Books
Phase
Late Cold War Espionage
1966–1991 CE
From the later 1960s, Cold War intelligence operated in a world of established alliances, divided Germany, nuclear parity and increasingly sophisticated surveillance and communications. Western and Soviet services continued to recruit agents and run defections while also responding to terrorism, proxy wars and political change outside Europe.
Détente reduced some forms of confrontation without ending the intelligence contest. By the 1980s economic pressure, technological competition and instability inside the Soviet bloc changed the strategic environment, but espionage networks remained active until the political order that had sustained them began to collapse.
