Secrecy in the Liberal Order

Yet recent scholarship suggests the opposite conclusion: order and stability rely on secrecy.^[3] States choose to cooperate for a variety of reasons, both rational and ideological, but they understand that there are risks involved. States tend not to cooperate in an institutional setting, for example, if they fear revealing sensitive economic data, intelligence sources, or military vulnerabilities.^[4] Similarly, states shy away from arrangements that force them to be transparent in ways that threaten their international status.^[5] Institutions can use secrecy as a safeguard against these dangers. By ensuring that sensitive information is protected, they show that international cooperation need not work against national interests. 

Secrecy also provides a solution to the two-level game, or the problem of simultaneously satisfying foreign counterparts and domestic critics.^[6] The cloak of secrecy enables diplomatic agreements to mature out of view from domestic spoilers. Such agreements link contentious issues in ways that might provoke controversy among critics; unveiling them together as part of a package helps dilute the opposition, resulting in a more durable deal.^[7] In some cases, the existence of domestic opposition itself creates an opportunity to use secrecy in clever ways. Talented statesmen use their critics as collateral to create diplomatic trust. Their message to partners: we care enough about this relationship to put our future in your hands, and we trust that you will not reveal the arrangement to our public.^[8] 

Secrecy encourages participation in institutions, and institutions use secrecy to maintain faith among members.^[9] Demands for openness appeal to liberal sensibilities, yet more transparency might undo the liberal order by inviting claims of hypocrisy and preferential treatment. Transparency requirements might also lead partners to demand that states who violate institutional rules and tacit norms be punished or expelled.^[10] From the perspective of a builder of long-term institutions, it might be better to let them get away with minor violations. Obscuring such violations can help preserve basic principles, whereas insisting on transparency and accountability works against those principles. Institutions must be tactful about how they treat their member states, given that participation is voluntary and there is no supranational enforcement authority. In some cases, institutions might issue opaque judgments for the same reason, erring on the side of stability without overreacting to what are essentially misdemeanors.^[11] 

While secrecy creates inducements for states to cooperate, it also gives states special tools against their rivals. During the Cold War, the United States frequently resorted to covert action against Soviet allies and communist fellow travelers, violating liberal principles in the service of a broader liberal project. It chose regime change attempts in South America, for example, because it could not offer a legal justification for overt military intervention. U.S. leaders hoped that acting covertly would allow them to fight back against the spread of communism while avoiding charges of hypocrisy.^[12] Secrecy allowed leaders to act in ways that might have been controversial but, in their view, served the collective good.^[13] This undemocratic idea might be necessary for upholding democratic alliances. 

The idea that the liberal order relies on an illiberal practice is peculiar and counterintuitive. Nonetheless, the burst of recent research on secrecy suggests that international institutions depend on it. Demands for transparency and open dealing can discourage international cooperation, even among states that are inclined toward liberal principles. The upshot is that secrecy is important, perhaps vital, to making the liberal order last.This proposition has important implications for international relations theory and Cold War history. It also speaks to the campaign by U.S. President Joe Biden and his administration to breathe life back into Cold War institutions and to rally democracies in a common cause. This effort, which relies in part on embracing transparency, may be misguided.

secrecy is important, perhaps vital, to making the liberal order last.

Secrets Among Friends

Scholars who laud the Cold War–era international order tend to emphasize its commitment to transparency. Postwar diplomacy was effective, they claim, because it was out in the open. The advent of permanent organizations espousing liberal principles was a milestone for diplomacy, which had previously been associated with secret agreements and murky statecraft. Before the creation of multilateral forums like the United Nations (UN), observers had often viewed diplomacy as synonymous with ruthless realpolitik. They urged diplomats to embrace a cosmopolitan worldview, but these exhortations often fell on deaf ears. Diplomacy served the state, not the greater global good.^[14] 

Critics of traditional diplomacy bemoaned the role of secrecy. From their perspective, clandestine maneuvering was deeply destabilizing. Making and breaking alliances inspired deep distrust among states, increasing the risk of conflict and war. Such critiques were loudest in the interwar period, when observers sought explanations for the recent calamity and searched desperately for lessons that states could use to avoid a repeat performance. Secret agreements among the great powers were the root of the problem. The journalist A. Maurice Low spoke for many in his condemnation of the “necromancers who practised the black art of secret diplomacy.”^[15] Low’s blistering account also served as a stark warning to those who would resuscitate the old ways. 

Some interwar leaders took this warning to heart, though they proved unable to transform diplomacy as former U.S. president Woodrow Wilson envisioned. Fledgling institutions did not provide a durable alternative to realpolitik, much to the dismay of leaders who sought to embed higher principles in the international system. Interwar institutions failed spectacularly under the dual pressures of economic depression and political fascism, in both cases plagued by collective action problems that made it impossible to coordinate an effective response. Mistrust among allies prevented them from confronting external threats to the interwar order. Open diplomacy fell apart as great powers adopted beggar-thy-neighbor economic policies, and as fascists leaders made a mockery of existing borders and previous agreements.

