\u00a0<\/strong>Sir Michael Fallon, former Defence Secretary, speaking to the <\/strong>Harkness Fellows<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\r\n \u00a0<\/strong>It\u2019s a pleasure to be addressing the Harkness Fellows this evening, and especially on such an important topic. \u00a0Well-timed too, not just because of the current conflict in the Gulf but because we mark this year the 250th<\/sup> anniversary – the semiquincentennial – of American independence.<\/p>\r\n That first Brexit has been stunningly successful, giving the world a new democracy of immense strength, vibrancy and generosity.\u00a0 A country that for nearly a century has led the free world and made huge sacrifices of blood and treasure in defence of civilised values and freedoms around the globe: \u00a0freedom of expression, the rule of law, the priceless right to rid ourselves of bad governments.\u00a0 Nothing else I say tonight should lessen my profound admiration for a country that I have been visiting for over forty years.<\/p>\r\n Tonight I want to focus of the other side of that Brexit, and examine the ledger from the British point of view: \u00a0How stands the UK-US relationship today? \u00a0Is it still special? \u00a0Is it as important to the United States as it still is to us?\u00a0 Or have we become steadily less relevant to Washington?<\/p>\r\n The economic relationship is probably as close as ever.\u00a0 It was perhaps inevitable that two great, open, free enterprise economies, sharing historical ties, a common language and similar rules of competition and contract, would be bound to do more and more business with each other.\u00a0 We\u2019ve seen huge flows of trade and capital back and forth across the Atlantic.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n It\u2019s true that the flows have not always been equally balanced, even when adjusted for population and relative wealth. \u00a0US companies have certainly done very well over here, while ours have sometimes struggled to take full advantage of the larger American market.\u00a0 None the less Britain now holds well over \u00a3700 billion of US assets, and those capital flows help to underpin both our public and private economies.\u00a0 Our enormous public borrowing requirement, for example, is largely dependent on financing by the US-denominated bond markets.\u00a0 Though labelled as \u201cthe kindness of strangers\u201d, given the closeness between our two central banks and Treasuries, this might be better called \u201cthe kindness of friends\u201d. \u00a0\u00a0We almost take this for granted, and rarely ask where else we might want these capital flows to come from: \u00a0from countries less well-disposed to us?<\/p>\r\n The heart of the special relationship, less visible but just as vital, is of course the defence relationship. \u00a0We fought both World Wars side by side.\u00a0 Happily our withdrawal from Empire coincided with the emergence of the United States as super-power, when we accepted with as much grace as we could muster the role of America\u2019s principal junior partner.\u00a0 That acceptance was well summed up, in the middle of World War Two, by Harold Macmillan, then Churchill\u2019s Minister in the Middle East (and later Prime Minister himself).\u00a0 He famously described Britin as playing the part of the Greeks to America\u2019s Rome, the new imperial power: \u00a0\u201cyou will find the Americans<\/em>\u201d he told his staff \u201cmuch as the Greeks found the Romans \u2013 a great big vulgar bustling people, more vigorous than we are, with more unspoiled virtues.\u00a0 We must run our joint HQ here as the Greek slaves ran the operations of the Emperor Claudius<\/em>.\u201d\u00a0 (I\u2019m not sure whether Roosevelt would have appreciated the comparison with Claudius).\u00a0<\/p>\r\n Since the end of the Second World War, our alliance has flourished.\u00a0 British and American forces have served side by side in almost every conflict bar Vietnam and the Falklands: \u00a0Korea, the Cold War, the Balkans, the Gulf, Afghanistan and in my time in Iraq and Syria leading the Coalition against the Daesh. \u00a0Two years ago our air forces were flying together again, defending the Red Sea against Houthi attacks and defending Israel against Iranian missiles. \u00a0Tonight RAF Typhoons will be out again, flying alongside US aircraft to protect our bases and interests in the Gulf within our rules of engagement.<\/p>\r\n Our militaries are deeply embedded in each other at every level, in each of our services and in all five domains.\u00a0 Beyond the purely military we have special agreements, much envied elsewhere in Europe, on intelligence sharing and co-operation between our various security agencies.