Counterintelligence from Cold War to the Post-Cold War Period

Counterintelligence from Cold War to the Post-Cold War Period

Introduction

Cold war is a name given to certain period of time in the history in which there was political and military antagonism between powerful states such as Soviet Union and America. The period of cold war as 1947 to 1991 followed by the serious impactful years to come in the world. In this period of time wars like the Vietnam war and Korea war also took place but cold war is referred as 'cold' because there was not any sort of mass destruction but only the preparation of arms and war strategies by both the parties. Cold war is basically a war between two superpowers; America and Soviet Union. It was basically a perceptional war between the two systematic systems; capitalism and communism. Capitalism prevailed in the American ideology and communism was incorporated in Russia's politics and society since its independence. Thus the cold war was not just a political war but the war actually belonged to every other Russian and American.

In this period both the countries prepared for nuclear war which could also be stated as world war III. In this nuclear preparation there was a lot of focus on the counterintelligence from both the sides. As a result, world experienced, for the very first time, a counterintelligence which had drastic impact on every part of the world. These impacts were negative for both the people of America and Soviet Union but also caused panic amongst the people of the other parts of the world. Counterintelligence had negative impacts because it never really was meant for the purpose of national security. Counterintelligence means to monitor the spies who are working according to the orders of the enemies.

Discussion

Development of Counterintelligence

Counterintelligence comprise of the process of planning means to reduce the activities of enemy spies and also to provide them with incorrect information which will lead their enemy to wrong military conclusions. Before cold war, there were a lot of counterintelligence activities in the World War II. FBI was one of the organization of counterintelligence which also worked by the name COINTERPRO. They were involved in the conduction of many operations under the name of national security. The operation which they carried was also illegal but they operated them under the name of national security which had negative impacts. In order to understand the impact of counterintelligence, it should be clear that what steps of counterintelligence were taken from the cold war to the post cold war period.

Espionage was one of the very important parts of the strategies of counterintelligence from the beginning of the cold war and beyond. It has a very special kind of importance and impact in terms of the counterintelligence preparation from east to the west. The basic purpose of the counterintelligence in the cold war was to serve the national security for the countries who were directly or indirectly involved. There were a lot of spies both in Soviet Union and ...