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Doomed agent. For an officer of a foreign state, you are a resource
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
[REGNUM] For a foreign intelligence officer, you are not a friend, relative or ally. Even if he competently creates such an impression in you, claps on the shoulder and expresses admiration for your courageous choice. People need encouragement, recognition, a sense of fighting brotherhood, especially if they are doing something dangerous and morally dubious. They readily accept a pat on the back as a display of the most cordial camaraderie. For an officer of a foreign state, you are a resource.

Daria Trepova, who, using a figurine stuffed with explosives, killed military commander Maxim Fomin (Vladlen Tatarsky) and wounded about forty people (many of them seriously), now says that she did not know about explosives. From the outside it is difficult to understand whether this is true.

We do not know if Trepova's employers kept her in the dark about her role in the attack. Finding out the details is a matter of investigation and court.

But hardly anyone doubts that using it in the dark is not only possible, but also quite common.

There is a crude joke about rabbits who thought it was love, but they were just bred. There is an even grosser reality. People think that they are fighters for the idea, but they are simply used.

They see what is happening through a bright emotional light filter, perceive themselves as underground heroes who are loved, respected and ardently supported by "all the honest people of the planet."

But foreign intelligence officers see them in a completely different way.

One of the classics of military science is the ancient Chinese theorist Sun Tzu , with his famous work The Art of War. His most frequently quoted maxim is "war is a way of deceit."

Sun Tzu opposed the heroic culture of his era from the standpoint of rationality and pragmatism, for example, he does not advise starting a war in anger. We are angry for a while, but we die forever.

Some of the techniques he describes are repulsively immoral and dishonorable.

The commander in ancient treatises deceives not only the enemy, but also his own subordinates and allies. He lies to his officers to avoid a leak.

He entrusts terrible secrets to his agent in the expectation that he will be captured by enemies and, under torture, will reveal secrets that are in fact cleverly crafted disinformation. This is the so-called "dead agent" (or "doomed spy"), because the enemies will surely kill him, convinced of the falsity of his information.

If we began to reproach these people for the extreme meanness of their methods, they would explain that in a situation of armed conflict between states, when the commander is responsible for the lives of many of his subordinates and for the outcome of the war, he can and must do things that in another context are blatantly immoral.

If you betrayed those who trusted in your personal interests, you are a scoundrel and a Judas, and if in the interests of the state, you pulled off a successful operation.

The famous Italian Renaissance political scientist Niccolò Machiavelli says the same thing.

"It should be understood that a sovereign, especially a new one, cannot do everything for which people are considered good, since in order to preserve the state, he is often forced to go against his word, against mercy, kindness and piety."

Of course, people already in his time resented such immoralism, and today the word "Machiavellianism" is used in the sense of extreme deceit and shamelessness.

But Machiavelli explained that he does not write about how people should behave, but about how they actually behave.

Whether we like it or not, the activities of states and especially their intelligence agencies are nothing like heroic fantasy.

For a foreign intelligence officer, you are not a friend, relative or ally.

Even if he competently creates such an impression in you, claps on the shoulder and expresses admiration for your courageous choice. People need encouragement, recognition, a sense of fighting brotherhood, especially if they are doing something dangerous and morally dubious. They readily accept a pat on the back as a display of the most cordial camaraderie.

For an officer of a foreign state, you are a resource. Pawn on the board. He solves the tasks facing him, and your life and well-being are not at all included in these tasks. It has nothing to do with anyone's personal moral character, likes or dislikes. He's just doing his job.

Here you can’t even say that he is betraying you - a person can betray someone with whom he had relationships and obligations. In relation to you, he never had any obligations. You are not even a citizen of his country.

You can complain later that you were shamelessly deceived and used, but it is much better to understand from the very beginning who you should not do business with.

April 5, 2023
Sergei Khudiev.

Posted by: badanov 2023-04-06
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=663478