The architects of the post–World War II order worked hard to avoid the same fate, building stronger institutions that would alleviate suspicions and allow states to move away from their old habits. According to G. John Ikenberry, then U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt deliberately tried to eschew the “allied intrigues and secret understandings” that proliferated in the interwar period.^[16] In their place, he sought a cooperative system among great powers working together to preserve the peace. Roosevelt died before the war ended, of course, and the postwar international order that emerged was far from what he envisioned. Nonetheless, what followed was, to Ikenberry, “history’s most sweeping reorganization of international order.”^[17] The United States worked to create an order in its own image, but in a way that seemed less threatening to partners. It would be a benign hegemon and a trustworthy steward, not a domineering empire that subjugated other states to its will. Smaller powers would accept their role in the system, assured that Washington would not abuse its position.

How would the United States convince them to go along? The answer, to liberal theorists, rested on the principle of transparency. The country’s open political system made it more predictable than authoritarian great powers, who could change course quickly and without notice, rendering their promises hollow. Openness also gave U.S. allies a genuine voice in the operation of the order. As permanent members of postwar institutions, they were deeply involved in the design and operation of the modern international system. This created incentives for their continued participation. They could accept U.S. dominance because the system itself constrained U.S. power. The abandonment of secret diplomacy in favor of transparent institutional governance protected them against the fate of their predecessors, who were always at risk in the aftermath of shifting alliances. Open democracies were able to negotiate in confidence, and their collective efforts would safeguard democracy against ideological challengers. 

Yet the conduct of diplomacy in the Cold War was not entirely transparent. In some ways, it was guided by norms of secrecy. Although leaders worried about repeating the mistakes of the interwar period, they understood that states remained cautious about sharing information and that they jealously guarded their prerogatives. Even those who grasped the logic of a new liberal order were reluctant to put themselves at risk.

the conduct of diplomacy in the Cold War was not entirely transparent.

These ideas informed the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, which codified the rules for diplomats abroad and the responsibilities of host countries. The convention, along with various headquarters agreements, stressed the inviolability of diplomatic documents, archives, and correspondence. The physical location of information did not matter, nor the communications technology used to send it. The convention obligated states “to permit and protect free communication on the part of the mission for all official purposes,” and it promised that a foreign mission “may employ all appropriate means, including diplomatic couriers and messages in code or cipher.”^[18] The same norms covered diplomatic practice within international institutions. The 1946 Convention on the Privileges and Immunities of the United Nations covered activities within the UN and other multilateral bodies, including NATO and the Council of Europe. Like the Vienna Convention, it emphasized that states had the right to keep their information and communications to themselves. Participants in international institutions expected traditional secrecy to prevail, at least at the working level.^[19]

At the same time, the early Cold War witnessed a rapid expansion of secret intelligence organizations in the West. The United States established the Central Intelligence Agency in 1947, and over the next two decades the country added several new secret services that focused on different technical collection disciplines. U.S. allies followed suit, growing their own secret services while simultaneously committing to an open international order. Many relied on diplomatic cover for espionage, using embassies to provide cover identities for intelligence officers. “While at home,” as scholar Stuart Murray put it, “intelligence officers were often housed in grand, imposing and Orwellian buildings; while abroad, they were embedded in diplomatic institutions.”^[20] The close relationship between espionage and diplomacy, protected by conventions that ensured the secrecy of communications, seemed incongruous with the principles of secrecy and open negotiations that underwrote the postwar order.^[21] 

Understanding Secrecy in the Postwar Order

It is strange, and a little unsettling, that the expansion of the liberal order occurred alongside a renewed commitment to secrecy. Mid-century leaders preached the gospel of openness and lamented the legacy of secret diplomacy, yet they also endeavored to protect state secrets and increased their investment in espionage.

Mid-century leaders preached the gospel of openness and lamented the legacy of secret diplomacy, yet they also endeavored to protect state secrets and increased their investment in espionage.

There are at least three ways to resolve this apparent contradiction. First, the Western allies might have been truly committed to the open order that liberals describe. Their actions regarding norms of secrecy were primarily intended to stave off the Soviet Union and other illiberal challengers. Transparency would be the default principle among the Western powers, while secrecy would provide a buffer against intrusions from their main rivals. Intelligence gathering, meanwhile, was aimed at the Soviet Union and Communist fellow travelers. There was nothing inconsistent or hypocritical about their actions, according to this logic, given the existence of a powerful rival that posed a continuous threat to the West.

The clearest evidence in favor of this argument is that postwar Western intelligence organizations treated the Soviet Union as their first priority. There was no close second. Moscow’s capabilities and intentions occupied the lion’s share of their budget and time. Similarly, fears of Soviet espionage probably drove efforts to secure diplomatic communications. Western leaders were well aware of Soviet espionage coups before and during the Second World War, and they were on guard. The efforts to build a liberal order occurred in parallel with attempts to secure information from prying illiberal eyes. These goals were not mutually exclusive. 

