British Secret Services’ Political Agency and the Intelligence Intervention in the Russian North in 1918-1919

In modern conditions the range of use of intelligence in politics is expanding. Today, experts single out intelligence operations as a separate kind of informational confrontation, on a par with the cybernetic and psychological struggle. In international conflicts, the goals are more and more often achieved not through direct military influence, but using alternative forms: sabotage, economic, diplomatic, etc. One of the widespread areas of secret services’ activity appears to be the interference into the development of the political systems of sovereign states. Thus, nowadays on a par with military interventions there are economic, diplomatic, ideological, intelligence, etc. interventions. This circumstance significantly complicates both the detection of foreign interventions and realization of countermeasures. It is especially difficult to solve these tasks in a situation of reconnaissance/intelligence intervention carried out by the secret services, whose activities are, as a rule, autonomous and entirely based on the use of unofficial methods and techniques, quite often associated with violation of the law. Moreover, as far as the choice of a interventional course by the government mostly depends on the information on the development of the situation provided by various departments, a misestimation is possible due to high level of bias in the work of intelligence-analytical services. In this perspective, studying the experience of past interventions largely reveals the most dangerous for the state forms of external interference. Account of this experience is a necessary condition for the formation of ability of society to resist disorganization and the crisis of statehood.

secret services, intelligence, intervention, agency, political decision-making, opportunistic behavior, McNamara’s law, Civil war, small wars, conflict