\u201ccorrosive complacency\u201d<\/a> towards defence, said on Wednesday that the traditional allies were diverging over values \u2013 and that even after Donald Trump leaves the White House, the separation was likely to continue.<\/p>\nLord Robertson, a former Labour defence minister and Nato secretary general, highlighted Trump\u2019s unprovoked attack on Iran, his decision to levy tariffs on traditional allies and, \u201cmost jarringly\u201d, he said, the threat to wrest Greenland from Denmark.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll of these illustrate a growing divergence between Westminster and Washington,\u201d Robertson said at a seminar at the Chatham House thinktank.<\/p>\n
He said the diplomatic tone from the White House had \u201creached a historic low point\u201d with Trump\u2019s repeated public criticisms of the UK.<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s unilateral actions during his presidency indicated that the postwar era in which the US acted as a steward maintaining global rules, norms and institutions \u201cmay well be over\u201d, he said.<\/p>\n
Keir Starmer has offered limited military support to the US bombing of Iran, refusing to participate directly, as questions remain over whether the initial attack that killed the country\u2019s supreme leader Ali Khamenei complied with international law.<\/p>\n
Trump has compared Starmer to Neville Chamberlain, described the Royal Navy\u2019s aircraft carriers as \u201ctoys\u201d and complained that UK wanted to help secure the strait of Hormuz only once \u201cthe war is over\u201d.<\/p>\n
Robertson emphasised that Trump did not represent the full spectrum of American opinion, but he said the UK needed to accept that the president\u2019s behaviour was also reflective of longer-term changes in US foreign policy and act accordingly.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s clear that our high level of military dependance on the US is no longer tenable,\u201d Robertson said, and it was a \u201cnaive belief\u201d that the White House would always be on hand to help the UK out in times of conflict. Such an approach had led to the \u201cdiminishment of our own capability\u201d militarily, he added.<\/p>\n
Starmer meeting British military personnel in Bahrain earlier this month. Photograph: WPA\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
He said the UK \u201cmust rapidly pivot to becoming a more autonomous military actor\u201d, working closely with European allies against Russia, and demonstrate progress to lifting defence spending to 3.5% of GDP by 2035 in line with a Nato target, while recognising that the US was becoming more transactional.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe relationship with the United States will depend very much on what we contribute to the alliance,\u201d Robertson said, amid forecasts that Germany is on track to spend twice as much on defence as the UK by 2029 if both countries maintain their current plans.<\/p>\n
It is the second time in a week that Robertson has intervened over military spending, in comments that he hopes will strengthen Ministry of Defence\u2019s hand in a long-running row with the Treasury. There remains an \u00a318bn funding gap in a 10-year defence investment plan, leaving key commitments not yet signed off.<\/p>\n
On Wednesday the cross-party Lords international relations and defence committee, which Robertson chairs, published its own report on the special relationship, saying it was \u201cunder greater strain today than at any point since the second world war\u201d.<\/p>\n
Robertson did not comment on whether Starmer\u2019s disastrous appointment of Peter Mandelson as the UK\u2019s ambassador to the US last year had worsened a declining relationship with Washington.<\/p>\n
Kim Darroch, a former UK ambassador to Washington and another member of the Lords committee, said at the same event that it was inevitable that prime ministers would sometimes try to make a political appointment to the post.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs a diplomat myself, I like the idea the job should, more often than not, go to diplomats. The history of British diplomats in that job in Washington has been pretty favourable,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
But he added that what politicians might occasionally want was someone they thought they could trust, adding: \u201cIt won\u2019t be the last time this happens.\u201d<\/p>\n
Responding to the Lords committee report, Warren Stephens, the US ambassador to the UK, said the White House national security strategy made it a top priority to \u201csupport our allies in preserving the freedom and security of Europe\u201d.<\/p>\n
He said the US would work alongside the UK, \u201cour closest ally\u201d, to keep both countries and their citizens safe and prosperous.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Britain\u2019s high military dependence on the US is \u201cno longer tenable\u201d and the UK has to become increasingly…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":545096,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-545095","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-kingdom","8":"tag-gb","9":"tag-great-britain","10":"tag-greatbritain","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/545095","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=545095"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/545095\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/545096"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=545095"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=545095"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=545095"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}