Joe Barnes รีทวีตแล้ว
🚨EXCLUSIVE🚨
Is the "special relationship" between the UK and the US dead? A former head of Nato has said Britain must look to "reassess" its historic ties with Washington, branding them "old and unhelpful".
Writing exclusively for The Telegraph, Lord Robertson claimed that decades of American leadership of Nato had led to an “alibi mentality” in the UK, allowing Britain’s military to decline because they believed the US would always “bail them out”.
He warned America’s time as a “steward of international rules-based order... has come to an end” and that the UK must look to forge closer ties with European allies.
The Labour grandee said the UK must “reckon with its military dependence on the US” and instead “chart a new course”.
“Over the last 80 years, both countries have indeed enjoyed a unique period of close collaboration across defence, foreign policy, economic engagement and cultural exchange,” he wrote. “However, it is increasingly clear that framing the relationship as somehow ‘special’ is perhaps outdated and unhelpful.”
The former defence secretary’s intervention came as a major House of Lords report urged the Prime Minister to “accelerate” military spending to 5 per cent of GDP and “redouble efforts” to strengthen its defence industrial base “urgently”.
Lord Robertson, who chairs the Lords' International Relations and Defence Committee which released today's report, has been fiercely critical in recent days of the Government, accusing it last week of “corrosive complacency” and paying “lip service” to the risks the nation now faced.
Full story: telegraph.co.uk/gift/e661bc76c…
English