One problem with this interpretation, however, is that the allies also spied on each other. Western states reportedly went to great lengths to surveil one another, using electronic collection techniques and old-fashioned spying. The practice of espionage within the liberal order suggests that the need for secrecy was not simply a response to the competition with the Soviet Union.^[22]

A more cynical argument is that Western leaders used liberal rhetoric to obscure the fact that their conduct, both in terms of secret diplomacy and secret intelligence, was the same as ever. High-sounding public commitments to openness diverted attention from the gritty requirements of statecraft. Cold War leaders gave inspirational speeches about a new kind of political order founded on transparency and cooperation within shared institutions, but they practiced the dark arts with great energy and hid their efforts behind the shield of classification and plausible deniability.

Critics of U.S. foreign policy have made powerful arguments along these lines, and it is certainly hard to reconcile postwar paeans to openness with the simultaneous rise of secret bureaucracies and covert action.^[23] Yet there is a danger of exaggerating the importance of hidden activities while downplaying what happened in the open. The institutions at the heart of the Cold War order were hardly secret. They were, by design, sprawling bureaucracies that attended to a range of international problems including security, trade, development, global health, and environmental protections. Moreover, the U.S. commitment to the postwar order never really seemed in doubt, despite sometimes intense questions about the nature of U.S. military plans to defend against the Soviet Union.^[24] 

A third possibility, then, is that states in the emerging order wanted to maintain operational secrecy while preferring transparency at the level of grand strategy and foreign policy.^[25] Western allies, in this view, were committed to transparency when it came to major decisions about the alliance itself. No more would they enter into clandestine side deals or suddenly break longstanding arrangements without prior notice.^[26] Diplomatic activities reflected their grand strategies, which they discussed openly. At the same time, they would retain the freedom to keep their own counsel, enabling internal dialogue and debate by keeping their communications private. In this sense, the alliance was akin to modern judicial systems, in which the substance of criminal proceedings plays out in open courts, while participants have the right to attorney-client privilege.

This logic can be taken further. Although the idea of a liberal international order relied on transparency, members of the order were unwilling to fully participate unless they could maintain control of information. Counterintuitively, secrecy might have been a necessary condition for ensuring their participation and consequently for maintaining institutional stability.

Although the idea of a liberal international order relied on transparency, members of the order were unwilling to fully participate unless they could maintain control of information.

Secrecy provided two key benefits. First, it encouraged tolerance and flexibility. No one could expect self-interested states to completely follow institutional rules. The question was what to do in cases of rule breaking. As discussed above, revelations might have been destabilizing because member states would have less confidence in their partners, even if a given transgression itself was minor. So instead of offering the whole truth, institutional arbiters used opaque judgments to preserve confidence. U.S. officials, for example, repeatedly obfuscated evidence of violations of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in order to sustain the regime.^[27] States that were committed to the liberal order were thus able to offshore secrecy to international institutions. Likewise, secrecy encouraged flexibility. States in the order could experiment with different arguments and float proposals quietly. With such an arrangement, these experimentations might fail gracefully and without embarrassment. 

Second, secrecy encouraged smaller states to speak with a stronger voice. Liberal theorists argue that openness creates opportunities for weaker powers to gain influence. This might be true to a point, but doing so carries risks. Large democracies sometimes worry that smaller states exploit them through political manipulation, leading to xenophobia and nativist blowback. Dependent states are typically careful about spoiling relations with their critical allies. Indeed, smaller powers may prefer to use their voices discreetly, given the inherent dangers of publicly challenging much richer and more powerful patrons.

Secrets Among Rivals

The core institutions of the modern global order began during the Cold War, when the United States had an abiding interest in binding non-Communist states together to balance against Soviet power. U.S. leaders committed to avoiding what they saw as the fundamental error of the interwar period, when Washington was unwilling to back nascent organizations like the League of Nations. Failure to do so created room for aggressive fascist states, which accumulated military capabilities and territory without facing a unified response. Building such unity required knitting together the Western world through overlapping security and economic institutions, using American military and financial power to make them strong and resilient. 

These Cold War institutions outlasted the Soviet Union, despite predictions that they would become obsolete. Even after the need to balance against the Soviet threat had passed, states had many other reasons to cooperate, and institutions helped. They provided venues for sharing ideas and information and for resolving disputes. They codified the rules that underpinned the rules-based order. The fact that institutions were transparent assuaged fears that the United States would run roughshod over its erstwhile allies. Transparent covenants openly arrived at were appealing to smaller states that could not challenge U.S. power. 

The United States also tried to attract illiberal great powers during the 1990s and 2000s, believing that they would eventually see the benefit of joining the rules-based order. Perhaps they would become more liberal over time; prosperity is hard to resist. Ideally, their attitudes toward the United States and the West would mellow as institutional cooperation became normal. A genuinely global order would be characterized by routine great power cooperation under transparent rules. Economic and political grievances would be rare and manageable. The old-fashioned struggle for power would fizzle. 

Things worked out differently. The open rules-based order was replaced by open competition. Russia and China increasingly rejected participation in a U.S.-led order and decried what they saw as U.S. encroachment on their sovereign interests. Washington grudgingly gave up on its post–Cold War hopes after repeated failures to reset diplomacy with Moscow and Beijing. Today, great power competition is the foundation of U.S. foreign and defense policy, though what this entails is not altogether clear. The stakes are high when the competitors are nuclear-armed and economically interdependent great powers. Efforts to maximize relative power may prove counterproductive. Particularly confrontational approaches risk disaster. 