\u00a0 We share membership of key groupings: \u00a0Five Eyes, the E3 and P5 at the United Nations, and the G7.\u00a0 We sit alphabetically side by side at every NATO meeting. \u00a0<\/p>\r\n And beyond that we both operate the same Trident nuclear ballistic missiles as part of our deterrent, though we keep them under independent national control. \u00a0You can\u2019t in fact get much closer to an ally than sharing a nuclear missile system: \u00a0go to Rosyth in Scotland and you will see the common missile compartment being built there for both our new Dreadnoughts and the US\u2019s new Columbia submarines.<\/p>\r\n I would suggest to you that it is the breadth, range and depth of these relationships that elevate them beyond the personal relationship that may exist between particular Presidents and Prime Ministers. \u00a0Indeed, the special defence relationship has served us well in the most testing of times: \u00a0Macmillan and Kennedy negotiating the Test Ban Treaty in the early 1960s, or Reagan and Thatcher facing the Cold War challenge together in the mid-1980s. \u00a0It has also survived times of strong policy disagreement: \u00a0our occupation of the Suez Canal, for example, or Harold Wilson\u2019s refusal to send a single battalion to help in Vietnam.<\/p>\r\n And when there are disagreements, we need to be careful about over-doing what JD Vance calls the \u201cpearl-clutching\u201d when those disagreements are expressed in language that seems to disrespect the relationship, or about channelling our disappointment into complaints about the personalities of the principals involved. \u00a0Just as there have been earlier Presidents who have been accused of abuse of power, of corruption, even of promiscuity, indeed former Presidents who have been impeached or forced to resign, so our American friends can point to British Prime Ministers who have come close to insider dealing or in more recent times have broken the rules.<\/p>\r\n The special relationship, therefore, has always been bigger than its principal inter-locutors.\u00a0 A better question this evening might be: \u00a0is it weakening anyway?\u00a0 I suggest that there are at least four pressures bearing down on it:\u00a0 the more recent imbalance in the military relationship; the growing trend towards isolationism in the United States; the successive failures of the West to secure democracies in the Middle and Far East; and America\u2019s increasing pre-occupation with China. \u00a0Let me take each in turn.<\/p>\r\n The miliary imbalance has indeed worsened.\u00a0 Concerns about British (and European) defence investment are not new: they date back to the 1990s.\u00a0 It was Obama, not Trump, who insisted on agreement to the 2 per cent of GDP defence spending target at Nato\u2019s Wales summit in 2014. \u00a0It was Ash Carter, his Democrat defence secretary, who pressed me, George Osborne and David Cameron to meet that target the following year.\u00a0 Even then there were doubts about the power and punch of UK forces.\u00a0 There was respect for our nuclear deterrent, for our special forces, for our two new carriers.\u00a0 But successive defence secretaries in my time \u2013 Chuck Hagel, Ash Carter and Jim Mattis \u2013 questioned our ability to field one, let alone two army divisions, to maintain properly a blue-water navy, to find the money to complete the purchase of the 138 F-35s that we had ordered (ten years on we have fewer than 40).<\/p>\r\n Are we not seeing a resurgence of American isolationism in the MAGA movement\u2019s condemnation of \u201cforever wars\u201d and in Elbridge Colby\u2019s long-standing passion for more homeland defence?\u00a0 Again, none of this is new.\u00a0 There has always been a streak of healthy scepticism in the United States about getting involved in \u201cother people\u2019s wars\u201d. \u00a0When Henry Ford famously said \u201chistory is bunk<\/em>\u201d, it\u2019s often forgotten that he said it in the middle of the debate about whether the US should join in the First World War: \u00a0he was opposing the historical case for America to defend Europe\u2019s democracies against the Kaiser\u2019s Germany.<\/p>\r\n Today, however, that isolationist tendency is being fuelled by other, more powerful forces: \u00a0economic grievance magnified by globalisation, cultural change driving identity issues of race and gender, and the demographic pressures of large-scale immigration.\u00a0 We seem a long way from the heady days of JFK asking what you can do for your country and droves of those young Americans volunteering for the Peace Corps.<\/p>\r\n The third pressure on the special relationship is, I think, a lack of confidence in its purpose.