The British secret service in neutral Switzerland: An unfinished debate on NATO's cold war stay-behind armies

In 1990, the existence of a secret anti-Communist stay-behind army in Italy, codenamed ‘Gladio’ and linked to NATO, was revealed. Subsequently, similar stay-behind armies were discovered in all NATO countries in Western Europe. Based on parliamentary and governmental reports, oral history, and investigative journalism, the essay argues that neutral Switzerland also operated a stay-behind army. It explores the role of the British secret service and the reactions of the British and the Swiss governments to the discovery of the network and investigates whether the Swiss stay-behind army, despite Swiss neutrality, was integrated into the International NATO stay-behind network.     

The CIA in Western Europe and the abuse of human rights

Covert action by the CIA and other intelligence services is designed to remain secret. Academics and the public at large therefore to this very day face great difficulties in answering two specific questions: What covert action has the CIA carried out in Europe during its almost 60 years of existence? Did CIA covert action violate human rights in Europe? Some operations, however, have become known and are now in the public research domain. Among them are the clandestine anti-communist stay-behind networks set up by the CIA in case of a Soviet invasion of Western Europe. As the details of the operation emerge only gradually some sources suggest that the stay-behind network was linked to terrorist groups, adding further interest to this largely unknown research subject at a time when the so called ‘war on terrorism’ has forced academics to examine present and historical terrorism data once again.     

The Soleimani killing’s regional implications

The January 2020 killing of Major-General Qasem Soleimani, one of Iran’s most influential security officials, by a US airstrike brought relations between the countries to a new low. Iran, which engaged in smaller-scale provocations against the US throughout 2019, was likely caught off guard by the attack, but now has the option to retaliate on its own timetable against a wide range of US targets across the Middle East.     

What's wrong with the Intelligence Cycle

In the modern era, almost all intelligence professionals will study the Intelligence Cycle as a kind of gospel of how intelligence functions. Yet it is not a particularly good model, since the cyclical pattern does not describe what really happens. Policy officials rarely give collection guidance. Collection and analysis, which are supposed to work in tandem, in fact work more properly in parallel. Finally, the idea that decision makers wait for the delivery of intelligence before making policy decisions is equally incorrect. In the modern era, policy officials seem to want intelligence to support policy rather than to inform it. The Intelligence Cycle also fails to consider either counter-intelligence or covert action. Taken as a whole, the cycle concept is a flawed model, but nevertheless continues to be taught in the US and around the world.     

Mirroring Risk: The Cuban Missile Estimation

The Cuban Missile Crisis is by this point well known to all scholars of international politics. Yet, although it has yielded countless lessons over the years, one critical aspect of the case has remained unexamined: the failure of estimation prior to the crisis that led US officials to discount the possibility of a missile deployment in Cuba. This article re-examines US intelligence estimates of the Soviet Union prior to the Cuban Missile Crisis in light of the concept of ‘mirroring risk’, introduced in this article. I present a framework for understanding a class of intelligence failures that are caused by the mis-assessment of how an adversary frames a decision and the risks that they are willing to take. I also present a new two-stage process for understanding how individuals assess the risk-propensity of adversaries in international politics.     

Environmental mediation: An alternative approach to policy stalemates

Environmental mediation is a new and innovative attempt to overcome the policy stalemates that frequently hinder effective environmental policymaking. It brings together environmentalists, business groups, government officials, and a neutral mediator in an attempt to negotiate a binding settlement to a specific controversy. This essay describes this approach, discusses its advantages over more traditional dispute resolution processes, and explains how it is able to produce acceptable agreements in such a difficult policy area.     

The euro for China: too important to fail and too difficult to rescue

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to analyze China's strategy in relation to the euro. The first section summarizes China's active support to the single currency since its creation up to the first phase of the current Eurozone debt crisis. It shows how China has used a two-pronged approach. It has developed a public campaign in favor of the euro, especially when the market sentiment has been bearish on the single currency, and it has continued to be an active player in the European sovereign debt markets. The second part explains why China has been so supportive. Beijing wants to move away from dollar hegemony and thus it favors a tripolar monetary system based on the US dollar, the euro and the Chinese renminbi (RMB). With this aim, and despite the crisis, China has continued to diversify its foreign reserves into the euro making it by now ‘too important to fail’, not only because China holds roughly $1 trillion in euro-denominated assets, but also because for China the Eurozone is a crucial market and an important strategic counterweight to US dominance in world affairs. Finally, the third part focuses on how by the end of 2011 China switches to a more cautious approach due to the difficulty involved in rescuing the Eurozone. Domestic pressures, public outcry in Europe against being saved by China, the unwillingness of the European leaders to enter into strategic bargaining and Germany's strategy to use sovereign bond spreads as a market mechanism to create ‘more Europe’ have convinced policy-makers in Beijing to keep a lower profile while making sure the value of the euro remains stable.     

