No BFFs in geopolitics. Spying on friends is a symbol of power

Over the last seven months, numerous articles in the western media have called on democracies to re-examine relations with India because of its alleged hand in the killing and attempted killing of Khalistani terrorists in North America. In the last couple of days, charges have expanded to include espionage. Referring to recent revelations that the two diplomats expelled from Australia in 2020 were Indian, news outlet ABC said, “It does raise a lot of questions about Australia’s trust and relationship with India”. This begs the question: do friendly countries spy on each other? Answering this question reveals that the right to spy is not tied to ‘values’ as is currently espoused, but to the question of ‘power’.

Contemporary history has witnessed the US spying on its European and Asian allies while the list of allies that have spied on the US include France, Germany, Japan, Israel, and South Korea. In 2013, Edward Snowden, a contract employee of the US National Security Agency, publicly revealed the US’ spying activities, which kicked off angry reactions from several European countries. At a political level, a normative disapproval of the US’ spying activities was understandable. At an intellectual level, however, western analysts and commentators were candid in making a case for spying on allies. Former CIA officer Peter Earnest deemed the European reaction hypocritical. Charles Kupchan, professor of international affairs at Georgetown University, pointed out that friends today may not be friends tomorrow. Similarly, Washington analyst James Lewis focused on the policy differences between the US and Germany and argued that spying was essential to align the direction of Berlin’s policies with the US. The bottomline in Lewis’ argument is that, for friends to remain friends, spying on each other is inevitable.

This applies even more so to regions with complex geopolitical interactions. For instance, in 2014, Germany faced an angry reaction from Turkey after media reports that Berlin was spying on its NATO ally. In its defence, it argued that Turkey’s terrorism problem had implications for Europe. Also, it pitched it as an attempt to comprehend Erdogan’s complicated foreign policies with neighbours such as Saudi, Syria, Iraq and Iran. Therefore, to accommodate this policy, the Germans came up with a tactic that Josef Joffe of the Hoover Institution termed “a Talmudic distinction between friends and mere partners”. Accordingly, Britain and America were friends that could not be spied on whereas Turkey was ‘fair game’.

It is against this perspective that one should view India’s reported spying on friends. Fundamentally speaking, the notion of friendship in international politics is itself inconsistent for India. When observing the intelligence relationships of Pakistan, they are mostly alliance-based or ideology-driven. The cooperation between the ISI and Anglo-American agencies during the Cold War and the War on Terror is an example of alliance-based relationship whereas ties with the Gulf intelligence services since the late 1970s are ideological. India is neither part of any formal alliance formation nor is it ideologically placed to find natural friends in the world. As a civilisational state that is finding its place back in the international system, friendships are most likely to be purely transactional. In such a scenario, the above arguments made by western analysts advocating espionage on friends apply equally, if not more, to India.

Public discussions in India are mostly focused on acquiring power in the military and economic sense. Not readily evident to the casual observer is an intelligence hierarchy that is dominated by powerful countries. Moving ahead, India will need to understand this hierarchy and develop mechanisms to navigate through it. After Independence, India neither had the capability for independent intelligence operations nor the political vision to guide the development of a robust intelligence apparatus. Consequently, for core intelligence requirements such as China, Delhi had to rely on London and Washington. The latter utilised the relationship to their own advantage, occasionally using the liaison channels to spy on India.

Intelligence scholars Robert Dover and Richard Aldrich say such intelligence hierarchies “opened up sensitive information of the Global South to an elite group of nations”, which is instructive of “global information inequality”.

As India grows, its intelligence system will require a cultural transformation to overcome reliance on foreign agencies for tradecraft and technology. Innovative operational methods and indigenous technology development should support espionage operations and information security. This is not to suggest that spying operations will be failproof. Even US intelligence had two of its officers expelled from Spain in December 2023 after being caught spying. That the world does not make much noise about it reflects the power the US wields.

After the Snowden leaks, French politician Bernard Kouchner had commented that the European outrage was due to “jealousy” over “the extent of the US’ intelligence dominance”, not over morality. When the US Congress inquired if American intelligence spies on its allies, director of National Intelligence James Clapper replied confidently that it was “a fundamental given”. As India grows and projects its power, there will surely be such jealousies. But Indian intelligence should focus on gaining dominance.