Discuss the pros and cons of the internationalization of U.S. criminal law The Policing the Globe authors opine in the Introduction that "Interest in cross-border policing has grown in recent years (especially after the shock of September 11 and its aftermath), but far too little attention has been devoted to examining the international dynamics of criminalization and crime control across time, place, and issue area." Is the internationalization of U.S. criminal law good? Is it bad? Both? Discuss the pros and cons of the internationalization of U.S. criminal law. Your response MUST include: Analysis of at least TWO of the Dark Side Themes from the Module 1 lecture (pasted below for your reference) Include at least ONE type of international crime to support your argument. Cite at least TWO learning materials sources from Module 1 Respond to the discussion question, maximum 300 words. Reply to two students. I STRONGLY encourage you to take a position, even a position you may not instinctively agree with. You should also provide a counter-argument, suggestion, or policy alternative in your replies, and not simply AGREE with your classmates' assessments. Replies are maximum 200 words. Formal citations are not needed, but you should link any resources you refer to. Your post is due by Thursday at 11:59pm AZT and your two replies are due by Sunday at 11:59pm AZT. . Dark Side Themes 1. What motivates the internationalization of U.S. criminal law? Pragmatism; Altruism; Influence; Coercion 2. Are there political consequences to the internationalization of U.S. criminal law? Foreign criminal procedures, sentences; Sovereignty; Equal application of the law 3. Is there tension between the internationalization of U.S. criminal law and U.S. foreign policy? 4. How do the principles of character-driven leadership inform the internationalization of U.S. criminal law? Module 1 It should come as no surprise to any of you given my training as a historian that I would start this course with the history of the US intelligence community. But examining the history of US intelligence is important because it helps one understand not only its current structure, but also its unique attributes compared to other countries. The use of intelligence is as old as our Republic. But its primary purpose throughout much of our history was in support of our military. Thus, as commander of the Continental Army, George Washington relied on intelligence, and even employed a network of spies and a system of code words to provide that intelligence. If you have a chance, I highly recommend the short video from the history channel on George Washington as a Spy Master. It's a delight. But the remarkable thing about the history of US intelligence is not that intelligence was used primarily for military purposes, it was that for much of our nation's history, there was no perceived need for a formal intelligence organization. This speaks volumes about the fact that largely from the time of the Revolutionary War, until the Second World War, the United States faced no serious outside existential threat. Indeed, the historian C. Vann Woodward has referred to this as the "age of free security." A byproduct, of both the fact that geography blessed the United States by surrounding us with relatively non threatening neighbors, as well as oceans that kept us apart from potentially hostile powers, and the fact that the greatest power of the nineteenth century, Great Britain, possessed the world's most powerful navy and was with the exception of the War of 1812 and some tensions during our Civil War, essentially a benign force when it came to the United States. This changed dramatically during the Second World War when the United States faced an existential threat from both Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. In fact, The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, underscored perhaps more than any other event the need for better and more reliable intelligence, even in peacetime. In the summer of 1942, President Franklin Roosevelt named William J. Donovan as head of the Office of Strategic Services or the OSS. Donovan, also affectionately known as "Wild Bill" Donovan, divided the OSS into various operational and analytical elements. OSS paramilitary forces operated behind enemy lines. It had its own counterintelligence branch, as well as the research and analysis branch. Some very famous individuals were involved with OSS during the war, including Alan Dulles, who later became the first civilian Director of Central Intelligence. Indeed, not only does the Central Intelligence Agency regard the OSS as its predecessor, but so too do special operations forces in the US military. SOCOM, or the Special Operations Command, uses the same spearhead design as the OSS insignia. And even my own Bureau, INR in the State Department derives from the research and analysis branch of the OSS. I should note here that while the OSS has a reputation as the beginning of the US intelligence community, there were many important operations in various departments, especially the US Navy, the US army, and the War Department that predated the OSS and whose code breaking operations and expertise prove critical to our success during the Second World War. The State Department for a while had its own diplomatic code breaking operation, but it had been shut down in 1929 by then Secretary of State Henry Stimson who famously declared the "gentleman don't read each other's mail." How quaint. However, the lines from the OSS to the modern US intelligence community were not entirely direct