UK SECURITY – SAFER IN, SAFER OUT?

As in all of these debates, both sides have credible arguments and counterarguments that deserve to be seriously considered. There are those who say that being in the EU is weakening Britain’s defence and security and constraining relationships with others, such as the US. Some of the examples they give are the increasing primacy of the European Courts; the lack of border or migration control and the EU’s ambitions for a European Army and Navy, and that these issues are or will make Britain less safe. Others argue that if Britain left the EU, the EU would restrict Britain’s access to various security data and the resulting lower level of cooperation will inevitably lead to a less secure Britain and Europe. In addition, if Britain left and wanted to have any meaningful trade relationship with the EU then it would have to accept the free movement of people and therefore could not control migration from the EU.

First, let us just make sure we agree that if Britain left the EU, the EU it is not going to collapse into chaos. Germany is not going to invade Poland, Russia is not going to be rolling tanks into the EU and hundreds of Jihadists are not going to be pouring over the borders. The NATO alliance is sufficient deterrence and the people who would be responsible for agreeing the terms of any relationships will not be petty or childish and will be intelligent, competent and responsible negotiators. This does not mean that it is going to be easy. There will be regrets, there will have to be compromises, and those wishing to exploit weaknesses will take every opportunity to do so whether Britain remains or leaves. However, it appears that the argument is not just about whether Britain will be less safe if it leaves, but also how safe is it if it stays? Safer in – Safer out?

There are two individual and separate areas to consider in this debate, that of Defence or military capability and that of Security, which in this debate mainly relates to terrorism and criminal intelligence. So let us deal with the defence arguments first.

Defence

As far as military defence is concerned, it would appear that whether Britain remains or leaves, the central argument comes down to whether Europe should develop its own integrated military capability, (or be stopped from it), or whether it should put its regional efforts and resources into the existing security architecture of NATO. In both the remain and leave camp, there does not seem to be any serious support for the Commission’s efforts to establish a European Army and Navy.

However, the remain camp argue that it would be easier to stop the EU from forming a European Army if Britain remains in the EU and it is much more likely to have one if Britain left, which in turn might undermine NATO. The Americans are adamant that from a military point of view, Britain must remain in the EU, as without Britain, the US will not have a voice at the table; Europe is more likely to shun difficult decisions; avoid confrontations; seek to appease potential aggressors like Russia and fallback on the Americans as usual.

The leave camp argues that other than possibly France, Britain has the only serious military capability in Europe with the inclination and ability to rapidly and effectively deploy its forces to anywhere in the world and that without it, an EU Army would be a non-starter. They are also adamant that there is no need for a European Army and all this will do is to divert vital resources and attention from NATO. They add that a European Army would have no effective leadership unless it came under the NATO command structure and therefore what purpose would it serve? Who would take responsibility for the deployment and actions of a European Army? Would it be the Commission? What military objective is the EU likely to have that is not common to NATO?

It also seems to be understood that a consensual style structure, such as the EU, is not conducive to an effective military role except perhaps peacekeeping. Some of the EU’s members have a strict no conflict policy which will mean that it is unlikely that they could ever agree to deploy combat troops or that the front line will always be left to the like of Britain and France. A good example of Europe’s inability to agree on decisive military action was in the Balkan’s war (1990’s) in which it is said that the EU’s contradictions and indecision contributed to the genocide in Bosnia and was only finally resolved when the Americans and NATO took over. The current situation in Ukraine is showing some disturbing similarities.

The balance of the argument seems to support that an EU military capability is more likely to weaken NATO and that the EU is better off deploying its regional resources into NATO. The only question seems to be where Britain should be best placed to lead or undermine the ambitions of those who support a European Army, or to argue the case for a much firmer line in response to a real external threat. There can be no doubt that the EU’s ambitions for a military force will be depleted without Britain at the table and there seems to be agreement in Europe that deflating this ambition would probably be a good thing. Therefore, if the consensus is that the EU’s collective defence would be better served under a NATO structure, it is highly unlikely that Britain’s or the EU’s military defence capability will be weakened as a result of Britain leaving the EU. In military terms, the weakness will be in the political debate, but the EU, as a collective, has never shown any meaningful decisiveness in this arena and is unlikely to do so regardless of whether Britain is in or out.

