The past month has seen an earthquake of magnitude ten in British politics, producing seismic shocks across the European Union and the Atlantic. First came the decision to exit the EU, the most surprising political result in modern British history, which not only led to the downfall of David Cameron, but also plunged the UK into a constitutional crisis. Then came the publication of John Chilcot’s long-awaited report into the invasion of Iraq in 2003, which reveals that Tony Blair’s government went to war on the basis of faulty intelligence. Although the referendum and the Chilcot report were not connected, their quick succession has pulverised the British Establishment. The summer of 2016 is when fundamental questions are being asked about the future of the UK, its politics, and its role in the world.
Before the referendum, a vigorous debate arose from comments made in this magazine by Richard Dearlove, a former Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), who argued there would be national security advantages for Britain leaving the EU. Now the UK has voted to do so, previously speculative debates are reality and will have to become policy matters for the new Prime Minister, Theresa May.
Both before and after the referendum, one subject has received insufficient attention: its likely impact on one of the most important aspects of British foreign policy at present, the “special” intelligence relationship between Britain and the United States. Contrary to what other commentators have suggested, Brexit threatens to undermine, and even terminate, the UK-US special intelligence relationship. The reasons for this are historical: it is only by considering Brexit’s broader past context that we can appreciate its full implications. Brexit, a tectonic shift, represents the biggest realignment in European security since 1945.
The relationship
In the years since 1945, the trans-Atlantic intelligence relationship between Britain and the United States has been closer than that between any other two countries—in fact, it has been the closest intelligence relationship between any two nation states in history. It was forged during the Second World War when, in the face of a common enemy, the two countries pooled intelligence resources together in unprecedented ways. During the war, Britain was the undisputed senior intelligence partner; but soon after it, facing massive economic cuts, it became junior to the US.At times in the post-war years, the special intelligence relationship was strained and even pushed to breaking point. This occurred, for example, when high-level Soviet agents, subsequently known as the “Cambridge spies,” were revealed from the early 1950s to have penetrated the heart of the British secret state. It also occurred in 1956 when Britain attempted (and failed) to exert itself one last time as an imperial power during the Suez crisis of 1956, a move that managed to alienate Washington. Despite these strains, the special intelligence relationship endured and even strengthened. Since 9/11, the area of signals intelligence (SIGINT) has become particularly close between Britain’s SIGINT agency, GCHQ, and its US equivalent, the National Security Agency (NSA). GCHQ and NSA teams have been co-located at each other’s facilities, working in uniquely close collaboration. Overall, in the post war years, intelligence has been the most “special” part of the special relationship.
All this was before 23rd June 2016. The referendum decision has unprecedented significance: never before has a country like Britain left the EU. It is often said that history can provide lessons for the future—and that those who do not learn from past mistakes are doomed to repeat them. Only one other country has ever left the EU, Greenland in 1984, but drawing parallels is tenuous, given the size of Britain’s economy and role in world affairs.
More important than Greenland’s exit from the EU, Britain itself has a long history of successfully exiting places in the world, both that it no longer wanted, and which no longer wanted it. In the two decades after 1945, Britain managed to withdraw from most of its imperial territorial holdings on broadly favourable terms, at least for itself. In fact, it was the end of empire (a process known as decolonisation) that played a key role in the development of the UK-US special intelligence relationship. Britain’s territorial holdings overseas, its real estate in far-flung outposts of empire, from Hong Kong to Cyprus, offered the US valuable staging posts for intelligence operations during the Cold War. For all its anti-colonial history and rhetoric, the United States found Britain’s colonial territories strategically important.
A major success during Britain’s retreat from empire was the way it carefully brokered close intelligence relations with its colonial states that gained independence: in many instances, newly independent governments positively welcomed the assistance. These colonial/ Commonwealth intelligence connections allowed Britain to punch far above its weight in international relations because it was an indispensable partner for the US in the Cold War. Backed by America’s vast military power and resources for intelligence, it was able to leverage a disproportionate influence on the world stage.