\u00a0 That reflects a deeper malaise born of the serious setbacks for the West since the fall of communism and the so-called \u201cend of history\u201d.\u00a0 We have together tried and failed to implant democracy in places as far apart as Libya, Syria and Afghanistan.\u00a0 Freedom House\u2019s annual survey, earlier this month, shows the number of full democracies falling, not rising. \u00a0\u00a0Less than a quarter of the world\u2019s population have full democratic rights, a proportion that has halved in the last twenty years.\u00a0 It is no accident that Putin took his chance on invading Ukraine six months after our retreat from Kabul, and no surprise, perhaps, that some forty of the United Nations 200-odd members refused to condemn that invasion.<\/p>\r\n Finally, there is the rise of China.\u00a0 For the first time the United States is confronted with a rival superpower that challenges them both economically and militarily.\u00a0 It seems sometimes to me that America just doesn\u2019t quite know how to handle China.\u00a0 They knew how to defeat the former Soviet Union: to undermine its ideology, outpace its economy, outspend and out-innovate its military. \u00a0But the United States now faces a China that is out-building its navy, out-spending its efforts in space, controlling its critical minerals and threatening its supremacy in the new technologies.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n And China is doing all this in and around America\u2019s own hemisphere.\u00a0 It should not have come as a surprise therefore that last November the new US National Security Strategy should have placed Europe, including Britain, third in its order of security priorities.\u00a0 That may point to the movement of troops, planes and missile defence away from our continent and back to the homeland.\u00a0 We need to understand that places like Cuba, Venezuela and even Greenland are part of America\u2019s hemisphere.\u00a0 Much closer to home, their stability matters more to Washington than the future of Crimea or even of Estonia.<\/p>\r\n So how should we approach the special relationship?\u00a0 It is clearly not what it was since the days of Churchill and Roosevelt, Macmillan and Kennedy, or Reagan and Thatcher.\u00a0 What won\u2019t serve us is yet more pearl-clutching or mourning for a lost heritage.\u00a0 Instead, we should surely apply ourselves on this side of the Atlantic to trying to make ourselves more relevant to Washington.<\/p>\r\n First, and most obviously, by rebuilding our military.\u00a0 Unless we strengthen our forces again, we cannot be taken seriously as a reliable partner to the United States or a credible deterrent to our common enemies.\u00a0 It is worth reminding ourselves that at the beginning of this century, long before 9\/11, long before international terrorism, before Russia invaded Crimea, before Iran and North Korea developed nuclear missiles, the Blair Government in 1999 was spending 2.7 per cent of our GDP on defence.\u00a0 Today it\u2019s 2.3 per cent, or some \u00a37 or 8 billion less per year.\u00a0 \u00a0And we now do not aim to reach the new NATO target of 3 per cent until the next Parliament.<\/p>\r\n Second, we need to resume a leading role in NATO.\u00a0 In my time, we were the second biggest spender, earning the right to the Deputy Supreme Commander post. \u00a0Today we rank just 12th<\/sup> out of 32 members, a long way behind the Baltics and the Nordics, and only just ahead of Romania.\u00a0 Instead of worrying whether or when the United States might step away from Europe, we should be stepping up.\u00a0 The question for us and our allies isn\u2019t how many American troops might be withdrawn: we should rather wonder that 80 years after VE day we still rely on more than 80,000 US servicemen and women to guard NATO\u2019s Eastern frontier.\u00a0 It\u2019s our frontier, of course, and we in the West, along with the Spanish and Belgians and Portuguese, should be doing more to defend it.<\/p>\r\n We have indeed led in Ukraine.\u00a0 But while we have done much with American help to stop Ukraine from losing their war, we haven\u2019t done nearly enough to help them win it.\u00a0 Europe can\u2019t go on leaving the main burden to the United States: \u00a0we need to supply much more of the weapons and intelligence that the Ukrainians need.\u00a0 We have been slow to enforce sanctions on Russia and to curb Russian abuse of our own financial system.<\/p>\r\n Third, we should be working with our European partners to reduce our dependency on American defence and enablers.\u00a0 Patriot missiles, heavy lift, air-to-air refuelling, surveillance aircraft \u2013 these are high-end capabilities that a continent as wealthy as ours should be providing ourselves.