What constitutes successful covert action? Evaluating unacknowledged interventionism in foreign affairs

Cormac, Rory; Walton, Calder; Puyvelde, Damien Van

doi:10.1017/s0260210521000231

Cited by 9 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 60 publications

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“…106 In the latter cases, propaganda heavily relied on false, fabricated pieces and lies, building on secret and deceptive actions. 107 Between the two, a vast majority of propaganda contents includes appeals to known facts coupled with almost-truths, distortion, and oversimplification. 108 Propaganda, therefore, frequently conflates facts with inferences and values and lies to its recipient to achieve political and strategic goals.…”

Section: Assessment Criterion 2: Deliberate Falsehoodmentioning

confidence: 99%

Are propagandists combatants? Analysing the ethical status of propagandists in warfare

Robin

2024

Rev. Int. Stud.

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Belligerents increasingly rely on media manipulation, propaganda, and communication to attain strategic advantages in conflict. Given the civilian propagandists’ clear role in creating tactical or strategic advantages for one side in the conflict, should these propagandists be considered combatants, and can they therefore be legitimately targeted because of their activities? This article overcomes traditional binary frameworks of distinction to argue that propagandists are indirectly participating civilians, i.e. participants who cannot be intentionally or directly killed in conflict. Because of their activities, propagandists, it argues, are liable to less-than-lethal harm, of which it identifies three types (destruction of property, privation of liberty, isolation). The article then proposes a necessary criterion – necessity – to decide if less-than-lethal harm is warranted against propagandists. It then creates four new criteria – denial of agency, falsehood, influence, gratification – to serve as assessment criteria able to decide what degree of harm a propagandist may maximally face. In making this argument, the article contributes to just war literature by proposing a novel way to evaluate the ethical status of a highly diverse, yet undoubtedly influential, category of war participants: those who undertake the ‘media battle’, outside of the military.

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Section: Assessment Criterion 2: Deliberate Falsehoodmentioning

confidence: 99%

Are propagandists combatants? Analysing the ethical status of propagandists in warfare

Robin

2024

Rev. Int. Stud.

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“…There is a body of literature on intelligence failure (Dahl, 2013; Jervis, 2011; Rovner, 2011; Stein, 1980), which emphasizes unit-level bureaucratic politics and cognitive biases. But there is less work on intelligence success (Cormac et al, 2022; Lindsay, 2020a), which depends on system-level relationships between intelligence adversaries. The literature on military effectiveness (Biddle, 2004; Brooks and Stanley, 2007; Talmadge, 2015) offers relevant insights, namely on the importance of institutions over the quality or quantity of weapons.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Abducted by hackers: Using the case of Bletchley Park to construct a theory of intelligence performance that generalizes to cybersecurity

Lindsay

2024

Journal of Peace Research

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Most cyber intrusions are a form of intelligence rather than warfare, but intelligence remains undertheorized in international relations (IR). This article develops a theory of intelligence performance at the operational level, which is where technology is most likely to affect broader political and military outcomes. It uses the pragmatic method of abduction to bootstrap general theory from the historical case of Bletchley Park in World War II. This critical case of computationally enabled signals intelligence anticipates important later developments in cybersecurity. Bletchley Park was uncommonly successful due to four conditions drawn from contemporary practice of cryptography: radio networks provided connectivity; German targets created vulnerability; Britain invested in bureaucratic organization; and British personnel exercised discretion. The method of abduction is used to ground these particular conditions in IR theory, revisit the evaluation of the case, and consider historical disanalogies. The result is a more generalizable theory that can be applied to modern cybersecurity as well as traditional espionage. The overarching theme is that intelligence performance in any era depends on institutional context more than technological sophistication. The political distinctiveness of intelligence practice, in contrast to war or coercive diplomacy, is deceptive competition between rival institutions in a cooperatively constituted institutional environment. Because cyberspace is highly institutionalized, furthermore, intelligence contests become pervasive in cyberspace.

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Women in Intelligence: A Dynamic and Integrative Literature Review

Andoko,

Nurisnaeny,

Wicaksono

et al. 2024

Gend. Issues

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What constitutes successful covert action? Evaluating unacknowledged interventionism in foreign affairs

Cited by 9 publications

References 60 publications

Are propagandists combatants? Analysing the ethical status of propagandists in warfare

Are propagandists combatants? Analysing the ethical status of propagandists in warfare

Abducted by hackers: Using the case of Bletchley Park to construct a theory of intelligence performance that generalizes to cybersecurity

Women in Intelligence: A Dynamic and Integrative Literature Review

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