With Britain’s hard-military power in decline after 1945, but with the US lacking connections in parts of the world where the British flag still flew, London and Washington relied on each other. One had experience of ruling in every corner of the world, the other could bank-roll future intelligence operations. It was in this context that the so-called “Five Eyes” agreement emerged for the pooling of intelligence between trusted allies, the United States, Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, which exists down to the present day. Notably, before the referendum, all the “Five Eyes” countries wanted Britain to remain in the EU.
Little Britain
One way Brexit threatens the special intelligence relationship is through the UK’s potential disintegration. It was certainly welcome news that, soon after the news of the result came through, President Barack Obama confirmed that the special relationship between the UK and US would endure. However, as a skilful lawyer, Obama undoubtedly chose his words carefully. If the current United Kingdom he spoke of ceases to exist, will his statement still apply?The referendum has split the UK apart. In her first statement as Prime Minister, Theresa May stressed the “precious bond” existing between the four countries that make up the UK, and the importance of maintaining their union. Ultimately, however, this may not be up to Westminster: in the referendum, Scotland and Northern Ireland voted to “Remain,” and further referenda are now likely to be called in both places to leave the UK and stay within Europe. With that, the UK faces the real prospect of disintegrating. Will Washington really value an intelligence relationship with England and Wales as any more special than its intelligence relationship with other countries on the edge of Europe and not in the EU, like Norway?
To choose a topical (and contentious) example: if the UK does splinter apart, what will happen to the nuclear submarine facilities in Scotland, which the US uses and helps to fund? At the end of last month, MPs at Westminster voted overwhelmingly to renew the Trident nuclear submarine programme, at an estimated cost of £31bn. However, if Scotland becomes independent, the future of Trident will be thrown into doubt.
The historians Peter Hennessy and James Jinks have recently shown in their book, The Silent Deep, that Britain’s nuclear submarine program played a key part in the special intelligence relationship during the Cold War, with the US giving Britain unique access to its nuclear submarine technology. With Brexit, however, the fate of Britain’s only nuclear submarine base, located at Faslane on the Clyde, which the US also uses, is in jeopardy. There is no existing alternative in England or Wales to Faslane’s deep-water facilities or its nearby bunkers for nuclear warheads. Estimates suggest that it would take 20 years and £15bn to build an alternative base for Trident.
It is reasonable to assume that, faced with vocal Scottish opposition to Trident—the Scottish National Party voted overwhelmingly not to renew it last month—if Scotland gains independence, policy-makers in Washington will soon start looking for alliances elsewhere in Europe with more stable and certain futures. Norway would seem to be an increasingly attractive alternative: it has similar seaports to the UK, is strategically placed for controlling sea-lanes with Russia, has well-respected intelligence services (which are not undergoing public censure in the way Britain’s are after Chilcot), and it also has strategic access to Europe in a way that is an unknown quantity for Britain at present.
A second way that Brexit threatens the special intelligence relationship is that the US will lose its most favoured ally with direct access to the EU and able to influence its security policies. For over four decades, since Britain joined the EEC (the forerunner of the EU) in 1973, US strategy on Europe has relied on Britain acting as a bridge between it and Europe, bringing a “North Atlantic” outlook to it. With Britain amputated from the EU, that bridge will be demolished.
Britain will lose its influence on EU security agencies, which Washington has hitherto valued. It will no longer have the same access to the EU’s police agency, Europol, which plays an important role in counter-terrorism and fighting international crime. Britain has hitherto been a leading Europol member, helping to drive its agenda and shape its operations. Its current director, Rob Wainwright, himself British and a former MI5 officer, has said that Brexit would make the UK “a second-tier member” of Europol, without the influence it currently enjoys.
After Brexit it will no longer have direct access to EU databases, which contain 64 million pieces of information on criminal suspects, missing people, non-EU citizens denied entry to Europe, fingerprints, and vehicle registrations, all of which are valuable for security and intelligence, and which the British police currently use every day.
The value of Europol formed part of a wider debate before the referendum about whether Brexit would make the UK more or less safe. Dearlove argued that it would not damage British security, but on the contrary, would bring benefits: outside the EU, Britain could safeguard its borders better and not rely on intelligence provided by weak intelligence services within Europe. The French and Belgian intelligence services were heavily criticised following the terrorist attacks in Paris last year. However, other former heads of Britain’s intelligence services, such as John Sawers (another former head of MI6) and Jonathan Evans (a former Director-General of MI5), wrote before the referendum that Britain would be safer remaining within the EU. David Omand, a former head of Britain’s SIGINT agency, GCHQ, made similar arguments, as did other high-ranking British intelligence officials.