Missing revolution: the American intelligence failure in Iraq, 1958

Why were American officials caught by surprise with the military coup and later revolution in Iraq on 14 July 1958? Drawing on American intelligence and diplomatic records as well as multilingual sources, this article argues that the US intelligence failure is the product of two factors: the collection of information from too few and too similar human sources of intelligence in Iraq’s ruling regime, and the unreceptivity of US officials to assessing new information and their unwillingness to update assessments of local Iraqi developments. It revisits America’s intelligence failure in Iraq and suggests important lessons for the study of intelligence.     

United States democracy assistance in Malaysia: the nature and impact of concurrent strategy

This exploratory article seeks to analyze the nature and impact of one of the main democracy promoters in Malaysia i.e. the United States (US). The US is a promoter that is often being alleged with interfering with Malaysian domestic affairs, especially since the sacking of former Deputy Prime Minister, Anwar Ibrahim in 1998. This article argues that the US democracy promotion in Malaysia can be conceptualized under the framework of a concurrent democracy assistance strategy. This is due to the fact that while the US is supporting the non-regime compatible program, it is also concurrently channeling bigger aid for regime-compatible program to Malaysia from 1999–2015. The improvement of diplomatic ties between both countries since post-Mahathir era and the prioritization of security issues have led to a more engaging conduct of democracy promotion. Despite the US continuous funding of non-regime-compatible programs through non-state actors, this approach was nevertheless balanced by cordial relations at the state level. Nevertheless, the effect of US democracy assistance and promotion on Malaysia’s democratic development has been minimal, reinforcing the views on the difficulty to promote democracy in a semi-authoritarian regime.     

Ensuring the after-life of the Ciano diaries: Allen Dulles' provision of Nuremberg trial evidence

The relationship between Western intelligence officials and Nazi war crimes prosecutors has been, and in some aspects remains, a difficult one. It is increasingly apparent that it is precisely the selective nature of support war crimes prosecutors can expect from intelligence officials that merits particular scholarly attention. One such example in this case of positive assistance concerns the provision of a specific piece of evidence, the diaries of Ciano, Mussolini's Foreign Minister, obtained for the Allies by Allen Dulles, a senior US wartime intelligence official with the OSS, based in Bern, Switzerland, and used in the prosecution case against Ribbentrop at the Nuremberg war crimes trials. This article, based largely upon recently declassified American security files, closely examines Dulles' actions undertaken to retrieve the diaries and pass them to the prosecution.     

The Impact of Electoral Reform on the Public Service: The New Zealand Case

October 1996 marked the beginning of a new era in New Zealand politics, with the advent of a system of proportional representation based on the German model. This article explores the impact of electoral reform on the public service. First, it summarises the extensive public sector reforms during the mid-to-late 1980s and considers the preparations undertaken by the public service for proportional representation. Second, it outlines the concerns and expectations about the likely consequences of the new electoral system on the bureaucracy. Third, against this background, the article examines the extent to which the public service has been affected by electoral reform. It is argued that despite some notable changes to the political environment within which officials operate, the overall impact of proportional representation on the public service to date has been modest. The analysis presented here is based on a series of interviews conducted during 1997 with ministers, senior public servants, ministerial advisers and parliamentary officials, along with a range of secondary sources.     

Naming the Pacific

Abstract

A conventional explanation for the establishment of the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) holds that it was an attempt on the part of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to maintain US military engagement in Asia while tactically promoting cooperative relations with China in the post-Cold War era. This line of argument is associated with realism and neoliberalism. This article maintains that such an explanation is unsatisfactory, and seeks to offer a sounder explanation by employing a constructivist perspective. It argues that the interests and policies of the ASEAN countries which had led them to initiate the ARF were defined by what can be regarded as a norm of security cooperation in Asia. This norm contains two sets of ideational elements. The first is common security thinking fostered in the Conference for Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE). Such thinking emphasizes efforts to achieve the security of the whole region through multilateral security cooperation, on the basis of the view that regional security is indivisible. The second element is a set of diplomatic norms associated with the ASEAN Way of diplomacy, which underline the Southeast Asian countries' commitment to the habit of dialogue and consultation. Today, the nature of the ARF may be disputed. Critics of the ARF assert that it is a mere ‘talking shop’ in which no significant measure to achieve security has been carried out. Yet only by understanding thoroughly the establishment process of the forum can a fair assessment be made of its significance. The research in this article concludes that the ARF should be seen as an arena for the development and practice of norms – in other words, a ‘norm brewery’.     

The August 1924 raid on Stolpce,Poland, and the evolution of Soviet active intelligence

In August 1924, a Soviet-sponsored raid on the Polish town of Stolpce to free two imprisoned communist activists went badly wrong. Though the ruling Politburo had not authorized this raid, the public embarrassment and diplomatic consequences led the Soviet government to overhaul its program of ‘active intelligence’, halting peacetime attacks on neighboring states in favor of quieter preparations for wartime sabotage and diversion under the authority of the Red Army's Intelligence Directorate. At the same time, the Politburo organized stay-behind groups in Soviet border regions to prepare for the possibility of enemy occupation.     