\u00a0 That means co-operating with European companies, as we did with Germany and Italy on Typhoon, as we are doing with Poland on new missiles and with Norway on new frigates. \u00a0Whether through NATO or the European Defence Agency British companies should be fully engaged in these multi-lateral and mini-lateral partnerships.<\/p>\r\n Fourth and finally, and here I do take some issue with the new US security strategy, the current war has confirmed that we can no longer consider three or four separate theatres. \u00a0We are enveloped now in a single conflict against countries that are hostile to our values and wish us harm.\u00a0 Iranian drones, North Korean troops and Chinese weapons are all being used in the Donbas.\u00a0 Hamas leaders are feted in Moscow.\u00a0 Blocking the Strait of Hormuz denies Europe its oil and gas.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Across the West our companies, our infrastructure and our democracy are subject to cyber and other hybrid attacks and interference.\u00a0 Sometimes these may be criminal in origin, but often now they are directed by state-backed criminal organisations or simply by state actors themselves.<\/p>\r\n We need to persuade our American friends, through that special relationship, that this is all one conflict and that our shared values are under attack across the globe.\u00a0 If Putin can get his way by force in Ukraine, and then perhaps in Moldova and Georgia too, China will be further emboldened in the South China Sea.\u00a0 If the Strait of Hormuz is blocked with impunity, so Taiwan can be blockaded.\u00a0 If British companies can be closed down by cyber warriors, so can their American suppliers.<\/p>\r\n Britain should therefore not despair of the special relationship. \u00a0We can still have the emperor\u2019s ear.\u00a0 Current disagreements can be overcome if we continue to remember the trust that binds us together.\u00a0 The trust that shares nuclear weapons, the trust that pools intelligence, the trust that has our militaries serving side by side.<\/p>\r\n The special relationship, after all, has been extraordinary: it transcends history and seniority.\u00a0 It has outlasted very different Prime Ministers and Presidents. \u00a0Built on enduring common values it will continue to survive if those values are respected, shared and trusted.\u00a0 If you\u2019ve seen that wonderful musical Hamilton, you\u2019ll remember Alexander Hamilton\u2019s great challenge to Aaron Burr: \u201cif you stand for nothing, Burr, what will you fall for?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\r\n ______________________________________________________<\/p>\r\n 25th April 2024 It is a great honour, after many years of speaking to groups of Farleigh Dickinson students here (near Banbury, Oxfordshire) and also in London, to be asked to give this year\u2019s Commemorative Lecture.<\/p>\r\n I must start by saluting the memory of Lord North whose great house this was.\u00a0 He was a Member of Parliament for thirty-six years, and served like me as defence minister, then as Chancellor, Leader of the Commons and Prime Minister. His career as Prime Minister, as those of many of his successors, was marked for ever by just one event \u2013 the British defeat at Yorktown and the consequent loss of our American colonies.\u00a0 Whether or not he was to blame for Yorktown is still debated: my military friends attribute it instead to \u201cthe fourth XV playing away from home\u201d.<\/p>\r\n But the loss of the colonies was thus laid firmly at North\u2019s door.\u00a0 That great historian of the Georges, Jack Plumb, was unsparing: No amount of apology can explain away the most glaring fact of all \u2013 that he was an utter failure\u2026during his time as leader the fortunes of his country reached the lowest point in modern history.\u00a0 <\/em>Taking a longer view, however, we could perhaps see North as paving the way for the first Brexit over two hundred and fifty years ago.<\/p>\r\n That Brexit has indeed proved stunningly successful.\u00a0 It has given us a democracy of immense strength, vibrancy and generosity.\u00a0 It has given the world a country that has led, one that has made huge sacrifices of blood and treasure to defend civilised values across the globe \u2013 freedoms of voting and speech, and the rule of law.\u00a0 Nothing else I may say this evening should be taken as lessening my profound admiration for the United States.<\/p>\r\n I want to focus on the other side of that Brexit.\u00a0 From the British point of view, how stands the UK\/US relationship today?\u00a0 Is it still \u201cspecial\u201d?