Spooked 'Drugs ships' strikes open a transatlantic intelligence rift

It is an intelligence relationship that predates even the Five Eyes: the UKUSA alliance that began, naturally enough, in secret in 1946. But last week the strain of trying to be the closest security ally to a freewheeling White House seemed to be showing.

- Dan Sabbagh

Britain was reported to have suspended intelligence cooperation with the US in the Caribbean because London does not consider the deadly US military campaign against ships accused of drug trafficking to be in line with international law.

Britain's foreign secretary, Yvette Cooper, downplayed the reports this week, while the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, described them as “a fake story”. Initially, however, the UK had simply chosen to neither confirm nor deny the report and it was widely covered. Because Britain has a handful of island territories in the Caribbean, it has sought to monitor the movements of suspected drug traffickers, and swapped intelligence on the issue with the US under longstanding arrangements.

It would have amounted to an extraordinary open fissure in a close working relationship at a time when the US is increasing its military buildup, expanding its controversial campaign in the region with an attempt to threaten Venezuela.