Knowing Your Friends Intelligence Inside Alliances and Coalitions from 1914 to the Cold War

Sun Tzu said that it is as important to know yourself - and by extension, your allies - as it is to know your enemies. This is a study of the murky, ultra-sensitive business of gathering intelligence among, and forming estimates about, friendly powers, and friendly or allied military forces.
States sometimes enter into coalitions or alliances mainly and explicitly because their intelligence evaluation of the potential partner concluded that making the alliance was, from the originator's national security interest, the best thing to do. This collection investigates this aspect of intelligence.

Little attention has been paid to the murky, ultra-business of gathering intelligence among and forming estimates about friendly powers, and friendly or allied military forces. How rarely have scholars troubled to discover when states entered into coalitions or alliances mainly and explicitly because their intelligence evaluation of the potential partner concluded that making the alliance was, from the originator's national security interest, the best game in town. The twentieth century has been chosen to enhance the coherence of and connections between, the subject matter of this under-explored part of intelligence studies.

Foreign Affairs, Vol. 78, No. 2"[An] excellent collection of articles from Intelligence and National Security, the premier journal of intelligence studies."Military Review -" These essays are far removed from the theme of military intelligence, but their political and diplomatic focus is still important. Anyone who has worked with allies or in combined operations will find much thought provoking material in this collection"The Journal of Military History- " a pathbreaking work...This is an extremely interesting collection of essays, well worth reading by students of intelligence. It is certain to live up to its editor"s hopes of stimulating further detailed research into the ways in which allies, rather than adversaries, have used intelligence in their evaluation of each other"Low Intensity Conflict and Law Enforcement, Vol 7, No 2, Autumn 98"Knowing Your Friends may be a breakthrough in the under-explored study of espionage and intelligence assessmments of one"s friends because of its goal to provoke further research and study. In this it has achieved its purpose through, for the most part, significantly interesting chapters on little-known subjects."Cryptologia-" Written by experts in each area, the ten articles provide a fascinating study of relationships and how they were affected by information gathered from the use of intelligence methods.