Papers by Philip H J Davies
International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence, 2019
On 9 May 2018 Malaysia provided one of the most compelling demonstrations of the power of the sec... more On 9 May 2018 Malaysia provided one of the most compelling demonstrations of the power of the secret ballot ever seen. In the country's 14 th General Election, colloquially referred to a GE14, the incumbent and highly controversial Prime Minister Najib Razak 3 , his party the United Malay National Organisation (UMNO) and its associated, multi-ethnic coalition Barisan Nasional (BN, 'National Front') were soundly ousted from power. UMNO/BN had held power in one form or another since Malaysia received its independence on 31 August 1957. Mired in persistent allegations of corruption on an epic scale, BN were defeated by a fractious coalition of previously minor parties collectively termed Pakatan Harapan ('Alliance of Hope'), whose success has largely been attributed to the last minute return to active politics of Najib's 4 only slightly less controversial predecessor-but-one, Mahathir bin Mohamed. 5 It was no surprise to any of those observing that the higher echelons of the Malaysian government underwent a scouring purge of speed and thoroughness rarely seen since the fall of the Soviet Union. But while an assortment of leading and not-so-leading political lights rose and fell, and Najib found himself under criminal investigation and his home searched and possessions seized, an equally unprecedented public furore emerged regarding the Malaysian intelligence community. That furore was focused on the Malaysian intelligence community's its least well-known agency, the Malaysian External Intelligence Organisation (MEIO), also known as the Research Division of the Prime Minister's Department (RD). 6 One of the numerous revelations to follow from Najib's fall from power was the fact that, five days before the election, the Director General of MEIO, Hasanah Abdul Hamid 7 had written to the thenacting Director of the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Gina Haspel. 8 In principle, correspondence at heads-of-agency level should be nothing out of the ordinary given the close cooperation of the Malaysian intelligence community with a wide range of other nations (including but not confined to the Anglo-American '5 Eyes' agencies). What caused public dismay when the letter was leaked to the public via social media and thence to the Malaysian press shortly after the election was not just the intensely politically partisan tone of that letter. The real flashpoint for controversy was a concluding paragraph that appeared to be asking, even begging-however obliquely-for a CIA covert political action to intervene that election on the side of Najib and UMNO/BN. IN PRESS WITH INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF INTELLIGENCE AND COUNTERINTELLIGENCE 2 NOT FOR CITATION WITHOUT AUTHORISATION The affair of the MEIO and Hasanah's letter to CIA has significance for the wider study of intelligence organizations in government. GE14 demonstrated compellingly that Malaysia is a functioning electoral democracy. Its intelligence agencies are highly professionalised and comparatively wellresourced for a country of its size, and its intelligence personnel as able and well-trained as any to found in the more fulsomely resourced agencies of the developed world. But the story of Hasanah's letter to CIA is the story of a national intelligence agency slipping from a national security function to regime protection. That disastrous mission creep also exposes some serious limitations in our existing conceptual and theoretical understanding intelligence-policy proximity, politicization and the boundary conditions between politicization and regime protection. There are questions to ask about the applicability of current such theory beyond the Western liberal democracies to the socalled 'rest of the world', especially so-called 'new democracies', and particularly the increasingly prosperous and developed 'newly industrialised countries' (NICs) of the 'global South'. Politicization, Proximity and Beyond The notion of 'politicization' is one of the most common terms in intelligence theory, usually employed as something of an epithet or accusation. It also appears in the study of civil-military affairs where use is comparatively naïve and simply refers to the military, as Mark Beeson and Alex Bellamy put it, 'becoming involved in politics'. 9 The relationship of intelligence institutions to policy formation and execution is, however, more nuanced and so also must any concept of intelligence politicization. As a general rule, 'politicization' appears in the literature as a dysfunction that manifests as a bias in or alteration intelligence judgements arising from tacit or explicit pressure to suite those judgements to the preferences or prejudices of intelligence consumers. Often such bias or alteration is attributed to too close a relationship between the intelligence and policy communities. Stephen Marrin has framed this problem as that of 'proximity' or 'relative distance between intelligence analysis and national security decisionmaking'. 