\u00a0 \u00a0Is it as important today to the United States as it still is to us in the United Kingdom? \u00a0Or have we steadily become less important, more of a 51st<\/sup> state, a less relevant partner, even a vassal state?<\/p>\r\n Certainly the economic relationship is as close as ever.\u00a0 Perhaps inevitably two open enterprise economies, sharing historical ties, a common language and similar laws of contract and competition, were bound to do more and more business with each other.\u00a0 There are huge flows of trade and capital across the Atlantic.\u00a0 Of course, it\u2019s true that these flows are not equally balanced: the larger US corporations have done extremely well out of their British markets, and our companies have sometimes struggled against covert protectionism over there.<\/p>\r\n But UK businesses currently hold over \u00a3600 billion of US assets.\u00a0 And the capital flows our way help to finance our economy, both public and private.\u00a0 The scale of our public borrowing, for example, makes us dependent on the international bon markets, \u201cthe kindness of strangers\u201d.\u00a0 With the USA we should perhaps think of it as \u201cthe kindness of friends\u201d, given the close relationship between our central banks, Treasury departments and Finance ministers.\u00a0 A better question might be to ask whither we would like these capital flows to come from?\u00a0\u00a0 Countries that are less well-disposed to us?<\/p>\r\n The heart of the UK-US relationship, less visible but vital, is the defence relationship.\u00a0 We have fought two world wars side by side.\u00a0 Britain\u2019s withdrawal from empire happily coincided with America\u2019s assumption of superpower status.\u00a0 We accepted the role of principal junior partner with as much grace as we could muster.\u00a0 In the heat of the second world war, Churchill\u2019s Minister for North Africa and the Middle East, Harold MacMillan, a classicist and future Prime Minister himself, famously identified Britain as playing the part of the Greeks to America\u2019s Rome, the new world power: You will find the Americans much as the Greeks founds the Romans \u2013 a great big vulgar bustling people, more vigorous than we are, with more unspoiled virtues. We must run our joint HQ here as the Greek slaves ran the operations of the Emperor Claudius. <\/em>History does not relate whether President Roosevelt relished the comparison with Claudius.<\/p>\r\n Since the second world war our alliance has flourished.\u00a0\u00a0 Our forces have served side by side in almost all the post-war conflicts, excepting Vietnam and the Falklands: the Cold War, the Western Balkans, the Gulf, Afghanistan, the coalition against the Daesh.\u00a0 This very month our air forces have been flying together, defending against Houthi attacks on the Red Sea and against Iranian missiles being fired at Israel.<\/p>\r\n We have special agreements, much envied elsewhere in Europe, on intelligence sharing, and our security agencies work closely together.\u00a0 We share membership of key groupings \u2013 Five Eyes, P5 at the United Nations, the G7, and we sit, alphabetically, side by side in NATO.\u00a0 Beyond that we share the Trident nuclear missile system; though our twin deterrents are under independent control, you cannot get closer to an ally than sharing a common missile compartment on nuclear ballistic submarines.<\/p>\r\n Is this very closest of \u00a0relationships weakening?\u00a0 Yes, there are genuine US concerns about NATO\u2019s spending on defence.\u00a0 These go far back: it was President Obama, not Trump, who led the commitment to 2 per cent of GDP at NATO\u2019s Wales summit in 2014.\u00a0 There was direct pressure on us, indeed on me, to meet that minimum 2 per cent commitment which we did in 2015.\u00a0\u00a0 And, yes, there have been concerns amongst the US military about the power and punch of UK forces.\u00a0 They\u2019ve seen a shrinking army, less able to support or backfill for the US.\u00a0 Against that, there\u2019s US respects for our nuclear deterrent, our special forces and our two carriers.\u00a0 What I can confirm is the closeness: with all three of the US Defence Secretaries with whom I worked \u2013 Chuck Hagel, Ash Carter, Jim Mattis \u2013 there was continuous co-operation and consultation, especially in the campaigns in Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq.<\/p>\r\n Is the relationship under pressure from a further bout of isolationism in the United States?\u00a0\u00a0 Are we right to be concerned that America\u2019s traditional attention to the rest of the world and acceptance of leadership and responsibility may now be slipping?\u00a0\u00a0 There is nothing new here.