Politicization Of Intelligence Essay

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The Politicization of Intelligence in the Korean War

The role of intelligence in policy making has always been an ambiguous one. On the one hand, the intelligence community must be independent from policymakers, so the intelligence community can do its job objectively and unbiased. On the other hand, policy depends on intelligence for providing relevant information usable for policy production and implementation (Gookins, 2008). Betts (2002) states that because of this paradox, politicization of intelligence is inevitable. He defines politicization as “to give a political tone or character” or “to bring within the political realms”. Gookins’ (2008) definition is more specific, stating that politicization of intelligence “refers to the influence of partisan, bureaucratic, and personal politics on intelligence analysis”.
In this paper it is studied how the strains of intelligence producers and policymakers can express itself in practice. A case study is used to demonstrate this strained relationship. The case that is studied is the lead up to the 1950 Korean War, where intelligence played a crucial role. The research question of this study therefore reads as follows: How did the politicization of intelligence affect the action taken by the US concerning the Korean War in 1950?
After a brief analysis of the relevant literature on the politicization of intelligence, the case of the Korean War is outlined. Next, the literature is applied to the case and, lastly, the research question is answered in the conclusion section of this study.

The Politicization of Intelligence
As mentioned before, it seems that intelligence and policy cannot live with and without each other (Betts, 2002). The intelligence community and policymakers need to ...

... middle of paper ...

...wered by stating that the politicization of intelligence affected the action taken by the US extensively. The decisions taken by Washington concerning the situation in Korea were based completely upon the intelligence they received. It was because of the incomplete and distorted intelligence reports that the US did not prepare for war and, consequently, was taken by surprise when the North Koreans and Chinese attacked. Because of bad intelligence, the Korean War started with thousands of casualties on the side of North Korea and the US. Therefore, it would only be logical to assume that these casualties, or a great deal of them, could have been prevented if the intelligence community had done its job right and remained objective and unbiased, even if that meant an angry General MacArthur. This case illustrates how bad intelligence can have devastating consequences.

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