The Covert Colour Line: The Racialised Politics of Western State Intelligence

Oliver Kearns' book "The Covert Colour Line" reveals how orientalist worldviews and racist assumptions shaped British and US intelligence services since 9/11, leading to catastrophic mistakes. Understanding this historical context is essential to explain why anglophone state intelligence is unable to grasp the motives and international solidarities of adversaries.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 272 pages
Publication date: 20 April 2023
Publisher: Pluto Press

The repeated intelligence failures in Iraq, Libya, and across the Middle East and North Africa have left many critics searching for a smoking gun. Amidst questions of who misread or manipulated the intel, a fundamental truth goes unaddressed: Western intelligence is not designed to understand the world. In fact, it cannot.

In his book, "The Covert Colour Line," Oliver Kearns reveals how the catastrophic mistakes made by British and US intelligence services since 9/11 are underpinned by orientalist worldviews and racist assumptions forged in the crucible of Cold War-era colonial retreat. Understanding this historical context is vital to explaining why anglophone state intelligence is unable to grasp the motives and international solidarities of adversaries.

Offering a new way of seeing how intelligence contributes to world inequalities, Kearns argues that intelligence agencies' imagination of non-Western states and geopolitics fundamentally shaped British intelligence assessments, which would underpin the 2003 invasion of Iraq and subsequent interventions.

This book is a must-read for anyone interested in understanding the complex relationship between intelligence, power, and race in the modern world. Kearns' insights are based on a wealth of recently declassified materials, and he provides a fresh perspective on a topic that has been overlooked for far too long.

Dimension: 216 x 140 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780745347301