\u00a0 There has always been a healthy degree of scepticism about getting involved in other people\u2019s wars.\u00a0 When Henry Ford famously said: history is bunk, it\u2019s often forgotten that he was in the middle of a debate in 1917 about whether the United States should enter the first world war, and the historical case for defending the mother democracies of western Europe against the Kaiser\u2019s Germany.<\/p>\r\n Nevertheless, in Washington earlier this month, I heard at first hand complaints about \u201cforever wars\u201d and the unequal burden being shared between the USA and its allies.\u00a0 I would suggest to you that the roots of this malaise lie deeper still. \u00a0First, there have been serious setbacks for the West. We failed to implant those priceless seeds of democracy into Libya, Syria and Afghanistan. \u00a0Freedom House\u2019s annual surveys show that the number of fully-fledged democracies is now declining. Forty of the two hundred United Nations refuse to condemn Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine, even two years on.\u00a0 The fall of Kabul was a defeat for NATO as much as for the USA.<\/p>\r\n Second, the United States is not immune to the process of internal fragmentation convulsing western democracies.\u00a0 Economic grievances fostered by globalisation, cultural change driving identity issues of race, gender and class, and demographic pressures from large-scale immigration and its effect on public policy choices have all combined to shake our institutions.<\/p>\r\n A third pressure is geographic: the explosion of growth across the Indo-Pacific and the growing assertiveness of China.\u00a0 From Europe we\u2019ve seen the pivot to the Pacific begun by President Obama, perhaps the first Pacific President. \u00a0That\u2019s led to concern that the United States may be less willing to shoulder its NATO burden in the Euro-Atlantic.\u00a0 \u00a0Whether President Trump returns to the White House this November, it\u2019s important to note that these concerns are two-way.\u00a0 Just as European worry about the American response if a NATO country is attacked by Russia, so US policy-makers worry whether European countries rally would support the continuing independence of Taiwan or would pay the likely economic cost of sanctions against China if China invaded.<\/p>\r\n I want to make just two points to you this evening.\u00a0 First, that these two theatres \u00a0\u2013 Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific \u2013 are connected; and second, that there\u2019s plenty for all of us to be doing more to tackle them.<\/p>\r\n Already we can see the current conflicts becoming intertwined.\u00a0 Hamas leaders are received in Moscow.\u00a0 North Korea supplies shells for use in Ukraine. Iranian missiles are fired by Houthis at European shipping in the Red Sea. \u00a0Our key trade routes, our cable connections, our flight patterns are all vulnerable to disruption.\u00a0\u00a0 The relationship between Russia and China may not be a formal alliance but it is a growing entente, underpinned by bilateral energy and trade deals.\u00a0 If you add in North Korea and Iran, you have a formidable quartet of countries that wish us harm, and that are doing us harm, on the European mainland, in the Middle East and in the Pacific. \u00a0And if China comes to blows with the United States in the Pacific, it\u2019s all too easy to see Russia seizing the moment to increase pressure in the Euro-Atlantic theatre \u2013 by attacking our cables, invading another Black Sea country, or further destabilising the western Balkans,<\/p>\r\n So the United States has every self-interest in the Pacific in helping to ensure that Putin does not win in the Ukraine. Another Western defeat, following on from Kabul, would show Putin that the West fundamentally lacks staying power.<\/p>\r\n It would signal to China that if we are unable properly to defend Donetsk and Luhansk we are less likely to deliver aid to Taiwan or to resist further nationalisation of the South China Sea.\u00a0 So I am confident that the United States will continue its commitment to the western alliance, and I urge my Republican friends to re-read President Trump\u2019s 2017 speech in Warsaw and reflect on his endorsement of the principles and strength of the NATO alliance.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n Europeans, meanwhile, have plenty to do.\u00a0 For our part Britain has already committed to the Indo-Pacific by means of what we call a tilt. To begin with, this was essentially flag-waving: I sent RAF Typhoons through the South China Sea in 2016; one of our aircraft carriers has deployed there and will return next year; we now have two offshore patrol vessels permanently based out there.