Columbia International Affairs Online: Working Papers

CIAO DATE: 08/2012

Role of Intelligence in International Crisis Management

Kwa Chong Guan

July 2012

S.Rajaratnam School of International Studies

Abstract

This Working Paper reviews conventional thinking about the contribution of strategic intelligence to early warning of diplomatic crisis and its escalation and resolution. The paper argues that in an increasingly complex and interdependent world driven by forces of globalization strategic intelligence may not be able to provide policy makers the foresight of crisis and its possible outcomes. Instead, strategic intelligence can perhaps help the policy maker to make sense of an increasingly chaotic, uncertain and unpredictable situation and grasp the complexity of a spectrum of possible outcomes.