10 The appropriate degree of proximity is one of the most long-debated points of conceptual debate in the field, despite Walter Laqueur's over-optimistic 1985 suggestion that 'The debate about integration versus separation now seems to be over'. 11 The problem of proximity is, essentially, a dilemma. Former National Intelligence Council chair Mark Lowenthal has described the policy-intelligence relationship as a 'semi-permeable membrane' 12 while his erstwhile British Joint Intelligence Committee counterpart, Sir Percy Cradock, famously likened the relationship to one of 'separate but adjoining rooms, with communicating doors and thin IN PRESS WITH INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF INTELLIGENCE AND COUNTERINTELLIGENCE 3 NOT FOR CITATION WITHOUT AUTHORISATION partition walls, as in cheap hotels.' 13 Without those barriers, however ephemeral, Cradock warns 'Too close a link and policy begins to play back on estimates, producing the answers policy-makers would like … analysts become courtiers, whereas their proper function is to report their findings … without fear or favour'. 14 Too great a distance, however, too little proximity, and intelligence risks become detached or even irrelevant to the needs and an interests of intelligence users. There are advocates of both greater and lesser proximity, a debate that can be traced at least as far back as 1949 and the public dialogue between Sherman Kent and Wilmoore Kendall on the publication of the former's seminar Strategic Intelligence for American World Policy. 15 As later encapsulated by CIA's Jack Davis, Kent's 'recommended fix' was to 'warrant scholarly objectivity, provide analysts with institutional independence [and] to warrant relevance, urge them to strive to obtain "guidance" from policymakers.' By contrast, Kendall exhorted the intelligence profession to 'directly help "politically responsible" leaders achieve their foreign policy goals'. 16 The debate has continued over the decades, with Arthur Hulnick labelling advocates of greater separation 'traditionalists' and of greater proximity 'activists'. 17 The entire question has become still more vexed when it became apparent that different countries functioned entirely effectively with significant variations in the degree of proximity that their systems were willing and able to accommodate. 18 Shortly before 9/11 and Iraq, Lowenthal pithily and effectively boiled the potential drivers of politicization down to 'a variety of motives: a loss of objectivity over the issue at hand and a preference for specific options or outcomes; an effort to be more supportive; career interests; outright pandering.' 19 In the wake of those same traumas, Gregory Treverton provided a more detailed taxonomy. There may, for example be explicit 'direct pressure' from policy-makers on intelligence to toe a certain line. That line may be internalised and become an internal orthodoxy or 'house line' in 'a particular analytic office' that overrides doubt and dissent. Senior officials (most likely on the policy 'side') may 'cherry-pick' selected items of reporting or evidence to support that line. Questions may be asked or framed in ways to steer a particular answer that appears to support the preferred line. And finally, policy and intelligence practitioners may develop a 'shared mindset' in which 'intelligence and policy share strong presumptions'. This latter case Treverton notes 'is more self-imposed than policymaker-imposed'. 20 In which case, the problem becomes one of a shared groupthink crossing the intelligence/policy frontier, which can arise all too readily under conditions of closer proximity and familiarity. The kind of concern elicited by the notion of 'politicization' is, however, very largely an artefact of intelligence in developed, stable liberal democracies. As a conceptual discipline, intelligence theory IN PRESS WITH INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF INTELLIGENCE AND COUNTERINTELLIGENCE 4 NOT FOR CITATION WITHOUT AUTHORISATION suffers from a long term déformation professionelle of focusing narrowly albeit not quite exclusively on (mainly Western) democratic examples and criteria. The end of Cold War put paid to its attendant cottage industry of exposés of the machinations and excesses of Soviet Bloc security apparats. The result was an acute loss of interest in scrutinizing the intelligence and security institutions of authoritarian states, and therefore a loss of conceptual interest in systems principally geared towards regime protection rather than non-partisan notions of national security. 21 By the same token, regime protection is never really discussed as a potential extremum of proximity and politicization within nominally democratic systems. There appear to be two main reasons for this. The first arises from an implicit assumption across in the theoretical literature that the transition between policy support and regime protection represents a step change driven by fundamental differences in structure and ethos between democratic and...
