Australia and the ‘Five Eyes’ intelligence network: the perils of an asymmetric alliance

ABSTRACT

Aside from NATO, the Five Eyes intelligence network between the USA, the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand is the world’s most enduring multilateral arrangement of its type. While the Five Eyes network does not constitute a formal security alliance in the classic sense of the term, it does emulate significant features of how alliances operate in practice, including active burden-sharing and intra-alliance bargaining. Most analysts claim that the USA dictates in hierarchical fashion the terms and conditions of how the Five Eyes network functions, and that junior partners have little alternative but to fall in line if they want to preserve the flow of high-grade intelligence from Washington. Using Australia as a case study, this article shows that a more fluid relationship has been at play, one that challenges conventional assumptions about asymmetrical alliances and the role of junior partners.

KEYWORDS:

• alliances
• Five Eyes
• intelligence cooperation
• UKUSA

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Andrew O'Neil is Professor of Political Science and Research Dean at Griffith University. The author would like to thank Kate Grayson for her research assistance and valuable comments on earlier drafts of this article. He also thanks Matt Sussex and two anonymous reviewers for detailed comments on earlier versions of the article. The usual caveats apply.

Notes

1. It is significant that the Australian agency which interacts most frequently with Five Eyes counterparts, the Australian Signals Directorate, refers to the UKUSA network on its website as an ‘alliance’ (see http://www.asd.gov.au/partners/allies.htm).

2. The former Deputy Secretary of the Australian Department of Defence, Paul Dibb, has confirmed that Soviet officials issued several thinly veiled nuclear threats against the joint facilities in various conversations with their Australian counterparts during the 1970s and 1980s (Author’s interview with Paul Dibb, Canberra, 24 May 2012).

3. Commonwealth Parliamentary Debates (Senate), 22 February 2016, p. 630.

4. Public knowledge of ‘the bases’ was due primarily to the pioneering work of the late Australian National University academic Desmond Ball. The book that broke ground on the subject was A Suitable Piece of Real Estate: American Installations in Australia (Ball 1980).

5. On the bureaucratic origins of the National Intelligence Coordination Committee, see Medcalf (2008).