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Diplomacy
OpinionComment
Tom Plate
Tom Plate

Opinion | Cold War-era spy novels have much to tell us about the US, China and the new year

  • John le Carré’s fiction, set during the Cold War, can easily be a platform for understanding the current frost between Beijing and Washington
  • Will the two sides understand that they are not that different, after all?

Reading Time:3 minutes
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Gary Oldman as secret agent George Smiley in an adaptation of John le Carré’s spy novel Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. Photo: Focus Features
Tom Plate

So what about this coming year? Maybe it will be better (oh, yes please).

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But who knows? Public opinion surveys, which certainly have seen better days, are not so good at prediction: some people prefer to keep their feelings secret. Social science studies can be useful, but narrow.

Opinion journalists have it rough, having to tender predictions under deadlines. Particularly if you are looking for big truths, probably only artists with time to think and space to consult with himself will satisfy. You just have to find one you trust – a true artist.

One for sure is John le Carré, who, with just a couple of weeks of 2020 to go, had his clock run out at age 89. The great English writer wrote about the past – but, as we shall see, that was only half his story. Over the holiday season I set about rereading as many of his enduring novels as I could – rough but smart Russian communists playing espionage games, cynical capitalist spies replying in kind.

The colours which this novelist painted were mostly grey, very rarely black and white. He was not a hopeful sort: his belief in the possibility of redemption was dwarfed by his belief in the far stronger probability of repetition. Human nature to him was more unyielding than any artificial wall, whether in Berlin or China.

The Cold War slugfest between Moscow and the West that provided a setting for his technically fictional stories can easily be imagined as a platform for understanding the current frost between Beijing and Washington.
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