Nice going GCHQ!
That said, you could spin it another way: the UK had enough good will and political capital to lean on its European neighbors for a bare-minimum amount of help. "We can tell you how it works, but it's on you to figure the rest out".
Naughty kid not paying attention is also relevant -- you've only got so many hours in the day and so many hours to map out threats. This was still the Cold War and nuclear holocaust was a bigger priority than distant Latin American dictatorship.
Yes, both France and the Netherlands are broadly aligned with the UK, and would fight alongside them in the case of any existential threat. But for colonial wars one might think they'd be happy to see Britain get some egg on her face.
[0] I'll just link to skeptics.se here, where the accepted answer is that the evidence does not completely support this, but there are plenty of links for more reading https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/11152/can-exoce...
Any “friend” who won’t help with small things is a lot less likely to help when it really matters. And the Dutch and French both also have possessions in the New World full of people perfectly happy with the status quo who deserve protection from would be conquerors.
Looks like the IFF info didn't help.
(Had either of the British carriers Hermes or Invincible been sunk, Britain would have retreated.)
Belgium is as divided as the EU itself. We have 6 distict governments: federal, flemish, walloon, french, german and brussels. That doesn't help in any way.
The things that happen here are sometimes too crazy to mention, like the time a serialkiller escaped because the 2 cops guarding him didn't do their job, and also didn't have any bullets in their guns to stop him. Surreal.
But this will not work (at least for decades.) To get favors from US many will spill the beans. And that's not as bad as doing that to Russia or China. EU is made of countries with their own national interests
Specifically, Belgian police and standards are a joke. Just look at the way they bungled the response to the French terrorist attack where the perpetrator(s) fled to Brussels / Molenbeek. The rest of the country might be ok, but Brussels has exposed that the Belgian government is unable to govern its own largest city. And how Belgian passports are issued locally by every town government rather than a centralized authority. A joke.
I had hoped that the EU would break down regulatory barriers and force bureaucratic consolidation, but it seems progress has stalled in the last 10 years.
The EU should have one single intelligence agency - not a dysfunctional collection of fighting to be part of the "in" group.
The EU is heading away from that, not towards it.
The EU is an economic and political union. It might not be complete or perfect, but integration has been happening decade by decade. We now have a single currency, a unified supreme court, a single charter of citizen rights, freedom of movement and a single market. A lot of younger people feel European, there is such a thing as an European identity. Each one of these things was considered impossible at a certain point. It is a slow and hard process but it is happening.
I find that the English-speaking media is particularly keen on repeating the mantra that "the EU is collapsing". I've witnessed this all my life. It became more intense now with Brexit, but the UK was not ever a real member. It opted out and demanded exceptions for everything. Unfortunately, the EU had to be built around the UK, not with it. There was also a shift in attitude with the current administration in the US, which sees the EU as an adversary instead of as a friend. So I would take anything I read in English about the EU with a pinch of salt...
There's a tendency among hardcore europhiles to blame the nasty british for all questioning of the European ideal, as though if it weren't for perfidious albion Europe would be of one mind.
This completely ignores both the deep euroscepticism felt by many people across the EU(which European countries tend to just ignore instead of being so hasty like Britain as to actually have a referendum - and if a referendum must be held, just have it again and again until you get the right answer...) and also ignores that other countries have differing opinions to France and Germany too.
Perhaps, but that was not what I said at all. What I said is that the UK always chose to not participate in the project, and that the project went on without it. Now, with Brexit, the UK government is openly hostile towards the EU. This is just a fact. Another fact is that the EU was able to maintain a united political front when faced with Brexit (which posed -- and was meant to pose -- an existential threat to the EU). So the reports of EU's death may be premature, as the cliché goes...
> This completely ignores both the deep euroscepticism felt by many people across the EU
Well, I haven't. On the contrary, I said that it is a very hard and incomplete project, and that it was considered impossible by a lot of people every step of the way. I also mentioned that it is among the younger generations that a European identity is growing. Not established, but growing.
> and also ignores that other countries have differing opinions to France and Germany too
Well, I ignored none of that. You just assumed it.
What I think is undeniable is that there are vested interests in the collapse of the EU. The EU is composed of many small countries, that could be much more easily pushed around if not acting as bloc. Naturally, those who would indeed like to push Europe around dislike the EU. With the stance of the current US administration and of the post-Brexit UK government, it just so happens that in the current year of 2020, a lot of people with such vested interests write in English.
Europe is not a country and the ones that insist it to be are high society politicians who like to pretend they are above the populace.
Let's not forget that it took even the USA several centuries and a civil war to get to a mostly unified country. Even then there are vast differences in culture between states. If (say) California and Texas wouldn't have been part of the USA right now, I doubt they'd choose to merge into it.
Compared to Europe, the US is as homogeneous as it can be. Of course it's heterogeneous but at a regional and sometimes city area level with different customs and traditions imported from other countries and "americanized"
The strength of Europe is their independent countries and diverse cultures and every time an enterprising young fella had grandiose ideas it always ends with an absolute bloodbath of apocalyptic proportions.
Generally speaking the ones that want a "fully integrated" Europe are:
1 - Politicians with a manager mentality who like to get frisky with concepts such as "economies of scale", "standardization", "efficiency", etc. Yet they don't know anything of what a society is.
2 - The usual crème-de-la-crème "citizens of the World" who in reality are just old-money rich ignorant "kids" who can't even fathom what an existence of a real "normal" person is.
3 - People from other parts of the World who think Europe is a country
4 - Competing superpowers who root for the destruction of Europe and know very well that their only hope is for it to implode.
As such it's basically guaranteed to keep country specific intelligence agencies.
A EU based agency would be interesting, but given how problematic it is to oversee it probably a nightmare to.
A stronger cooperation between EU agencies should be possible.
"Certain countries were deliberately not allowed to join because within the Maximator alliance they were considered as lacking relevant (signal-/crypto-analytical) expertise and/or experience. Allegedly, these countries include Norway, Spain and Italy."
And
"Belgium is a notable exception in north-western Europe; it had not been invited to join Maximator because of its lack of SIGINT (and COMSEC) capabilities." adding in a footnote that "Belgium’s cryptographic behaviour and discipline were problematic. For instance, at least once it compromised its own communications via a basic mistake in key management;"
:D