Why is area studies analysis important to:
1. strategic security
2. protection management
You will use and source the attachment “module 1 lesson 1” for this assignment. I have included the descriptions for strategic security, protection management, and area studies analysis.
Strategic security management is based on a comprehensive, fundamental and long-term conception of safety conditions inside and around companies or organizations.
Protection management encompasses many areas, including threat assessment, workplace violence, cyber security, corporate security, intelligence gathering and intelligence analysis.
Area Studies is a discipline that brings together several fields of study in order to analyze nations and geopolitical regions.
INT 584 Lessons
Table of Contents
Module 1 Lesson 1:
Section 1: Area Studies Analysis
Area Studies is a discipline that brings together several fields of study in order to analyze nations and geopolitical regions. Area and foreign language studies were emphasized at the end of WWII, when it was generally realized that there was a need to increase our knowledge of foreign actors. By the 1950’s, global security concerns spurred the US to pass legislation to build foreign language and area studies programs across the public educational system in the National Defense Education Act of 1958. The act has been reauthorized throughout the decades and continues to emphasize the importance of area knowledge and foreign languages skills as vital to the strategic security of the USA. Today, the US government continues to value the training of US students in foreign language and international and area studies. As one example, the Department of Education still offers the Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowships Program (FLAS) that provides academic year and summer fellowships for graduate students in foreign language and either area or international studies.
U.S. policymakers rely on reports from intelligence, economic, geographic, political, cultural, and law enforcement analysts to make crucial decisions. Often, it is the expertise of area studies analysts generates accurate and useful reports. These analysts possess a deep understanding of the foreign actors, their area of operations, or specific factors that are at play. Understanding the strategic security challenges of a specific area requires in-depth analysis of many different aspects of an issue. The expertise might be geographical and cover a particular portion of the earth’s surface – a continent, country, or a district. It might also be expertise based on an ethnic population that has little awareness of political boundaries. It might be a foreign language expertise where a translation is not literal but includes subtle nuances of the intended meaning. Finally, and this is where this course’s assignments will fit in, it may be expertise based on a deep dive into a very narrow topic.
Area analysis products tend to be made up from many deep dive analysis projects on very specific narrowly defined topics. The example of the area study format in FM 31-20 presents an area analysis for planning a military operation. You are probably also familiar with country studies, a form of the macro level of area analysis product. Yet if you look at the subjects listed on the outline of the FM 31-20 example, it becomes apparent that the information for each line would be the result of other detailed analysis projects. Just imagine if you were to fill in the information about a region within the USA. Natural strategic data is the results of geological survey teams from USGS; climate data is collected by National Weather Service; points of entry information by the Department of Homeland Security and Department of Transportation; population data is compiled within the US census; just to name a few. All of these departments have various organization responsible for producing different products. When the same information is assembled about a foreign adversary, it is the work of intelligence analysts working to gather the information using classified sources and methods. Many different analysts working for years make up each section of an area analysis of many smaller projects. As multiple area analysts communicate their analysis through products, a larger contextual picture of the subject matter emerges.
This course will use a series of assignments that build upon each other to ultimately produce the final assignment of a research paper on a deep dive topic relevant to strategic security. The expected product is not a country study or full area analysis, rather it is a single subject scoped to finish during the course. You must do original analysis to receive a passing grade.
Before Analysis: The proper use of sound analytical methods, such as those you will learn in this course, help to reduce the probability of analytical failures by increasing the quality of analysis. Quick judgments, unexamined assumptions, confirmation of held beliefs, or dismissal of conflicting data can all result in false conclusions. Analytical failures can have disastrous consequences for security. In this course, you will be introduced to quantitative approaches and will learn a few qualitative structured analytical techniques you will need for quality analysis. These approaches are typical of analysis practiced by intelligence, law enforcement, or business professionals charged with predicting outcomes with overwhelming yet incomplete, ambiguous, and possibly deceptive disparate information (Heuer & Pherson, 2015). Structured analytic techniques are methods using a qualitative approach that might be helpful in your Applied Capstone Product or thesis project.
Before we delve into methods, we must develop the problem to be studied (also known in academics as the research problem) and formulate an analytical question (research question).
