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A Silent Debate: The Role of Intelligence in the UK Arms Trade

Information on the role of intelligence and the intelligence services in the United Kingdom’s (UK) arms exports policy and arms exports in general has been largely unavailable. Amid the extensive and often lively analysis concerning this UK policy two leading academic attempts to explain arms exports policy have been made but, overall, a critical lack of attention has been paid to the process behind arms exports policy, with an unbalanced focus on the end-user or the ‘‘victims’’ of such export policy. Intelligence, though variously defined, can reasonably be considered as the act of covertly collecting and analyzing information to aid strategic decisionmaking. Intelligence is most often associated with state actors, although the realization is growing that corporations, including companies involved in the manufacture of arms, have been involved with covert information gathering. During the Cold War period, intelligence became recognized as a function of ‘‘high politics,’’ with intense secrecy marking the operations done under this broad banner. In the realm of arms exports policy, the role of intelligence has three functions: national security, foreign policy assistance, and commercial. Little disaggregation exists between government and commercial intelligence operations, with the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) and Defence Intelligence Staff (DIS) supporting commercial endeavors under the rationale of supporting the commercial efforts of ‘‘UK Plc.’’ The key premise in evaluating the relationship is that the relevant domestic intelligence agencies (SIS and DIS) should play a significant role in the legitimate sale and export of UK-designed and manufactured arms to third party countries. Indeed, to suggest that an export trade that has