Political Science Quarterly
Volume 115 No. 1 (Spring 2000)

 

The Spy Novels of John LeCarre: Balancing Ethics and Politics
By Myron J. Aronoff. New York, St. Martin's Press, 1999.
Reviewed by Raymond L. Garthoff

 

John LeCarre's spy novels are justly renowned as exciting stories of suspense and intrigue, among the best of the genre. Whether they have thought about it explicitly or not, many readers will have understood that they are also subtle studies of the contemporary dilemma of balancing ethical values with political exigencies. At no time has this dilemma loomed larger than during the period of the cold war, although of course it is ages-old and continues today. And in no sphere of human activity is the dilemma sharper than in espionage, although LeCarre sees espionage as only the most intense concentration of politics. The book is subtitled "Balancing Ethics and Politics," and LeCarre's answer, insofar as Aronoff could find one, is for the individual to seek a skeptical balance between ethical and political requirements through flexibility and reason, and learn to live with ambiguity.

John LeCarre (nom de plume of David Cornwell), before turning full time to writing, served first with the British security service (MI-5) beginning when Cornwell was a student in the 1950s, and then with the foreign intelligence service, MI-6 (nominally in the diplomatic service) from 1960 to 1964. (Aronoff erroneously dates this service from 1959 to 1966). The four years abroad as an espionage case officer was obviously the experience most directly relevant to his subject in the spy novels, but the earlier years are also pertinent to his understanding of the ethical dilemma. Aronoff notes that Cornwell was a secret service informant at Oxford in the mid-1950s, although he fails to note that he was at the same time the author of articles in the Oxford Left sharply criticizing U.S. cold war militarism. LeCarre's novels do not, however, reflect the author's political views so much as his efforts to wrestle with the need to resolve both personal and political dilemmas of reconciling idealism and realism.

The novels clearly reflect his view of the impact of Britain's decline as a world power in the postwar world as it was reflected in the world of British intelligence in the 1950s and 1960s, with the decline of an "arrogant elite" and "the end of an era dominated by it" (p. 184). Aronoff sees in LeCarre's later novels a similar rudderless drifting in American intelligence today, as a result of the rapidly changing international conditions after the cold war. As depicted by Aronoff, LeCarre sees a nation's intelligence service as "an appropriate metaphor for the society it serves" (p. 209).

During four decades, LeCarre has written thirteen spy novels set in the cold war world, and three in the post-cold war era. During the cold war, there was a clear, and at least partially justified, end against which various policy means could be considered. The collapse of the Soviet threat removed that adversary and the policy end toward which intelligence means could be weighed. With the demise of the cold war, the ends of Western policy have become much more ambiguous. And bureaucratic politics within and among intelligence agencies in Britain or the United States, which LeCarre saw as growing and dangerous during the cold war, became even more so.

Aronoff's analysis, highlights of which I have sought to set forth, is based on a detailed analysis of LeCarre's spy novels. Needless to say, it helps to have read at least some, if not all, of the sixteen novels. Aronoff nonetheless succeeds in providing sufficient context to identify and analyze the principal characters and episodes featured in his extensive analysis. He also includes reference to concurring and divergent interpretations of the several other authors who have sought to analyze LeCarre's works. It is a very comprehensive, thorough, and thoughtful analysis by a professor jointly of anthropology and political science at Rutgers.

Raymond L. Garthoff
The Brookings Institution