Intelligence and the Cold War

The Hidden Hand: Britain, America and the Cold War Secret Intelligence, by Richard J. Aldrich. (London: John Murray, 2003). 733 pp. $19.95.

James Bond symbolizes the popular appeal of any story related to the intelligence services. Yet, until recently, this interest had not been matched by academic publications. As Professor Richard J. Aldrich rightly asserts in his book, The Hidden Hand: Britain, America and the Cold War Secret Intelligence, "only a minority of scholars has yet attempted to integrate secret service with international history." ¹ By addressing this issue in the context of Anglo-American relations from June 1941 to the end of 1963, this brilliant book fills two major gaps of international relations historiography. Indeed, being one of the first serious and well-documented scholarly assessments of the impact of secret services on the Cold War, this study is also a major contribution to the history of the so-called "Special Relationship." By shedding light on "the 'Missing Dimension' ² of history," Aldrich also focuses on an understudied theme of Anglo-American relations—the intelligence field. It therefore is no accident that Professor Aldrich's book received the Donner Prize and was short listed for the Westminster Medal.

The Anglo-American "Special Relationship" was characterized as an informal alliance establishing a privileged link between the two Anglo-Saxon powers. It did not rest on any specific treaty but more on an aggregation of agreements. Since World War II, three pillars symbolized this relationship: collaboration between the military forces, cooperation in the fields of nuclear weapons (except between 1946 and 1958), and collaboration in intelligence. However, so far, "there remains an alarming disparity in our understanding of [these] areas. The importance of intelligence is often commented on, but rarely subjected to sustained analysis." ³ In The Hidden Hand, Aldrich demonstrates that this underdeveloped theme is indeed a very important gap, which has distorted our understanding of the "Special Relationship."

In his introduction, Aldrich explains that he chose to emphasize conflict between the two allies rather than to depict an illusory collaborative image. ⁴ He persuasively demonstrates that "many still held true the familiar dictum that 'There are no friendly secret services, only secret services of friendly states'" and that "secret service in this turbulent period often seemed an anarchic struggle of 'all against all.'" ⁵ This was especially true in the context of Anglo-American relations regarding the notion of European unity. Anxious to generate the birth of a United States of Europe to help in the containment of the Soviet Union, the Americans did not hesitate to launch covert operations and propaganda activities designed to convert British citizens and officials to European unity. ⁶

However, the reader quickly finds out that there was more than discord and collaboration to this relationship, as the author describes what Professor Paul W. Schroeder termed a "pact of restraint": "All alliances in some measure functioned as pacts of restraint (pacta de contrahendo), restraining or controlling the actions of the partners in the alliance themselves." ⁷ Indeed, the advent of the nuclear age introduced a "new sense of threat" ⁸ for Great Britain, especially after the Soviets tested their first atomic bomb in August 1949. "This resulted in a mercurial change in the nature of British thinking about threat assessment. American acceptance of the likelihood of war had become the main enemy, while the Soviets were seen as unpleasant yet comparatively cautious and predictable. After the outbreak of the Korean War in the summer of 1950 the British increasingly focused on containing the possibility of war, more than on containing communism. In practice that meant containing Washington and secret service was often at the forefront of this most awkward struggle." ⁹ Initially faster than the Americans to engage in the Cold War, the British then embarked upon a policy designed to prevent the Americans from taking advantage of the "vulnerability gap" that existed between them and the Soviets in the early 1950s. ¹⁰ Simply stated, it was imperative for British diplomats...