The UK will have to significantly increase defence spending if it is to maintain influence with US

[barryqwalsh]

It argued that without such investment the UK armed forces' usefulness to the US would be diminished.

"The government must not let this happen," the report says.


Defence budget risks UK influence, say MPs

 

[cnm]

I love it. The UK's defence secretary's primary objective is to be of use to the US. And to think people thought British poodles were a vanishing breed.

 

[barryqwalsh]

I love it. The UK's defence secretary's primary objective is to be of use to the US. And to think people thought British poodles were a vanishing breed.

Come outside and say that!

 

[cnm]

Of what use will that be to the US?

 

[Ecocertifmrl]

The UK's defence secretary's primary objective is to be of use to the US.

Did he say that?

 

[Ecocertifmrl]

Basically like all countries, in order to influence the world they need significant military capablities

...just in case more of rightist trolls come sneakig round asking diiba-daaba.

 

[Two Thumbs]

so the english actually want the US to 'use' their troops.



I'm thinking this may not be an accurate quote.

 

[Ecocertifmrl]

so the english actually want the US to 'use' their troops.



I'm thinking this may not be an accurate quote.

 

[barryqwalsh]

The British Army is likely to send up to 440 more troops to Afghanistan to train the Afghan National Security Forces.

UK to send 440 more troops to Afghanistan

 

[Taz]

The British Army is likely to send up to 440 more troops to Afghanistan to train the Afghan National Security Forces.

UK to send 440 more troops to Afghanistan

440 butlers.

 

[barryqwalsh]

Lord Houghton, former Chief of Defence Staff says Britain has a hard choice to make: do we increase the defence budget to maintain Britain's influence abroad or do we diminish ourselves?

Listen/download our podcast.
BBC Radio 4 - Today - Clips

 

[cnm]

Britain diminished itself in the iraq debacle. It's too late.

 

[whitehall]

It should be noted on the military forum that the British term "M.P." does not stand for Military Police as it does in the Colonies. MP is Brit-speak for a member of parliament, kind of like a congressman only more archaic. Ironically I watched a vintage 1942 movie on cable last night (Leslie Howard and David Niven) called "Spitfire" ( I thought it would be about a vintage sex queen but no luck) which was about the Brits reluctance to fund research and production of a fighter in the 30's even on the eve of certain war with Germany. Maybe it's deja-vu all over again.

 

[barryqwalsh]

I love it. The UK's defence secretary's primary objective is to be of use to the US. And to think people thought British poodles were a vanishing breed.

Britain’s one-sided special relationship with America





When Theresa May visited Washington in January 2017, she mentioned the special relationship more times than her hosts spelt her name right in the official schedule. Fielding questions on President Donald Trump’s refugee ban in Ankara later in the week, she equivocated and seemed to freeze.

The prime minister was still six months from an electoral fall but history will record those back-to-back trips as the first telling clue to her inadequacies. But what, she is entitled to ask, was she meant to do? Once Britain voted to leave the EU — against her wishes, however quietly asserted — it could not contemplate a rupture with the US president, too.

There was something distasteful about the fringe Eurosceptics who cheered Mr Trump’s rise as a vindication of their cause, but something hard-headed as well. If he saw a world tilting from globalist technocrats to sovereign nations, with Britain at the leading edge, the least we could do is humour him for the sake of a trade agreement. There was no shame in the UK’s mission to profit from the Trump presidency. There is some shame, with eight months of evidence, in the pretence that it is going anywhere.

Those Eurosceptics assumed two things of the new president: a coherent view of the outside world and the political wherewithal to impose it on a reluctant American establishment. Time has exposed both as wishful thoughts. His worldview is a farrago of irreconcilable instincts: autarky but also commercial pragmatism; America-first but also action in Syria. The mix makes him hard to court, even for diplomats as steeped in ambiguities as the British. His one consistency — the worship of strength — does not help a medium-sized nation with a frail prime minister.

Where there is coherence, it is of a nationalist strain that is not much easier to work with. Brexit’s biggest admirers in the Trump team, says one member of Mrs May’s cabinet, are also the keenest to screen America from trade. Where does that leave Britain and its neo-Elizabethan dream of seafaring commerce? You cannot eat a pat on the back.

If the first of Britain’s two bets flopped quickly, the second has taken a while. Last week, Pippa Malmgren, an official under President George W Bush who now advises Liam Fox, the British trade secretary, said Mr Trump “does not know how to operate the US government”. Her bluntness is corroborated by events: his loss of staff, the growing assertiveness of more conventional voices. British diplomats always backed America’s policy establishment to win in the end, if only because — unlike Brexit — the Trump presidency is time-limited and reversible.