Defence Studies, 2018
This article examines the evolution of the current British military joint intelligence doctrine. ... more This article examines the evolution of the current British military joint intelligence doctrine. We argue that military intelligence doctrine is dogged by an intrinsic tension between the ethos and expectations of military doctrine and those of the professional practice of intelligence. We further argue not only that prior iterations of UK joint intelligence doctrine failed to effectively deal with this intelligence doctrine dilemma, but also that measures in the current doctrine to address this problem directly created their own problems. Moreover, as a result, otherwise sound innovations in the current UK intelligence doctrine have proven unsuitable to wider diffusion in more recent intelligence doctrine such as the new NATO intelligence doctrine which, otherwise, draws extensively on its British precursor.
Intelligence and National Security, 2017
Abstract This article examines the Brunel Iraq HUMINT Matrix exercise. The purpose of this approa... more Abstract This article examines the Brunel Iraq HUMINT Matrix exercise. The purpose of this approach to intelligence pedagogy is to get participants to think through and work out analytic methods, issues, and potential solutions from first principles and for themselves. Our strategy is to try and fuse training and education learning outcomes, so that students emerge with a technical competence in analytic methods, underpinned by a deeper understanding of the foundations and internal logic shaping those methods. The Iraq Matrix exercise seeks to unpack and examine the nuts and bolts of source evaluation, and to test alternative hypotheses with particular attention to the relationship between the quality of various sources and, the weight of judgements they can or cannot sustain. The ultimate goal is to encourage what is currently fashionably referred to as ‘reflexive practice’, whereby the practitioner reflects critically and self-critically upon how their task works and how they do it, then uses those insights to improve their workplace performance. But not all of our teaching is directed towards practitioners. For those whose aims are scholarly and academic, the aim is to give observers a more visceral understanding of the challenges of the intelligence task they intended to study. Here the intended reflexive practice goal is to encourage an empathy with the workaday challenges facing those in the business of intelligence analysis, and to discourage the observer’s temptation to make facile and simplistic judgements about processes or events.
Intelligence and National Security, 2017
The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 2014
4 Lt. Co. John Dalley was a member of the prewar Federated Malaya States' Police Force. At the ou... more 4 Lt. Co. John Dalley was a member of the prewar Federated Malaya States' Police Force. At the outbreak of hostiles with Japan he formed Dalley's Company (Dalco)-an irregular, all volunteer, guerrilla force. He later formed Dalforce, which comprised of Chinese civilian irregulars. When Singapore fell, Dalforce retreated into the jungle, and renamed itself the Malayan People's Anti-Japanese Army (MPAJA). Dalley subsequently became a prisoner of war. At the end of the War the MPAJA reformed itself into the Malayan People's Anti-British Army (MPABA).
Journal of Conflict Studies, Jun 1, 2004
One of the strange ironies one encounters as your ordinary working academic is that very often it... more One of the strange ironies one encounters as your ordinary working academic is that very often it is the best undergraduate essays that are the easiest to criticize, find fault with, and pinpoint the errors. The very precision and clarity of the author's thought and writing makes critical analysis easier. While, on the other hand, the very worst essays are the hardest to shape any coherent critical response to because the very incoherence means one hardly knows where or how to begin. Unfortunately, David Arbel and Ran Edelist's thick volume on Western intelligence on the collapse of the USSR-or lack thereof-falls into the latter category of essay. The book is an almost unreadable mass of sweeping generalizations, unsupported assertions, barely relevant side roads of tendentious narrative and wholesale self-contradiction. The finished product is so incoherent that it is nearly impossible for a reviewer to know where to begin.
Journal of Conflict Studies, Sep 1, 1998
Review of International Studies, 2009
This article examines the status, role and development of imagery intelligence in the UK governme... more This article examines the status, role and development of imagery intelligence in the UK government. It is argued that imagery intelligence occupies a subordinate and marginalised position compared to other forms of intelligence, chiefly from human sources and the interception of communications. The origins of that position are recounted, and the problems arising from internal struggles over control of imagery examined. It is concluded that the existing approach to imagery represents a serious problem and that a substantial restructuring and upgrading of imagery intelligence is essential if UK foreign policy decision-making is to be properly informed in the 21st Century.
