Department of War Studies, King’s College London
ESSAY QUESTIONS
1.
Is secrecy an essential part of intelligence?
2.
Is clandestine collection more valuable than open source collection?
3.
Should allies spy on each other?
4.
Are intelligence activities ethically sound? Discuss how different approaches to ethics
would respond to this question, and refer to different types of intelligence activities to illustrate
your argument.
5.
What are the advantages and disadvantages of institutionalizing ‘devil’s advocate’
intelligence assessments?
6.
To what extent can the outbreak of the First World War be explained as an intelligence
failure?
7.
What contribution, if any, did intelligence make to the course and outcome of the First
World War?
8.
To what extent can the outbreak of war in Europe in 1939 be explained as an
intelligence failure?
9.
What does a comparison of Operation Barbarossa and Pearl Harbor in 1941 tell us about
the recurrence of ‘warning failures’?
10.
What contribution did intelligence make to the course and outcome of the Second World
War in Europe or the Pacific?
11.
Why did the Germans fail to realize that their secret communications had been
penetrated by the Allies during World War Two?
12.
What was the role of intelligence agencies in the Cold War? Why did they become more
important?
13.
‘The US intelligence community displayed a distinct lack of imagination in failing to
foresee the Soviet deployment of missiles on Cuba and the subsequent crisis in 1962.’ Discuss.
14.
‘US covert action during the cold war was almost universally counter-productive.’
Discuss.
15.
‘From Stalin to Gorbachev, the USSR’s ideological blinkers ensured that the first rate
intelligence it collected could never translate into first rate policy.’ Discuss.
16.
Why did western intelligence analysts fail to predict the collapse of the Soviet Union?
1
Department of War Studies, King’s College London
17.
Did the British intelligence services infringe on human rights in Northern Ireland? Were
their actions justifiable?
18.
How effective were the British intelligence agencies in tackling the IRA?
19.
What does a comparison of the British failure to anticipate Argentina’s invasion of the
Falkland Islands in 1982 and the United States’ failure to anticipate Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in
1991 tell us about the recurrence of ‘warning failures’?
20.
What does a comparison of the American failure to predict China’s entry into the Korean
War and to anticipate the Tet Offensive during the Vietnam War tell us about the recurrence of
‘warning failures’?
21.
Is organisational weakness as important a factor as a lack of concrete intelligence in
what is known as intelligence failure? Discuss in relation to the attacks of 11 September 2001.
22.
Why was British and American the intelligence about Iraq’s WMD programmes wrong
before the 2003 war?
23.
so?
Are intelligence agencies in democracies different from those in non-democracies? How
24.
Is democratic control undermining the effectiveness of intelligence agencies?
25.
How does intelligence oversight affect intelligence services?
26.
How, and to what extent, can intelligence oversight mechanisms prevent human rights
abuses by intelligence services and their staff?
27.
How effective have western intelligence services been in tackling Al-Qaeda and AQrelated groups since 9/11? Illustrate your answer with reference to the intelligence services of
one, two, or three western countries
28.
What factors are most important in determining whether or not intelligence services
respect human rights?
29.
Identify positive as well as negative lessons from the Israeli experience with intelligence
in counterterrorism (focus strictly on intelligence-related questions). Could some of these
lessons be applied to other cases?
30.
Analyse the developments in the United States’ intelligence machinery since 11
September 2001. Have they yielded a more effective intelligence community?
31.
Has the transformation since the terrorist attacks of 911 of the CIA from an intelligence
agency to a paramilitary one been detrimental to its original role?
32.
What is the role of Western intelligence in preventing the Iranians from developing a
nuclear weapon? Is it positive or counter-productive?
2
Department of War Studies, King’s College London
33.
Are authoritarian regimes more vulnerable than democratic ones to the politicization of
intelligence?
34.
Compare and contrast the course and consequences of the ‘Wikileaks’ leak of
intelligence on the war in Afghanistan with that of the ‘Pentagon Papers’.
35.
What are the specific challenges and opportunities for intelligence organizations created
by the internet? Who has the most to win and the most to lose?
36.
What is the attribution problem? Can it be solved?
37.
Is mass surveillance different from bulk collection? How?
38.
Did Edward Snowden do more good or harm?
39.
What are the most and the least valuable intelligence capabilities revealed by Edward
Snowden?
40.
Has the Internet changed the balance between human intelligence and signals
intelligence?
39.
What factors are most important for shaping the quality of co-operation between
security and intelligence services within one state? Illustrate your answer with reference to one,
two, or three country-cases.
40.
What are the tensions between intelligence goals and law enforcement/prosecution
objectives? Have these tensions been overcome, and if so, how? Illustrate your answer with
reference to one, two, or three country-cases.
41.
How significant has the involvement of private companies in national security
intelligence become? What are the risks and benefits?
42.
Why do the intelligence agencies of liberal democratic states sometimes carry out or
collude in torture? Illustrate your answer with reference to one, two, or three cases.
3