Johnson’s foreign policy is reorienting away from the US towards Europe
It has been an extremely difficult year for the “special relationship”. The shared language and common history has meant that it has always been perceived, at least on this side of the Atlantic, as being qualitatively different to the security backstop guaranteed by US involvement in Nato. Sometimes it looks as if the US feels the same way. “The greatest alliance the world has ever known” was how Donald Trump described it during his state visit in July 2019. Yet it was followed, almost immediately, by an unprecedented personal attack in which he called then UK Ambassador Kim Darroch a “pompous fool”, effectively declaring him persona non grata.
It was hard to know how much weight to give to Trump’s action at the time. It could hardly compare to the Suez crisis, when the US dictated a painful lesson about how she had both the ability and desire to dictate Britain’s place in the post-War world. Nonetheless Boris Johnson, in a considerably weaker domestic position than today, did not stand up to Trump and Darroch resigned as a result. The story has changed significantly since then. Although Johnson trumpeted a trade deal with the US as a cornerstone of post-Brexit “global Britain”, Trump has “flip-flopped” in his support. Hardly surprising, as former US state department official Jeremy Shapiro described Trump’s instinctive approach to foreign policy: “Every relationship is transactional, entirely subject to the president’s domestic political needs or simply to his mood.”
The nadir in the special relationship was made all too apparent by the failure of the US to brief the UK in advance on the assassination of Qasem Soleimani at the start of this year. This appears to have awoken Johnson to the implications of America’s current mercurial foreign policy.
In a BBC interview on Tuesday, Johnson said the UK intended to play “its traditional role, which is to serve as a bridge between the European powers and the United States.” This of course overlooks the fact that a significant reason for the UK’s importance to the US was to act as a mechanism for expressing joint concerns at the EU.
Despite his assurances, Johnson’s foreign and defence policy since his December re-election appears to be reorienting, away from the US and towards Europe. Both Britain and her European allies have been less than supportive of the US’s Iranian policy in recent weeks. This may not be unusual for our continental European neighbours but Britain joining their call for de-escalation is notable, and attracted the ire of Mike Pompeo.
Trump’s distorting effect on transatlantic security relations is readily apparent, but so too is Britain’s dwindling ability to act as honest broker over the Atlantic. Trump’s threat of tariffs on European car imports if European partners didn’t harden their stance on Iran, almost caused France and Germany to abandon plans to invoke the dispute resolution of the Iran nuclear deal, to avoid the appearance of capitulating to Trump.
On the issue of Huawei too, Johnson is trying to square an impossible circle that could jeopardise Britain’s role in the “Five eyes” intelligence sharing partnership. Johnson cannot simply ignore the fact that America’s primary strategic focus is China and the economic and military rivalry that entails. Australia, another “five eyes” member already took the wise decision to exclude Huawei from its networks.
This week the EU trade commissioner, Phil Hogan suggested not only that the EU is not, in principle, opposed to giving Huawei access to their 5G plans, he went on to say that the UK could call Trump’s bluff’ on threats to withdraw intelligence cooperation. The question for Johnson is whether the economic benefits of Huawei’s 5G partnership are greater than the risk of economic and military exclusion by the US. The stakes seem desperately high.
This leaves the UK in an uncomfortable position. Johnson has set himself the impossible task of balancing UK foreign policy between a mercurial US president and Europe, at precisely the moment we are set to exit the EU.
In an interview with theSunday Times, Ben Wallace, the Secretary of State for Defence, made the thinking behind Johnson’s actions explicit. He stated that the upcoming Defence Review “should be used to make the UK less dependent on the US in future conflicts”. In effect he was suggesting that Britain should be prepared to fight wars without America. The seismic change in 70 years of British defence and security planning that this represents cannot be overstated.
His comments call into question not only America’s commitment to global security but by implication the whole post-War security architecture enshrined in Nato, and underpinned by US power. Wallace questioned the very basis of post-War British military planning — that will require a major rethink during this year’s anticipated Strategic Defence and Security Review.
Starting with the Healey defence review in the late 1960s, Britain has recognised that major wartime operations could only be undertaken in co-operation with allies. Two further supplements to the review saw the withdrawal of all British forces deployed east of Suez. Since then, successive defence reviews have combined a reliance on nuclear deterrence with an ongoing process of salami slicing conventional expeditionary capability.
Today we simply do not posses the full spectrum of military capabilities. As Nick Harvey, then Minister for the Armed Forces explained in 2011 “it has been decades since we retained that sort of definition of a full spectrum of capability.” This means that today Britain’s armed forces must deploy with allies in almost every circumstance, bar low intensity, short-lived military actions.
Although it has never been explicit who these allies should be and European defence partnership remains key, there has been an assumption that Britain’s predominant military orientation has been towards the US.
White papers in the early 2000s were more explicit about the importance of US defence integration, both in terms of harmonising British and US strategic interests but also maintaining interoperability. A 2018 Defence Select Committee report suggested $3 billion a year in defence benefits to the UK from the defence relationship with the US.
Britain should be mindful of these benefits. The announcement of “Tempest” our proposed sixth generation fighter project, shows the potential strategic pitfalls of our current situation. Although the Tempest fighter sounds like an air force squadron leader’s dream, the challenge of seeing the project through to completion is considerable, not least because unlike the Eurofighter project, Tempest would not have Franco-German involvement.
Excluded from the rival EU fighter project and unlikely to be able to sell the plane to the US, Tempest is a manifestation of Britain being stuck between the US and EU.
That certainly appeared to be the view of new German defence minister, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer on her visit to London this Thursday. She suggested that Britain wanted to take “a very independent position… that relies on traditionally good and close relations with the United States.”
The UK’s defence relationship with the US is weaker than we might hope. The Afghan and Iraq wars showed real division. The Afghanistan papers released by the Washington Postin December show the depth of US antagonism over what they perceived to be Britain’s inadequate preparation for operations in Helmand in 2006, with then US general Dan McNeill calling British strategy ‘dysfunctional’.
These experiences and successive budget cutbacks have contributed to growing doubts in Washington about whether Britain remains capable of fighting a war alongside the American military. Between 2010 and 2015, Britain’s defence budget fell by £8 billion. Although it has stabilised since then, it needs to grow.
Britain’s role as “indispensable ally” is under threat, not least because France is openly pushing its own special relationship. Within weeks, France will become the only member of the EU with both nuclear weapons and a permanent seat at the UN security council, not to mention a serious commitment to defence spending. Britain’s ambassadorial team will suddenly no longer participate in efforts to pool European influence in Washington.
Johnson may well be correct in seeking to balance US and European defence collaboration. In terms of Franco-British cooperation there is certainly precedent. In the 1990s both countries, aware of the limits of what they could do with the US, formed the basis of the UN intervention force in Bosnia.
As Lawrence Freedman said, “alone among their substantial allies, they were the two with some sense that warfare might be necessary at all during Europe’s post-communist upheaval.” Certainly this view of the return of great power competition — and potentially conflict — chimes with current US military analysis.
Resolving Britain’s currently confused strategic orientation is not only a matter for the upcoming defence review. Ever since the 2016 Brexit referendum attention has been focused on the mechanics of exit. Almost no thought has been given to what Britain’s national interests should be after leaving the EU. The phrase “global Britain” has been touted but for our own sake and the sake of clarity amongst our allies, this rather hollow phrase needs to be injected with a great deal more detail. Only then can we fully shape alliances in our best interests.
