Nowadays, intelligence is no longer the sole domain of the state’s security apparatus. Research institutes, international organizations, law enforcement agencies, and private security companies all now deal with the fluidity and complexity of intelligence and security threats.
The increasing development of research in intelligence studies has cultivated widespread awareness of the need to strengthen the collaboration between academia and the intelligence community. Intelligence activities, a crucial part of democratic governance, are also central to state the management and practice in developed societies.
There has been a mushrooming of research institutes and centers for intelligence studies at universities, private interdisciplinary and multi-stakeholder structures aimed at broadening the intelligence debate in countries like Brazil, France, Greece, Australia, the UK, the USA, Israel, the Baltic states and Singapore.
In Greece, the Research Institute for European and American Studies (RIEAS) has initiated the Mediterranean Council for Intelligence Studies (MCIS), and the European Intelligence Academy (EIA) in order to promote academic intelligence studies. RIEAS plans to start an on-line specialized journal that would approach intelligence studies from an academic point of view; design and introduce an intelligence course for decision-makers in the public and private sector; and establish a data-base of international intelligence literature.
In the Balkan region, Romania, Bulgaria, and Turkey have developed academic intelligence studies and linked law enforcement and intelligence agencies with public and private universities, and they have initiated undergraduate and postgraduate courses in their own intelligence academies.
Presently Greece is surrounded by potentially major threats such as illegal migration, transnational organized crime, illicit networks, cyber crime, and ethnic-religious conflicts. In addition, Greece is in the middle of persistent economic depression and growing risks of social violence as austerity destroys the means of survival for millions of people.
Against this backdrop, Greece needs to enhance and promote academic intelligence studies in order to provide to public and private security-intelligence professionals with additional specialized knowledge (and continuing training) that will improve their own confidence and effectiveness and enhance their capability to protect the security of the Greek state.