Oh, for a world where spooks don’t matter

Who knows the name of the head of Danish military intelligence? And who cares? That’s as it should be. In well-run countries, the spooks and spy-catchers get on with their tough grubby job and do not bother the rest of us.

In post-communist Europe, it’s different. In Poland the government is obsessed with reform of the military intelligence service, the WSI. Sensible Poles of my acquaintance believe that its tentacles are so strong and long that it will topple the government.

The caretaker Czech government quickly moved to change the top brass at the counterpart service there.

In Romania, President Trajan Basescu has just sacked his intelligence chiefs in a row about an escaped suspect triple-agent arms-dealer and kidnapper (I’m not exaggerating).

In Lithuania, the security service has raided a newspaper to seize tapped phone calls relating to an affair in which a top spook is accused of masterminding the defenestration of a colleague from a hotel in Belarus (I’m not exaggerating that either).

The problem is that in countries with weak institutions, intelligence and security services have disproportionate importance. They can bug and blackmail, helping their allies and destroying their opponents. Nobody much stops them. Their victims doubt that the courts will help, nor will going to the media or complaining to politicians. Both those walks of life are infested already. In the west, over-mighty spooks are the stuff of bad thrillers. In eastern Europe, it’s real life.

Memories of Communism make it worse. Spies and spymasters are mild figures of fun in countries with no reason to fear them. In countries where the Communist security agencies could ruin your life, or end it, fear is still ingrained. And when Communist-era security and intelligence officers are still in senior positions 15 years later (and I am not talking just about Russia here) paranoia seems all too sensible.

Changing the chiefs is the common, tempting, and ineffective solution. But it doesn’t go deep enough. Closing down a whole service is expensive, disruptive - and still may not work, if the old-boy network is strong enough. Estonia started from scratch in 1991, which in retrospect looks wise. But what can other countries do now?

The real answer, as with so many other ills of the ex-Communist world, is to make other institutions stronger and more transparent. Clear and cleanly enforced laws mean less room for spooks’ influence-peddling. If something goes wrong, then quick, crunchy justice from well-trusted courts and impartial prosecutors will sort it out, not a word in the right ear. If the business world is open and dynamic, then costs, customers and competition are what matter, not having a pal in the security service.

Opening the archives helps. The biggest weapon in the intelligence game is what Russians call ‘Kompromat’ - embarrassing secrets from the past. Putting as much as possible of the pre-1989 archives in the open may be painful - but it means that they can’t be misused.

Western pressure helps a bit. Being trusted by outside colleagues is a badge of honour, rewarding the professional and conscientious against the dodgy and corrupt. The Estonian and Polish foreign intelligence services score well here.

The biggest problem is at the top. Politicians who come into office determined to reform the intelligence services rapidly get sucked into their shadow. The secret world starts mattering much more than the real one. The sight of the country’s leading figures obsessing about intelligence reform undermines everyone else’s confidence in the rest of the system. That makes things worse, not better.

• Edward Lucas is central and eastern European correspondent for The Economist

Who knows the name of the head of Danish military intelligence? And who cares? That’s as it should be. In well-run countries, the spooks and spy-catchers get on with their tough grubby job and do not bother the rest of us.