Intelligence is a tool that serves American diplomats in many ways - negotiating agreements, delivering demarches, assuring compliance with a treaty, promoting transitions to democracy, and seeking to constrain or avoid conflict. For example, timely spotting of Iraqi military movements toward Kuwait in 1994 allowed United States diplomatic and military actions to prevent an Iraqi attack. Timely intelligence has also identified attempts to violate UN-imposed sanctions, allowing diplomacy both here, at the U.S. mission to the United Nations and at missions abroad to thwart actual deliveries. Intelligence-based demarches have prevented the transfer of equipment and products intended for use in the manufacture of weapons of mass destruction. U.S. intelligence-sharing has persuaded foreign governments that their neighbors' military movements were normal training and not preparations for attack.
Analysts often do interpret information differently.
Sometimes the differences matter a great deal. INR's assessments helped senior officials develop a strategy for dealing with the North. Close interactions between INR analysts and policymakers were key to the successful negotiation of the 1994 Agreed Framework. Cartographer Leo Dillon . Keyed to the Secretary's foreign policy agenda, the Summary and other INR publications put into context the intelligence community's raw intelligence reports, provide timely assessments of foreign developments, and alert policymakers to potential trouble spots.