Intelligence and the Liberal Conscience

The question of how to reconcile the practice of national security intelligence with the values on which liberal democracies are understood to be based was very much present at the creation of Intelligence Studies. At a time when the conceptual landscape of Intelligence Studies has broadened, this article represents a revisiting of these first principles. In it, I explain the normative tension between the requirements of liberal democratic orders and the practice of national security intelligence as arising from three sources. First, the confusions that arise from liberalism itself as an ideology. Second, the constraining effect of the international. Third, the constraining ‘problem’ of the nature of the liberal democratic state. In light of these and contemporary anxieties about the implications of intelligence practice for liberal values, I discuss how far it is possible or useful to think in terms of ‘liberal intelligence’ and what its core characteristics might be held to be.