The reality is that nobody really knows what impact Brexit will have on British domestic security. However, the elephant in the room during these discussions was always the UK-US special intelligence relationship. Dearlove admitted that it would be met with disapproval, and some disappointment too, in Washington—though he felt confident that the relationship would endure. He may be proved right, but there is a serious risk that he will not. London’s strategic value for Washington in intelligence matters may wane as appears to be the case for US finance. Before the referendum, Wall Street banks relied on the City of London having direct access to the EU’s financial markets. Now some have started looking to relocate from London to alternative cities within the EU. In a similar way, Washington may start looking to other allies within Europe, particularly Germany, which can influence European security policies in a way that Britain cannot. A friend inside a club is more valuable than one outside it. Ironically for Britain, Brexit’s destabilising effect on the EU is likely to strengthen the alliance between Washington and Berlin. (Initial fears of Brexit contaminating other EU countries, potentially jeopardising the entire EU project, have lessened as the UK’s economy has slumped towards recession). Faced with increasing belligerence from Russia, Washington will likely look to a strong ally within the EU to bolster its security.
If this does happen, history will be repeating itself. When Britain was last outside Europe, in the 1960s, it tried unsuccessfully to act as a bridge between Europe and the US. Britain found itself increasingly side-lined in alliances between the US and Europe, falling between two camps, with Washington turning directly to Berlin. It is no coincidence that this was also a low point for the special relationship. In fact, it was largely because Washington emphasised that the special relationship would strengthened by the UK in the Common Market that London pushed to join. There is a risk is that, just as the special relationship was strengthened by the UK being part Europe, it will be weakened by Britain being outside it.
A third way that Brexit threatens the special intelligence relationship is due to time constraints. Those negotiating Brexit will have to do so far more quickly than their predecessors did in similar situations in the past. The US statesman Dean Acheson famously said in 1962 that Britain had lost an empire but not yet found a role in the world. That was not right. Britain had indeed lost an empire, but it did find a role: lacking “hard” military power after 1945, it found its global role in “soft” power, with intelligence at the forefront. Its intelligence capabilities, which it gradually built up in the years after 1945, acted as a force multiplier, allowing it to deliver beyond its other capabilities.
Brexit, however, has changed the UK’s position in world affairs literally overnight. Once the UK engages Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, it will have two years to negotiate its exit. By contrast, Britain’s retreat from empire took place over two decades after 1945, with British officials slowly managing the process with fancy footwork to the UK’s advantage. Brexit negotiators will have to negotiate rapid bilateral agreements with each EU member state, on all the major issues of state, including intelligence and security, to establish Britain’s new position in the world.
At the same time, the UK will need to keep the US convinced of its special value. Brexit not only asks the British public to take a leap of faith into an uncertain future, but also asks its greatest ally to do so too. This is a tough sell, when the US has other major allies within the EU, like Germany, with more politically stable futures.
A fourth way that Brexit threatens the special intelligence relationship is through perception. Intelligence relies as much on perception as it does on actual capabilities. If the UK does break up, the government in London—controlling, let’s call it, Little Britain—will find it harder to claim the status of a major power. If the UK cannot even keep itself together as a country, it risks being perceived as a spent, second-rate, power. Like Sterling’s plunge on foreign exchange markets since the referendum, Britain’s currency in international affairs risks plummeting after Brexit. Perception of decline is likely to have consequences for Britain’s intelligence prowess, even if its actual intelligence capabilities have not deteriorated. For example, human intelligence (recruiting agents or spies) relies on people being willing to give up their secrets, which they are more likely to do when they believe they will be held by a powerful, safe, country. Why hand over secrets to Little Britain’s MI6, when you could give them to CIA or German intelligence, where they are likely to have more influence?