How do great powers compete when they have so much to lose? Part of the answer may come from the secret services. Rather than risking it all on economic or military conflict, they may engage in a thoroughgoing intelligence contest. Intelligence agencies compete for information; they manipulate and deceive; and they occasionally sabotage and subvert. Their main purpose is to give leaders decision-making advantages, while creating uncertainty for their rivals. Doing so disabuses rivals of the notion that they are in full control of events, while encouraging sobriety. Over time, both sides might see the value of restraint. 

Intelligence contests have a long history, but there are few formal theories about how they work. If it is true that secrecy contributes to order, observers ought to look harder at how the secret services interact. Great powers sometimes settle into intelligence contests as an alternative to war, or as a way of reducing its impact. In protracted contests, rival professional intelligence agencies can develop a set of tacit rules about the limits of acceptable conduct. These rules of the game enable states to compete while simultaneously controlling the risks of escalation. These limits allow both parties to try to gain advantage over the other, without creating dangerous instability.^[28] 

Great powers sometimes settle into intelligence contests as an alternative to war, or as a way of reducing its impact.

Intelligence contests between great powers continue today, both in the physical world and in cyberspace. These contests have sparked a great deal of public fear: witness the outrage among Americans over Russian election meddling and Chinese espionage. Yet it is possible that these activities serve as release valves for political pressure. The great powers can fight over information instead of actually fighting.^[29] 

Other research suggests the possibilities of clandestine signaling, defined as the selective revelation of military capabilities that “depend on secrecy for their battlefield effectiveness.”^[30] Such capabilities may include intelligence techniques for locating and tracking enemy forces. Revealing the ability to find the enemy makes little sense in wartime because it probably means losing the ability to achieve a surprise attack. But in peacetime, clandestine signaling can enhance deterrence by injecting a dose of uncertainty into an adversary’s plans, especially if the adversary has no easy way of adapting. And because these signals are outside the public view, there is little danger of embarrassing the target state in a way that would cause it to lash out. A quiet reminder of the real military balance ought to dampen enthusiasm about provoking an open crisis. 

Making the Most of Ambiguity

A genuinely liberal international order would include clear rules for participating states—and clear penalties for breaking them. International politics usually fall short of this ideal, however, and even like-minded states disagree over basic issues. States fight about what counts as a rule and what constitutes a transgression. Sometimes they fight about which rules to follow, given that values are often in conflict. Among leading states, there is no agreement about what rules matter most, what the penalty is for violating those rules, or who is willing to enforce them. 

Ideally, great powers would also share information freely. In practice, they hoard information and guard their secrets jealously. As a result, states can never be too confident about knowing their rivals’ intentions, assessing their commitments, or predicting their behavior. Great power politics remain a shadowy business. Is an effective and stable political order possible under these conditions? 

Perhaps. Set aside the familiar presumptions of the liberal order, which emphasize clear rules and enforcement mechanisms. Instead, imagine an international regime based on uncertainty about rules and doubt about enforcement. In both cases, the basic purpose is to foster enduring stability and peace, and the authors of either type of order could seek to preserve shared ideals. But in the latter case, the logic is quite different. Rather than compelling states to live up to legal obligations, the point of departure would be the notion that a frank recognition of ambiguity might inspire a bit of caution. If great powers feel less sure that other states share their vision, they might tread lightly. If smaller states feel less sure that great powers will come to their rescue over disputes with third parties, they might also be more careful.

Critics would surely argue that this arrangement would open the door to predators, who would relish a world characterized by doubt and disagreement. History is littered with marauding states that destabilize global politics and wreck a lot of lives. No durable order can exist, according to this argument, unless would-be aggressors know that their actions will provoke a counterbalancing alliance hewing to clear rules and bound together by public obligations. A failure to specify these rules and obligations, the argument goes, is a pathway to instability and war. If the world resigns itself to ambiguity, critics say, that would invite trouble.

This is a reasonable fear, and it echoes familiar arguments about the need for strong deterrent signals, issued in clear language and backed by moral conviction. But alliance dynamics make unanimity difficult, and signals are notoriously prone to misinterpretation. For these reasons, a different solution ought to be considered. Instead of trying to cut through the fog, states can embrace it. It may be possible to manipulate ambiguity in ways that make conflict less likely. Efforts to turn up the fog machine may convince adversaries to take fewer risks.^[31] Aggressive rivals are more likely to go on the offensive if they believe they can control events. The more they recognize that ambiguity and uncertainty are unavoidable, the more they will grudgingly tolerate the political order. Or at least they will be less likely to try to change it through violence.

It may be possible to manipulate ambiguity in ways that make conflict less likely.

Secret intelligence agencies are in the information business. It is not surprising that they have also been responsible for information operations, using a mixture of truth and deception to manipulate adversaries’ perceptions. It is not hard to imagine something similar today, with intelligence agencies fortifying a rough political order by confusing foreign adversaries and planting a seed of doubt about their ability to control events in the case of conflict. Such activities would not solve international rivalries because they would not change the underlying political disputes among rival nations. But they might induce the kind of caution that would reduce the chances of war. Clandestine information campaigns are not typically thought of as a source of stability, yet they might prove to be useful.

