Cultures, conditions, and cognitive closure: Breaking intelligence studies' dependence on security studies

Abstract

This paper is about how the conceptualization of 'culture' in intelligence studies has taken on too powerful a role, one that has become too restrictive in its impact on thinking about other intelligence communities, especially non-Western ones. This restriction brings about unintentional cognitive closure that damages intelligence analysis. The argument leans heavily in many ways on the fine work of Desch and Johnston in the discipline of Security Studies, who cogently brought to light over fifteen years ago how ultra-popular cultural theories were best utilized as supplements to traditional realist approaches, but were not in fact capable of supplanting or replacing realist explanations entirely. The discipline of Intelligence Studies today needs a similar 'intellectual intervention' as it has almost unknowingly advanced in the post-Cold War era on the coattails of Security Studies but has largely failed to apply the same corrective measures. This effort may be best accomplished by going back to Snyder in the 1970s who warned that culture should be used as the explanation of last resort for Security Studies.