Product Description: This book explores the limits of institutional knowledge. What does an empire know and how does it know it? How does its own culture, general or bureaucratic, shape the information it receives and its ability to "process" information. Army Foreign Area Officer Maj. Patrick Kelley takes us through historical and cultural terrain never before traveled in a virtuoso exercise of cross-disciplinary analysis that is as much fun as it is thought provoking. Not since Spengler or Voegelin tackled civilization dynamics has empire been subject to such original and erudite treatment on such a grand scale. Imperial Secrets is sui generis and Kelley has invented a new field: imperial informatics. Policymakers would do well to read and ponder this book before taking their next major decision.
Major Kelley chooses three empires with which to compare our current intelligence circumstances. Each of these faced challenges in understanding peoples; Rome in the first and second centuries AD, the Ottomans in the 16th to 18th, and Britain in India in the 18th to early 20th. Kelley feels these warrant study in light of our need to deal with peoples whom we may seek to influence. The author also asks: ?If power shapes knowledge, does knowledge also shape power This is a delightful exercise in erudition in which key postmodern insights and reasoning are used to gain political understanding. Full of surprises and insights, Kelley takes his readers through an enchanted forest peopled by Foucalt, T.E. Lawrence, J.S. Bach, Borges, Idries Shah, Hobsbawm, Jung, Baudrillard, and many more. One hopes our educated, certified, and degreed military and intelligence leadership can penetrate a work this rich, deep, and ultimately useful. (Originally published in color by the NDIC Press)
The 14 secrets of longevity of the Qing Dynasty Emperor, Qian Long, cover all aspects of living long and healthy life. This book offers Qian Long's sage advice on the role of diet, exercise, relaxation, emotions, sex, and environment in achieving long life and good health. This traditional Chinese medical theory includes self-massage, stretching, and qi gong exercise as well as how to use Chinese tonic herbs.
The renowned espionage historian offers “a gripping account of British intelligence during the last days of empire” (The Daily Telegraph). Drawing on a wealth of newly declassified records and hitherto overlooked personal papers, intelligence expert Calder Walton offers a compelling and authoritative history of Britain’s espionage activities after World War II. A major addition to intelligence literature, this is the first book to utilize records from the Foreign Office’s secret archive, which contains some of the darkest and most shameful secrets from the last days of Britain’s empire. Working clandestinely, MI5 operatives helped to prop up newly independent states across the globe against a ceaseless campaign of Communist subversion. Though the CIA is often assumed to be the principal actor against the Soviet Union through the Cold War, Britain plays a key role through its so-called “special relationship” with the United States. In Empire of Secrets, Walton sheds new light on everything from violent counterinsurgencies fought by British forces in the jungles of Malaya and Kenya, to urban warfare campaigns conducted in Palestine and the Arabian Peninsula. The stories here have chilling contemporary resonance, detailing the use and abuse of intelligence by governments that oversaw state-sanctioned terrorism, wartime rendition, and “enhanced” interrogation. “An important and highly original account of postwar British intelligence.” —The Wall Street Journal
A Financial Times Best Book of the Year The untold story of how Russian espionage in imperial China shaped the emergence of the Russian Empire as a global power. From the seventeenth to the nineteenth century, the Russian Empire made concerted efforts to collect information about China. It bribed Chinese porcelain-makers to give up trade secrets, sent Buddhist monks to Mongolia on intelligence-gathering missions, and trained students at its Orthodox mission in Beijing to spy on their hosts. From diplomatic offices to guard posts on the Chinese frontier, Russians were producing knowledge everywhere, not only at elite institutions like the Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg. But that information was secret, not destined for wide circulation. Gregory Afinogenov distinguishes between the kinds of knowledge Russia sought over the years and argues that they changed with the shifting aims of the state and its perceived place in the world. In the seventeenth century, Russian bureaucrats were focused on China and the forbidding Siberian frontier. They relied more on spies, including Jesuit scholars stationed in China. In the early nineteenth century, the geopolitical challenge shifted to Europe: rivalry with Britain drove the Russians to stake their prestige on public-facing intellectual work, and knowledge of the East was embedded in the academy. None of these institutional configurations was especially effective in delivering strategic or commercial advantages. But various knowledge regimes did have their consequences. Knowledge filtered through Russian espionage and publication found its way to Europe, informing the encounter between China and Western empires. Based on extensive archival research in Russia and beyond, Spies and Scholars breaks down long-accepted assumptions about the connection between knowledge regimes and imperial power and excavates an intellectual legacy largely neglected by historians.
