MANTRAYA RESEARCH NOTE # 01: 08 APRIL 2025
DR. THOMAS A. MARKS
Abstract
Though much strategic focus is currently on state competition, insurgent groups continue to drive the news cycle. Whether Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthi in the Middle East; the Islamic State and al Qaeda in a broad swath of territory, notably in Africa; or resurgent self-proclaimed Marxist-Leninists in Latin America, such as National Liberation Army or ELN of Colombia (but now also Venezuela), the strategies and attendant processes of non-state actors loom large. In particular, as highlighted daily with the Hamas case, there remains a pressing need to comprehend the intelligence processes of such groups. For it is intelligence that, at least theoretically, provides the foundation for action.
Analytical Consideration
Recent efforts to advance a theory of intelligence for non-state actors have focused principally upon the reality that the subject is not a state. While there is general agreement concerning intelligence as a function,[1] discussion necessarily turns to whether there is distinction between state and non-state approaches. The existing literature would seem to indicate there is a difference but that it is driven, in the final analysis, by where a non-state is in the process of achieving its objectives. That is, the assessment’s conclusion will be driven by the entry point for analysis. Is the counter-state in the process of formation and contestation with the state or has it become a full-fledged challenge?
The term “counter-state” has been in general use for decades and in the aftermath of 9/11 was privileged over the previous “clandestine infrastructure.” Any number of equivalents are used, such as “shadow” or “pseudo” state or government. Rather than terminology, it is focus that matters: a challenge emerges to the existing order which is intent upon creating a new reality to supplant what is. If state power is the objective, counter-state works well; if exploitation of the state is the end, albeit with local control of political processes necessary, para-state works best to highlight the parasitic relationship (e.g., a narco-cartel). The extreme, of course, would be actual civil war, a house divided against itself, which would present what effectively are two contending states, rather than a state challenged by a non-state actor as we are examining here.
For analysts, use of the term “civil war” in academic literature and beyond has become all but useless for the simple fact that its plain-face meaning has in the post-9/11 world been linked to quantitative and temporal metrics (i.e., a certain number of deaths in a certain slice of time) for the purposes solely of facilitating large-N studies. The precise derivation remains obscure (I know of no work that discusses etiology of the matter), but it has the practical effect of lumping quite disparate phenomena.[2] The conflict in Colombia, for instance, is frequently termed a “civil war” but is not in any analytical sense of the word. Thus, consideration of the intelligence needs and processes of the various non-state challengers remain quite different from those of, say, the Vietnam War.
Therein lies the heart of the matter as concerns intelligence. The complexity of the Vietnamese struggle for liberation and national unity (as proclaimed by North Vietnam) serves to illustrate.[3] During the war, very different organizational expressions of non-state actors (with a variety of names) had very different pressing intelligence needs.[4] The numerous non-state actors involved were consumed by the requirements of targeting and force-protection, in other words, operational and tactical intelligence. In contrast, an advanced counter-state of the nature represented in the Vietnam War necessarily required additional inputs, such as strategic intelligence.[5]
It is the latter category, strategic intelligence, which has normally been identified as of least immediate concern to the non-state actor, yet recent events remind us that this is entirely situational. Just as the need to read the global crowd was central to the successful Vietnamese war effort at every level, so the calculations of the non-state actors in the present clash with Israel, notably, Hamas and Hezbollah – and most recently the Houthis – appear to be firmly linked to strategic intelligence.[6] This should not surprise, given the integration of the tangible and intangible battlefields by Hezbollah nearly two decades ago in the 2006 war with Israel. Then, even the most tactical of actions appear to have integrated into a matrix of action which was dependent upon intelligence of the most global sort. Best evidence supports an assessment that planning has consistently been informed by intelligence, with the important caveat that analysis within a closed loop invariably introduces product distortion.[7]
Such non-state entities – challengers to existing order which fall within what one source usefully terms sovereignties[8] – must necessarily be focused upon warfighting, regardless of the precise mix of kinetic and nonkinetic struggle. That is, struggle is less likely to stovepipe application of force and other instruments of power in the manner characteristic of the U.S. approach; that is, as put succinctly by Komer, “bureaucracy does its thing.”[9] The implications for intelligence requirements, therefore, are instrumental. The opponent must be understood in order to be overcome, with its actions taking priority over any motives.
These findings, as cursory as they are, are in accord with substantial research dealing with non-state violent actors or sovereignties. What is of moment is that most such groups do not achieve the levels of operational and organizational development seen in the case of the non-state actors in the Vietnam War. Nevertheless, they are invariably highly developed systems which require extensive information qua intelligence as a product of its processing for counter-state formation and maintenance. The requirements of offense and defense similarly strongly resemble those of the state rivalries and often copy the models provided by what already exists.[10]
Does this speak to a theory of intelligence, particularly one which would offer distinction between state and non-state actors? It could be termed such, though what is presented here has more the characteristics of “observations.” What must be understood is not simply functions but context. Systems may be interrogated from a variety of angles, but ultimately the key is to discern their intelligence needs for goal satisfaction.[11] The strategic objective is likely to remain relatively unchanged even as the organizational and operational realities evolve. This will necessarily drive the importance of different facets of intelligence but is unlikely to produce new processes or theory.
