Suchergebnisse

This article analyses the role that the UK intelligence services (particularly Secret Intelligence Service [SIS or MI6], the Defence Intelligence Staff [DIS], Government Communication Headquarters [GCHQ] and associated agencies) play in the legal UK arms trade. The article shows that intelligence has been used in support of British-based private commercial businesses, and occasionally in providing intelligence on the negotiating positions of rival manufacturers. This raises important questions about the role of the state in the private sphere, particularly the use of a large number of government assets in support of private interests and the elision of British government interests with those of a section of the manufacturing industry. This article also challenges existing conceptions of how the UK's intelligence agencies operate and relate to their customers. Conventional typologies of UK intelligence have emphasised the importance of the 'central machinery', highlighting the Joint Intelligence Committee as the focal point of intelligence tasking and analysis in the UK. However, in this case the intelligence support provided to the sale of military equipment suggests a range of parallel practices that are much more decentralised and often informal. This research therefore suggests that our conception of the UK intelligence architecture requires some reassessment.

Through the empirical lens of the EU's Joint Actions and policies on landmines and unexploded ordinance this article seeks to draw wider conclusions about the nature and focus of the EU's Common Foreign and Security Policy and the EU's security identity. This research suggests that the EU has found a niche soft-security role in international affairs that is driven by an agreed set of normative assumptions. Further, this article explores the structural position of the EU in relation to the Ottawa Treaty. It suggests that because the EU does not have a state-like identity in foreign and security policy spheres it is at the whim of member governments advancing narrow national interests. However, the evidence from this case study demonstrates that the EU does have the ability to be an effective security actor in its own right.