As strange as it may sound, it is true that the Five Eyes intelligence partnership on which Canada relies most to prove its allegations that India was involved in the murder of a Khalistani terrorist and information about other terrorists of the same Species collected on its territory is potentially open to India as well as Japan, Germany and South Korea.

This idea comes from the United States, arguably the leader of the Five Eyes. In 2022, a congressional subcommittee on intelligence and special operations asked the Director of National Intelligence and the Secretary of Defense to consider expanding the Five Eyes. The idea has been discussed among policymakers ever since.

Furthermore, the “Five Eyes” multilateral intelligence agreement includes the main intelligence agencies of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States. Its origins can be traced back to 1946, when the Cold War began and Soviet Russia was seen as the greatest threat to democracy and the Western value system.

It has been described as “the world's most exclusive intelligence club,” “the world's leading intelligence network,” “the world's oldest intelligence partnership,” and “the world's deepest and most comprehensive collaboration between spy agencies.”

The origin of the Five Eyes can be traced to then British Prime Minister Winston Churchill's decision in 1941 to involve the United States in one of the greatest secrets of all time – which Britain had uncovered (with the help of the Poles and French) in the German Enigma encryption system. The secret (known as ULTRA) was very tightly controlled in the United Kingdom, and the idea of ​​sharing it with the Americans was not without risk, but proved to be a shrewd political calculation.

After the war, this Anglo-American cooperation was formalized in the UKUSA Agreement of 1946. Canada joined in 1948, and Australia and New Zealand joined in 1956 via their so-called “dominion status within the British Commonwealth.”

The group's designation was an acronym for the security classification of intelligence documents exchanged between these countries: “SECRET – AUS/CAN/NZ/UK/US EYES ONLY.”

The agreement was so secret that Australian Prime Minister Gough Whitlam was reportedly not informed of its existence until 1973. No government officially recognized the agreement by name until 1999, when the director of Australia's Defense Signals Directorate (DSD) disclosed his country's cooperation “with its counterpart signals intelligence organizations abroad under the UKUSA relationship.”

In fact, the contents of the UKUSA Agreement were officially made available to the public for the first time in June 2010.

Each of the Five Eyes states allegedly conducts interception, collection, procurement, analysis and decryption activities and, by default, shares all intelligence information received with the others.

However, it should be noted that the basis of their intelligence activities is actually the exchange of signals information (that is, the sharing of foreign information from communications and information systems).

Over time, other areas of cooperation were added, including the exchange of human intelligence (i.e. information from personal contacts), the joint development of technologies, and the interoperability of military equipment and communications.

In addition, information sharing arrangements have now expanded beyond the core Five Eyes agreement to include Nine Eyes (with the addition of Denmark, France, the Netherlands and Norway) and 14 Eyes (nine Eyes plus Germany, Belgium, Italy, Spain and Sweden). and 41 Eyes (all of the above, plus the allied coalition in Afghanistan).

However, it should be noted that the scope of other Eyes is limited to sharing some, not all, resources of the Five Eyes. You cannot access all Five Eyes data. Be that as it may, in a rapidly changing world, Five Eyes faces new challenges.

Remarkable challenges

FirstAlthough members formally cooperate in various intelligence areas, such as: Such as human intelligence (HUMINT), covert operations, security provisions for counterintelligence data processing, and the production of joint estimates, the core of these multilateral arrangements is signals intelligence (SIGINT), a wide range of operations targeting electromagnetic emissions.

However, these are inadequate in the age of satellites, long-range reconnaissance aircraft and the Internet. As a result, there are now discussions about members expanding their respective technology industry bases and initiating closer government-private interactions.

Secondthe “Anglophone” or “Anglo-Saxon” identity of the Five Eyes is being diluted with the rapid demographic changes due to waves of immigration from outside the Anglosphere in each of them. The gradual acceptance of multiculturalism weakens the previously shared feeling that citizens were exclusively English relatives and that intelligence was vital to protecting their “civilization, culture and race.”

This perhaps explains why citizens in these countries are increasingly questioning the lack of transparency and accountability in Five Eyes' activities.

The secretive nature of the alliance means citizens have little insight into how their data is collected, shared and used, making it difficult to hold governments accountable for potential abuses of power. As it stands, Edward Snowden's 2013 revelations have lifted the curtain on the alliance's extensive data collection activities and highlighted the precarious balance between security and individual privacy rights.

ThirdThere were contradictory voices against the increasing dominance of the United States over the other four partners. Andrew O'Neil, professor of political science and dean of research at Australia's Griffith University, has argued that the US hierarchically dictates the terms and conditions of how the Five Eyes network operates and that junior partners have no choice but to join if they do so Want to maintain the flow of high-quality intelligence from Washington.

The dominant US is said to have periodically used intelligence disruptions to pressure its allies to adopt policies more closely aligned with Washington's.

Examples cited include the US government's veiled threat to the UK during the Huawei controversy; the US effectively suspended New Zealand from the trilateral ANZUS alliance when Wellington refused to allow American nuclear-capable warships to dock in its ports in the mid-1980s; the US did not support the UK during the Suez Crisis (1956); Britain's unwillingness to participate in the Vietnam War; the faulty intelligence that led to the invasion of Iraq in 2003; and a series of espionage setbacks, from Kim Philby and George Blake in the 1960s to Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen in the 1990s/2000s.

FourthIt is argued that the Five Eyes Alliance's greatest challenge today lies in the fact that it no longer faces a single dominant threat. The intelligence agencies of all five nations are now battling self-radicalized terrorists at home, an entirely new domain of cyber threats, as well as Russia and China. Can the Five Eyes partnership survive in this environment while minimizing painful compromises and capacity losses? There is no easy answer to this question.

That may be the case Why are political elites in Washington discussing the idea of ​​expanding the alliance and the “circle of trust” to other like-minded democracies like India? Analysts like Mohamed Zeeshan argue that India should be part of this expanded group by invitation. It would result in privileged access to the product through state-of-the-art intelligence capabilities, particularly from Britain and America.

“It would mean more opportunities for training and technology of the highest quality. It would also significantly improve India's preparedness in dealing with threats such as cross-border infiltration in Kashmir and incursions along the difficult border with China. Given the Five Eyes' more global intelligence presence, this would also help India expand its own influence and presence, particularly if Indian diplomatic missions around the world can benefit from US intelligence information about the countries in which they operate.

“There are many other benefits: A member of the Five Eyes is the most direct beneficiary of U.S. foreign policy influence and hard power, which means stronger bargaining power with other countries, stronger national passports, more freedom to travel,” and increased security for its citizens abroad. A closer relationship can extend to American security guarantees in the event of an attack by an enemy,” Zeeshan argues.

However, expanding the Five Eyes seems to be easier said than done. Overall, despite occasional differences, all members of the Five Eyes alliance share the same strategic or geopolitical outlook.

This may not be the case with India, which values ​​its “strategic autonomy” and has close ties with Russia. Without a shared perception of threats, it is difficult to share information and respect the circle of trust.

• Author and veteran journalist Prakash Nanda is the Editorial Board Chairman of EurAsian Times and has been commenting on politics, foreign policy and strategic affairs for nearly three decades. He is a former National Fellow of the Indian Council for Historical Research and a recipient of the Seoul Peace Prize Scholarship.
• PERSONAL VIEWS OF THE AUTHOR
• CONTACT: prakash.nanda (at) hotmail.com
• Follow EurAsian Times on Google News