International Innovations

Although it has already been reported that fugitive National Security Agency employee Edward Snowden was nominated by a Swedish professor for a Nobel Peace Prize, many people were nominated. Snowden’s character is not nearly as interesting as the circumstances under which he has risen to the attention of the whole world. There are precedents for such events: captain of the French General Staff A. Dreyfus and Serbian schoolboy G. Printsip were both fairly uninteresting individuals who were not fully aware of the meaning and scope of the events connected with their names. The point is not Snowden himself, but in the important international events connected to him.

First of all, the scandal surrounding Snowden is not a spying scandal. Indeed, had it been a spying scandal, everything would have been much simpler both for the Americans and for the powers towards which American interest has been extended. All spies collate the results of their missions to the archetype of “Eustace to Alex.” Alex decides in deepest secrecy what to do with the given information. He may choose not to inform the other side that their activities have been discovered. For example, instead, he could start a game of misinformation. He could change codes. In our case, this would add to the secrecy. He could inform his partner that their activities are no longer secret, but tell them this in confidentiality. Cases in which Alex begins an open international scandal are quite rare.

However, if the Snowden scandal is not one of spying, but of idealism, then the open nature of the scandal is guaranteed, even if the party subjected to surveillance (France, Germany, Russia, Brazil, etc.) did not want a public hearing and would have preferred to take action discretely. But if the publicity has already occurred, then these parties are forced to respond publicly, even if they do not want to.

In addition, there is the issue of asylum, which is usually not at all relevant in a case of espionage. An agent secretly working for the secret services of another state is absolutely sure that if it is physically possible to drag him out of the reach of counterintelligence, it will be done. And in any case, his extradition from the state for which he was spying is not a consideration. After all, if this were not the case, who would want to work as a spy? And the fact is that the spy has some information which must not fall into the hands of counterintelligence forces. For this reason, the right to asylum for a spy is not questioned by anyone. When members of the “Cambridge Five” fled to the Soviet Union, British security services were hardly satisfied, but before official demands were made the idea of returning agents to their country was not accepted on the grounds that there was no use in doing so. In part, this is expanded on in the book “I Chose Freedom” by Victor Kravchenko, a Soviet defector. If the Soviets demanded the return of the runaway, then it was purely a ritual matter. They always understood the pure futility in doing so. There’s no use in crying over spilled milk.

The Department of State’s announcement of its deep disappointment that Snowden was given a “platform for speech” and a “platform for propaganda” in Moscow demonstrates a level of anger that the Soviet Union did not always reach in similar cases. The USSR Constitution does not contain a first amendment which would require Soviet officials to air their thoughts publicly — whereas the U.S. Constitution does. This [difference] is probably linked to the fundamental novelty of the current international situation. During the Cold War era, there were two worlds and two systems. Before today, there were spheres of influence throughout which fugitives were sheltered. Sovereignty included the right to asylum.

Nowadays, the U.S. has decided that the entire world falls under its sphere of interest, thereby denying the rest of the world’s right to provide shelter if the U.S. decides that it does not like it. As one representative of the Department of State announced, any country which aided Snowden by providing transit or a place to live “would put relations [between our two countries] in a very bad place for a long time to come.” This used to be called “Finlandization.” Finland was obliged to extradite runaways to the USSR, although it was not always too zealous in fulfilling this obligation, sometimes turning a blind eye to police action. In the eyes of America, the whole world is subjected to Finlandization and that has been shown through the Snowden incident.

However, during the late Soviet era there was a joke that went as follows: A wolf is walking in the woods, calling on animals. He tells a hare to come to his place to be his lunch and puts it down in his notebook. He then tells a vixen to visit him for some after-lunch carnal pleasures and makes a note of that, too. A system breakdown occurs when the hedgehog tells him “go freak yourself!”, after which the wolf scratches his head and says, “Hmm, I’m gonna have to cross you out.” How our friend the wolf will react now is, of course, interesting.