The first and second oldest professions
It’s been reported that Russian operatives penetrated the files of several U.S. companies and government agencies, potentially compromising vital American secrets. I use the word “operatives” because what used to be called spies are now called operatives, and an operative working as a spy in the digital world is increasingly referred to as a hacker.
In honour of John le Carre, who recently passed on to the safe house of eternity, we should think a bit about espionage, a trade that creates far fewer suave martini drinkers than it creates, in the words of Len Deighton, seedy civil servants hanging on for their pensions.
Spying has an ancient and even holy origin. In the book of Joshua, the eponymous protagonist is planning to assault Jericho. He needs more information on Jericho’s military capabilities and preparedness. He orders two men – I will assume they were well trained and suited for the mission – to i nfiltrate the city, collect i nformation and provide information on its order of battle.
Their first task is to get into Jericho, then find people who can pass unobserved inside the city. On the city wall they find a woman named Rahab, a prostitute who presumably lives in the low-rent district of Jericho. Her profession suits her perfectly for espionage. She could move around the city at all hours without raising suspicion, and her customers likely had useful intelligence they could unwittingly be parted with.
Because she was a prostitute, no one thought her capable of understanding or using the intelligence her customers gave her.
The two spies propose a deal to Rahab. She would provide intelligence in exchange for being spared when Joshua et al. took the city.
She apparently took the deal. But afterward she confronted one of the most fundamental dilemmas of spycraft: would her co-conspirators hold up their end of the bargain, or was she now a liability to be liquidated? Could she be trusted?
The mission at Jericho was an incredible success and brilliantly executed. We never hear that Rahab lived happily ever after, but the Bible frequently leaves out the epilogues of such stories.
The reason the Bible addressed this question directly is because war was such a common feature in the Old Testament.
Espionage may be a craft of courage, deceit, uncertainty and betrayal, but it is also an indispensable part of war.
We are political animals, and cities or nations live constantly in fear of other cities and nations. Envy and fear of others is at the heart of being human. Much of the Bible is about this, and the laws it contains are designed to limited envy and replace fear with love.
The Bible also knows that this is not likely to happen. It is a realistic book, and the book of Joshua is ultra-realistic.
The Hebrews and the Jerichoites feared each other for good reason and so needed to know each other’s intentions and capabilities. To do that, they needed to spy on each other.
Contemporary geopolitics is no different.
The U.S. defeated the Japanese at Midway because it broke the Japanese code. It landed at Normandy because Washington baffled German intelligence. It lost the fleet at Pearl Harbor because it lacked spies and codebreakers.
Buried in the many noble and virtuous lessons in the Bible is that war depends on good intelligence, now as always.
Most Americans are enraged by Russia’s recent exploit. But nations must spy on other nations. The United States has a massive intelligence service, with the lavishly funded National Security Agency at the centre. And I’m confident the U.S. gives as good as it gets.
Either way, it touches on another fundamental dilemma of espionage – that is, how to determine what is actually true.
Maybe the Russians succeeded. Maybe the story is designed to confuse the Russians, who had not authorised this operation, and force them to search their system for rogue operatives working not for the Federal Security Service but for military intelligence. Or maybe the U.S. baited the Russians into attacking, only to carefully feed them disinformation.
For all we know, this is an extraordinary success for the United States. Perhaps the best way to avoid the dilemma is not to get caught – a nice but ultimately unrealistic sentiment. We still don’t know the truth about Rahab. Was Rahab really a spy for Israel, or did she dazzle the two spooks and send them home loaded with disinformation?
In the end, the Hebrews won so we must assume she was the real thing.
Prostitution is said to be the world’s oldest profession. If so, espionage is the second. Patriotism and corruption go hand in hand, and the brew they create is uncertainty. Is there a word of truth in the stories about the Russian operation? I suspect no one on either side is quite sure.
Intelligence simultaneously clarifies and confuses. But if you can get reimbursed, it’s quite a living for seedy civil servants.
George Friedman is an internationally recognised geopolitical forecaster and strategist on international affairs, and the founder and chairman of Geopolitical Futures. www.geopoliticalfutures.com