National Security Offenses II: Espionage, Export Control, and Sanctions

Abstract This chapter, the second of the two chapters on national security offenses, discusses espionage, export control, and sanctions violations. It is commonplace to think of the crime of espionage as a crime of disloyalty, akin to treason, or as a crime of harming one’s country, given the high stakes. While such facets may be present in some instances of espionage, this chapter argues, it is more theoretically sound to think of the wrong of espionage as involving not betrayal or risking harm, but usurpation. The relevant wrong here is rooted in the idea of separation of powers between individuals and the state, and we should conceive of these national security crimes as crimes of usurpation or “foreign relations vigilantism.” The crime of espionage is a crime of usurpation because the state is to have exclusive control over matters of national security, and individuals are to stay outside that domain. Those who seek to take the matters into their own hands transgress the boundaries that delineate how the power is to be distributed within the polity for reasons of national security. The same considerations explain, this chapter argues, the wrongness of violations of export control laws and international sanctions.