Background
In this work, Patrick Kelley interprets the intelligence environment of political, military and information empires. His contribution sheds light on the cause of enduring intelligence collection deficits that afflict the center of such empires, and that can coincide with their ebb and flow. Alert intelligence practitioners, present and future, can note here just how useful a fresh interpretation of the intelligence enterprise can be to a coherent understanding of the global stream of worrisome issues. The long-term value of this work will be realized as readers entertain the implications of Churchill's comment that "The empires of the future are the empires of the mind."
The manuscript for this book was reviewed by scholars and intelligence practitioners, and was approved for public release by the Department of Defense's Office of Security Review.
Selected Review Commentary Excerpts
Good intelligence, in both senses of the word, has been notably missing in U.S. foreign policy over the past several years. Skillfully moving from the Roman to the Ottoman to the British empires, adeptly applying ideas from a wide range of Eastern and Western philosophies, Patrick Kelley has produced a remarkable set of lessons-yet-to-be-learned for the United States. Full of trans-historical and cross-cultural insights, this is the perfect supplement and essential sequel to the U.S. Army and Marine Corps Counter-Insurgency Field Manual. Francis Bacon said knowledge is power: Kelley makes it so.
Patrick Kelley is that rare scholar-soldier who has dared to be self-reflexive. His monograph on "Imperial Intelligence" is carefully researched and lucidly written. Considering how crucial the question of intelligence gathering is, an understanding of its history should be of great interest to scholars, to statesmen, to intelligence gathering departments, and to interested non-specialist readers as well.
As Patrick Kelley observes near the close of this book, "all intelligence is fundamentally historicized." One of the main reasons we study history is to escape the insularity of the present, to overcome the unwarranted exceptionalism that so oft en afflicts our sense of ourselves, to remind us that the problems we face can be found to echo those of our predecessors. Kelley brings an historical perspective brilliantly to bear on contemporary America's intelligence capabilities and limitations, identifying its "way of knowing" as a distinctively imperial one and demonstrating that it shares much in common with the intelligence challenges of the Roman, the Ottoman, and the British empires.