For nearly eight decades, the Five Eyes intelligence alliance stood as one of the most formidable partnerships in global security. Born from the ashes of World War II through the UKUSA Accords of 1946, this exclusive club of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States shared the world’s most sensitive intelligence secrets.
Yet by 2020, this once-mighty alliance had quietly crumbled into irrelevance, plagued by internal divisions and diminishing returns that few seemed willing to acknowledge. The machinery continued to hum, but the strategic value had evaporated.
The warning signs were clear to those paying attention. Speaking at the Australia-Canada Economic Leadership Forum in Melbourne on February 13, 2020, defense analyst Gregory Copley delivered a stark assessment of the partnership’s deteriorating state.
“The UKUSA Accords—Five Eyes—have commoditized the Australia–Canada intelligence exchange, and this has removed much of the value of the process. Traffic volume does not equate to quality intelligence or quality strategic analysis,” Copley observed, highlighting how the alliance had devolved into a bureaucratic exercise rather than a strategic necessity.
The alliance’s troubles deepened significantly under President Donald Trump’s administration, which actively worked to dismantle traditional partnerships in favor of new strategic arrangements. This deliberate bypassing of Five Eyes represented a fundamental shift in American foreign policy, one that prioritized bilateral relationships over multilateral commitments.
By 2025, the writing was on the wall. Trump’s return to power brought with it a comprehensive restructuring of America’s global alliances, with Five Eyes becoming an early casualty of this strategic realignment. The president’s vision called for breaking down what he viewed as outdated structures and rebuilding America’s international relationships from the ground up.
The Spectator’s U.S. edition captured this transformation in a November 18, 2025 article by James Tidmarsh titled “Why Trump is freezing out Five Eyes allies,” which documented the systematic marginalization of the once-vital partnership.
What made Five Eyes’ decline particularly striking was how quietly it occurred. Unlike other high-profile diplomatic ruptures, this dissolution happened gradually, with member nations continuing their routine exchanges even as the strategic foundation crumbled beneath them. The alliance became a victim of its own success, having grown so institutionalized that it lost the agility and relevance that once made it indispensable.
The commoditization Copley referenced in 2020 proved prophetic. As intelligence sharing became routine rather than strategic, the unique value proposition that had sustained the alliance for decades began to erode. Member nations found themselves drowning in data while starving for actionable insights, a classic case of quantity overwhelming quality.
For the international intelligence community, Five Eyes’ effective dissolution marks the end of an era. The alliance had weathered the Cold War, adapted to the digital age, and survived numerous political transitions across its member states. Its inability to navigate the changing geopolitical landscape of the 2020s serves as a cautionary tale about the fragility of even the most established international partnerships.
As nations worldwide reassess their strategic alliances in an increasingly multipolar world, the Five Eyes experience offers valuable lessons about the importance of maintaining relevance and adapting to evolving security challenges. The question now becomes whether any new arrangements can fill the intelligence void left by this historic partnership’s decline.
