Think Again: Spies

Virtually every nation resorts to the "dark arts" of espionage to protect its government, economy, and citizens. But with the end of superpower conflict, the spread of democracy, the advent of new information technologies, and the emergence of a more transparent world, the central question about spying today is whether it is still necessary.

BY LOCH K. JOHNSON | SEPTEMBER 1, 2000

Spying Is a Cold War Anachronism

Wishful thinking. True, global spying probably reached its zenith during the standoff between the United States and the Soviet Union. Spies, though, have been around in one form or another since the Lord told Moses to "send men to spy out the land of Canaan." For all the talk of a global trend toward democracy and greater transparency, spies seem likely to thrive, even in the absence of a superpower struggle.

In the United States, the intelligence budget -- approximately $30 billion in 2000 -- is gradually inching back to its Cold War heights. (As a general rule, nations spend on spying an amount equivalent to about 5 to 10 percent of their defense budgets.) The difference is that whereas the United States used to allocate 65 to 75 percent of its intelligence resources to spy on the U.S.S.R., it now devotes only about 15 percent to Russia. The rest goes toward dealing with what the former U.S. Director of Central Intelligence R. James Woolsey characterized in his 1993 confirmation hearings as "a bewildering variety of poisonous snakes," whether terrorism, drugs, the spread of weapons of mass destruction, ethnic conflict, or good old-fashioned bad behavior between, among, or within nations.

Although just about every major intelligence service shrank in size after the Cold War, most have eagerly embraced the "new threats" mantra as a strategic imperative. By 1994, the British Secret Intelligence Service -- the United Kingdom’s equivalent of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) -- devoted only 15 percent of its resources to the former U.S.S.R. (compared with 37 percent during the Cold War) and roughly 40 percent to fighting drugs, terrorism, weapons proliferation, and money laundering, with the balance divided among individual countries. As Ernst Uhrlau, Germany's intelligence chief, recently noted, he sees "an ever stronger connection between transnational issues and internal and bilateral conflicts." The transnational game is one that even lesser nations feel compelled to play: In 1997, seven years after achieving independence, Namibia cited terrorism, ethnic conflict, and the trafficking in drugs, arms, and diamonds as the rationale for creating its central intelligence service.

Bureaucracies inevitably strive to advance their own interests, especially when they are less accountable to the public. Yet even though they may inflate threats in order to pad budgets, it is hard to argue that spying is no longer necessary. During the last decade, wars and civil conflicts that threatened the interests of greater and lesser powers erupted from the Persian Gulf and the Balkans to East Timor and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. North Korea tested long-range missiles. Terrorists bombed U.S. barracks and embassies in Saudi Arabia, Kenya, and Tanzania, as well as buildings in New York City and Moscow. The Aum Shinrikyo cult in Japan released sarin nerve gas into Tokyo's subways. India and Pakistan conducted surprise nuclear tests. And, lest we forget, Russia and the United States remained (and remain) armed with enough nuclear warheads to annihilate one another in a half-hour.

In a strategic landscape plagued by still greater uncertainties, the need to know not only endures but grows. Moreover, although globalization has brought about a new set of favorable circumstances for nations in terms of trade, travel, and communications, it has also brought greater exposure to foreign intrigue, against which intelligence can provide a shield. New information asymmetries add to the seductive power of spying: Whether on the battlefield or in trade negotiation sessions, the disproportion of the benefits that accrue to those with superior intelligence and information has grown. Given these circumstances, it should come as no surprise that spying in some cases is actually increasing in intensity. In the United States, wiretaps related to espionage and counterespionage (chiefly against suspected terrorists and international drug dealers) shot up from 595 in 1990 to 880 in 1999. In a 1994 white paper, the South African government noted that its country was experiencing a "dramatic increase in foreign intelligence activities." And from Central Asia to the Baltic States, the new nations clustered along the periphery of the former Soviet Union have experienced a surge of spying by Russia, the United States, China, and assorted other powers.

 SUBJECTS: INTELLIGENCE
 

Loch K. Johnson is Regents professor of political science at the University of Georgia and author of Bombs, Bugs, Drugs and Thugs (New York: New York University Press, 2000).