5 - Intelligence as Threats and Reassurance

Summary

[2011]

Intelligence mattered in the Cold War mainly through governments’ use of the knowledge it produced. But it was at the same time an activity, principally in its covert means of information collection, and also a capability: a power that governments felt able to count on in planning for the present and future. Both these had effects on the psychology of the two sides. The collection activities (or some of them) were seen as intrusive threats by the opponent against whom they were targeted. By contrast the intelligence capabilities that depended on this collection gave their own governments in the West – perhaps also in the East – some assurance in facing the Cold War's future. They were some restraint on the fears and distortions of uncertainty.

The two effects interacted in ways that posed an intelligence version of the ‘security dilemma’ of military power, in which seeking more security nationally through developing more forces increases perceptions of insecurity internationally and leads to a ratcheting of military procurement. This did not apply to intelligence's verification of the US–Soviet strategic arms agreements in which, remarkably and exceptionally, the intelligence coverage of the two sides was legitimised so that it provided mutual reassurance without additional threats. But everywhere else intelligence increased the confidence of its own side by drawing on the product of collection activities that alarmed the other. This chapter discusses this combination of its threats and reassurance and the place of the two in Cold War psychology, though it is written mainly from an Anglo- American perspective and adds only limited aspects of the Soviet Union's perspective.

Threats

Human and Technical Collection

Most intelligence activity was in collection and the first-stage exploitation that went with it. The image of this collection everywhere was of espionage, the covert use of human agents, and this can be discussed first. The agents were of all kinds: those seeking to talent-spot, recruit and run them and the recruited agents in place, but also the defectors who changed sides with information to offer, the emigres, travellers and other occasional sources of all kinds, the whole gamut of human contacts with the other side. The image of ‘spying’ was popularly extended to all other intelligence collection, even merging into legitimate information-seeking.