Spies
The Epic Intelligence War Between East and West
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4.4 • 25 Ratings
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- $16.99
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
Foreign Policy Best Book of 2023
Foreign Affairs Best Book of 2023
The “riveting” (The Economist), secret story of the hundred-year intelligence war between Russia and the West with lessons for our new superpower conflict with China.
Spies is the history of the secret war that Russia and the West have been waging for a century. Espionage, sabotage, and subversion were the Kremlin’s means to equalize the imbalance of resources between the East and West before, during, and after the Cold War. There was nothing “unprecedented” about Russian meddling in the 2016 US presidential election. It was simply business as usual, new means used for old ends.
The Cold War started long before 1945. But the West fought back after World War II, mounting its own shadow war, using disinformation, vast intelligence networks, and new technologies against the Soviet Union. Spies is a “deeply researched and artfully crafted” (Fiona Hill, deputy assistant to the US President) story of the best and worst of mankind: bravery and honor, treachery and betrayal. The narrative shifts across continents and decades, from the freezing streets of St. Petersburg in 1917 to the bloody beaches of Normandy; from coups in faraway lands to present-day Moscow where troll farms, synthetic bots, and weaponized cyber-attacks being launched woefully unprepared West. It is about the rise and fall of Eastern superpowers: Russia’s past and present and the global ascendance of China.
Mining hitherto secret archives in multiple languages, Calder Walton shows that the Cold War started earlier than commonly assumed, that it continued even after the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991, and that Britain and America’s clandestine struggle with the Soviet government provided key lessons for countering China today. This “authoritative, sweeping” (Fredrik Logevall, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Embers of War) history, combined with practical takeaways for our current great power struggles, make Spies a unique and essential addition to the history of the Cold War and the unrolling conflict between the United States and China that will dominate the 21st century.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Historian Waldron (Empire of Secrets) presents an authoritative appraisal of 100 years of intelligence operations between Russia and the West. Drawing on declassified records in American, British, Russian, and former Soviet bloc intelligence archives, Walton contends that the espionage of the Cold War was just another step in a still-ongoing covert conflict that began with the Russian Revolution of 1917—though it took the West until the Cold War to realize the extent of Soviet infiltration, which Walton argues was as real as Senator Joseph McCarthy alleged during the Red Scare of the 1950s, despite most of McCarthy's specific claims being "inaccurate and overblown" and his "purges" unnecessary for national security. ("Between 1947 and 1956, 39,000 federal employees were sacked and or resigned.... In Britain, the total for the same period was just 124," and most were reassigned, not fired.) Still, Walton contends that Russian intelligence operations outpaced the West, pointing for example to Soviet espionage inside the U.S. atomic bomb project. He concludes with lessons to apply to the struggle now unfolding between the U.S. and China, and warns against "a new Chinese red scare." This is an encyclopedic yet entertaining dossier on the people, organizations, and events that shaped one of the 20th century's defining ideological battles. (June)
Customer Reviews
Eye opening & essential
Meticulous examination of the intelligence war Soviet Union/Russia vs the US & UK from 1930’s to today. “History doesn’t repeat itself but it does rhyme.” Forget James Bond and Jason Bourne. This is the real stuff from recently declassified material from all three combatants. Fascinating.