Robert Dover

Towards a common EU immigration policy: a securitization too far

Abstract This article examines the EU’s immigration policy as it has developed towards Sub‐Saharan Africa. It argues that the securitization of this policy is counterproductive in two important ways. First, the erection of further barriers to economic migration from the south and the extra‐territorialization of this problem merely increase the transaction costs and physical dangers faced by an important source of cheap labour. Secondly, in seeking to keep African migrants out of the EU, the Union is locking economic and social insecurity into its territorial area. Furthermore, this article argues that the connection of migration policy to the ‘global war on terror’ fundamentally mis‐specifies the threat of terrorism from African sources. Aid conditionality, and the policies that follow on from it, merely serve to radicalize African populations — thus creating the threat that is feared by European policy makers.

For Queen and Company: The Role of Intelligence in the UK's Arms Trade

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 UKs 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.

The EU and the Bosnian Civil War 1992–95: The Capabilities–Expectations Gap at the Heart of EU Foreign Policy

Abstract Using the empirically driven case study of the European Unions response to the Bosnian civil war 1992–95 this article assesses the effectiveness of the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), through Christopher Hills ‘capabilities–expectations gap framework’. In assessing effectiveness it explores both the expectations placed on the EU and the capabilities the Union was able to deploy. Moreover, this research suggests that the EU was ineffective in responding to the Bosnian crisis. The EU pursued a rigid strategy of diplomatic and economic foreign policy, failing to generate the political will to attempt alternative approaches. This research argues that the capabilities–expectations gap framework is a useful tool for conceptualising the EUs effectiveness but that it under-specifies the importance of the end result of the policy.

Lost Over Libya: The 2010 Strategic Defence and Security Review – An Obituary

Immediately after the formation of the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government following the May 2010 general election, the conduct of a Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR), in line with election manifesto pledges, was announced. This SDSR was published just prior to the Comprehensive Spending Review in October 2010. It was intended to be a fundamental review of Britain’s defence and security posture, based on the strategic need established by the 2010 National Security Strategy, rather than another example of the budgetary salami slicing seen in the 1990s and in the revisions to the 1998 Strategic Defence Review (SDR) during the 2000s. The message was clear: the SDSR was distinctive precisely because it was the operational embodiment of the NSS’s strategic assessment. However, by the turn of 2011, the SDSR was already being seen as fundamentally flawed by parliamentarians, defence professionals and expert commentators alike (continues ...)

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

The Palgrave Handbook of Security, Risk and Intelligence

The file associated with this record is under embargo until 36 months after publication, in accordance with the publishers self-archiving policy. The full text may be available through the publisher links provided above.

Regulation by Revelation: The Opportunities and Challenges of Information Control in an Intelligence Era

Abstract:Over the last twenty years, revolutions in data capture and analysis have given enforcement and security agencies unparalleled access to the inner workings and private lives of their adversaries—and ordinary citizens. As a consequence, we would expect to see dramatic improvements in state and private security. However, domestic security agencies are overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information available to them, and have only marginally improved their operational effectiveness. The third wave global Jihadist insurgency works from a model that is analogous to “unicorn” technology corporations, which then provides insights on how to counter these groups. Attempts to keep up with the evolving enemy shift the social contract between governments and citizens. Whilst technologically advanced functionaries create ever more impressive technology, legislators struggle to understand and regulate its impact: the focus on the rights of the individual has been replaced with the primacy of protecting the state. Whistleblowers like Edward Snowden and the LuxLeaks and Panama Papers regarding tax evasion have been the route to transparency for these developments and have made these revelations without protection and to wide scorn. Yet whistleblowers remain the key route for legislators to generate popular and interest group support to try to impose governance over the ungovernable information wars.

Fixing Financial Plumbing: Tax, Leaks and Base Erosion and Profit Shifting in Europe

Abstract Aggressive tax planning by multinational enterprises (MNEs) costs EU member states between €50-70 billion and €150-190 billion per annum through base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS). This tax gap has been blamed on ‘unethical’ companies acting legally, but inappropriately. Action to curtail this behaviour has been made possible by the confluence of two powerful movements: a popular articulation of tax morality as it relates to MNEs and the high issue salience reached as a consequence of the financial crisis and austerity in Europe, an emerging discourse around tax morality, and the efforts of prominent whistleblowers. As a result, domestic governments have removed their ‘soft’ veto and facilitated supranational bodies in innovating on corporate taxation, helping to rebalance the technical and structural superiority of MNEs in the international tax system.

Intelligence and Nuclear Proliferation: An Introduction to the Special Issue

This article was published in the journal, Intelligence and National Security [© Taylor & Francis (Routledge)] and the definitive version is available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02684527.2014.895590

Britain, Europe and Defense in the Post-Industrial Age

The European project has always had defense as one of its core elements.The practical reality, however, is that defense has always remained on its periphery.The permanent reality we must live with is a post-industrial Europe that is unwilling and unable to invest adequately in defense research and development,manufacturing and equipment, and which is still unable adequately to deploy capabilities into an operational theater. This article seeks to map out the decline of European defense by examining the UK as an exemplar of the trends within the decline of European defense. The article is divided into five parts.The first part outlines the context of European defense. Parts 2 to 4 then consider three central propositions. First, that the structure and operation of the British political system has contributed to the decline of the defense industrial base. Second, that the European defense industrial base has declined to such a degree that autonomous European defense is no longer possible.Third, that a confluence of these structural factors,matched to a widely accepted analysis that the predominant threat to the EU mainland comes from asymmetric actors, has led to the EU shifting its focus from European defense to European security, which in turn will continue to drive the decline in defense spending and defense as a public policy priority. Finally, the article draws together some conclusions that suggest that European Union defense identity is effectively dead.