The world of global espionage has traditionally been dominated by the big powers—Russia, China, the United States, France, and Britain. But a series of recent revelations are a reminder that the intelligence services of middle powers—particularly those of the so-called global south—are not only active in the West, but also likely expanding the scope and ambition of their activities. The ramifications of these activities could rival any major power spy scandal. The states are smaller, but the stakes are not.
Three recent cases offer a snapshot into the capabilities of middle powers’ spycraft regimes and suggest some ways that Western nations can better anticipate—and even prepare to thwart—these threats in the future.
First, Egypt may have infiltrated the highest echelons of U.S. decision-making by enlisting the help of the former chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Last week, federal prosecutors charged U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez and his wife, Nadine Arslanian Menendez, with conspiring to have the senator act as an agent for the Egyptian government by using his powerful position to bolster military sales and aid to Egypt. An indictment last month also accused Menendez and his wife of accepting as bribes more than half a million dollars, bars of gold bullion, a Mercedes-Benz convertible, and other valuables from the Egyptian government.
The superseding indictment, which details various bribery and corruption schemes, alleged that Menendez provided Egypt with sensitive nonpublic information, including a roster of employees at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo (a document that could be useful for counterintelligence), and that he “ghost-wrote” a “letter on behalf of Egypt seeking to convince other U.S. Senators to release a hold on $300 million in aid to Egypt.” The evidence suggests that Egypt succeeded in getting a major U.S. official to effectively sell his considerable access and influence in Congress. (Menendez and his wife have pleaded not guilty.)
The second case involves Ethiopia. In late September, the U.S. Justice Department arrested Abraham Teklu Lemma, an information technology contractor for the U.S. State Department, on espionage charges. The charges allege that Lemma, a naturalized U.S. citizen of Ethiopian descent, copied “secret” and “top secret” information from intelligence reports, deleted their classification markings, removed them from the State Department, and “used an encrypted application to transmit classified national defense information to a foreign government official associated with a foreign country’s intelligence service.”
Although the Justice Department did not name the foreign power, the New York Times reported that Lemma was charged with spying for Ethiopia—a country that has long been a recipient of enormous amounts of U.S. aid.
Third, consider India—while New Delhi may be closer to a major power, its espionage activities have traditionally flown under the radar for all but intelligence-focused academics and practitioners. In September, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau publicly expressed suspicion that operatives from New Delhi’s external intelligence service, the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), were linked to the June assassination in British Columbia of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a Sikh separatist leader and Canadian citizen who had previously been labeled a “terrorist” by New Delhi. Since then, a diplomatic row between India and Canada has grown increasingly bitter. The Canadian government expelled RAW’s station chief in Ottawa, and in early October, Canada withdrew 41 Canadian diplomats from India after New Delhi threatened to revoke their diplomatic immunity.
Several past and present Indian security and intelligence officials told Reuters that RAW “was galvanized to play a more assertive international role after the 2008 Mumbai attacks,” when Islamist terrorists killed and injured hundreds of people across the city. These officials attributed RAW’s increasingly assertive activity in the West partly to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s desire to cultivate a strongman image and bolster the country’s overall defense capabilities. As one recently retired senior RAW officer told Reuters: “Our footprint is growing in parts of the world which were not important earlier.”
Altogether, these incidents showcase that middle powers undertake a broad spectrum of intelligence activities, including influence operations, deniable covert action, and classic espionage aimed at accessing nonpublic and classified information—approaches that are not solely reserved for use by great powers. Many aspects of tradecraft cut across national intelligence traditions, practices, and resource bases. These examples also push back against the common misperception that big budgets, military prowess, or high technology translate to successful intelligence operations.
In reality, intelligence power does not always correspond to military or technological might. This was made clear during the Cold War, when Cuba—a militarily and economically weak state—managed to turn dozens of sources working for the CIA in Cuba into double agents, as CIA veteran Brian Latell detailed in his book Castro’s Secrets. Even after the Cold War, Fidel Castro’s impoverished Cuba kept up an intelligence campaign against the United States, with Cuban agent Ana Belen Montes continuing to work in upper echelons of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency. Using only her prodigious memory and a shortwave radio, Montes served Havana well for many years, betraying U.S. intelligence until her arrest in 2001.
Like the Cuban intelligence service, the states in the cases above did their homework and found targets, ranging from the heights of power to an IT help desk technician, to serve their aims. Intelligence officers don’t look for fancy titles—they seek out individuals with natural access to the information they want to receive or the power to achieve certain goals.
Rankings of so-called national power, such as the one published by U.S. News and World Report, only make it easier to underestimate middle powers, since they often neglect intelligence power in favor of other important attributes, such as alliances, economic influence, leadership, and military strength. Rankings that overlook intelligence distort the true picture of a state’s power. Even poorly led or isolated states—such as Iran, Cuba, and North Korea—can pull off sophisticated intelligence, counterintelligence, or cyberoperations that surprise the West.
Western powers need to come to terms with this reality and take a more balanced approach to counterintelligence by not overlooking middle powers and countries in the global south. Western nations are currently putting most of their resources into great-power competition, but focusing too dramatically any single intelligence direction invites problems. The British Security Service, known as MI5, provides a cautionary tale. Over the past few decades, MI5 devoted nearly all of its resources to counterterrorism; while this has protected Britain from some major terrorist attacks, it has also left the gates open for major powers such as Russia and China to conduct what appear to be widespread intelligence operations in the country.
Western powers should also recognize that even the national interests of close allies do not entirely overlap. As an adage frequently attributed to former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger goes, “there is no such thing as friendly intelligence agencies; there are only the intelligence agencies of friendly powers.” Of course, Western intelligence communities have developed extremely close liaison relationships, such as the Five Eyes alliance (of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States) born out of World War II. Yet there is no denying that countries will act in their own interests. The recent cases concerning Egypt and Ethiopia remind us that states that benefit from U.S. largesse see little contradiction in also conducting intelligence operations against the United States. Western states should not get too comfortable.
There is little doubt that the intelligence services of middle powers are more active in their own neighborhoods than their recent activities in North America alone would suggest. India focuses intensely on rivals Pakistan and China; Ethiopia has troops in Somalia and is fighting a number of ethno-regional militias domestically; Egypt is concerned with deteriorating security across North Africa and identifying external support for the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist movement that opposes the government of longtime President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.
Regional—and global—intelligence operations will likely continue to expand. The security strategies of middle powers may be local, but their field of operations is increasingly global.
Much like the adrenaline rush of a secret agent meeting, intelligence success at the international level is addictive. Middle powers that best other states—and enjoy the fruits of their tradecraft—will try again, seeking out agents who are naive, venal, or share their ideologies. Western policymakers and observers should not discount the ambition, intention, and intelligence capabilities of these states.
