NAVAL INTELLIGENCE AND GREAT POWER COMPETITION
RETHINKING THE COMMUNITY PARADIGM
TODD MOULTON AUGUST 31, 2023 9 MIN READ
Retaining a qualitative advantage over great power rivals entails intelligence practitioners at all levels who understand the military and nonmilitary underpinnings of adversaries’ capabilities or intentions.
As the United States’ technological advantages recede, people will remain its best “weapon” to outthink opponents. Yet, the naval intelligence community’s (NIC) recruitment, education, training, and billeting paradigm is not adequate for great power competition. Russia and China can now challenge the United States across multiple domains, using all instruments of power. Meanwhile, NIC assessments of rivals’ capabilities focus on military capabilities, with scant attention to nonmilitary, historic, or cultural factors, which often drive decision-making. This narrow focus reflects the NIC’s traditional cultivation of broad military analysts. A great power competition context demands more holistic analyses, which means the NIC must realign its recruitment, training, education, and billet structure to develop the community’s understanding of nonmilitary aspects of its operating environments.
Retaining a qualitative advantage over great power rivals entails intelligence practitioners at all levels who understand the military and nonmilitary underpinnings of adversaries’ capabilities or intentions. Such insight can speed friendly leaders’ decision-making. Transient jobs in disparate regions preclude many analysts from developing such needed insight. The NIC should therefore expose personnel to tactical, operational, strategic, and interagency billets that focus them on great power competition rivals’ military and nonmilitary features. Such exposure must then be reinforced with education and training.
Education and training opportunities between changes of duty stations rarely marry up with a Sailor’s forthcoming assignment or build on experience gained during a previous one. Such a fragmentary approach leaves NIC personnel with at best an intermediate level of knowledge or cultural understanding of America’s adversaries.
https://warroom.armywarcollege.edu/articles/naval-intelligence/
