The recipients of Cold War arms in the 1970s and 1980s became the failed states in Africa after the Cold War.

the true intelligence successes of Western powers during the Cold War are measured by omissions, like Sherlock Holmes’s dogs that did not bark. The greatest contribution that British and U.S. intelligence made to the Cold War was to help prevent the outbreak of a hot war, World War III. By contrast, Soviet intelligence services broadly failed to

As far as intelligence is concerned, Niall Ferguson is correct. We are already engaged in a new Cold War—and Western public policy conversations about Chinese espionage have hardly begun.

the KGB’s methodology was not to create a false story out of nothing, but instead to amplify existing grievances in Western societies. Exploiting U.S. race relations, for example, was stock-in-trade for the KGB during the Cold War. The wounds that Soviet intelligence exploited in the United States were American-made, not foreign.

What the Soviet Union could not do openly through communist parties, it did secretly.

At the end of the war, Cadogan, letting off steam in his diary, wondered how they ever managed to run the war “with the PM spending hours of his and other people’s time simply driveling, welcoming every red herring so as to have the pleasure of more irrelevant, redundant talk.”25

Western powers can be in a Cold War irrespective of whether they seek one and before they recognize it.

There are few better ways to befriend someone than to let them in on a secret. Sharing secrets builds trust—at least with those trustworthy.

the only limitation for the Russian security service (FSB) is operational effectiveness—not legal, ethical, or moral considerations.