Sexual diplomacy

Relevance

Sexual diplomacy is still highly relevant because it exploits human vulnerability, a timeless tool in power politics. Though royal weddings are history, using intimacy for state goals has simply shifted online, now appearing in intelligence and cybersecurity. The same human needs that made Cold War honey traps work are now targeted digitally on a massive scale, allowing a single cyber operation to achieve what once took a team of spies.

This raises tough ethical questions, as states often weaponise behaviours they officially condemn, turning people into pawns in a moral grey area. The threat is amplified by deepfake technology, which allows for the creation of believable fake compromising material (kompromat). In today’s information warfare, the ability to fabricate a convincing lie about someone’s private life is a powerful weapon, making the study of sexual diplomacy essential to understanding modern conflict.

Methods and approaches

The methods of sexual diplomacy vary by goal. For alliances, the primary tool has been the dynastic marriage, a public union designed to forge lasting kinship between states. For coercion, the classic method is the ‘honey trap,’ where an agent fakes a romantic relationship to exploit a target’s psychological vulnerabilities and gain access to information for blackmail or espionage.

In the digital era, these tactics have become ruthlessly efficient. Cyber honey traps replace physical contact with fake social media profiles, allowing agents to build trust remotely before manipulating the target into compromising their data. The goal, espionage and influence, is unchanged. Now, generative AI represents the next step, enabling the creation of ‘deepfake’ compromising material to discredit targets without any human interaction.

Geographical scope

Sexual diplomacy has always operated in the shadows, but its geography has transformed from the tangible to the virtual. In the past, its landscape was composed of legendary espionage hubs: Vienna, Paris, and post-war Berlin, where intelligence services hunted for targets in the physical world of embassies and military bases. These operations were deeply personal and geographically contained.

Now, geography has been completely redrawn. The internet is now the main operational theatre, a ‘new Berlin’ without borders. State-sponsored agents can now cultivate and exploit targets from thousands of miles away using social media and encrypted apps. This digital shift has effectively globalised the threat, making anyone with access to sensitive information a potential target, no matter where they are.

Historical development

The use of intimacy as a state tool is as old as politics itself. For centuries, its primary form was the dynastic marriage, where empires like Austria’s Habsburgs expanded through strategic weddings rather than war, creating a powerful political web across Europe. Colonial powers also used informal unions as a method of control.

The 20th century professionalised the practice’s darker side: sexpionage. The femme fatale spy of the World Wars evolved into the institutionalised ‘honey trap’ of the Cold War. Intelligence agencies like the Soviet KGB and East Germany’s Stasi perfected this method. The Stasi’s infamous ‘Romeo’ program, for example, used male agents to build long-term relationships with secretaries in West German ministries, turning romance into a channel for espionage. Western agencies like the CIA also used these tactics, just more cautiously.

The fall of the Berlin Wall didn’t end sexpionage; it simply pushed it into cyberspace.

Actors

Sexual diplomacy is conducted by a range of actors operating on behalf of the state:

• The State and its agencies: The ultimate actors are governments, which direct intelligence services like the CIA, Russia’s SVR, and others to conduct these operations.

• The agents: On the front lines are the individual ‘Romeos’ and ‘femmes fatales,’ who are trained to build relationships and exploit the psychological vulnerabilities of their targets.

• The targets: These are typically officials, scientists, soldiers, or executives with access to valuable state or commercial secrets.

• The digital operatives: A new class of actor has emerged in the digital age: elite, state-sponsored hacking groups that create fake online identities to execute cyber honey traps, often in collaboration with traditional intelligence services.

Examples

From the Cold War to today, sexpionage has proven to be a devastatingly effective tool. The East German Stasi’s ‘Romeo’ programme, for example, turned love into a weapon by having agents build intimate, decades-long relationships with West German secretaries to steal state secrets.

Similarly, the 1963 Profumo Affair in Britain showed how the threat of blackmail alone could cause immense political damage, leading to the resignation of a key minister and destabilising the government. The fact that these methods are anything but history was confirmed in July 2025, when China’s government publicly detailed a recently foiled honey trap operation, proving the tactic remains a critical part of the modern espionage world.

Whether it’s a royal marriage centuries ago or a cyber honey trap today, sexual diplomacy shows us a fundamental truth about power: it’s often used in our most private spaces. It proves you can’t separate big international events from the personal vulnerabilities of the people involved. The tools have definitely changed. We’ve gone from handwritten letters to malicious code, but the core strategy of using intimacy and trust for political advantage hasn’t gone anywhere.

This forces us to ask some tricky ethical questions about how far a government will go for national security. And as we get deeper into an age of AI and digital tricks, the risk of these tactics being used for spying and political manipulation is only getting bigger. Learning about this hidden side of politics isn’t just for fans of spy stories anymore; it’s crucial for anyone who wants to understand how power really works in the world today.