The Rise and Fall of Intelligence: An International Security History

Introduction

1 Introduction Secrecy has this disadvantage: we lose the sense of proportion; we cannot tell whether our secret is important or not. — E. M. Forster, A Room with a View T his book shows how the world changed intelligence and how intelligence changed the world. A century ago, almost any state, large or small, could be competitive at espionage. Fifty years ago only the Cold War alliances clustered around the two superpowers could run credible intelligence activities to understand and influence events outside their own borders—and sometimes not even there. Today, however, many states can do so once again; and what is more, private entities and even individuals (some with criminal motivations) can gather secrets and manipulate events around the globe. Indeed, many of these new intelligence actors feel they have a need to do so, lest worse be done to them than they do unto others . The skills needed to “do” intelligence have diffused around the world and across societies; they can literally be purchased online. The problems caused by this spread of intelligence, moreover, now reach beyond the security services to corporate offices and private homes. In short, intelligence has traded uniqueness for ubiquity. How and why that evolution happened is our story. From Espionage to Intelligence Spying might be as old as history, but what we call intelligence is much newer. Only in the last century has the grim imperative of espionage— long regarded in many lands as a loathsome necessity—been revamped as the profession of intelligence and a suitable concentration for government agencies and college classes. That conceptual shift happened for a series of reasons. Before we tell this tale, however, we must define intelligence and its scope. 2 introduction Intelligence in its essence pertains to the ways in which sovereign powers create, exploit, and protect secret advantages against other sovereignties . A sovereignty, of course, need not be a modern state; it might be a warrior tribe on the steppe, a Greek polis, or a colonizing empire in South America—whether run by Incas or conquistadors. Sovereignties thus comprise people who have the will and the means to use force to control territory, resources, and other people. In our day, most sovereignties are indeed states, but today, as in ages past, various “nonstate actors” aspire to sovereignty and have the will and the means to fight insurgencies or to mount terrorist attacks to drive out an occupying army or an entrenched regime. By definition, all of these sovereign actors seek to reduce risks, to mitigate threats, and to create and use opportunities to win and preserve what they see as their interests. They also seek to influence other actors. Until recently, there was no binding international law (or, needless to say, no world police to enforce it) that might protect them against their opponents, and thus their safety lay in the strength they could muster and the friends they might recruit. Sovereignties thus operate in something that can only inadequately be described as a competitive environment; the Enlightenment concept of the “state of nature” seems more apt. They are locked in a struggle in which the rules are unsettled and in which the stakes can be life and death. Historically, sovereignties that failed to defend themselves or find strong patrons were destroyed, with their rulers ousted and even killed. No one should be surprised if sovereignties sometimes use secret as well as open means to protect themselves. Where sovereigns can do their business aboveboard and face-to-face, most indeed do so, because it is cheaper, faster, more reliable, and entails less risk of embarrassing them. Where those conditions do not apply, however, and the stakes are life and death, sovereigns resort to secret means. Opening a courier’s dispatches can aid one’s diplomacy; a few gold bars can deprive an enemy of his ally; and a spy can spot conspirators plotting against the prince. These measures are cheaper and safer than mobilizing the army and sending it into the field to fight, or allowing plots against the palace to ripen. Though hardly risk free, they are far less risky than the alternatives. They might not work, but they might gain time to devise something that does. Such means that sovereign actors employ in protecting themselves and their interests might well entail espionage—properly understood as spying, introduction 3 or the clandestine collection of other people’s secrets. Intelligence and espionage...