After the spy fiasco that ended last month with a Cold-War era exchange of agents, Russians are licking their wounds over the outright incompetence of their secret services. But according to this article from Russia’s Vedemosti, since Russia can no longer compete with the likes of the CIA and other Western spy services, the event may herald a welcome change in priority – and provide Moscow with the ‘last laugh.’
For Vedemosti, columnist Anton Oleynik writes in part:
Foreign intelligence, which during the Cold War was the pride and ultimate achievement of passionate young men with fire in their eyes, today has fallen hopelessly behind both technologically and in human terms.
In Soviet times, a diplomatic career, and even more so, a career as an undercover intelligence agent, had a magnetic attraction, allowing one to serve the motherland without waiting in line for sausage while eating real foie gras (if one wasn’t saving for a new apartment, of course.) Today a man with connections and without too many scruples can more easily make money in Russia, and not over the hill. A senior Foreign Ministry official testifies to this: “The salaries offered for service abroad are small and cannot be raised; and now the Foreign Ministry is opening regional offices – not for diplomatic positions, but for technological work – hiring which is done in the regions themselves. Because people there are satisfied with the wages and enthusiastic about the possibility of going abroad. This isn’t enough for Muscovites anymore.
The diminishing prestige and professional standards in the difficult trade of espionage does, of course, sadden some. This is a sort of collapse of the Soviet dream: a house and car, but not among our native birch trees. Rather, somewhere in the midst of decaying capitalism.
But if one looks at things without hysterics, the scandal can be seen in a positive light. From a purely pragmatic point of view, this confirms the economic theory of comparative advantage. It’s worth dispensing with the spy-related romance of hidden parachutes and transmitters and do what we do better than anyone else. No need to spend time perfecting spy technologies and paying for the lifestyles of secret agents. This is an area in which matching the CIA and other intelligence agencies will be difficult for a long time to come.
In this case, it is first of all considerably easier to ensure that the nature of our operations remain concealed. Petroleum and gas pipes are traditionally perceived as industrial artifacts, and not as elements of a secret weapon. Secondly, this “secret weapon” could be deployed almost anywhere – and without the use of expensive methods of resident spy airlifting. The client himself invests in the construction of pipes or gas- and oil-producing capacity. Third, children today dream of Gazprom or joining the president’s administration, so there is no reason to worry about a shortage of exceptional “human resources” – real pragmatists who won’t be converted to another belief system or attracted by the imagined virtues of the less-pragmatic West. Then we’ll see who gets the last laugh.
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