American Counterintelligence and Security for the 21st Century

IWP 646
Four credits

The current mission, organization, size, structure, and doctrines of the American Counterintelligence and protective security communities are once again at issue. The events of 9/11, the several wars in the Middle East and central Asia, and the coming of the “information age” have raised fundamental questions about the purpose and mission of U.S. counterintelligence and security policies and capabilities, and even about the place of security and secrecy as elements of national security policy in American life. Attention is also focused once again on longstanding questions of the performance and effectiveness of these capabilities and the communities that support them.

The seminar will build on an understanding of the complicated theoretical, functional and practical relationships between intelligence and policy and the roles of intelligence, protective security and counterintelligence in our democracy developed in other courses. Intelligence is, in essence, the gathering and analysis of secret information about other nations.Its opposite twin, security, is the protection of one’s own secrets. Counterintelligence seeks to protect both of the elements from foreign intelligence activities.

In the practical world of statecraft, these elements have several “great purposes” including: (1) the gathering (and protection) of secrets, (2) the discernment and validation of the information and information and images which other nations present to us, and (3) the counterintelligence activities which we take to disrupt and deny foreign intelligence activities which target us. In this seminar, we will examine these functions and how they might be successful in the face of 21^st Century challenges.

Semester Available

To be Announced

Principal Professor

Kenneth deGraffenreid

Faculty Chairman, Former Deputy National Counterintelligence Executive {read more}

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FEATURED FACULTY

Juliana Geran Pilon

Director, Center for Culture and Security; Professor of Politics and Culture

Nuclear Weapons Proliferation: History, Technology, and Policy

This course examines the problem of preventing the proliferation of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons, delivery systems, and associated technologies. The course addresses these issues historically, technically, and analytically. The first part of the course focuses on nations and technologies of concern, why they are, and what specific security threats proliferation poses. The second part examines how we have attempted to prevent proliferation and what successes and difficulties we have had in these efforts. The final part examines what other approaches might be taken to mitigate proliferation economically, politically, and militarily.

Principal Professor

Henry D. Sokolski