How else might secret intelligence agencies bolster the international order? During peacetime, secret services could facilitate ongoing back-channel discussions with adversaries, away from public view and immune from domestic spoilers. In this way, intelligence agencies could increase caution-inducing ambiguity about future conflicts, while reducing crisis-inducing misperceptions about present politics. Subterranean diplomacy can help identify common interests and contentious issues to avoid. Such efforts are more likely to succeed among institutionally mature intelligence agencies that develop tacit norms and even grudging professional respect over many years of rivalry.^[32] This may not be enough to keep the peace, of course, but secret back channels remain important in war, especially if intelligence agencies can quietly lay the groundwork for settlement talks.^[33] Secret intrawar communications also send an important message to adversaries about the postwar order by saying, in effect, we will be watching.

Transparency Tradeoffs

The recent burst of research on secrecy has explored an intriguing idea about institutional cooperation. The idea is that secrecy helps. Contrary to the basic tenets of liberal internationalism, which is deeply skeptical of secret diplomacy, scholars have argued that secrecy can encourage states to participate in international institutions, asserting that norms of secrecy help preserve those institutions' fundamental values. True transparency, according to this school of thought, makes institutions much more fragile. A liberal international order demands a nontrivial amount of illiberalism to survive.

secrecy can encourage states to participate in international institutions, asserting that norms of secrecy help preserve those institutions’ fundamental values.

This provocative claim has led to a reconsideration about the sources of stability in the Cold War. Scholars have reexamined the role secrecy played in holding the Western alliance together, and the ways in which secret activities like covert operations and clandestine signaling allowed the superpowers to compete while controlling the risk of escalation. It is inherently difficult to research these issues, given classification restrictions, even in decades-old government archives. Nonetheless, scholars have pieced together an impressive body of research supporting the basic notion that secrecy was an important pillar of Cold War stability, both among allies and adversaries. 

The question of secrecy also has important implications for current policy questions about the international order. One is whether secrets still matter. Why would anyone worry about secrets given the abundant information at people’s fingertips today? Anyone with a smart phone has the ability to communicate with counterparts around the globe, sharing text, pictures, and video in real time. The public also enjoys access to reliable satellite and GPS data, the kind of information and technology that not so long ago would have been a tightly guarded state secret. Meanwhile, traditional and social media are increasingly capable of reporting from places that had long been largely hidden. Even if observers accept that secrecy played an underappreciated role in preserving stability during the Cold War, they might remain skeptical that it has much to offer today. 

To many observers, concerns about secrecy seem anachronistic. The state no longer enjoys a monopoly over essential information. Not only do private citizens have access to collection sources that were previously closely held (like imagery satellites), but private researchers have developed advanced technology to process and interpret vast amounts of data. All of these advances have made it possible for individuals and firms to conduct remarkably granular assessments of issues that used to be stubbornly out of reach. Some former intelligence officials are now urging their old agencies to drop the cloak of secrecy and engage routinely with the private sector, given its analytic capabilities.^[34] As one U.S. State Department official recently wrote, “The gap between what governments know and what members of the public can discover is shrinking.”^[35] 

These trends have led some to argue that governments should embrace transparency as a tool of statecraft, rather than clinging foolishly to an irrelevant and outmoded belief in the sanctity of secrets. The Biden administration seems to have taken this idea to heart. Before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, it used intelligence in public as a kind of “prebuttal” to phony Russian pretexts for war. Observers were struck by the unusual willingness of the administration to disclose intelligence, even at the risk of revealing sources and methods. Any hopes that this effort would restrain Russia through a kind of “deterrence by disclosure” did not materialize. Still, the use of transparency might have had a positive effect on prewar diplomacy with allies, enabling sanctions against Russia and military aid for Ukraine.^[36] Perhaps encouraged by that experience, the Biden administration now seems to be moving to make transparency a central part of its approach to great power competition.^[37] 

The amount of easily accessible information in public view is staggering. At a glance, this suggests that the gap between secrets and open sources is shrinking. It is not easy to measure the secrecy gap, however. Nongovernmental observers may be impressed by the amount of information now at their disposal, but they cannot know how much remains classified. It may be that the volume of secrets is increasing alongside the volume of public knowledge. Cybersecurity offers a useful comparison. Observers commonly warn about the rising number of security breaches, an alarming trend for those concerned with protecting information. Yet this rise has occurred amid a huge increase of online communications. As more users create and store more data, more security breaches are happening. Measuring security requires more than counting the absolute number of incidents: it requires tracking the ratio of incidents to the number of users and the amount of information they produce. The denominator of rapidly growing reams of online data cannot be ignored.

It is also possible that as public information becomes more abundant, states will invest more in protecting secrets. More widely disseminated information creates powerful incentives for compartmentalization. This dynamic suggests that there is an inverse relationship between the amount of information in public view and its importance to policymakers. Ironically, the rise in public information may put a premium on private knowledge. 

