UK/US special relationship

Karen Neville

Close intelligence links mean the bond between Britain and America will stand firm according to author and journalist Michael Smith

Donald Trump’s second term as US president has led to some concern over where America stands. Here in Britain, it raises the worrying question of where does the ‘Special Relationship’ stand now?  

Pretty much where it always was is probably the answer. The relationship has survived an awful lot of difficulties over the years and will survive Trump, not least because the real ‘Special Relationship’ is based on far more than the actions of individual politicians. It is based on close security links both in terms of sharing nuclear weapons technology and more importantly intelligence. 

The shared intelligence relationship began at Bletchley Park during the Second World War when the British and American codebreakers shared their expertise to break the top German and Japanese ciphers, producing exceptional intelligence that helped win the war, and continued into the Cold War in the face of the threats from the Soviet Union and Communist China, and subsequently terrorist groups like the PLO and more recently al-Qaeda. As a result, that close intelligence relationship not only continued, despite the occasional political hiccups like Suez in 1956, it became stronger. GCHQ and its US equivalent, the National Security Agency (NSA) split up the world between them, sharing resources to expand the amount of intelligence they could collect. They work hand-in-glove. Former MI6 Chief John Sawers said of the first Trump presidency that “the relationship between CIA and MI6, between NSA and GCHQ and between the FBI and MI5 remained really, really deep. The operational cooperation was as deep at that time as it had been in the past. There was no change.” 

Attempts by US politicians to use the intelligence relationship to apply pressure on Britain are nothing new, Henry Kissinger ordered the US intelligence agencies to stop sharing intelligence twice in the early 70s and on both occasions the sharing continued, not least because the best intelligence on the Middle-East and the southern Soviet Union was coming from the British signals intelligence base in Cyprus. Indeed, the American valued that so much British Prime Minister Harold Wilson wanted to axe it to save money, President Gerald Ford intervened to block it. It remains just as important today and not just for intelligence on the Middle-East. Fly north from Cyprus and the first part of the old Soviet Union you come to is Ukraine. The real Special Relationship remains as vital to both Britain and America as it ever was. 

l Michael Smith’s latest book The Real Special Relationship: How the British and US Secret Services Work Together is out now in paperback 

Want to chat spies or books with Michael? Get in touch at editor@roundandabout.co.uk