Custom «US Intelligence Revolution» Essay Paper Sample

In security context, intelligence is a process of gathering information using very sophisticated secret approaches with an aim of strength both the national security and defense departments. Consequently, several countries worldwide have established well-structured intelligence organs and agencies which are integrated to form the most vital units of government. This has been made rather a compulsory process rather than an option to these governments due the rising crime rates ranging from the cyber-based crimes to the terroristic activities (Lowental, pp43). According to the security experts, a government without proper intelligence is under yet to unfold. Like any other nation, United States of America have a federal organ to accomplish the intelligence roles. The organ is currently managed by independent directors who design and accomplish the process. However, historical events which took place either in US or the entire world played a major role in shaping the intelligence especially the World War II and the emergence of the Cold War which totally brought revolution to it.

U.S intelligence was established in 1880's which comprised Naval Intelligence and the Army Military Divisions (Lowental, pp69). With this office, personnel were posted to major European cities. However, these officials opted for espionage in early 1900's when Spanish-America n War where they struggled to learn the Spanish military tactics. Counterintelligence was established in 1916 by Justice Department Bureau of investigation later became FBI. While in the World War battles broke, Franklin Roosevelt, the then President established a counterintelligence agency. With the establishment of Office of Strategic Services it gave birth to the current Central Counterintelligence Agency.

As one of the sources of revolution to US intelligence, World War II is now an historical event which took place around 70 years ago (Andrew & Christopher, pp21). It began from 1^st September, 1939 and lasted until 1945. The war which culminated into loss of more than 60 million lives involved most of the world's great powers. It simply began through an attack to Poland by Germany. France and Britain followed suit against Germany which was then engaging Poland in a serious war. Interestingly, in a span of one week, other countries like Australia, South Africa, and were also in the same battle. With time as the war propagated itself, there rose two totally rival military alliances; Allies and Axis averaging at over hundred millions of military personnel having engaged in the war. To boost up the war more, the nations dedicated their industrial and economic capabilities together with the scientific sophistications which were by then the source of the 'great powers' (Ciebes, pp22). Apart from the fights within Europe, USA was also not a safe place to be. Japan which was then in the fourth year in fights with China attacked US possessions in Pacific. This became a landmark to US intelligence after defeating Japanese naval operations.

As the war ended in 1945 with the victory over Japan and Germany, U.S and the Soviet Union emerged as the new super powers. Alongside this, United Nations came into birth within aim to prevent any possibility of World III arising. Good enough, UN fostered good international relations which consequently prevented any kind of national or rather international war. Ironically, the rivalry between the new superpowers; US and Soviet Union, triggered a fresh Cold War. This lasted barely until the last decade of the century. This chronologically was a period between 1947 and 1991. As mentioned above, the war took another different perspective different from the world wars. It was characterized by political and economic rivalry competition, propaganda feud and the worst of all the proxy wars (Maddox, pp 213). According to Prados (p19) proxy warfare is a situation whereby the two rival powers engage third parties to supplement their efforts. Although U.S and Soviet Union did not fight directly, they employed this warfare as that could trigger a hazardous nuclear war. This was accomplished by U.S defense and intelligence agencies.

This Cold between U.S and Soviet Union was seen by other nations and the defiant Germany and Japan. This is mainly because; during the battle, the two nations were allied against other rivals and were expected to establish mutual relationship which turned into long-time rivalry. Instead, they turned against each other. Although the military from the two nations did not clash in a more direct way, they engaged each other through military coalitions, the mentioned proxy warfare, propaganda, nuclear arm races, and the field events like sporting and the space race. The whole war can be attributed to the disagreement on the political ideas, and the modalities of resettlement of Europe continent they were now overruling. The war was underground as both nations involved their innocent third counterparts.

O'Toole (p12) the insecurity rose between these nations as the cold war did not bear good fruits to them. Especially for United States, there were the rebounds of events from Soviet Union which were mainly aiming to bring the States down. As a result, there was a serious effect on the economy where United States witnessed consecutive regressions for almost five quarters. Consequently, there was an urgent need to focus on the ways to deal with this although it became near an impossible action as the two countries were all reluctant to give in the fight. U.S Congress organized subsequent sessions with most State organs to discuss on the appropriate measures which could be taken to curb the problem. After thorough efforts to ascertain this, the delegates agreed to start on the strategies to gather and learn the opponent's steps with an aim to abort them. National intelligence was found to be an appropriate organ.

The US intelligence was got unaware by the cold war and the organ was then restructured to handle it. To start with, the organ's mission was modified to accommodate the newly culminating effects of the war. Sincerely speaking; Cold War marked a big landmark to the US intelligence. As a result new missions were incorporated and alternatively modifying those in existence by then. This enabled United States to handle the new threats the Cold War was posing to its government and the nations which the State was allied to. Its functionalities and were either replaced or modified to make it more relevant to the situation. It was also a big challenge as the nation was still recovering from the battles it had engaged itself before with Japan.