Early post-war Holocaust knowledge and the search for Europe’s missing Jews

ABSTRACT

Lambertz discusses the post-war failure to trace nearly all missing Jews who had been trapped in Europe during the war, which underlines the extent of Nazi violence. Missing person enquiries provide evidence for how Jewish survivors, refugees and immigrants across the globe understood what had happened during the Nazi era. The correspondence arriving in post-war Jewish community offices across Germany in the late 1940s reveals highly fragmentary knowledge of wartime events, both on the part of far-flung former community members and the officials who attempted to assist them.     

Local Government Finance in Hungary: Okun Revisited

Fundamental change in the economic systems of the nations-of central Europe is now taking place. The economic transition has broad social and cultural consequences, among these the alteration of local government service provision and financial management. In this article, the authors describe some of the fiscal characteristics of local governments in Hungary with an analysis of the dilemmas of transition. Efforts to create and enhance local government financial management capability are detailed. This article portrays the difficulty of developing a fully operational market economy within a democratic context in the post-Communist era while, at the same time, maintaining social protection for citizens through the continued provision of a wide array of social benefit programs. The essential dilemma for local government social program managers and budget officials is that service demand far surpasses the financial resources available to continue services at the levels to which people grew accustomed under the Communist regime.     

Iran’s nuclear programme and diplomacy under pressure

A recent explosion at the Natanz nuclear complex set back Iran’s nuclear development by one to two years but may encourage Iran to move its centrifuge production underground, where it will be hidden from international supervision. While Iran is also under diplomatic pressure, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) of 2015 is likely to survive until the US presidential election in November.     

The United States,Japan, and the European Union: comparing political economy approaches to China

Abstract

This paper examines US, Japanese, and European political economy approaches to China, and their effect on US–Japan and US–EU relationships. Great powers with a greater security concern in dealing with another major country care more about power while those with less of a concern are preoccupied with calculations for wealth. China's rise and its actions have posed a far greater security challenge to the United States and Japan and are driving the two countries closer together. The political economy game involving China reveals a dominant welfare motive among the advanced market economies. The ambition to transform China politically has diminished. China's integration into the global market makes a relative gains approach difficult to implement. Globalization simply limits the ability of a state to follow a politics-in-command approach in the absence of actual military conflict, which explains why the political economy approaches of the United States, Europe, and Japan are not that different in the scheme of things. China's own grand strategy to reach out to the world to outflank the US–Japan alliance has also contributed to a divergent European policy toward China although there are severe limitations to Beijing's ability to drive a wedge between the United States and Europe.     

Destroying one Public Service Bargain Without Making Another: A Comment on Lowe and Pemberton,The Official History of the British Civil Service,Volume II: 1982–1997

This article responds to Lowe and Pemberton's second volume on the history of the civil service and analyses fundamental shifts in British governance at the centre that occurred during the 1980s and 1990s. The traditional ‘public service bargain’ (PSB) that underpinned the relationship between ministers and officials has been repeatedly undermined. The article examines how far prior civil service reforms relate to the changes of the contemporary era instigated by Conservative‐led governments since 2010. As Lowe and Pemberton's work illustrates, the impulse to reform the state and the managerial reforms it unleashed were long in the making. Their legacy can be traced to the emergence of Thatcherism after 1979. The core argument of the article is that the more recent efforts of the Johnson administration to transform the state and undermine the PBS were scarcely original. Rather, they consolidated and drew upon earlier initiatives.     

The politics of productivity and the politics of anti-communism: American and European labour in the Cold War

The ‘politics of productivity’, an attempt to raise levels of industrial productivity in Europe by transcending class conflict and creating a consensus in society for economic growth, was a prominent element in Marshall Plan thinking. It constituted a central focus of the European Recovery Program's labour programme administered by American trade union officials who staffed the Marshall Plan's Labor Division. This programme was initially supported by the American Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), until hostility to collective bargaining in the local business community, combined with the unwillingness of senior Marshall Plan administrators to insist on collective bargaining as the price of receiving American assistance, blighted the project. This contribution contrasts the CIO's initial support for the productivity programme with the American Federation of Labour's (AFL) more direct strategy of combating communism at the level of organization and propaganda. It concludes by describing how the competing claims of these two American labour organizations for US government funding became a significant factor in American labour's conduct of Cold War politics.     

Organizational Culture and US Intelligence Affairs

Both US intelligence officials and intelligence studies scholars claim that ‘organizational culture’ is a cause of ‘intelligence failure’ and the proper locus of post-9/11 intelligence reform efforts. This essay uses a postmodern perspective to demonstrate how the dominant discourse of ‘organizational culture’ shapes stakeholders' understandings of accountability and what constitutes necessary, correct, or effective intelligence reform. By exploring institutional struggles over the meanings of ‘culture’ and ‘accountability’, this essay calls for reconsideration of the ways US intelligence officials and intelligence studies scholars talk about ‘organizational culture’ vis-à-vis post-9/11 intelligence reform.