II.

Justification and International Sanction

In order to adopt and implement foreign policy, plan military strategy and organize armed forces, conduct diplomacy, negotiate arms control agreements, or participate in international organization activities, nations have vast information requirements. Not surprisingly, many governments maintain some kind of intelligence capability as a matter of survival in a world where dangers and uncertainties still exist. The cold war may have ended, but hostilities continue in parts of Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union, the Middle East, and elsewhere. Indeed, the collapse of old political blocs in the late 1980s has even increased international uncertainty and consequent need for information.

All nations have laws against espionage, but most sponsor spies in other lands. Because of the clandestine nature of espionage, no reliable count exists of how many intelligence officers—only a small percentage of whom are actually spies—there are in the world. A common estimate is that the United States today still employs some 200,000 intelligence personnel. The number that was generally ascribed to the Soviet intelligence establishment in the 1980s was 400,000, a figure that included border guards and internal security police.