\u00a0 But beyond these rather transient deployments are the long-term capability partnerships that we are developing across the region.<\/p>\r\n AUKUS is the agreement between Australia, Britain and the United States to co-operate on the next generation of nuclear-powered submarines.\u00a0 These will extend the reach and lethality of the Australian Navy across the Pacific, and further tie our defence companies into building a common platform.\u00a0 British and US submarines will deploy to Australia to fill the gap before the new boats are commissioned.<\/p>\r\n GCAP is the joint programme between Britain, Japan and Italy to develop the next generation fighter aircraft.\u00a0 This will provide Japan with the modern capability it needs to defend its interests in the northern Pacific, and will further tie two European countries into the defence of the region. \u00a0\u00a0Finally, Pillar Two of AUKUS links its principal partners into the development of the defences of the future \u2013 electronic warfare, robotics, deep space radar and hypersonics.\u00a0 This will keep the high technology advantage in the hands of the democracies.\u00a0 Already being discussed is how this Pillar Two work may be opened up to like-minded allies such as Japan and South Korea.<\/p>\r\n Britain is also well-placed to encourage the major European nations to carry more of the advanced technological burden in the Euro-Atlantic.\u00a0 For too long we have had to depend on the United States for capabilities such as surveillance and air-to-air refuelling.\u00a0 Through closer co-operation and central European funding these are exactly the sort of large-scale multinational development programmes to which we in Europe should now commit.\u00a0 That will mean the UK looking to partner with existing EU organisations such as the European Defence Agency.<\/p>\r\n Alongside that, we have to increase our defence spending.\u00a0 The United States has five times Britain\u2019s population but spends twenty times as much on defence, including on defending us.\u00a0 NATO members committed back in 2014 to spending 2 per cent of their GDP on defence, and we gave ourselves ten years to get there.\u00a0 So far only 11 out of 31 countries meet the target, all of them except the US and the UK with capitals east of Berlin.\u00a0 Britain has now committed to reach 2.5 per cent, and this should be agreed as the new target for every NATO member at this summer\u2019s Washington NATO summit.<\/p>\r\n Finally, there is a leadership role here for Britain.\u00a0 We need to fret less about the precise weighting of our relationship with the United States and cease worrying about each changing of the guard in the White House.\u00a0 Looking harder in the mirror should enable us to see beyond nostalgia.\u00a0 Britain is still the fifth or sixth strongest military power in the world.\u00a0 We don\u2019t have to accept third-tier status like Norway or Turkey, nor need we resign ourselves to be a bit-part player.\u00a0 With the right ambition and a proper scale of funding we can play our part alongside the United States in reinforcing the international rules-based order, in championing democratic values and in coming to the defence of the free.<\/p>\r\n Let me sum up.\u00a0 This between our two countries is an extraordinary relationship.\u00a0 It transcends issues of history and seniority.\u00a0 It has been built on enduring common values \u2013 freedom of thought and of expression. The power to choose and then to turn out governments, the rule of law through independent courts, and a strong sense of responsibility to those poorer than ourselves or under attack.\u00a0 The threats that we are facing are increasing every year.\u00a0 So we need to recommit to those values and to redouble our determination to defend them.<\/p>\r\n Fresh in my mind, because I caught that wonderful show in New York the other weekend, is Alexander Hamilton\u2019s challenge to Aaron Burr: If you stand for nothing, Burr, what will you fall for?<\/em><\/p>\r\n ______________________________________________________<\/p>\r\n 24th April 2024<\/p>\r\n ______________________________________________________<\/p>\r\n 22nd April 2024<\/p>\r\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.michaelfallon.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Wroxton-College.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\r\nLord North Commemorative Lecture – Wroxton College<\/a><\/h5>\r\n
Council on Geostrategy<\/strong><\/h5>\r\n
Podcast:
British defence in 2024: Investing in sovereign capabilities and collaboration<\/a><\/h5>\r\nPodcast:<\/h5>\r\n
War Among the People: Past, Present and Future<\/a><\/blockquote>