The Biden administration’s new approach rests on its faith in the marketplace of ideas. Releasing information provides an antidote to false beliefs, misleading propaganda, and outright lies. Weaponizing transparency is an urgent response to authoritarian great power rivals that have used disinformation campaigns to undermine Western solidarity. At a deeper level, Biden’s approach appeals to core liberal principles. Secrecy always sits uneasily in a democracy, and critics of the intelligence community have always been skeptical about its rationale for keeping information hidden. So, instead of stubbornly clinging to an outdated, awkward, and impractical secrecy regime, the administration seems eager to use transparency to strengthen the liberal order and regain the initiative from illiberal great powers. 

But there are problems with this approach. One is that the marketplace of ideas, like all markets, can fail. Information producers do not always act in good faith, and consumers are not always capable of distinguishing good news from garbage. Information is not self-interpreting. Weaponizing transparency by revealing secrets does not mean that target audiences will understand them. Research on fact checking is instructive. Experimental studies suggest that fact-checking initiatives can help disabuse individuals of false perceptions about particular events, though much depends on the methods of fact-checking outfits.^[38] Moreover, exposure to fact-checking sites reduces individuals’ confidence in their own ability to understand political reality.^[39]

Now, it may be that revealing government intelligence is more compelling than media fact checks because individuals often treat secret information as more credible than news they can find in open sources.^[40] U.S. officials have occasionally exploited the persuasive power of secrecy to rally domestic and international public opinion against their adversaries. U.S. ambassador to the UN Adlai Stevenson famously displayed imagery of Soviet installations during the Cuban Missile Crisis to disprove Moscow’s claim that it had not placed missiles on the island. In 1969, then U.S. defense secretary Melvin Laird released information on Soviet strategic capabilities in an effort to convince the Senate to support a missile defense system. And in 2002, then U.S. secretary of state Colin Powell went before the UN with supposedly damning intelligence about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. Stevenson, Laird, and Powell made use of secrecy as a dramatic instrument, hinting that what they were willing to release was the tip of the iceberg. “I cannot tell you everything that we know,” Powell declared. “But what I can share with you, when combined with what all of us have learned over the years, is deeply troubling.”^[41] The fraught decision about whether to reveal state secrets, and the assumption that leaders would only do so in extreme circumstances, heightened the drama. 

The persuasive power of secrecy might attenuate over time, however, if such disclosures become common practice. Secret intelligence that exposes illiberal conduct may prove to be a wasting asset. Husbanding information facilitates institutional cooperation among friends and enables operations against adversaries while controlling the risks of escalation. Somewhat counterintuitively, the United States has used secrecy for decades to build and maintain international institutions and to compete with great power rivals without resorting to overt conflict. There may be good reasons to increase transparency, to be sure, but doing so might mean sacrificing an important foreign policy tool. 

None of this is to suggest that secrecy is an unalloyed good. Quite the opposite: secrecy comes with substantial costs. Erring on the side of secrecy can lead to overclassification of information that the public has a right to see. It can also serve as useful cover for politicians and bureaucrats seeking to avoid criticism or embarrassment. In both respects, secrecy is at odds with basic requirements of representative government. 

In addition, there is still a lot to learn about the relationship between secrecy and international diplomacy. The new research cited above explains how secrecy encourages cooperation and strengthens institutions, while simultaneously giving states an option for subterranean diplomacy with adversaries. But this research program is still in its early days, and many questions remain open. Scholars of covert action have persuasively argued that wartime signaling helps control escalation, for instance. Does this finding also apply in peacetime and in crises? Is it possible that active intelligence contests among political rivals help prevent war? And how would such a proposition be tested, given all of the other pressures that drive states towards conflict, and given the inherent challenge of researching secret institutions? Anyone interested in studying these questions should approach the subject with humility.

Those responsible for maintaining political order should approach their work with caution. The transparency impulse, however well-meaning, may do lasting harm to liberal institutions. This essay has suggested, paradoxically, that secrecy is a pillar of the order, but it might be more appropriate to say that there is no paradox at all. Any political order among sovereign states under conditions of anarchy must allow them enough autonomy to make cooperation worthwhile. Their ability to control information, or at least their confidence that institutions will treat their information with discretion, is reassuring. States also value the ability to weaponize information against rivals through propaganda, public diplomacy, or clandestine signaling. Doing so requires the ability to keep secrets and deploy them selectively. 

The transparency impulse, however well-meaning, may do lasting harm to liberal institutions.

Hoarding secrets and weaponizing information are not liberal best practices. Nonetheless, they are important elements of the post-war order. Secrecy helps bind states together because it gives them freedom of action and, if necessary, recourse to unilateral action. Forcing members of the order to divulge secrets in the name of an ideological principle might drive them apart. For this reason, a perfectly liberal order has never existed and is probably impossible. Yet a durable arrangement of generally liberal states remains in place and will probably endure, as long as its leaders do not insist on ideological purity. 

About the Author

Joshua Rovner is an Associate Professor of International Relations at American University. Rovner is the author of Fixing the Facts: National Security and the Politics of Intelligence (Cornell University Press, 2011) and is the co-editor of Chaos in the Liberal Order: The Trump Presidency and International Politics in the 21st Century (Columbia University Press, 2018) and of Chaos Reconsidered: The Liberal Order and the Future of International Politics (Columbia University Press, 2023).

