19
Examination of witnesses
Professor Sir Lawrence Freedman, Lord McDonald of Salford and Laurel Rapp.
Q245 The Chair: Welcome; I am very pleased to have you here. Our third witness, Professor Freedman, is speaking to us remotely today.
I need to declare an interest to put on the record: I am a senior counsellor with the Cohen Group in Washington. We are looking at the issue of what is happening in Iran today in the context of a study that the committee has been doing about UK-US relations. This got somewhat disrupted because over the last couple of weeks things have moved. Therefore, we thought that we should take some additional evidence from some experts in the area to clarify the position before we finalise the report, which we hope will come out in the middle of next month. It will inevitably attract a fair degree of attention; developments as they stand at the moment are of acute importance.
We hope that we will complete this within an hour, if we can manage it. Each of the members of the committee will ask a series of questions. We had a Ukrainian delegation in before who were remarkably economic with their answers to the questions; we are hoping desperately that that model will be adopted by subsequent witnesses as well.
Because I am in the Chair, I get to ask the first question, to Laurel. When you answer the question, perhaps you can introduce yourself and say anything that you want to say to the committee first. I am concerned about the National Security Strategy of the United States, which is only a few months old, which said: “the days in which the Middle East dominated American foreign policy … are thankfully over”. Is what is happening today in regard to Iran an aberration, or is it an indication of the way in which American foreign policy has now fundamentally changed?
Laurel Rapp: Thank you very much for the invitation to appear before the committee. We at Chatham House have been following the report that will be forthcoming from this committee with great interest. I am Laurel Rapp, the US and North America programme director at Chatham House, recently arrived from Washington, where I was a US diplomat for 14 years, dealing with some of the issues before this committee today.
It is an important question. We have seminal, foundational grand strategy documents from the US Administration: the National Security Strategy, as you referenced, and the National Defense Strategy, and then we have the actions the Administration have been undertaking. The National Security Strategy calls for a much more limited role for the United States in the Middle East. It calls for the Middle East to be an area of commercial opportunity. Yes, there will be conflicts here and there, but, on the whole, the US will not be principally focused on the Middle East.
The National Defense Strategy has a similar message. We are looking at the Western Hemisphere, China and homeland defence. What we are seeing today is inconsistent with how the National Security Strategy has outlined the threats facing the United States and how the US should use its military in the world to support those objectives. It is also inconsistent with a lot of the campaign promises that the President ran on. It runs contrary to American public attitudes, if you look at recent polling on the strikes in Iran. But it is consistent with how we have seen this Administration exercise power—using force and the US military pre-emptively and proactively in a way that is less connected to partners. What we are seeing on Iran is the US hitting up against the limits of this approach.
Lord McDonald of Salford: I am Simon McDonald. I used to be Permanent Secretary in the Foreign Office, and 20 years ago, I was ambassador in Israel. I promise that I will answer your questions, Lord Chair, but there are four quick points to get off my chest. The first is that what is happening is very—maybe terminally—important for international law. There is no credible law without effective enforcement, and on the international stage there is no effective enforcement without the United States. The United States, at least temporarily, is withdrawing.
Secondly, this is a difficult time for British policymakers because the United States remains our key strategic ally. Our defence ultimately rests on the United States, so every pronouncement from the Government must bear that in mind, no matter how difficult the actions of the US Government. But in that context, there is a difference between allowing the use of our facilities and actively joining in—that difference might be helpful.
The third point is that, from what I can see in Iran, the country that is achieving its objectives is Israel. Netanyahu has been personally obsessed with Iran and the Iranian threat all his life. When I was ambassador, he was Finance Minister. I did not have much to do with him, but we talked about Iran. He had a bust of Churchill in his office, and this was his model; in the 1930s, Churchill was the only one to see the threat of Nazi Germany, and similarly, at the beginning of this century, Netanyahu saw the threat from Iran. What is happening now is the culmination of a lifetime plan.
I have two last thoughts, the first of which is that it might work. There is a lot of doomy prognostication about what is happening in Iran, but there is a possibility that Israel and the United States may achieve their objectives, and I think the committee should consider that. Lastly, it is never going to go back to what it was. The relationship with the United States has been changing over a long time. Trump has catalysed and galvanised things and accelerated trends which were already there. A very familiar British policy position is to outwait a problem in the hope that it will go away and we can resume a more familiar way of doing things. In this case, I think that will not happen, both because of long-term trends and the damage that this President is doing to important institutions.