insofar as the OSS was abolished at the end of the war and its functions were divided among the War Department and the State Department. Donovan himself had argued in favor of continuing an independent civilian intelligence organization, while others favored leaving intelligence entirely with the military. President Truman issued an executive order in 1946, creating the Central Intelligence Group and a Director of Central Intelligence. But the key change happened with the passage of the National Security Act of 1947. That act is really the foundation of the modern US intelligence community. In addition to creating the National Security Council, the Act established the Central Intelligence Agency as the lead civilian intelligence organization in the United States. It also created the modern defense department. It is important to stress for the purpose of understanding evolution of US Intelligence Community three key points: First, notwithstanding the establishment of the CIA, and even the subsequent creation of the Director of National Intelligence, in the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, a significant part of what we consider the US intelligence community remains under the direct authority of the Secretary of Defense and the Department of Defense. This includes the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency and the National Reconnaissance Office, along with intelligence elements in each of the uniform branches of the military. This means that the Department of Defense and the Secretary Defense control a substantial portion of the overall intelligence budget, and the capacities of the intelligence community. Other departments also control their own elements within the intelligence community. As I noted before, I was for five years the head of the Bureau of Intelligence and Research in the Department of State, reporting both to the Secretary of State, and to the Director of National Intelligence. But my budget and my personnel were largely controlled by the Department of State. This is true in other agencies as well. Second, the CIA from its origin, was prohibited from collecting information regarding US persons. That is, it was only intended to collect foreign intelligence, leaving the collection of domestic intelligence to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which is both a member of the Intelligence Community but also obviously a law enforcement agency. It's important to note that in many countries, especially authoritarian ones, this division between domestic and foreign intelligence largely does not exist. Or if it exists, it's of no material importance. Third, throughout the period of the Cold War, that is roughly from the end of the Second World War until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 or the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the overwhelming focus of the intelligence community was on the existential threat posed by the Soviet Union. I want to stress this because it explains so much of the history of the US intelligence community, and so many of the actions that were undertaken by the intelligence community throughout this period. Indeed, the focus on the Soviet threat was really the defining purpose of much of the intelligence community throughout the time from the end of the Second World War until at least 1991. The major change for the intelligence community comes not so much from the collapse of the Soviet Union, as from the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Indeed, it is hard to overstate the impact on the American psyche and the American world view of that day, which some have compared to Pearl Harbor, even if the threat posed by terrorists was never as existential as what we faced during World War II. In terms of the intelligence community, September 11 ultimately results in the most significant reforms since 1947, particularly the creation of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. But I would argue that while that is vitally important, the creation of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence proved much less significant than the overall shift in the focus of the intelligence community in the wake of 9/11. This is especially true if you look at the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, launched in the aftermath of 9/11, which consume so much of the energy and the resources of the broader intelligence community over the last twenty years. Many would argue that the Global War on Terror, announced under President George W Bush, was both ill defined and ultimately damaging to our national interests. Present Bush declared to the outset, that "our war on terror begins with Al Qaeda, but it does not end there. It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped, and defeated. That is a breathtaking statement. And as we shall see, it led to a number of gross missteps. Not the least of which was the war in Iraq, in my view at least, perhaps the biggest mistake in American foreign policy since the Vietnam War. While the legacy of 9/11 and the Global War on Terror continues to be felt within the intelligence community, the situation confronting the intelligence community today is in fact much more complicated and challenging. As the DNI's National Intelligence Strategy of 2023 notes, the United States faces an increasingly complex and interconnected threat environment. We are going to explore that complicated and interconnected threat environment from the perspective of the role of intelligence in the weeks ahead, and especially in our final module.
READ MORE >>
