Thomas L. Knapp
Eight decades after the "Anglosphere" powers (the U.S., the U.K., Canada, Australia and New Zealand) codified their World War intelligence sharing protocols in the 1946 UKUSA Agreement, the "Five Eyes" alliance — named for a "AUS/CAN/NZ/UK/US Eyes Only" classified information designation — may finally find itself retired.
In early March, the Trump administration "paused" sharing intelligence with Ukraine, also forbidding the four other partners from passing along U.S.-gathered intel. Rumor has it that Trump may also want the Canadian "eye" plucked out as one of his trade war tantrums. That, along with Trump's recent "pro-Russia" lean, has the other four "eyes" considering a separate intelligence-sharing apparatus minus the U.S.
As an American, I've got limited skin in the game on the matter of whether the "Four Eyes" should continue absent U.S. involvement ... but I do think that Americans would benefit from the U.S. regime's withdrawal or expulsion, for several reasons.
First, the U.S. regime massively subsidizes the other four partners. The publicly disclosed U.S. intelligence budget exceeds $80 billion per year and likely comes to far more than that. That's at least ten times the publicly disclosed intelligence budgets of the other four regimes combined. Even assuming those other regimes operate far more effectively and efficiently, it's just not a very good deal.
Second, access to intelligence from other "Anglosphere" regimes feeds Washington's bad habit of, as John Quincy Adams put it, going "abroad in search of monsters to destroy." Those other four regimes are essentially crack dealers who service the U.S. regime's addiction to a globally ruinous imperial foreign policy.
Third, the arrangement has also been long-known to expose U.S. regime secrets to foreign adversaries, going back at least as far as the 1950s, when British spy Kim Philby passed information to the Soviet Union on U.S. plans and operations in the Korean War.
Finally, the Five Eyes arrangement empowers the domestic U.S. surveillance state that Edward Snowden revealed to the public more than a decade ago. U.S. intelligence operators are legally forbidden to cast their Sauron-like gaze on Americans. They ignore that prohibition themselves ... likely with quite a bit of help from the signals intelligence the other four "eyes" provide.
U.S. withdrawal from the Five Eyes, or better yet its complete dissolution, wouldn't cure the above diseases, but it would reduce the inflammation and ease the symptoms, while leaving all four regimes free to share information at need rather than wholesale.
Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.