The Chair: You said, if I picked it up rightly, that it was likely that Israel and the United States could achieve their objectives. What precisely are the objectives?
Lord McDonald of Salford: The clearest objective I see is that Iran should not be a threat to them in future. Iran has been a threat and a gathering threat—the nuclear programme and the missile programme were proper problems for both countries, particularly Israel. This operation could remove the key capabilities. I no longer have access to the intelligence, but I am pretty sure that they have done very significant damage. Whoever is in charge of Iran at the end of this has a choice to make, whether to try to reconstitute or to decide, on balance, “It is better for our country not to have this, because if we try again, it is possible, and even likely, that I personally, as leader of Iran, may suffer the fate of Ali Khamenei”.
On US strategy documents, this is not related to them because one person who is not interested in these documents is the President of the United States. People can write whatever they like, but what he thinks and wants overrides everything else in the American system. A demonstration of that right now is the clear difference between the President and the Vice-President. The Vice-President’s very clear preference is not do what is happening right now.
The Chair: He has been remarkably quiet. Professor Freedman, would you like to say something?
Professor Sir Lawrence Freedman: First, there is nothing new in a divergence of opinion between Europeans and the US over the Middle East. You could see it during the October War in 1973; you could see it in the early 1980s; and you could see it, not particularly with the UK but with other Europeans, over the response to 9/11, the invasion of Iraq and so on. It has always been a tension point in transatlantic relations, partly because of the close link between the US and Israel.
I agree with Lord McDonald that one should not particularly assume that these documents have more status than that of a fleeting glimpse of what appears to be strategy at the time. The most important point about them is the stress on the Western Hemisphere; you can see that in Venezuela and possibly, soon, Cuba. Indeed, Trump may be thinking at the moment that if he had concentrated on that, he would be in a bit of a better position politically than he is now.
You asked the question: what are the objectives? On one level, you can narrow down the objectives of this operation, and it comes down to nuclear missiles and naval force, and the Administration in Israel will be able to claim that they have done a lot. But they stated right at the start that they wanted regime change, and they have not got it. The regime has been badly hit and depleted but it is still sort of there. The regime, essentially, is the IRGC now—the revolutionary guard are the hardliners who are, in effect, in control, to the extent anybody is. My concern, which raises wider security issues, is that the prospect for Iran is not a peaceful transfer of power to nice liberal democrats but more chaos because that country will become ungovernable. There are risks in that of refugee flows, terrorism and so on. We need to take that into account.
Finally, on the US-UK relationship, I think we just have a problem with Trump. In 2025, the Prime Minister and other European leaders did a reasonably good job with combinations of flattery, concessions and trying to work with him. It seemed to go okay but it is slowly falling apart. It would have been difficult for this Government to support the initial strikes and we were not consulted on what was going to be done. The fact that Trump expresses anger about the UK and other Europeans is a reflection of it not going as he wanted it to go.
Q246 Baroness Blackstone: Before I ask the question that I was going to ask, I come back to Lawrence Freedman on this being an issue about Trump. Is that really the case when we have seen a national security strategy that is hugely anti-European, which presumably comes from Hegseth and the people around him? We have also seen Vance making extremely critical comments about Europe and where it stands on a variety of things. It must go wider than Trump, must it not?
Professor Sir Lawrence Freedman: I am having real difficulty hearing at the moment, because there is a lot of crackling, I am afraid. If I understood the question, Vance’s anti-European line, which he expressed first in the Munich Security Conference early in Trump’s second term, reflects a view among some in the Administration. I am not sure how much Trump is particularly bothered about it in the way in which Vance would express it, but it is there and it goes with the dismissal. I am more concerned that, while Trump asks us to come in to help rescue him out of a security problem that he has created, the main security problem we face is Ukraine, which the US does progressively less about. The US does not donate at all to Ukraine at the moment.
So you have two things. You have a cultural ideological difference expressed among certain members of the MAGA coalition then you have a different set of priorities. One of the things that has happened with this—Lord McDonald alluded to it—is the fact that Vance has been rather silent. You could look at someone like Elbridge Colby in the Pentagon, as well. The security view you were looking at was: “Europe and the Middle East are not really our concerns anymore. What really bothers us is the Indo-Pacific”. Actually, Trump is not interested in that, except in economic terms.
I do not think there is coherence. The point about national security strategy is that these documents are written to give more coherence to the practical expressions of foreign policy than is, in reality, the case.
