Do they listen? Communicating warnings: An intelligence practitioner’s perspective

Abstract

This short chapter seeks to examine, from a practitioner’s perspective, some of the elements that contribute to successful and unsuccessful communication of warnings to policy makers. For this purpose, it assumes that accurate and timely warnings are available and focuses on the communications aspects of the warning process. It does so by drawing on experience of the last seven years from within the European Union (EU), looking primarily at our processes and experience. That said, some of the examples mentioned are not of course just of warning interest to the EU but also to a wide range of other international actors.1.