National intelligence could only carry out its primary roles but had to be modified to cope with the new circumstances. As a result, its scope was extended to include the role which were not in existent before or which were performed by other State organs. The extension of the scope intended to override those sections in the government which were too reluctant to handle the upcoming security crisis (Leshuk, pp57). The following discussion handles the new scope of intelligence during the Cold war times; first, the intelligence now intensified the responsibility of giving a well done analysis on all areas relevant to the US national security (Walker, pp204). This was changed to gather information not only within the State but also the foreign nations. It was now analyzing any collaboration between the rival Soviet Union and other countries. Spies were dispatched to every country they suspected for the same.

The organ also was vested with the power to advise any give the responsible department about any suspected insecurity. It could now bring all operations of the latter departments into a standstill with an intention to concentrate on the impending crisis. Proper means of communication were put in place to ensure the timely dissemination of information. More Forensic scientists were recruited into the organ conduct thorough forensics on the information which was in Soviet Union's public domain and also in other countries (Walker, pp204). This lead to professionalizing the organ to have experts who could accomplish all these with utmost secrecy as this was the primary role of the body. Secondly, it was expected that US don't expose its secret monitoring of the rival as this could raise other security concerns. Interestingly, United States became an active participant at any event which Soviet Union partied. This enabled the organ to monitor the rival's weakness and strength which were communicated to the relevant department with corresponding recommendations.

During the President Ronald Reagan's era; former US president, US Intelligence received a major boost following the integration of intelligence- related bodies into United States Intelligence Community. All this intended to check on security matters posing US into danger as a result ill-intention Soviet's activities (Leshuk, pp58). It was officially promulgated on 4th December, 1981. The Community was intended to join the rest cooperative federations which are now sixteen working separately all with one mission of conducting intelligence. The main objective was to check on intelligence effectiveness by accomplishing foreign relations and protection of the National security.

It is also quiet clear that the current US national intelligence derives the organizational structure from then modifications done to accommodate the security concerns during the nearly five decades of Cold War. The formation of the mentioned US intelligence Community saw the structure completely changing. Intelligence agencies, relevant federal offices, military intelligence, and the civilian bodies are currently the members of the US Intelligence Community (Andrew & Christopher, pp22). It was designed to be headed by a Director of National Intelligence (DNI), an office which didn't exist in the earlier intelligence organization.

Evidently, US Intelligence started relinquishing some of its earlier domination on the security issues. This poses a question whether if this was a change towards complication of its role or if it was a way making its role simpler than before. Currently, the number of both government organizations and private corporations range at nearly 400 all intended to work on improvising intelligence (O'Toole, pp13). They joint role are to deal with the counterterrorism, intelligence, and the domestic security. This is not work of the recent but most of them are products of the strategies which were laid down to align the intelligence department to cope with the roaring struggle by Soviet Union to over United States by using shadow-boxing approaches. This presents both organizational and scope changes in the United States intelligence.

The above changes were characterized with financial changes to meet their corresponding budgetary allocation. More so, the past governments were criticized for loading lot government resources to military (Coil, pp100) According to relevant sources; military took a huge sum of citizens' taxpayers though their perspective was very negative too this. In this paper, the huge military budgetary allocation are speculated to been aimed at meeting the new roles of military intelligence. To bring this point home, Cold War forced United States of America to review the amount of resources allocated to the intelligence departments to meet the cost of running the complex system. Resources were required to advance the technology which taken by then to be the greatest weapon (Sulzberger, pp67).

Setting up nuclear plants and the development of nuclear weapons were the major challenge to United States during this period. This is quite evident if the issue is seen from the economics perspective considering the cost of both capital and reinforcement of the project (Walker, pp204). Although the weapons were not used during the shadow-boxing war, there was need for each nation to get prepared if the situation could trigger war between them. Resources were mainly dispatched to intelligence organ for the purpose of complementing the rising demand for policymakers, lawyers, military mapping officials, and the intelligence personnel. During this period, US was described for being philanthropic; it was involved in peacekeeping missions, refuge and humanitarian accommodation, participating in almost all events which soviet union was involved. The primary reason for all these was to tame the Soviet's existence in other countries and fight to take precedence causing a burst in the subsequent budgetary amounts.

In conclusion, both nations suffered a lot in terms of their economies when they engaged in the Cold War which covered almost five centuries. This can be seen from to perspectives; first, the two nations were the primary participant of World War II battles, as a result they lost an indispensable huge amount of resource and instead of recovering, Cold War was the next point of interest. Secondly, resources were used by the two parties against each other. This was a double loss. To lay the issue of US to rest, US national intelligence before and after the Cold War had a very big difference in terms of technological sophistication, scope, resource allocation, mission, and the organizational structured (Sulzberger, pp68). The Cold War officially ended in 1991 following the collapse of the USSR. This left United States to remain as a principal military power with Russian Republic emerging to be in possession of great Soviet's nuclear weaponry.