Reaction Paper on the documentaries "Korea" and "Spies"

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Reaction Paper on the documentaries Korea and Spies

Intelligence is the foreign policy instrument that was emphasized by the first documentary shown, “Spies”. Intelligence is the gathering and analyzing of information on foreign affairs. The information gathered and analyzed had to be concerned with the intentions and capabilities of other states, in this case the Soviet Union, that can threaten a country’s security.

There are two importaces of intelligence as a foreign policy instrument. First is that it provides an accurate understanding of international developments. Second is that it, most of the time, provides reliable information about another country’s capabilities and intentions. In this case the United States and the Soviet Union wanted to know what capabilities each one had and more importantly, what each others’ plans were in order to subvert these plans.

One of the limitations with regards to this instrument is that there is a clash between the rationales of national security and the autocratic accountability. An example would be when intelligence officers retire, they would write a book. And this, though intelligence agencies involved can censor it’s content, still exposes part or parts of the workings of the intelligence agency much so as to give others an idea of how they work. Another limitation would be the fabrication of intelligence to suit political interests and policy. An example of this would be in the case of Iraq, where the presence of weapons of mass destruction was used to justify the United States attacks. Another limitation would be the problem with the powerful bureaucratic functions, stuctures, and substuctures in the intelligence community. There are simply too many intelligence agencies which constantly have conflicting views and styles.

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Signal Intelligence (SIGINT) is the monitoring of signals generated by communications between targeted actors. This also included monitoring the flow of communications even when the precise meanings of the message cannot be obtained. This means of intelligence acquisition was employed by the United States as evidenced by the the Americans and British driving a tunnel deep into the Soviet sector in Berlin.

According to the documentary, Intelligence was used by the United States [as well as the Soviet Union] during the Cold War for one main reason: to know whether their enemy state intends to fight them. And the ...

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