^[1] For debates about the nature of the liberal international order, see Francis J. Gavin, Robert Jervis, Diane Labrosse, and Joshua Rovner, eds., Chaos in the Liberal Order: The Trump Presidency and International Politics in the 21st Century (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2018). On its future, see Stacie Goddard, Robert Jervis, Diane Labrosse, and Joshua Rovner, eds., The Liberal Order Strikes Back? Donald Trump, Joe Biden, and the Future of International Politics (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, forthcoming).

^[2] Robert O. Keohane, After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World Political Economy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984); James D. Morrow, “Modeling the Forms of International Cooperation: Distribution Versus Information,” International Organization 48, no. 3 (1994): 387–423; Martha Finnemore, “International Organizations as Teachers of Norms: The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization and Science Policy,” International Organization 47, no. 4 (1993): 565–597; Allen Buchanan and Robert O. Keohane, “The Legitimacy of Global Governance Institutions,” Ethics and International Affairs 20, no. 4 (2006): 405–437; and Christina L. Davis, Why Adjudicate? Enforcing Trade Rules in the WTO (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012).

^[3] For an excellent summary of this literature, see Allison Carnegie, “Secrecy in International Relations and Foreign Policy,” Annual Review of Political Science 24 (2021): 213-233. 

^[4] Andrew J. Coe and Jane Vaynman, “Why Arms Control Is So Rare,” American Political Science Review, 114 (2020): 342–355.

^[5] Allison Carnegie and Lindsay R. Dolan, “The Effects of Rejecting Aid on Recipients’ Reputations: Evidence from Natural Disaster Responses,” Review of International Organizations 16 (2020), 495–519. On the importance of status recognition, see Michelle Murray, The Struggle for Recognition in International Relations: Status, Revisionism, and Rising Powers (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2018).

^[6] Robert D. Putnam, “Diplomacy and Domestic Politics: The Logic of Two-Level Games,” International Organization 42, no. 3 (Summer 1988): 427–460.

^[7] David Stasavage “Open-Door or Closed-Door? Transparency in Domestic and International Bargaining,” International Organization 58, no. 4 (2004): 667–704; and Shawn L. Ramirez, “Mediation in the Shadow of an Audience: How Third Parties Use Secrecy and Agenda Setting to Broker Settlements,” Journal of Theoretical Politics 31, no. 1 (2018): 119–146.

^[8] Keren Yarhi-Milo, “Tying Hands Behind Closed Doors: The Logic and Practice of Secret Reassurance,” Security Studies 22, no. 4 (2013): 405–435. 

^[9] A similar argument holds that domestic institutions require a degree of secrecy to operate efficiently. Transparency requirements, however well-meaning, can undermine governing institutions and make it more difficult for them to regulate powerful private interests. See David E. Pozen and Michael Shudson, eds., Troubling Transparency: The History and Future of Freedom of Information (New York: Columbia University Press, 2018). 

^[10] Austin Carson and Alison Carnegie, “The Spotlight’s Harsh Glare: Rethinking Publicity and International Order,” International Organization 72, no. 3 (2018): 627–657; and Austin Carson and Alison Carnegie, Secrets and Global Governance: Disclosure Dilemmas and the Challenge of International Cooperation (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2020).

^[11] Geoffrey Garrett, R. Daniel Kelemen, and Heiner Schultz, “The European Court of Justice, National Governments, and Legal Integration in the European Union,” International Organization 52, no. 1 (1998): 149–176.

^[12] Michael Poznansky, In the Shadow of International Law: Secrecy and Regime Change in the Postwar World (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2020). 

^[13] This proposition relies on the notion that the state’s interests are distinct from the public’s preferences. For an early version of this claim, see Hans J. Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace (New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1954), 134–147. For a more thorough discussion, see Stephen D. Krasner, Defending the National Interest: Raw Materials Investments and U.S. Foreign Policy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1979). 

^[14] Stuart Murray, “Secret Versus ‘Open’ Diplomacy Through the Ages,” in Secret Diplomacy: Concepts, Contexts, and Cases, eds. Corneliu Bjola and Stuart Murray (London: Routledge, 2016). 

^[15] Quoted in Murray, “Secret Versus ‘Open’ Diplomacy Through the Ages,” in Secret Diplomacy, eds. Bjola and Murray, 30. 

^[16] G. John Ikenberry, After Victory: Institutions, Strategic Restraint, and the Rebuilding of Order After Major Wars, new edition (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001), 173. 

^[17] Ikenberry, After Victory, 163. 

^[18] Sanderijn Duquet and Jan Wouters, “Diplomacy, Secrecy, and the Law,” in Secret Diplomacy, eds. Bjola and Murray, 89–93; and UN, “Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations,” UN, April 18, 1961, https://legal.un.org/ilc/texts/instruments/english/conventions/9_1_1961.pdf.

^[19] Douquet and Wouters, “Diplomacy, Secrecy, and the Law,” in Secret Diplomacy, eds. Bjola and Murray, 95; UN, “No. 4 Convention on the Privileges and Immunities of the United Nations,” UN, February 13, 1946, https://www.un.org/en/ethics/assets/pdfs/Convention%20of%20Privileges-Immunities%20of%20the%20UN.pdf.

