Espionage logic makes allies and enemies arbitrarily interchangeable

Evidence

The personal/political nexus results in tragedy for David when he finally discovers the fate of Zameen, shot by a local warlord, Gul Rasool, with the backing of the CIA, which thought she might be an enemy agent. In the world of espionage, where principles come a distant second to expendability and deniability, Zameen’s fate feels as arbitrary as the alliances that have led to it. … Gul Rasool has ended up a valuable U.S. ally in the war on terror in Afghanistan simply because he made himself available to U.S. troops when they arrived—with large cash incentives—in the invasion of 2001 and at the same time made sure that a rival warlord was temporarily incapacitated and therefore ended up on the “other side.” — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 410

Categorization

• XREF: The arbitrary ally/enemy swap gives Morey’s reader a tool for reading the manufactured antagonist in Hamid’s Changez-CIA dynamic. — connects to: Longer equivalential chains make the enemy’s identity less stable. — Ernesto Laclau, On Populist Reason, 454; Spy fiction reveals the constructed nature of wartime sides — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 337; Espionage alliances are arbitrary and principles yield to expendability (+3 more)
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Longer equivalential chains make the enemy’s identity less stable. — Ernesto Laclau, On Populist Reason, 454; Spy fiction reveals the constructed nature of wartime sides — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 337; Espionage alliances are arbitrary and principles yield to expendability (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• An enemy can be converted into an ally through fair dealing and respect #complicates (0.74) — , A Year of World Stories, 13079