Security

The second area in the debate is to consider whether British people will be safer on their streets, or not, if Britain left the EU. The leave camp point out that there are two main elements of safety and security on the streets of Britain. The first one is border control and or immigration; the second is counterterrorism and criminal intelligence. The central themes of the remain camp arguments appear to be that, if Britain left the EU, it would be excluded from the shared EU intelligence capability and it would still not be able to control its border security by controlling EU immigration, because it would still have to accept the free movement of people in order to maintain free trade with the EU. The leave camp argue that there is little value from the existing EU intelligence structures and that Europe has more to lose by excluding Britain from any cooperation in intelligence or trade.

Border control

With regard to border control, the remain camp suggest that the current border arrangements with France at Calais, would be put in jeopardy if Britain left the EU and therefore would create problems at Britain’s border. In addition, they point out that the current open border between Southern and Northern Ireland enables anyone coming via the EU to flow freely via Northern Ireland to the British mainland and that it would not be practical to put a full border control in place.

The leave camp counter that it will be easy to put monitoring measures in place between Ireland and the UK, as has been done successfully for many years in relation to terrorism in Northern Ireland. They add that the EU’s policy of expansion, and if it comes into effect, the recent agreement with Turkey in relation to visa-free access for Turkish citizens, will lead to the EU having a direct and uncontrollable border with countries such as Syria and Iraq. They say that the recent migration crisis has proved that the EU’s open border policy, through the Schengen Agreement, is in tatters and that the only way to prevent terrorist or criminal activities resulting from migration is to regain control of who is allowed to enter Britain, by leaving the EU.

These are complex matters. First of all, the border control in Calais is very much a case of being in the interests of both France and Britain and is covered by EU law (Dublin Regulation) and International Law (Geneva Convention). As now, illegal (economic) migrants, on discovery, should be sent back to their country of origin and cannot simply be passed to another country. Under the Dublin Regulation, refuges from war or persecution can only apply for asylum in the first EU member state they enter and face deportation if they try to apply in another. That first country is responsible for either accepting or rejecting asylum. This means that France has to process, accept or deport these migrants by law and Britain has no legal obligation to assist or accept any of the migrants. This is similar in some ways to the situation played out recently in Greece when the rest of the EU closed their borders and now all migrants arriving in Greece are registered and shipped back to Turkey by agreement. The current European migrant crisis has thrown this and the open border Schengen Agreement into disarray and it is not clear what the final result will be. Whatever the outcome, it is not going to end up with boat and trainloads of asylum seekers arriving in Kent, as it would not be in France or Britain’s interests not to cooperate in this matter.

It is more difficult to dismiss the argument about the security concern caused by the open border with Ireland who are not in the Schengen area but who have a bilateral open border agreement with the UK. This will need the cooperation of the Irish government who would not wish to disrupt economic cooperation with its biggest trading partner. However, Britain does have a degree of control as all travellers have to go through a port to enter mainland Britain and it is correct to say that they have had significant success in managing the security threat from Irish terrorists for many decades. Obviously, this level of security might not be available to Northern Ireland but perhaps the more difficult situation might arise if Scotland decided that it wanted to leave Britain and stay in the EU. That said it is not clear whether the Scottish National Party has the legal or moral mandate to hold another referendum following the recent elections.

What is interesting is the current British government’s view, stated in its leaflet, recently sent to every household in the UK. On ‘Controlling immigration and securing our borders’, it states ‘ The UK is not part of the European border-free zone – we control our own borders which gives us the right to check everyone, including EU nationals, arriving from continental Europe’. This tends to suggest that it does not see border control as a significant issue.

