UK, France boost military, intelligence ties at Sandhurst summit
By
Robert Stevens and Alex Lantier
20 January 2018
On Thursday, UK Prime Minister Theresa May and French President Emmanuel Macron held a summit meeting at the UK military officers training academy, Sandhurst. The meeting was aimed at boosting UK-French military and intelligence ties, in line with the strategy developed in the 2010 Lancaster House Treaty, amid growing tensions with the Trump administration and inside NATO, and the crisis caused by Britain’s exit from the European Union (EU).
They agreed on a series of reactionary measures, including stepped-up military spending, joint spying operations, and attacks on immigrants trying to reach Britain from the French port of Calais. They pledged to intensify cooperation on nuclear weapons programmes, aircraft carriers, and naval deployments to the Pacific and Indian Oceans and the Caribbean sea. Also agreed were provisions for draconian Internet censorship.
The Financial Times noted that Sandhurst was chosen as a venue since it “underlined a two-decade old defence pact between Britain and France.” Highlighting the strategic character of the meeting, the heads of the UK’s main domestic and international intelligence agencies—MI5, MI6 and General Communications Headquarters (GCHQ)—and of their French equivalents, the General Directorates of External Security and Internal Security (DGSE, DGSI), all attended.
Pointing to “an increasingly unstable and uncertain world,” the summit communiqué declared that the “Lancaster House Treaty is the bedrock of our relationship. Since 2010 we have improved our collective capabilities and seen unprecedented levels of integration between our armed forces, intelligence agencies and diplomatic and…