The geopolitical economy of state-led intelligence-commerce: two examples from Iraq and West Germany

Abstract

This article argues that intelligence agencies are actors in the global political economy. Two key arguments are advanced: firstly, that states use intelligence-commerce to secretly pursue economic, strategic aims, which they have to publicly shun for political or normative reasons. Secondly, that states' specific use of intelligence-commerce is related to their structural position within the international political economy. To demonstrate that the use of intelligence-commerce exceeds regime-type and straddles the presumed, strict boundary of ‘democratic' and ‘authoritarian' intelligence, this article uses Iraqi and West German intelligence-commerce as two, related empirical examples. The article applies an understanding of the state as a bundle of practices organized around the hegemonic principles of nationalism and raison d’etat, which manifest both discursively and materially in intelligence agencies, and discusses research methodologies in the data-scarce context of intelligence scholarship.