Q247 Baroness Blackstone: I come back to my question. Given that apparently there was no consultation by the US of the UK before the air strikes began, perhaps, Simon, you could begin and tell us what you think this means for UK-US relations, both now and in the medium-to-longer term.
Lord McDonald of Salford: It is not good for UK-US relations in the short term. This is an Administration and a President who like to rely on their own resources. He clearly leads the most powerful country in the world and he enjoys exercising that power. So it is not part of his MO to consult others before acting. I do not think that is wise, but it is his observed behaviour in more than one sphere of policy. This came as a complete surprise. Of course, it is understandable and logical that the British system does not snap to and bomb alongside the United States. That was the correct call but, when our main ally asks to use its facilities on our territory, we could have considered that separately and more sympathetically.
Laurel Rapp: The US did not consult the UK in advance but nor did the US consult other allies and partners publicly, as far as we understand. And there was very limited consultation with Congress, which is a major aspect of domestic concern right now in the United States—the lack of congressional authorisation. In contrast to past US military action, there was no selling to the American people of the set of goals or objectives and bringing the public along in support of this objective.
President Trump is now starting to see what it looks like when you do not consult allies and partners. The US consults them for a couple of reasons. One is a courtesy because we are very close partners, but another is the material request that may be coming either at the beginning of an operation or across its course that the US will need a partner—military bases, military assets, naval assets and aircraft. These are requests that are now coming post facto and are being met with cold shoulders, which is not terribly surprising.
This will be a question moving forward: are there lessons that this particular Administration in the US are learning right now about the value and importance—imperative, in my view—to consult with partners before engaging in such an action? That is not just because of a set of values or courtesies but, in a material sense, can the US marshal the combined military might it needs to accomplish the tasks it sets out?
Professor Sir Lawrence Freedman: One of the difficulties we have at the moment, leaving aside whether we should be consulted before the operation—as has just been noted. nobody was really consulted about this war beforehand, including people who constitutionally should have been—is that the President has been demanding that we help on the Strait of Hormuz, which by far is the most important issue. We should not underestimate the difficulty that this operation has got us all into.
There were two possible responses to what the President said when he made that statement, when he said that, hopefully, the whole list of nations, including China, will help open the strait and escort ships through it. The US navy does not want to escort ships through the strait because it is too dangerous to do so. It would be too embarrassing to have US warships hit by what are most likely to be shore-based projectiles of one sort or another.
The correct response from us would have been to say, “We, too, have an issue with getting the Strait of Hormuz open. It really is important to our economy and the international economy. We’d like to see a plan about how to do that”. That would have been better than just the general European response, which has been to say, “You created this mess; you sort it out”. It is more important to say, “Now we have this situation. How do we get out of it?” There you are going to have to look at diplomacy as well as military means. The military means are potentially limited and getting shorter.
It is not just a question of whether we are talked to or not? It is also a question of what the conversation is about, its content. At the moment, we have a whole series of different conversations going on in the US, between the US and Israel, among the Europeans and among the Gulf states. But it is not clear how joined up all these conversations are.
The Chair: Do you not think that that particular conversation is actually going on quietly as distinct from publicly saying, “Where’s your plan?”
Professor Sir Lawrence Freedman: You would hope so. But that would also mean that the response to Trump’s initial post about this was to say that, of course, we are interested in seeing the Strait of Hormuz open and we look forward to talking to the US navy about its plan, because the US navy does not really have a plan.
Q248 Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon: Just continuing the theme about the relationship with the United States, as someone who also experienced the two variations from Trump 1 and then the Biden Administration, I will put that into context. The US, as we have heard, did not consult with allies or even inform them. Whereas under the previous Administration, when Iran attacked Israel, for example, that was telegraphed to us, which I recall.
But in understanding the state of affairs that we currently have, there has also been a long commentary on the disdain for international law, whatever that is constituted to be in this day and age. Where do you think it leaves the status of international law? United Kingdom for many years has been seen as the guardian of upholding the institutions of international law, including the international courts. Do you believe, and I have a view on this as well, that this is just limited to one Administration, i.e. President Trump’s second Administration, and that normal service will be resumed? Lord McDonald, I am mindful that you said that this is a game-changer and this will see a new precedent being set, so I will come to you first.
Lord McDonald of Salford: This is a watershed, but this particular President has less attachment to international law than any predecessor, and I would go so far as to say less than any imaginable successor. There is a particularly acute problem for the next three years.