Journal of Conflict Studies, Sep 1, 1999
Richard Aldrich's Espionage, Security and Intelligence is a volume in Manchester University Press... more Richard Aldrich's Espionage, Security and Intelligence is a volume in Manchester University Press's "Documents in Contemporary History" series. As such, it is primarily intended as a resource for advanced secondary school and undergraduate teaching. However, Aldrich's piece has a worth well beyond that of simply an instructional aid. This book is also a valuable guide to the range of sources available from published and archival sources on the British intelligence system. In this fashion, Aldrich's book also provides an insight for those already familiar with the problems of doing research on the British intelligence system into how much conditions have changed in the wake of the 1993 "Open Government" initiative.
Public Policy and Administration, 2010
This article argues that the failure to address intelligence agencies as public organizations par... more This article argues that the failure to address intelligence agencies as public organizations part and parcel with the overt machinery of government constitutes a significant lacuna both in the specialist study of intelligence and the broader discipline of public administration studies. The role and status of intelligence institutions as aspects of the machinery of central government is examined, along with the prospects of certain key paradigms in the field for understanding those institutions are considered. Finally, the implications for the wider study of decision-making, policy and public management will be examined.
Intelligence and National Security
The following article argues that defence intelligence in general, and Britain's Defence Intellig... more The following article argues that defence intelligence in general, and Britain's Defence Intelligence organization in particular, represents an area in intelligence studies that is significantly underinvestigated. It makes the case that the significance of understanding defence intelligence and DI lies not only in a general lack of illumination but because DI is subject to and prompts a range of difficulties and challenges that are either especially acute in the defence context or have ramifications for the wider intelligence community that remain to be fully appreciated. Particular attention is given to DI's remit being divided between Ministry of Defence and national requirements, problems of fixed-sum resourcing an intelligence function with national responsibilities that is subordinate to Departmental spending structures and priorities, fraught positioning of defence intelligence in Departmental line management and finally a chronic lack of public or official interest or scrutiny. The article concludes that the UK's experience has echoes elsewhere, notably in the United States, and that wider international study of defence intelligence is both long overdue and may have implications for understanding of national and wider intelligence institutions and processes.
BCISS Comments on JWP 2-00 Re-Write Arising from DCDC Intelligence Seminar Dear Col. Rigden,
Conference Presentations by Philip H J Davies
The limited but growing scholarly literature on the Indonesian and Malay martial arts has frequen... more The limited but growing scholarly literature on the Indonesian and Malay martial arts has frequently highlighted the notion of ‘silsilah’ in the establishment and propagation of the martial arts of the region. Glossed essentially as a historical narrative of a school or system that serves to explain its origin and indicate the authenticity by locating the art in a wider body of existing practice and precedent, silsilah can also been as fusing the risks intrinsic to any oral history with those specific to a self-glorifying mythology. This becomes especially acute when considering the assortment of arts brought to the West after 1949 by émigré Dutch-Indonesian Eurasians. A marginal and marginalised group to start with, the ‘Indo’ martial arts represent an entirely different order of eclecticism long sundered from the institutional and cultural setting in which the systems took shape. However, given the often acute concerns amongst Western practitioners about the relative authenticity of practices that require the investment of years or decades of study. This paper will examine some of the social research methods than can, and have been, deployed to investigate the originary narratives of certain Indo schools and systems and the insights into those systems that can result.
Intelligence doctrine is an especially troubled area of military doctrine. On the one hand, it i... more Intelligence doctrine is an especially troubled area of military doctrine. On the one hand, it is currently expected to support commanders' understanding in a complex and volatile global environment. At the same time, and more tellingly, as 'a box for thinking outside the box', intelligence doctrine is all but a contradiction in terms.
An overview administrative history of the UK's imagery intelligence organisation, the Joint Air R... more An overview administrative history of the UK's imagery intelligence organisation, the Joint Air Reconnaissance Intelligence Centre (JARIC) up to its relocation and restructuring at RAF Wyton as the Defence Intelligence Fusion Centre.
Talks by Philip H J Davies
Changes in the global defence and military operational environment are driving significant change... more Changes in the global defence and military operational environment are driving significant changes in thinking about intelligence professional practice and doctrine. This paper examines issues arising 2010-11 re-write of the UK's Joint Intelligence Doctrine in which the author was a central participant.
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Papers by Philip H J Davies
Conference Presentations by Philip H J Davies
Talks by Philip H J Davies