Return of the Cold Warriors

A LENGTHENING LIST of irritants appears to be straining and souring relations between the United States and Russia. The latest series of incidents involving allegations of espionage smacks of the tit-for-tat that characterised the bitter bilateral relations during the Cold War years. This has the potential to seriously threaten the uneasy balance in global affairs that has existed following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the emergence of the U.S. as the sole superpower. Moscow's decision to seek an explanation from the U.S. about reports that at the height of the Cold War American intelligence agencies had dug a tunnel under the Soviet embassy in Washington to aid surveillance comes within a fortnight of the arrest of a 27-year veteran of the Federal Bureau of Investigation on the charge of spying for Russia. In what was described as the worst spy case in FBI history, Mr. Robert Philip Hanssen was charged with handing over highly classified documents and betraying American intelligence sources and electronic surveillance methods. The charges portray the arrested agent as a cunning practitioner of the very arts of espionage that he was trained to combat under the all-powerful FBI.

If the charges are proved, the FBI agent's activities will demonstrate that the old Cold War games are still being played by both sides, a full decade after the Berlin Wall collapsed and heralded the end of the Soviet empire and the start of an era when the spy as the world knew him would have ceased to be. The FBI agent's arrest is not of course the first in the post-Cold War decade. Seven years ago, after the surprise arrest of a counter-intelligence chief, officials in Washington claimed that they had cleared many of the mysteries of the Cold War era when quite often spies disappeared without a trace and contacts that seemed impregnable proved damagingly unworthy of trust. The breaches and leaks of security that these exposed led automatically to total revamping of the espionage setups in both camps. At about the time that the tunnel in Washington was said to have been under construction in the mid-1980s, the U.S. and the Soviet Union were arguing bitterly over security and safety in their embassies. Each side was accusing the other of planting listening devices in their diplomatic offices and homes, charges that had sounded absurd to the world outside the ideological encampments.

The latest round of disclosures, voluntary and other, shows that the invisible cloak-and-dagger war when spy spied on spy is far from over. As for the latest spat, it is safe to hazard the guess that the reports about the clandestine tunnelling activity in Washington many years ago have suddenly surfaced now as a response to the arrest of the FBI agent which directly implicates Moscow. The strong Russian reaction to the reports is also a pointer to the direction in which relations between the two countries may be heading. With his years in the Russian intelligence agency, the KGB, and his own early ideological moorings, Mr. Vladimir Putin is proving to be the antithesis of his predecessor. Certainly, the bonhomie and back-slapping of the Yeltsin era has quickly evaporated but there must be worry that this is being replaced by suspicion and hostility as both Moscow and Washington settle under strong new leaders. Recent American actions such as the decision to go ahead with the controversial national missile defence system and the resumption of the bombing of Iraq have injected an element of the Cold War logic in the bilateral relationship. Every time a mole tumbles out of the Cold War era, the ties slip deeper into a freeze.

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