There are two critical questions I hope that the Priest and Arkin series will help us answer. The first is simple: does this enormous state security apparatus actually make the country any safer? Again, it’s not generally true that bigger is better. On this point, the historical example of the former Soviet Union and its allies is informative. Good literature already exists about the German Democratic Republic, in many ways the “model state” for the Soviet Empire. The massive state security apparatus of the GDR, focused on the Ministerium für Staatssicherheit (“Stasi”) may ultimately have encompassed up to 10% of the working population of the country (PDF) in its network of agents and informants (“inoffizielle Mitarbeiter”). ]]>