The thought process starts with broad topic that is narrowed into an analytical question. Often, inexperienced analysts jump right into research once given their topic (Major, 2014). The topic must be narrowed into a more focused point before you proceed. Given the seemingly endless amount of information available on any given topic, the analysts must determine how to look at the topic in a new and different way. The analyst must be conscious of what is actually needed before the research is begun. Major (2014) explains the difference between the topic and the intelligence issue as conveying “change or movement or activity” (p. 14). As an example, a topic is the China and Pakistan relationship but the issue maybe the implications of the completion of the M-8 motorway on the strategic importance of Gwadar port. Even narrowed, the intelligence issue is still too broad of a scope for just one area analysis product. Do not start the analysis yet.
Once the issue is understood, it should be evaluated again in the context. In strategic security analysis, this is a consideration of the situation, relevance to the future, and audience framing the issue. This pause for reflection helps the analyst to formulate the question. Using the previous example, a policy maker might what to know the implications on India from the impact of Sino-Pakistan port operations to include impacts on the Indo-China relationship. A military decision-maker might want to understand the how M-8 and Gwadar port improvements will impact logistic operations. A U.S. corporation might want to explore economic opportunities. Formulating a problem statement (see Creswell’s chapter 6) and the follow-on research question (See Creswell’s chapter 7) gives the analyst a focus for the product. It helps to define what information will be relevant, focus the collection effort, and identify distractions. Analysis begins with a topic that is refined into an issue, supported with the objectives and intent, and then stated as a question.
Analytical methodologies are also necessary in academic research. As you move forward in your Applied Capstone Product or Thesis, you will be analyzing previous research and then your own research data in relationship to a problem and answering your research question. The Creswell reading has a deeper explanation of the steps to move from research topic to a research question. There are similarities and difference between academic analyses and intelligence techniques. Don’t get bogged down in them. Synthesis what you are reading, attempt to meet the course objectives, and keep an eye on what might be relevant to your Applied Capstone Product or Thesis. The important similarities are focused systematic thoughts and processes to look at issues in a new and different way that might help to understand a problem or predict future outcomes.
Fermi Approach: Think about how you might reconsider your research question using the Fermi approach. The problem and question deserving of analysis might be a Fermi problem. As an intelligence analyst within the Intelligence Community, you have the ability to task collection to help answer the question. As a student of strategic security, it is more likely that you need to consider what is already known or use educated estimates of what might be. This is called a Fermi approach to problems and questions. Developed by Nobel Prize winning physicist Enrico Fermi of the Manhattan project, Fermi problems and questions refer to a way of looking at challenges in new and different ways, often without new collection. The Fermi approach challenges the analyst to focus on what is already known as a means of getting at an answer.
References
Creswell, J. W. (2014). Research design: Qualitative, quantitative and mixed methods approaches (4th ed.). Los Angeles, CA: Sage.
Heuer, R. M. & Pherson, R. H. (2015). Structured analytic techniques (2nd ed.). Los Angeles, CA: CQ Press
Major, J. S. (2014). Communicating with intelligence: Writing and briefing for national security. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield
Section 2: Discovering Topics
How to Discover Topics for Research: Potential Research Topics
If you keep an open mind, you can find potential research topics in many places. In this course, you need a topic that is focused on a narrow subject that is within a geographical location other than your country of citizenship. As you explore the potential topics, make sure to follow some basic recommendations:
- The topic should be interesting to you. You will invest a lot of time and effort into learning what is known about the topic and thinking of it in new and different ways. It is easier to do if you find the topic interesting.
- The topic should be relevant to your major and discipline. As you invest in answering a question, you want that work to add to the body of knowledge in your field of study.
- The topic can start broad but will need to be narrowly scoped. If you choose a very broad topic, your work will likely only address a small section a problem. That is okay. As you try to think of something relevant to your profession, you should not attempt to solve its biggest challenges. Scope the way you approach the topic so it can be completed while you are here in the course. Be realistic in the time and resources you have to devote to the topic. You only need to add a small piece of knowledge. To use a sport analogy, while a touchdown is fantastic, you just move the ball down the field. The course is not your life’s work.
- The topic should rich in resources. The project must be completed to be successful in the course. Make sure the topic can be done.
Many of you may have an idea for your topic and that is great. This exercise will still be of value to see how you might properly scope it. For others, this exercise might help you discover new topics or at least provide the necessary spark for you to come up with one.
Some of the places your topic might be discovered are listed below.
