Comparative Foreign Intelligence Services

This edited volume develops a comparative theory of post-Cold War intelligence liaison between the US intelligence community and its international counterparts.

It presents the US perspective on these liaisons and moves beyond simple ally-adversary classifications, showing how cooperation is influenced by strategic threat perception, material power, access to intelligence, and institutional culture. The core of the book rests on a dual framework that combines neoclassical realism and intelligence studies: states pursue liaison not only due to formal alliances or power but because threat perceptions, institutional culture, and intelligence access interact to create or limit decision advantages. Additionally, the volume advances our understanding of strategic institutional intelligence culture - the patterns through which intelligence agencies influence threat perception, policy interaction, secrecy management, and oversight. It classifies U.S. intelligence relationships along a spectrum: enduring partnerships, wary alliances, and transactional exchanges. The empirical section applies this framework to case studies including British-American and Israeli-American cooperation; Chinese and Russian intelligence under near-peer competition; and Cuban and Iranian systems influenced by regime security, revolutionary ideology, and gray-zone tactics. Examining the nature, type, and quality of interactions with intelligence agencies worldwide, along with an understanding of these interactions, are key to effective and smart intelligence practices.

This book will be of much interest to students of intelligence studies, national security, foreign policy, and International Relations, as well as practitioners.

Kiril Avramov is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Slavic and Eurasian Studies (DSES) and a Fellow at the Intelligence Studies Project (ISP) at the University of Texas at Austin, USA. His is the co-editor of Killing in the Name of the State: State-Sponsored Assassination in International Politics (2025) and the co-author of Ladders of Escalation: Flexible Modeling in Comparative Cases of State-Sponsored Targeted Killings (2026).

Bianca L. Adair retired from the CIA as a senior officer with expertise in the Middle East and in countering threats (counterintelligence/counterespionage). She previously served as Clinical Assistant Professor and Director of Intelligence Studies in the Department of Politics at The Catholic University of America. She also taught at the University of Texas at Austin’s LBJ School of Public Affairs.