THE FIRST CLAIMS OF an alleged secret collaboration between the signals intelligence agencies of the United States and Denmark surfaced in November of 2020. By January of this year, it was clear that the Danish government would, sooner or later, need to deal with the fallout of its controversial spy deal with Washington, under which Denmark enabled the US to spy on some of its closest European allies.
Still, the
news last weekend
that Denmark helped the US spy on countries such as Germany, France,
Sweden and Norway, is nothing short of remarkable, and has a huge
symbolic significance that cannot be overlooked.
IntelNews regulars will recall
that Lars Findsen, director of the Danish Defense Intelligence Service
(FE, or DDIS in English) was unceremoniously “relieved of duty”
in August of 2020. This was in response to a damning report by the
Danish Oversight Board, known as TET, which is responsible for
supervising the work of Denmark’s intelligence agencies. The Danish
Ministry of Defense would not discuss the precise nature of the report,
which at the time was believed to relate to vaguely described “improper
intelligence collection practices”.
Then, in November of 2020 came news
of an alleged secret collaboration between the DDIS and its American
equivalent, the National Security Agency (NSA). According to Danish
newspaper Jyllands-Posten and Danmarks Radio —Denmark’s
public-service broadcaster— the agreement dated to 2008, and involved
the use by the NSA of a number of fiber optic Internet cables that pass
through Danish territory, in return for the DDIS being given access to
the content of intercepted traffic. This collaboration resulted in the
interception of information belonging to the governments of Germany,
France, Sweden, Norway and Holland, among others.
It is said among intelligence
practitioners that “there is no such thing as a friendly foreign
intelligence agency”. There is also no known agreement not to spy on
each other between the United States and several core countries of the
Western alliance, such as Denmark, France, Holland, Norway, Germany,
Belgium, Italy, Sweden, or Spain (it is rumored that a “no-spy clause”
exists between Five Eyes participants). Technically speaking, therefore,
espionage between European powers, or between them and the US, is not
in violation of some sacred agreement.
Indeed, some would even argue that there
are reasons why Washington should want to keep an eye on the inner
workings of its close European allies, and vice-versa. For instance,
during the presidency of Donald Trump, relations between the US and
Europe were tested as few times in the past, and there were numerous
reasons why European governments would want to know what was in the mind
of President Trump and his inner circle. There has also been a vast
chasm that separates Washington and Berlin or Paris in relation to the
Iran nuclear agreement, and it could prompt the White House to seek
secret intelligence about Franco-German intentions on this topic. More
recently, Austria, a European Union (EU) and North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (NATO) member, has been accused
of orbiting too closely to Moscow, and may have become a target of
American —and even other Western European— spy agencies, as has Turkey,
another NATO partner.
Yet it is one thing to expect that
friendly Western countries may spy on each other occasionally, and quite
another to see it revealed in such a dramatic way in the world’s news
media, as has been the case in the past few days. Aside from its shock
value, this striking revelation further-complicates a number of severely
tested relationships on the European continent, as well as between the
EU and the US. It comes at a time when US President Joe Biden is trying
to convince the Europeans that Washington has returned to the world
stage following the Trump years, and is a trustworthy ally of the West.
To his embarrassment, he cannot claim that this latest scandal involving
US-Danish spy collaboration happened prior to his administration, since
he was vice president between 2014 and 2015, when much of the US-Danish
espionage occurred.
Moreover, the connections between this latest espionage scandal involving Denmark, and the Crypto AG affair of 2019,
which shattered the image of Switzerland’s neutrality, are inescapable.
Essentially, even the most ardent supporter of the EU ought to concede
that the Western European alliance is confronting a deepening crisis of
confidence and identity, and that the tension generated by this crisis
will not subside as a result of the recent revelations of espionage.
Ultimately, if there is one thing that the US-Danish spy collaboration
demonstrates, it is that Washington does not view the EU as anything
close to a unified entity. The question is, whether EU states do so
themselves.
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