Topics From Course Papers. Using a topic from a previous course paper can be a jumpstart. You are already familiar with topic, have done some initial review of current literature, have some knowledge of the scholars working on the subject, and have explored at least one of the potential problems. Just remember you are using it as a starting point. Your research paper is not a report or essay. You can recycle the topic, but you must expand on it. You cannot turn in a paper you have already submitted in a different course, that is self-plagiarism. For this course, it must have a geographical significance or delimitation, which is the researcher’s self-defined boundaries to set the scope of the study.
Articles on Research in Academic and Professional Journals: In the lesson of Module 3, there is a topic on how to read a research article. In the lesson as well as in the library, there were assertions that most articles reporting on research findings are written in the same format. As a reminder, the abstract presents an overview of the research. The first paragraph of the introduction includes the research topic and research problem. The last paragraph of the introduction often has the problem statement and research thesis. The methodology section explains the approach, qualitative or quantitative, that the researcher used. The first sentences of each paragraph in the discussion and conclusion sections will give you the gist of research. And what is most relevant to this discussion, at the end of the conclusion there is often a section on recommendations. Within the recommendations will likely be areas where the researchers are advising on potential areas for further research. They usually give a list of potential topics for further research.
Another way of using an article for a potential topic is to duplicate the work. Perhaps you have stumbled across a scholarly article that seems to have answered your idea for a research question. You thought you had a unique idea and now you found someone else has already done the work and researched it. Well, one approach might be to try and duplicate their research. No, don’t steal it, copy it secretly, or commit idea plagiarism. In academic research, it is acceptable (with your committee’s approval) to try to duplicate the results of previous research. You make the reader fully aware of what you are doing by overtly saying so. You properly cite and reference the original researchers but then you attempt to do what they did. You duplicate their work or with a slightly different twist. Perhaps you use improved structured analytical techniques, analyze a different case study using their methods, or look at a problem in strategic studies using the design of research from another discipline.
Student Dissertations, Theses, or Capstone Projects:
Similar to research articles in academic journals, student theses, dissertations, and capstone projects usually have recommended research for other scholars. The formats of these academic papers usually include recommendations for further study. Just like the researcher, the student will tell you what they didn’t answer.
Strategic Studies Institute’s Key Strategic Issues Lists (KSIL). There are lists of key issues that are of relevance to strategic leaders. The Strategic Studies Institute is just one example. Its KSIL is related to military question from the Military Service Chiefs, Army key leaders, and the Combatant Commanders. But there are also other lists related to national security.
Work Environment. Sometimes the idea for a topic might come from your job. Practitioners often can tell you about a challenge they have in doing their job. Using the work environment to discover topics often leads to practical or applied research questions. If you are looking for a solution of what might be done to change or improve a situation, it might be address doing something differently to fix a problem. An applied research topic might also come out of the discovery on the job. An applied topic is one that seeks to understand the problem better before doing something about it. Here you do not solve the problem but take a step or two towards the solution.
Another point of discovery might be related not to the job you have but the one you want. Is there a topic that might be relevant to that position? It might be a topic that helps you understand the work or it might be a topic that addresses a problem they are working on. Either way, a topic that is related to a job you want might help you gain insight and that knowledge looks good on a resume.
Professional and Trade Journals. Pull trade publications and skim them for possible topics. Each edition is usually centered on one theme so be sure to look back in the archives. You might find a certain theme resonates. You might see an obvious gap. Perhaps you notice the way certain themes are defined vary in the responses. Sometimes there are debates within professional and trade journals. You may have even taken a side of a professional argument but found it hard to back up your assertions because you lacked the evidence. Well, there might be a topic in there. As you discover topics, think about which of the related articles in that edition are most interesting to you. That might spark an idea.
Your Mother. For this point of discovery, it might be your mother, spouse, friend, or stranger if they do not work in the same field. Think about any issues that outsiders of this field of study tend to misunderstand. Perhaps you have found that when you explain what you do there is a particular point that gets great interest or is misinterpreted.
The Virtual Librarian. With the recommendation about rich in resources in mind, ask the librarian about topics. The virtual librarian knows the library and which topics are rich in resources.
Textbook and Course Study Questions. There are lists of study questions in most textbooks and in some course outlines. Many times these questions have no right or wrong answer identified because they are written to further critical thinking on the topic. They are excellent sources of potential topics.
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