The politics of intelligence failures: power, rationality, and the intelligence process

Abstract

This article develops a new approach to analysing intelligence failures. Rather than looking for their causes, intelligence failures are here analysed as part of a politics seeking to reify the value of rationality and the taming of power. To analyse this politics, the article draws on Bent Flyvbjerg’s notion of an asymmetrical relation of power/rationality, according to which power has a productive role that is inseparable from claims to rationality. The asymmetrical relation of power/rationality is used in order to challenge the instrumentalist language that pervades much of the literature on intelligence failures and what can be learned from them.