Intelligence and international relations : covert action as foreign policy instrument and accounting for intelligence in foreign policy analysis

Abstract

Students of international relations are commonly taught that diplomacy and warfare are the primary tools of a state's foreign policy. This paper aims to better connect the field of intelligence studies to that of international relations, with a particular focus on covert action as a 'third option' - a third foreign policy tool, past diplomacy but not amounting to warfare. Through a qualitative analysis of covert actions of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA, or the 'Agency') during the Cold War era, the paper demonstrates that successive U.S. presidents did indeed develop and employ the CIA's covert action capabilities as a primary effector of foreign policy to secure that nation's perceived national interest in the international arena. The paper will conclude by fitting intelligence agencies and their covert action capabilities into international relations theories, with a view to suggest the appropriate theoretical frameworks through which covert action may be best analysed.