International law is quite a slippery thing. In lots of parts of the world, people are very mindful that the countries that crafted international law and international institutions were rather few. It is a British construct or a “co-designed by Britain” construct that we are defending so assiduously. Not everybody is as attached to the current system as we are, but we are a country of law. It explains a lot, if not everything we do on the international stage. The whole Chagos agreement, for example, makes sense only because we are abiding strictly by our interpretation of international law. But with an Administration that, if you like, have gone rogue, this is a very strong signal about the whole system. Even if the problem is for only three years, it is a very big problem for that time.
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon: Laurel, do you think that this will be a game-changer, both in the minds of a new Administration that will come after the next election and the American people? There is a narrative, I am sure, about the perceived lack of support rather than the lack of consultation within US circles there.
Laurel Rapp: This is an indication and a moment which shows that the US approach to international law is inconsistent with how many other countries in the world are pursuing it. It is a break from past practice as well in the US and, I hope, future practice as a lot of the public messages crafted are not seeking to align with the principles of international law or the UN Charter. We have seen some references to that from the US representative to the UN, who said that it is consistent with Article 51, but there is very little evidence to support that claim.
I agree that there are much more fundamental questions about the future of the centrality and salience of international law as we look at what the future of the global order looks like. If this order is not as based on the rules, norms and standards developed over the past 80 years, we are entering a period where the powerful set the rules and the spheres of influence dominate. This is not a future in which these kinds of shared norms will flourish.
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon: Professor Sir Lawrence, you mentioned the Strait of Hormuz. In the context of international law, it is interesting to observe what Lord McDonald said: there is a bust of Sir Winston Churchill with Prime Minister Netanyahu, and one with President Trump, so perhaps we need to reignite the spirit of Churchill through those busts. But that is another question altogether. On the Strait of Hormuz, do you think the US would invoke, for example, Chapter VII in the UN Security Council before it took any more assertive or aggressive action in ensuring that the Strait of Hormuz stays open in the context of international law?
Professor Sir Lawrence Freedman: To be able to do that, it would have to get the Security Council’s agreement and it cannot; Russia and China will not go along with that. If you are going to do it, you would get it done under Article 51 on the right of self-defence, which is a catch-all for most things. The difficulty with international law here is that we have to be careful in assuming that, beforehand, we were and seen to be wholly committed to international law in everything we did, because that is not how it is seen in much of the rest of the world. There is a bit of making it up as we went along, as we arguably did with Kosovo, with Iraq in 2003 and so on. We have to be self-aware in terms of international law. There is always a tension between morality, the legal aspect and the organisation of power in these situations.
It is also worth noting, as you mentioned, that the actual opening statement by Trump nodded in the direction of international law when he referred to an imminent threat, which is the basis for a pre-emptive attack. The difficulty is that he could not find any evidence to support the view that it was imminent, but that was the nod in that direction. I am sure you all recall in 2003 that a lot of effort went into demonstrating the nature of the threat that justified the action.
I think we have to be careful. The important thing with international law is that you need to explain the basis of these conventions and these norms and the mutually beneficial nature. It is not good enough just to say “the rule of law”; we have to say why the rule of law can help and why it may backfire on us if we consistently undermine it. It has not started just with Trump; it has been going on for some time.
The Chair: A fellow member of your Iraq inquiry has the next question.
Q249 Baroness Prashar: Thank you very much, Chair. My question is also about the long-term continuing relationship between the UK and US. We know that President Trump has expressed sharp disdain towards the UK Government’s opposition and our refusal to participate in the offensive action. But to what extent will these spats at the top impact the long-term relationship? Do you think it has done it irreparable damage or do you think that that spat will be forgotten and that the USA and UK will have a different kind of relationship? I will start with you, Lord McDonald.
Lord McDonald of Salford: It will to an extent be forgotten because previous spats have been forgotten. The relationship between the US and UK since the special relationship was invented by Winston Churchill in the 1940s has had quite a few downs. Suez was a particularly low point. The Vietnam War and our failure to support the US was also a low point. It is a relationship that has been characterised by ups and downs.
When I served in Washington in the 1990s, it was not a particularly purple patch because we were worried that Germany was outflanking us and was much more beloved by the Administration than the UK. Part of this is the ebb and flow. The fundamentals of the commercial relationship, and the relationship between people and between academics, are still there and I think will survive the Trump Administration, but the relationship at the top will be challenging for this Prime Minister.