^[20] Murray, “Secret Versus ‘Open’ Diplomacy Through the Ages,” in Secret Diplomacy, eds. Bjola and Murray, 31. This state of affairs was hardly new. In fact, the rise of intelligence operatives in the early Renaissance evolved alongside the increasing role of resident ambassadors abroad, who were expected to act as both diplomats and proto–spy chiefs. See Ioanna Iordanou, Venice’s Secret Service: Organizing Intelligence in the Renaissance (Oxford University Press, 2019).

^[21] The simultaneous rise of the nuclear establishment reinforced the need for secrecy. See Alex Wallerstein, Restricted Data: The History of Nuclear Secrecy in the United States (University of Chicago Press, 2021).

^[22] Elizabeth Braw, “Spying on Allies Is Normal. Also Smart,” Politico, June 4, 2021, https://www.politico.eu/article/spying-allies-normal-us-denmark/ 

^[23] Patrick Porter, The False Promise of Liberal Order: Nostalgia, Delusion, and the Rise of Trump (London: Polity, 2020). 

^[24] Marc Trachtenberg, History and Strategy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991), 153–168.

^[25] See Paul Sharp’s distinction between “operational secrecy” from “strategic secrecy.” Paul Sharp, “Making Sense of Secret Diplomacy From the Late Moderns to the Present,” in Secret Diplomacy, eds. Bjola and Murray. 

^[26] But even here, there were limits. Article 102 of the UN Charter called for member states to register and publish treaties through the UN Secretariat, but there was considerable ambiguity in the interpretation of the article, and compliance was uneven. See pages 607–609 in Megan Donaldson, “The Survival of the Secret Treaty: Publicity, Secrecy, and Legality in the International Order,” American Journal of International Law 111, no. 3 (2017), 575–627.

^[27] Carnegie and Carson, “The Spotlight’s Harsh Glare.” 

^[28] Joshua Rovner, “What Is an Intelligence Contest?” Texas National Security Review 3, no. 4 (Fall 2020), 115–120.

^[29] Robert Chesney and Max Smeets, eds., Deter, Disrupt, or Defeat? Assessing Cyber Conflict as an Intelligence Contest (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2023).

^[30] Brendan Rittenhouse Green and Austin Long, “Conceal or Reveal? Managing Clandestine Military Capabilities in Peacetime Competition,” International Security 44, no. 3 (2019/2020): 48–83.

^[31] Joshua Rovner, “Ambiguity is a Fact, Not a Policy,” War on the Rocks, July 22, 2021, https://warontherocks.com/2021/07/ambiguity-is-a-fact-not-a-policy/ 

^[32] Joshua Rovner, “Spies as Agents of Peace,” in Man and Technology: How Humanity Thrives in a Changing World, eds. Kurt Almqvist, Alastair Benn, and Mattias Hessérus (Bokförlaget Stolpe, 2022). 

^[33] Len Scott, “Secret Intelligence, Covert Action and Clandestine Diplomacy,” Intelligence and National Security 19, no. 2 (June 2004): 322–341.

^[34] Erin Sikorsky, “Secrets Alone Won’t Save Us: Providing ‘Decision Advantage’ on Climate Security,” War on the Rocks, July 15, 2021, https://warontherocks.com/2021/07/secrets-alone-wont-save-us-providing-decision-advantage-on-climate-security/.

^[35] Garrett Berntsen and Ryan Fedasiuk, “To Defeat Autocracy, Weaponize Transparency,” War on the Rocks, August 23, 2022, https://warontherocks.com/2022/08/to-defeat-autocracy-weaponize-transparency/.

^[36] Eric Edelman, “The Pros and Cons of ‘Deterrence by Disclosure,’” The Dispatch, February 21, 2022, https://thedispatch.com/p/the-pros-and-cons-of-deterrence-by?utm_source=url&triedSigningIn=true 

^[37] Bryan Bender, “White House Launches New War on Secrecy,” Politico, August 23, 2022, https://www.politico.com/news/2022/08/23/white-house-war-on-secrecy-00053226.

^[38] Man-pui Sally Chan, Christopher R. Jones, Kathleen Hall Jamieson, and Dolores Albarracín, “Debunking: A Meta-Analysis of the Psychological Efficacy of Messages Countering Misinformation,” Psychological Science 18, no. 11 (2017): 1531–1546.

^[39] Chance York, James D. Ponder, Zach Humphries, Catherine Goodall, Michael Beam, and Carrie Winters, “Effects of Fact-Checking Political Misinformation on Perceptual Accuracy and Epistemic Political Efficacy,” Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly 97, no. 4 (2020): 958–980.

^[40] Mark Travers, Leaf Van Boven, and Charles Judd, “The Secrecy Heuristic: Inferring Quality from Secrecy in Foreign Policy Contexts,” Political Psychology 35, no. 1 (2014): 97–111. 

^[41] Colin Powell, “Text: Powell’s Speech to the U.N.,” New York Times, September 11, 2002, https://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/11/international/text-powells-speech-to-the-un.html.