Short Essay: “On the Methods of Intelligence Gathering and the Execution of Power as a System of Control”
“Aspiration for power is the distinguishing element of all politics, and hence of international politics. International politics is of necessity power politics.”
Hans Morgenthau,
Politics Among Nations, 1948
The process of intelligence gathering is not limited to merging various disciplines and experiences to analyze and inform the decision-making process of a nation-state, private corporation, or criminal organization. It involves a series of steps that are supported by a complex network of collection disciplines, including IMINT, SIGINT, MASINT, HUMINT, FININT, and occasionally, RUMINT. This process requires significant time, effort, expertise, and financial resources in order to gain an advantage over both allies and adversaries.
It can be argued that there exists a delicate balance between the intelligence collection practices of different political systems. The key question is whether the methods used to gather intelligence are suitable for each specific situation or system. The question remains whether different regimes, such as authoritarian versus democratic ones, would find varying intelligence collection methods more or less appealing.
In my opinion, categorizing the world as either “authoritarian” or “non-authoritarian” oversimplifies the complexities of political systems and ideologies that have existed for millennia. Additionally, some argue that the United States was considered a democracy during the presidency of Barack Obama, but during the Trump administration, it was perceived according to various experts inside and outside of the country, as being run by an authoritarian regime. Nonetheless, one could argue that the acceptability of covert use of power differs between democracies and authoritarian regimes, whereas overt use of power reinforces authoritarianism, as seen in some Gulf countries such as Saudi Arabia, or in the soft authoritarianism practiced in Singapore.
In his seminal work Discipline and Punish, The Birth of the Prison (1975), Michel Foucault has argued that discipline is a mechanism of power that regulates the thought and behavior of social actors through subtle means. Foucault’s approach suggests that power is ubiquitous and originates from diverse sources. According to his theory, the “spectacle” is the act of punishing and publicly executing criminals, as in the Saudi Arabian monarchy’s regular beheadings of dissidents and offenders, which represents an overt manifestation of power. In contrast, the panopticon symbolizes the non-physical aspects of power, such as the self-surveillance systems within a prison, which torture the mind rather than the body. This approach is prevalent in modern western democracies.
An example of modern-day conditioning and self-surveillance can be observed in the MTA’s security campaign “If you see something, say something.” While the campaign aims to maintain the safety of the transportation system in New York City, it can also be viewed as a highly effective technique of social control. Polly Sylvia’s dissertation (CUNY 2010) argues that this recurring MTA advertisement reinforces the War on Terror narrative, which seeks to convince the population that a threat exists and that any measures taken to counteract it are justifiable. In democratic political systems, surveillance and assessment no longer require the use of force or violence, as individuals have been conditioned over time to self-regulate their behavior and adhere to societal expectations.
China, often regarded as an authoritarian state due to its distinct political system, is frequently criticized for its high number of CCTV cameras in major cities. However, it is noteworthy that the United States has an even greater ratio of 15.28 cameras for every 100 people in a population of 331 million, compared to China’s 14.36 for a population of 1.4 billion. The United Kingdom follows closely behind with 7.5 cameras per 100 individuals. Other democratic countries among the top ten with significant surveillance capabilities include Germany with 6.27 cameras per 100 persons, the Netherlands with 5.8, Australia with 4, Japan with 2.72, France with 2.46, and South Korea with 1.99, according to Precise Security in 2020.
PS: almost all countries quoted above which possess formidable surveillance capabilities are considered to be democracies except for China.