Perception also starts at the top. As one of the longest serving Home Secretaries in modern times, Theresa May is well known and respected in Washington. She has been at the coal-face of the special intelligence relationship, dealing with security matters for years, including joint UK-US counter-terrorism. The same is not true for the new Foreign Secretary, Boris Johnson, who now has ministerial responsibility for Britain’s intelligence-gathering services, SIS and GCHQ. Johnson’s past undiplomatic statements have included comparing the US presidential candidate, Hilary Clinton, to a “sadistic nurse in a mental hospital” and also comparing the EU to Hitler. One foreign affairs commentator, Ian Bremmer, has quipped that, with Johnson as Foreign Secretary, US-UK ties will go from the special relationship to the “special needs relationship.”
Who you gonna call?
None of the above is to suggest that, post-Brexit, there will be no special relationship between the US and UK intelligence communites. There will be. The practical business of counter-terrorism and counter-espionage relies on bilateral relationships between countries, which Brexit will not impact. If London wants to share intelligence with Washington, or Washington with Berlin, this will continue as it did before. The flow of intelligence in cables running between London and Washington will continue, as it did before. Furthermore, as the US military confirmed immediately after the referendum, the UK will continue to be a key intelligence ally for the US within NATO—though even NATO’s future seems uncertain if Donald Trump were to be elected US President in November.More broadly, London will still be able to offer Washington world-wide intelligence capabilities and also with unique expertise and capabilities in SIGINT. The UK and US intelligence communities are so inter-twined through bureaucracies and personal connections, built up through the Cold War and more recently in counter-terrorism, that undoubtedly they will continue to work extraordinarily closely in the future.
While Britain and the United States will continue to have a special intelligence relationship after Brexit, it is likely they will not have the special intelligence relationship. Instead, Britain is likely to find itself sharing a diluted relationship with key EU countries, particularly Germany. Brexit is a watershed in the history of post-war European security, and with it, fundamental questions will be asked about Britain’s future role in the world. For the first time in four decades since joining Europe, Britain will have to answer them—including why its intelligence relationship with the US should continue to be more special than others.
Traditionally, Britain could point to their shared history, culture, language, and common political and legal philosophies. However, these aspects were never the heart of the Anglo-American special relationship, which, for all the warm talk of “cousins” on either side of the pond, was in fact based on cold pragmatism and strategic interests. It was a strategic marriage of convenience between two countries, one whose power was in decline, the other on the rise, both using each other. It borders on arrogance to suppose that, if Britain can no longer provide strategic interests for the US after Brexit, its special intelligence relationship with Washington will continue. On the contrary, in the post-Brexit world, the answer to the apocryphal question of Henry Kissinger, “Who do I call if I want to speak to Europe?”, would seem to be Berlin, not London.
Perhaps some greater distance between the pair would be beneficial. The Chilcot Report revealed that in 2002, before the UK parliament had voted for military action in Iraq, the Prime Minister, Tony Blair, wrote to George Bush stating, “I will be with you, whatever,” in what appeared a blanket promise of UK support for the US in Iraq. Nothing seems better to show that the special relationship is one of British subservience. However, if there is a cooling in trans-Atlantic relations, Britain will need to be prepared to stand on its own. The US Secretary of Defence, Ashton Carter, recently described Britain’s role on the global stage as “outsized.” After Brexit, it risks becoming undersized. As its experience in the 1960s shows, being outside Europe makes the UK less strategically attractive to the US. Without US support, Britain’s position in the intelligence premier league will lie in doubt.
Brexit therefore threatens to reduce the UK to no longer punching above its weight, as it is commonly said to do, but instead to a country firmly within its weight category—small, on the edge of Europe. This sobering wake-up call for the UK as a lesser world power is probably not what most Brexiteers had in mind.
Brexit, and the potential disintegration of the UK, risks becoming a final endnote in Britain’s retreat from being a world power. After it, England and Wales will reside in splendid isolation. Even now the fate of Britain’s few remaining overseas territories, Gibraltar and the Falkland Islands, lie in doubt. The phrase used by Otto von Bismarck to describe the rationality of launching a preventative war comes to mind: suicide from a fear of death. To escape a fear of dying within the EU, the UK has decided to commit suicide in international affairs.