END NOTES
[1] Of particular interest for this article’s discussion, Hank Prunckun, Methods of Inquiry for Intelligence Analysis, 3rd ed. (Boulder, CO: Rowman & Littlefield, 2019).
[2] The result, it should be clear, is the migration of body-count into terminology and analytical processes, such that purported findings concerning internal violence frequently mislead rather than shine light on their subjects.
[3] Examine e.g. Alexander Zervoudakis, “Nihil Mirare, Nihil Contemptare, Omnia Intelligere: Franco-Vietnamese Intelligence in Indochina, 1950-1954,” Intelligence and National Security 13, no. 1 (2008), 195-221; Christoopher E. Goscha, “Intelligence in a Time of Decolonialization: The Case of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam at War (1945-50),” Intelligence and National Security 22, no. 1 (February 2007), 100-138; David Strachan-Morris, “The Use of Intelligence by Insurgent Groups: the North Vietnamese in the Second Indochina War as a Case Study,” Intelligence and National Security 34, no. 7 (2019), 985-998. These may be profitably compared to Thomas A. Marks, “Evaluating Insurgent/Counterinsurgent Performance,” Small Wars and Insurgencies 11, no. 3 (Winter 2000), 21-46.
[4] Christopher Goscha, The Road to Dien Bien Phu: A History of the First War for Vietnam (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2022), esp. Ch.2 “Building Military Force.”; Martin G. Clemis, The Control War: The Struggle for South Vietnam, 1968-1975 (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2018). See also Paul Jackson, “Intelligence in a Modern Insurgency: The Case of the Maoist Insurgency in Nepal,” Intelligence and National Security 34, no. 7 (2019), 999-1013.
[5] Frederik Logevall, Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America’s Vietnam (NY: Random House, 2012), Ch.7 “War Without Fronts,” section II.
[6] For the Vietnamese case, see Pierre Asselin, Hanoi’s Road to the Vietnam War, 1954-1965 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2013); Lien-Hang T. Nguyen, Hanoi’s War: An International History of the War for Peace in Vietnam (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 2012); Ang Cheng Guan, “Decision-making Leading to the Tet Offensive (1968) – The Vietnamese Communist Perspective,” Journal of Contemporary History 33, no. 3 (1998), 341-353. For the Hamas and Hezbollah cases, see Devorah Margolin and Matthew Levitt, “The Road to October 7: Hamas’ Long Game Clarified,” CTC Sentinel 16, no. 10 (October/November 2023), 1-10; Bruce Riedel, “Hezbollah and the Axis of Resistance in 2024,” Brookings, 16 January 2024, https://www.brookings.edu/articles/hezbollah-and-the-axis-of-resistance-in-2024/#:~:text=Hezbollah%20is%20playing%20a%20careful,break%20down%20at%20any%20moment.
[7] Useful for orientation on the two groups are Judith Palmer Herik, Transnational Actors in Contemporary Conflicts: Hizbullah and its 2006 War With Israel (Cambridge, MA: HPCR, 9-10 March 2007); and Marvin Kalb, The Israeli-Hezbollah War of 2006: The Media as a Weapon in Asymmetrical Conflict (Cambridge, MA: John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, February 2007).
[8] John A. Gentry, “Toward a Theory of Non-State Actors’ Intelligence,” Intelligence and National Security 31, no.4 (2016), 465-489, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02684527.2015.1062320.
[9] Robert W. Komer, Bureaucracy Does its Thing: Institutional Constraints on U.S.-GVN Performance in Vietnam (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 1972).
[10] The work on the Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA), for example, would alone provide ample evidence for in-depth pursuit off the topics raised, and many studies touch upon intelligence, even if not dealing specifically with the subject.
[11] An approach is contained in David H. Ucko and Thomas A. Marks, Crafting Strategy for Irregular Warfare: A Framework for Analysis and Action, 2nd ed. (Washington, DC: NDU Press, September 2022)., https://ndupress.ndu.edu/Media/News/News-Article-View/Article/3163915/crafting-strategy-for-irregular-warfare-a-framework-for-analysis-and-action-2nd/.
(Dr. Thomas A. Marks is a Distinguished Professor and MG Edward G. Lansdale Chair of Irregular Warfighting Strategy, College of International Security Affairs (CISA), National Defense University (NDU), Washington, DC. His most recent publication is “Nepal: Intelligence Response to Insurgent Challenge,” in Intelligence Services in South Asia: Colonial Past and Post-Colonial Realities, eds. Ryan Shaffer and Ali Ashraf (London: Routledge, 2025), 133-148. This research note has been published as part of Mantraya’s ongoing “Fragility, Conflict and Peace Building”, and Mapping Terror & Insurgent Networks” projects. All Mantraya publications are peer-reviewed.)