Intelligence has been an integral facet of diplomacy since ancient times. Policymakers rely on intelligence collection to know the intentions and plans of rival or adversary states, as well as their capabilities. For example, during the 1922 Washington Naval Conference to determine fleet naval ratios, US codebreakers intercepted the Japanese delegation’s communications, discovering their secret instructions. This allowed the American negotiators to secure their desired terms. On the other hand, faulty intelligence can seriously undermine diplomacy, as experienced by the Russians in their 1939 Winter War with Finland, the American failure to anticipate the 1978-1979 fall of the Shah of Iran, and numerous other cases. [1]
Analysts play a key role in the intelligence process by making sense of contradictory or incomplete field reporting and helping to weed out inaccurate or irrelevant information. [2] Ideally, governments should base their foreign policies on sound finished intelligence, as opposed to ideological strictures, nationalistic jingoism, or domestic political considerations — as is too often the case. It is not uncommon for leaders who are inflexible to reject accurate intelligence reporting that does not fit their preconceived notions.
Diplomats who implement foreign policy should be aware of the intelligence analysis underlying its formulation. This intelligence process also applies to dealing with allies. They may be seeking quietly to gain an advantage in a friendly relationship and may not want to share their ultimate goals or may want to hide vulnerabilities. In that regard, accurate intelligence is vital for diplomacy because denial and deception can be practiced by friend or foe. [3]
India offers an example of a successful campaign to convince the world that it had no intention or even capability to develop a nuclear weapons program. To avoid Western sanctions, India’s official pronouncements insisted that its nuclear research capabilities were strictly for peaceful purposes, while simultaneously hiding their secret weapons program. When Indian scientists detonated three nuclear bombs in May 1998 the deception was revealed. [4] Conversely, in the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, US Ambassador Adlai Stevenson made a classic display of intelligence used effectively for diplomacy. To gain support for the US blockade of the island, he presented to the United Nations declassified imagery of secret Soviet missile bases in Cuba. [5]
In the early days of diplomacy, envoys sent to a foreign country were not only expected to establish lines of communication and trade but also engage in espionage. As intelligence and diplomatic establishments became more bureaucratic over the centuries, a distinction developed between diplomats and spies, even though spies continued to operate under diplomatic cover. [6] This raises the separate practice of “secret diplomacy,” usually coordinated closely with intelligence, as in the famous case of US President Richard Nixon’s secret overtures to the Chinese government ultimately leading to the “opening” of communist China to the West. [7]
Some scholars and intelligence officials argue that intelligence must be collected clandestinely to be considered intelligence, otherwise it is simply information. The contrary view holds that overtly gathered information can be just as valuable for diplomatic purposes and should be considered as intelligence. By this criterion, diplomats can be considered not only as consumers of intelligence, but also as collectors, due to their valuable contacts and sources of information. To wit, Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) is listed as one of the five main forms of intelligence collection. [8] The Chinese intelligence manual, Sources and Methods of Obtaining National Defense Science and Technology Intelligence gives eloquent testimony to the value of OSINT. [9] Although it does not diminish the importance of human and technical espionage, the manual argues that much of the needed intelligence can be gathered overtly at international scientific conferences and by exploiting studies published in technical journals and other publicly available materials in US corporate, academic, civilian government, and military sources. [10]
Intelligence officials routinely stress that their craft must be apolitical and not be dictated by political agendas. However, the reality is that intelligence has often been politicized in the past, and the trend seems to be towards increased shaping of intelligence collection and analysis to fit political objectives. [11] This not only entails revealing/ declassifying genuine intelligence to make a point but can also include presenting misinformation and disinformation as intelligence. US politicians during the Cold War exaggerated the “missile gap” with the Soviet Union to win elections and justify increased military spending; strong cognitive biases and “group think” among intelligence analysts impeded a dispassionate assessment of the communist threat. [12]
The role of politicized intelligence in shaping foreign policy and diplomacy was evident in the 2003 US invasion of Iraq. [13] In that case, “neo-con” administration officials became convinced that it was necessary to overthrow the Saddam Hussein dictatorship and they manipulated the intelligence process to arrive at two wrong conclusions: (1) Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and (2) the Iraqi regime was allied with al-Qa’ida terrorists. [14] Disregarding basic intelligence procedures for vetting walk-ins, these policymakers embraced the fabricated intelligence reports of an Iraqi refugee in Germany encrypted “Curveball.” [15] Some of his falsehoods were presented as facts by Secretary of State Colin Powell at the United Nations on 19 December 2002 to gain international support for an attack on Iraq. [16] That speech became a compelling case of how not to use intelligence for diplomacy. Today (October 2025), politically driven intelligence estimates are being used by opposing diplomats either to convince the public that Ukraine cannot win the war against Russia, or, alternatively, that Russia cannot win.
