Intelligence Prioritisation in an Age of Mid-Tier Powers: Information Requirements for a Globalised UK

This book examines how UK intelligence and national security priorities can best inform foreign policy strategy in the emerging geopolitical order. This book examines how UK intelligence and national security priorities can best inform foreign policy strategy in the emerging geopolitical order. It analyses the usefulness of the UK intelligence community in an emerging world order characterised by unbalanced multipolarity, in which mid‑tier powers use diverse levers of power autonomously, leveraging greater influence than previously. In particular, this book uses the requirements and priorities processes to analyse which structures have best served UK decision‑makers. A new framework is employed to investigate the cost‑effectiveness of different categories of intelligence requirements, and case studies at the national and transnational levels are used to examine the range of actors now relevant to policy outcomes. This book considers these issues in the context of the increasingly globalised and networked world order and asks what sort of requirements system can best deal with the resulting complexity and uncertainty, and whether current UK processes are adequate. It thereby provokes wider questions about strategy and what support UK governments might need when crafting policy. This book will be of interest to students of intelligence studies, foreign policy, British politics, public administration, organisation and international relations.