Recommended Citation

Craig H. Allen, The Limits of Intelligence in Maritime Counterproliferation Operations, Naval War Coll. Rev., Winter 2007, at 35

Authors

Craig Allen, University of Washington School of LawFollow

The Limits of Intelligence in Maritime Counterproliferation Operations

Publication Title

Naval War College Review

Document Type

Article

Abstract

This article begins with an examination of the intelligence needs of those engaged in maritime counterproliferation efforts. It then turns to risk-management decision making under conditions of uncertainty, focusing on decisions at the operational level and exploring the question of whether decision strategies in the WMD context should seek to minimize false-negative or false-positive errors. It concludes that even vastly improved maritime intelligence will not obviate the need for national and operational commanders to make decisions under conditions of uncertainty and that such decisions should be made on the basis of established risk-assessment and management principles. At the same time, risk management analysis must be sensitive to the public’s attitude toward risk. When possession of WMD is at stake, sound risk management that gives appropriate weight to the public’s preferences might well call for action even where the relevant event probabilities are quite low.