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Secret Agent

Secret Agent

Prerequisites

Requires:

• Communism

Summary

• Incites Revolutions
• Spies
• Steals Advances
• Plants Nukes
• Sues other stealth units

Gaemplay

The Secret Agent is a powerful Stealth Unit with many special attacks at his disposal. He can single-handedly Incite a Revolution in a City. He can Spy, revealing all the details of a particular city, including defenses and Production. He can steal the secrets to Advances from rival empires. Perhaps most insidious of all, he can plant a nuke in a city.

Historical

Throughout history, leaders of nations have always required vast amounts of information in order to implement foreign policy, military strategy, diplomatic negotiation and participation in international organizations. To sate this thirst, and to protect their safety and interests, governments have always maintained some kind of intelligence capability. Not surprisingly, all nations have laws against espionage, but most have vast networks of spies operating in other lands.

The Chinese military theorist Sun Tzu espoused the importance of intelligence in his book The Art of War (circa 500 BC). In it, he gave detailed instructions for espionage systems, including double agents and defectors. Until the rise of nationalism in the 18th century, and the growth of standing armies and diplomatic establishments, intelligence-gathering operations were indiscriminately designed by rules and military leaders.

Joseph Fouch, duc d’Otrante, minister of police during the French Revolution and the reign of Napoleon Bonaparte, established one of the first political espionage systems. Fouch retained a network of police agents and professional spies to root out conspiracies by the Jacobins and Bourbon Royalists to seize power. In the early 19th century, the Austrian statesman Prince von Metternich also employed an organization of political and military spies. The most notorious intelligence organizations of the 19th century was the dreaded Okhrana (Department for Defense of Public Security and Order) of the Russian tsars, created in 1825 to search for internal opposition to the current regime.

Much of World War I was fought on the basis of poor intelligence, due to the fact that many nations entered the war lacking sufficient espionage resources. This, along with advances in communications and aviation technology, led to major expansion in intelligence agencies. The Fascist governments of Europe and the military dictatorship in Japan, with their expansionist foreign policies, established counterespionage agencies, most notably the Gestapo in Nazi Germany. This led democratic nations to establish counterintelligence operations as well.