But if we are in the first phase of a gradual restoration of American orthodoxy, especially in foreign affairs, then Britain might be the one western nation with little to celebrate. It has nothing to show for its flattery of Mr Trump, including that promised state visit to London, than some reputational damage. It will then also have to reckon with the pragmatism of old-fashioned US statecraft without recourse to its own continental bloc.
It will have to reckon with the America that put Britain on the naughty step when it invaded the Suez Canal. The America that favoured Bonn and then Berlin over London as its point of European contact as the cold war ended. The America that urged British commitment to the European project and did what it could to influence the referendum in favour of membership. The America that has sectoral interests in agriculture and industry that should bring Mr Fox out in a cold sweat.

This is Britain’s bind: Mr Trump is not the cash cow that some had hoped, but the alternative is no soft touch either. We face a fight for relevance.
If any good comes from this, it should be a loss of illusions: a willingness to see America as a normal country, not as a benefactor.

There is something creepier about the phrase “special relationship” than the asymmetry of its usage. It is the amount of store it puts in bloodlines, as though earthly differences must yield to shared ancestry. (Hence the term “cousins”, again more common in Westminster than in Washington).

The largest ethnic group in America are the Germans. If Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor, built her Atlantic policy on that fact, we would question her grip on reason. Yet Britain still makes a fuss of lineages that involve a small share of the American population. Some of the most stone-faced in their dealings with the British were Wasps: John Foster Dulles, Dean Acheson, George Bush senior. We hold a candle in the face of all these rebuffs. And we call the Americans emotional.

 

[cnm]

Good dog.

 

[fncceo]

The Brits might have to upgrade their army, a bit.

 

[barryqwalsh]

"Irrespective of Brexit, having a close relationship between the UK and EU... would be sensible," says former Australian PM, John Howard about the Galileo project. He says it'll make sense for Australia and the UK to discuss a new intelligence sharing partnership.

The Today Programme

 

[harmonica]

Basically like all countries, in order to influence the world they need significant military capablities

...just in case more of rightist trolls come sneakig round asking diiba-daaba.

does any country need a massive military ---to influence the world??
....the US tried to ''influence'' Iran by taking out it's democratically elected leader and that really went bad for the US

before we got deeply involved in Vietnam, our military did not influence the Communist there--even as we gave massive help to the French
...the US tried to ''influence Southeast Asia--by HUGE/massive military force--and we ''lost''/lost tiny Cambodia, tiny Laos, and tiny Vietnam---obviously we didn't need to ''influence'' anything....
..America's massive military might did not influence the communist/NVs at all....in fact it was a great ''influence'' on Vietnamese to fight against what the US wanted---against the colonialists/etc


..we tried to ''influence'' Cuba and got the Bay of Pigs fiasco
...Japan does not try to ''influence'' and they have one of the top economies
....the US massive military does not often stop wars such as the Arab-Israeli conflict that went on and on
...it did not/does not stop the Middle East conflicts

..yes we need a strong military---but it does not often influence other countries to do what the US wants

look at the news today!! how is the US military helping with the ''trade wars''/tariffs/etc?

 

[Ecocertifmrl]

Basically like all countries, in order to influence the world they need significant military capablities

...just in case more of rightist trolls come sneakig round asking diiba-daaba.

does any country need a massive military ---to influence the world??
....the US tried to ''influence'' Iran by taking out it's democratically elected leader and that really went bad for the US

before we got deeply involved in Vietnam, our military did not influence the Communist there--even as we gave massive help to the French
...the US tried to ''influence Southeast Asia--by HUGE/massive military force--and we ''lost''/lost tiny Cambodia, tiny Laos, and tiny Vietnam---obviously we didn't need to ''influence'' anything....
..America's massive military might did not influence the communist/NVs at all....in fact it was a great ''influence'' on Vietnamese to fight against what the US wanted---against the colonialists/etc


..we tried to ''influence'' Cuba and got the Bay of Pigs fiasco
...Japan does not try to ''influence'' and they have one of the top economies
....the US massive military does not often stop wars such as the Arab-Israeli conflict that went on and on
...it did not/does not stop the Middle East conflicts

..yes we need a strong military---but it does not often influence other countries to do what the US wants

look at the news today!! how is the US military helping with the ''trade wars''/tariffs/etc?

Not everything is about US