There is a degree of accuracy in the argument that Britain might still have to maintain free movement of people, if it wished to continue to have meaningful access to the Single European Market. Therefore, we need to briefly consider the issue and effect of the free movement of EU citizens. But, as we are debating the issue of security, we must not allow the question of the effects of the ‘volume’ of immigration of EU citizens, to muddy the waters. The security question that this argument raises is that by allowing large volumes of people free movement from the rest of the EU, that this potentially allows more people into Britain who may be a security risk. However, the argument from the remain camp that we will still have to allow the free movement of EU citizens, even if we left the EU, has no merit in the security argument, because if the position of volume does not change, so the security risk does not change. That said, there is no way that in the event of Britain voting to leave the EU, that the British government would not be obliged to tackle the issue of the ‘volume’ of immigration of EU citizens into Britain. It is after all, the main issue that has led to this referendum. So with regard to the matter of security concerning the volume of free movement of people, it is reasonable to argue that the security risk would become smaller because the British government is more likely to negotiate more control over immigration if Britain leaves the EU. Therefore, this argument becomes about the effect and value of cooperation and of intelligence sharing concerning the people who are able to move freely about the EU.

Intelligence

With regard to the intelligence side of this debate, it is important to understand that the EU plays no part in counterterrorism measures and it has a very limited intelligence capability. Its main area of cooperation is the dissemination of information from its centralised databases such as the Schengen Information System, which lists and distributes information on individuals and pieces of property of interest. It is a sizable database with over 46 million entries from which Europol claims that Britain made 250,000 enquiries in 2015 presumably mainly about criminal matters. There is also the European Arrest Warrant, which helps to move wanted or suspected criminals more swiftly from one country to another. It is difficult to quantify this as a major contribution to intelligence albeit it does help to find known criminals or suspects and speed up the process of extradition significantly and so presumably removes criminals from Europe’s streets more quickly. Britain would need to negotiate similar extradition treaties as it has with many other countries such as the US, but presumably, the process would be slower unless the parties decided otherwise. The thing to keep in mind is that available figures tell us that other EU countries made 13,460 requests to Britain for information in 2014, versus 228 requests from Britain. In 2014, this resulted in 1097 extraditions from Britain and 143 extraditions to Britain. You need to be careful when interpreting these figures but this tends to suggest that the EU and Britain would wish to maintain some sort of fluid extradition arrangement should Britain choose to leave.

There are other potential areas of co-operation available such as the European DNA database that Britain has refused to join so far and the Passenger Names Record System, which Britain has been pushing for 10 years and which may be finalised shortly. As a member of the EU Britain automatically has access to these centralised databases and would automatically be excluded on leaving. However, there are a number of non-EU countries who share these systems at varying levels so it would be a case of Britain negotiating access if they were deemed of value or if Britain’s input was deemed as valuable. The main purpose of these information sharing systems results from the free movement of people or more especially from the Schengen open border system in which Britain does not take part and is never likely to.

Britain would also no longer be a member of Europol, which through these databases connects over 600 enforcement agencies across the EU. However, it should be remembered that Europol has no powers or jurisdiction of any sort in any of the member states. It is a centralised database and information sharing system. Critics argue that like the proposed European Army, Europol has simply duplicated much of what was already in existence with Interpol, which has been around for 56 years compared to Europol’s 20 years and operates across 190 countries compared to Europol’s 28. Perhaps Europol has been necessitated by the open border policy in Europe and has a different focus and purpose? The leave camp suggest that it would be much more efficient to put all these resources into Interpol and like to point out that Europol has come under criticism recently for exaggerating its capabilities. It has allegedly been presenting itself as a law enforcement agency, which it is not. It has no counterterrorism responsibilities, which is strictly the preserve of the individual intelligence agencies.