A serving U.S. military officer presumably has something to answer for at the very outset when writing about a topic like "Imperial Intelligence." If the issue is not one of purely academic import, and I do not believe it is, then there are obvious implications in associating the American enterprise with a highly charged term like Empire. I believe the matter is not clear-cut, and is the subject of much debate in various circles; however, what I will argue is that, regardless of how the U.S. role is characterized, it does face nearly unique problems in the field of intelligence. Nearly unique, in that these problems do not so profoundly impact traditional nation-states, but have been confronted before by historical imperial formations. The genesis for this position lies in the immediate aftermath of September 11th, when perhaps the most urgently asked and passionately debated question was "Why do they hate us?" This seems to me the essence of the Imperial Intelligence problem. Despite its broad consideration in the media and public venues, this question does constitute an intelligence problem the answer to which requires profound insights into the hidden thoughts and desires of others and presumes a predictive as well as explanatory response. The answer, or answers, will shape the course of public policy. It is also uniquely imperial, through its implications of betrayal, outrage, and anguished incomprehension. They, presumably, have no obvious reason to hate us; and in fact, we expect a degree of gratitude and cooperation from others around the world who have been the beneficiaries of our largesse. We saved the Saudis from Saddam Hussein, the rebuttals run, we provided more foreign aid to the Egyptians than any other state, we helped the Afghans throw off the Soviet yoke.
In 1905 President Teddy Roosevelt dispatched Secretary of War William Howard Taft on the largest U.S. diplomatic mission in history to Hawaii, Japan, the Philippines, China, and Korea. Roosevelt's glamorous twenty-one year old daughter Alice served as mistress of the cruise, which included senators and congressmen. On this trip, Taft concluded secret agreements in Roosevelt's name. In 2005, a century later, James Bradley traveled in the wake of Roosevelt's mission and discovered what had transpired in Honolulu, Tokyo, Manila, Beijing and Seoul. In 1905, Roosevelt was bully-confident and made secret agreements that he though would secure America's westward push into the Pacific. Instead, he lit the long fuse on the Asian firecrackers that would singe America's hands for a century.
In this work, the author, Patrick Kelley, interprets the intelligence environment of political, military and information empires. His contribution sheds light on the cause of enduring intelligence collection deficits that afflict the center of such empires, and that can coincide with their ebb and flow. Alert intelligence practitioners, present and future, can note here just how useful a fresh interpretation of the intelligence enterprise can be to a coherent understanding of the global stream of worrisome issues. The long-term value of this work will be realized as readers entertain the implications of Churchill's comment that "The empires of the future are the empires of the mind."
Between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, the galaxy was plunged into the shadows . . . STAR WARS(c) : SHADOWS OF THE EMPIRE v The minds behind the Star Wars galaxy have created a phenomenon of epic proportions, designed to unfold in nearly every medium at their disposal. This intensely researched volume guides you through this Star Wars event--as its creators reveal the secrets behind the multimedia release of the year. The tendrils of this dark drama will reach throughout the Star Wars galaxy: --The evil crimelord Xizor challenges the power of Darth Vader in an exciting new novel of Imperial intrigue. --Leia, Lando, and Dash Rendar launch an all-out attempt to rescue Han Solo in a state-of-the-art Nintendo video game. --Xizor's agents search the galaxy for Luke Skywalker in the taut comic book mini-series. Their mission: kill the son of Vader. --The secrets of the Imperial homeworld are revealed in brilliantly painted trading cards. --A fully orchestrated soundtrack and exciting new Star Wars action figures embellish the adventure. STAR WARS: THE SECRETS OF SHADOWS OF THE EMPIRE provides the official guide to the heroes, the villains, and all the major combatants. When this war is over, only one will control the Empire's violent underworld. . . .
