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I once wrote a book about a 1950s British KGB double agent, and recent spy news takes me back there. The main difference today is the increasing quantity and variety of foreign espionage. During the Cold War, the Russian security services were the main enemy actor in the West. But espionage, like most international industries, boomed with globalization. Now Russia is planning a sabotage campaign, China could be an even bigger player, and some smaller powers are joining in. For example, Henry Cuellar, a US Democratic congressman, was just indicted as an alleged Azerbaijani agent. (He denies wrongdoing.) Other recent revelations seem to come straight from Hollywood: Jan Marsalek, the fugitive Austrian CEO of the fraudulent fintech company Wirecard, allegedly helped plan break-ins and assassinations by Russian hit squads in Europe.
Espionage seems to be an international struggle, but the greatest damage it causes is domestic. Fear of espionage, whether real or imagined, permeates society. Some political parties can become a front for foreign interests. Even more tragically, entire nationalities risk being stigmatized as fifth columns.
Throughout the Cold War, Western intelligence services undermined their countries’ communist parties. In the 1950s, Britain’s MI5 kept 250,000 files on alleged communists and fellow travelers, in a country where there were few of either. However, the greatest efforts were directed at the Italian Communist Party. The CIA financed Italian anti-communist parties, while British secret agents interfered in the Italian elections as late as 1976.
Today’s suspected Russian front organizations are certain right-wing extremist parties. The recent rumors about the far right’s victory in the European elections in June overlook the fact that there are now two opposing far right in Europe. Some parties, such as Giorgia Meloni’s Fratelli d’Italia, are broadly pro-Western, while others appear to favor the Kremlin. That’s how much European politics has changed in a decade: from left versus right, to mainstream versus populist, and now to national interests versus Russian interests.
The main pro-Russian suspect is the group that had a chance of becoming the European Parliament’s largest single party just a few months ago: the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD). Always pro-Kremlin, perhaps it has turned into something darker. The two leading candidates in the June elections are involved in espionage scandals. An associate of Maximilian Krah was arrested as a suspected Chinese spy, while Petr Bystron was questioned over allegations of accepting money from pro-Putin oligarch Viktor Medvedchuk, who led a campaign to spread disinformation in Europe. Krah and Bystron deny wrongdoing.
The Russian presidential administration even designed a secret election strategy for the AfD, Spiegel reported. The apocalyptic document titled “Manifesto of the Party of German Unity” – the Kremlin’s proposed new name for the AfD – attacks “illiterate politicians” who have brought Germany “into conflict with Russia, a natural ally of our country.” .
Foreign infiltration goes beyond electoral politics. Last month, a German army officer admitted providing military information to Russian authorities. He explained that after seeing a pro-AfD influencer “probably on TikTok,” he decided to give Russia a military “advantage” in the hope of preventing nuclear attacks.
Once a nation begins to worry about foreign spies, it sees them everywhere. In Britain, paranoia during both world wars led to the internment of innocent German immigrants, including refugees. I grew up in the 1970s and still read children’s stories about heroic British youths catching German spies. Nevertheless, we now know that Hitler had few functioning spies in Britain after the outbreak of war. The paranoia was baseless.
Paranoia about foreign influence has stigmatized Muslims since September 11, 2001. Now suspicion is directed against Chinese and Russians in New York and Berlin. Beijing feeds Western paranoia by sometimes treating “Chinese diaspora communities.” . . as a tool to promote its political and security interests,” writes Audrye Wong from the University of Southern California.
Every time a British official was exposed as a Soviet spy during the Cold War – a regular, almost ritualized event between 1946 and 1963 – British trust in their society plummeted a little more. The MI6 people looked at each other and asked each other, “Are you a KGB agent?” Today, any exposure in Western countries has a similar impact. Even if Russian and Chinese espionage is aimed at obtaining information, its worst impact could be tearing civil society apart.
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