The leave camp likes to point out that the EU and its agencies are nothing to do with secret intelligence which is not shared across the EU. Secret intelligence is an infinitely broader subject covering things from the secrets of other governments; international terrorism and its supporters; economic activity and many other secrets. It is passed selectively from country to country by bilateral agreements under a different set of rules. This is because, for example, the Americans will share certain information with Britain but would not want this information sharing with another European country, which the information might be about or may have different interests or relations with the country or body that the information relates to. There are concerns that it will come to pass that the EU Commission, bolstered by European Court decisions, will eventually determine what Britain’s security relations with the US is going to be. Sadly there are precedents already. Britain is the United State’s number one intelligence sharing partner and it is this unique relationship that helps to keep Britain safe. It is said that Britain has the finest intelligence agencies outside the US and that Britain’s counterterrorism capability and expertise is highly respected across the world. It is argued that these might be undermined if Britain loses its ability to maintain a fully independent intelligence capability.

It is not unreasonable to conclude that as the essence of intelligence cooperation is what the respective parties can bring to the table, and that as Britain would still have significant equity, then it would not be in the interests of other EU countries not to continue to cooperate with Britain on all intelligence and counterterrorism matters.

In conclusion

The question of security and safety in Britain appears in many people’s minds to be second only to the Economy in relation to Britain’s potential departure from the EU. Understandably, people want to feel safe in their beds and on the streets. The question is will people be safer with Britain in or out of the EU? Is the government’s insistence that Britain will be much less safe if it left the EU, a reasonable statement? The problem is that in these debates about Britain’s future in Europe, the depth and breadth of the subject areas are so huge that we can never consider all of the aspects and arguments in detail. Some will say ‘but what about this’ and others ‘what about that’ and the only answer is that all these things are important and if someone feels strongly about a particular issue then they must consider their issues in arriving at a decision about a topic. But for most of us, the reason we share our views with others is to help ourselves or others to find a degree of clarity in these monumental subjects. But in the end we can only do this in the broadest sense with regard to the core topics that need to be considered, otherwise we will never find peace.

With regard to military defence, the suggestion that World War 3 is likely to break out in Europe if Britain left is a bit naughty. To say that as in the past, Europe will descend into chaos without Britain is a bit demeaning to our European allies. It is not helpful when numerous international figures line up to tell us it would be a disaster for Europe when it is obvious that what they mean is that it might not be in their interests. There would be no doubt that if Britain’s departure from the EU created a complete break-up of the EU, then a period of uncertainly and inevitable lack of cooperation and communication would create a significant weakness that would undermine the military defence of the EU for a period of time. Albeit, given the NATO architecture, it is unlikely to be of a critical or fatal nature. The balance of the real argument seems to suggest that perhaps the EU’s ambitions for its own Army and Navy would most probably do more to undermine NATO and European regional security than if Britain left the EU.

With regard to terrorism, international crime and border control, like the military, many past senior chiefs keep being rolled out to contradict each other. To be fair, all of these opinions whether for or against seem quite reasonable individual arguments that are difficult to refute in the context that they are given. It could be said that they are all true in their given scenarios. Therefore we need to consider the broader picture and the balance of the argument tends to fall that it would not be in any European countries interests not to cooperate with Britain on intelligence and security matters. It is commonly believed that Britain’s own independent security and intelligence capabilities currently, are far superior to any individual or collective European capability particularly with regard to terrorism matters. If Britain was denied access to centralised databases, there is the potential to undermine some of the capabilities of Britain’s law enforcement. However, there are alternatives and current resources could be redeployed to plug any gaps but it should be kept in mind that if Britain votes to leave, under Article 50 of the treaty of Lisbon, Britain can remain a full member for two years, or more if agreed, in which time it is hoped that appropriate structures will be agreed and or alternatives put in place.

In concluding these considerations it is not unreasonable to suggest that by trying to create an EU security architecture, in the form of Europol (FBI) and an Army and Navy, the Commission may in fact be actually undermining the security and safety of the EU in a way that is potentially much more damaging than an exit from the EU by Britain. Perhaps it is an appropriate time to explore this logic within the bigger picture of the raft of current problems facing the EU.

So, back to the question of Security – Safer in, Safer out?

It could sensibly be argued that at this current point in time there is hardly any difference to Britain’s security whether in or out, but that future activities or desires of the custodians and architects of the EU could quite easily undermine Britain’s security capability.

Have faith in your judgement.

William David

May 2016