Religion and Intelligence

摘要

Religion has seriously affected the gathering of intelligence since Biblical times. Beginning post-World War II with the rise of the state of Israel, however, religion began to become a direct political issue for the first time since the Middle Ages. The 1979 Iranian revolution brought this development to center stage, as practitioners of diplomacy were forced to study the interaction more carefully. The United States Intelligence Community (IC) understood some of this at the tactical level, but like the diplomatic community, has been slow to comprehend how fundamentally religion changes geostrategic considerations, hinders collection, impacts analysis, and changes the nature of covert operations, especially at the strategic level where politics, diplomacy, and intelligence intersect. To meet the challenge, the Intelligence Community and most statesmen need to develop much better understanding of religion's interplay with diplomacy among those at the upper levels who affect the direction of national policy.