Arturo G. Muñoz
Ph.D., Senior Political Scientist – Adjunct
RAND Corporation
United States of America
[2] See Roger Z. George and James B. Bruce, eds., Analyzing Intelligence: Origins, Obstacles and Innovations (Georgetown University Press, 2008); and Timothy Walton, Challenges in Intelligence Analysis: Lessons from 1300 BC to the Present (Cambridge University Press, 2010).
[3] See James B. Bruce and Michael Bennet, “Foreign Denial and Deception: Analytical Perspectives,” in George and Bruce, eds., Analyzing Intelligence, 423-445; and Donald C. Daniel, “Denial and Deception,” in Jennifer Sims and Burton Gerber, eds., Transforming Intelligence (Georgetown University Press, 2005), 134-146.
[4] See Lakshya Govani, “Pokhran Bespeaks the Secret Saga Behind India’s 1998 Nuclear Tests,” 23 May 2025 @ Pokhran Bespeaks The Secret Saga Behind India’s 1998 Nuclear Tests… – EBNW Story
[5] See Cuban missile crisis: Adlai Stevenson shows photos at the UN proving Soviet missiles are installed in Cuba – Today’s Flashback
[6] See Robert V. Keeley, “CIA-Foreign Service Relations,” in Craig Eisendrath, ed., National Insecurity: U.S. Intelligence after the Cold War (Temple University Press, 2000), 61-75.
[7] See Len Scott, “Secret Intelligence, Covert Action and Clandestine Diplomacy, “in L.V. Scott and P.D. Jackson, eds., Understanding Intelligence in the twenty-First Century: Journey in Shadows (Routledge, 2004), 162-179.
[8] The other forms of intelligence collection are Human Intelligence (HUMINT) (espionage), Geographic Intelligence (GEOINT) (formerly referred to as Imagery), Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) (communications intercepts), Measures and Signatures (MASINT) (includes radar intelligence, acoustic intelligence, nuclear intelligence, and chemical and biological intelligence).
[9] Written by Hou Zhongwen and Wang Zongxia, it was published in Beijing in 1991. A US government English-language translation was completed in 2000 and is posted at www.fas.org/irp/world/china/docs/sources.html
[10] Arturo G. Muñoz, book review of William C. Hannas, James Mulvenon, and Anna B. Puglisi, Chinese Industrial Espionage: Technology Acquisition and Military Modernization (Routledge, 2013), in Studies in Intelligence Vol.59, No.4 (Extracts, December 2015), 33-35 @ Chinese Industrial Espionage.
[11] See Joshua Rovner, Fixing the Facts: National Security and the Politics of Intelligence (Cornell University Press, 2011).
[12] See Richard Kerr, “The Track Record: CIA analysis from 1950 to 2000,” in George and Bruce, Analyzing Intelligence, 35-54.
[13] See the detailed description of how the intelligence estimate process on Iraq was manipulated to fit a political agenda in Paul R. Pilar, Intelligence and U.S. Foreign Policy: Iraq, 9/11 and Misguided Reform (Columbia University Press, 2001).
[14] See Aram Roston, The Man Who Pushed America to War: The Extraordinary Life, Adventures, and Obsessions of Ahmad Chalabi (Nation Books, 2008), 173-228.
[15] See Bob Drogin, CURVEBALL: Spies, Lies and the Con Man Who Caused a War (Random House, 2007); Joby Warrick, “Warnings on WMD ‘Fabricator’ Were Ignored, Ex-CIA Aide says,” 25 June 2006, Washington Post.
[16] Full Text of Powell’s Iraq Speech – CBS News Back to Table of Contents