I also note that, in times past, if the US President were tart about his British oppo, it would have been a problem for the UK Prime Minister, but not so much at the moment. The last opinion poll I saw had Mr Trump’s approval rating in the United Kingdom at 13%, so I think our Prime Minister can probably withstand Mr Trump’s ire.
Laurel Rapp: There is the leaders’ relationship and then there is the national interest that undergirds this relationship. At the leader level this week, today and potentially in the next years, there is tension. This is not inconsistent with what we have seen in other leader-level relationships with this particular President. We have seen this most viscerally with Canada and Spain. There is a growing list of leaders who are contending with these dynamics, right now.
But one hopes—and in most instances we see this borne out—that the interweaving of the special relationship here will be a ballast in the people-to-people ties and the strong economic ties. It is no coincidence that the first trade deal that the US inked was with the UK. It is no coincidence that the state visit was such a big piece of the US Administration’s approach in the first year. That came with huge investments in emerging technology and AI. Aside from the areas where there is disappointment or frustration, which we are seeing very acutely this week, there is a lot of very deep military co-operation even on Iran and, in some instances, this week. So you have this deep connectivity that, in my view, can and will endure spats at the top. But this leader-level relationship will make it a little bit difficult. There will be more friction in the months ahead.
Baroness Prashar: Professor Freedman, I wanted to come to you last, because I did not want to show any favouritism.
Professor Sir Lawrence Freedman: The last point made was very important: there is a level of just routine co-operation in the military, nuclear and particularly intelligence fields. It just goes on. In some ways, the UK provides that in a way that nobody else can provide. Also, there are very few people who Trump has not insulted other than, possibly, President Putin. I mean, we are talking about Trump’s personality as much as any deep-seated aspects of the relationship—but he is the President, so we cannot dismiss it.
There is one point I would make that is concerning and that we need to watch out for. Take an issue from the past that you and I know well, from 2003. At the start of the invasion of Iraq, the UK was providing about a quarter of the land forces. Going back to 1988, there was the reflagging operation in the Gulf, when the Americans took over Kuwaiti ships because of Iranian threats then and the UK was providing minesweepers and so on. The UK has not got a lot of capability there at the moment. The aspect that worries me more is that, over time, gradually, we could get stuff there, but the fact that we have been caught out means that it is not always clear what our contribution to this crisis is going to be.
In this case, I am sure that we took the right decision not to get involved in the initial strikes, but the Strait of Hormuz is an issue and I do not think it is going to be solved by naval escorts. The fact is that, if we have that conversation with the Americans, it is not clear how many escorts we have to offer. That sort of thing is likely to undermine our long-term position as much as whether or not the personal relationships at the top are good.
Baroness Prashar: We keep talking about the “special relationship”. Do you think the nature of the relationship is going to change? The word “special” has been a part of the vocabulary for a long time. In the longer term, given the geopolitical shift, is that going to change?
Professor Sir Lawrence Freedman: It is a phrase that is just embedded now. I do not think it will go away.
The Chair: I am sorry. Apparently, Professor Freedman, there is some crackling on the line, which is making it difficult for you to hear.
Professor Sir Lawrence Freedman: There is a lot of crackling.
The Chair: We do not know what the problem is. The technicians are looking at it and we will try to get it sorted out, but we know that you are working through that. Lord Lamont has the next question.
Q250 Lord Lamont of Lerwick: The UK almost always acts in lockstep with the US on significant military operations although, as has been pointed out, there are bumps along the road and sometimes exceptions. How historically significant is the decision not to participate in the operations against Iran in the Gulf and perhaps to strike out in a slightly different direction? How tenable is it to have an independent UK foreign policy, given our military reliance on the United States, particularly with nuclear? Does that not mean that we are bound to them in an irreversible way?
Professor Sir Lawrence Freedman: If you look back, a lot of the problems in the past have been when the UK was being militarily active and the US was being more cautious. Suez is the obvious example, in 1956. You could take the Falklands when, as you may recall, Margaret Thatcher was furious with the Americans for not being ready to take sides initially. You can even go to Bosnia in the early 1990s, when the British and French were involved on the ground and the US did not want to join in. There have been occasions in the other direction: Vietnam is the best known, when Wilson refused to join the US effort.
So it is not new that we have differences on these issues and that should not be a problem in itself. There are underlying political relationships that can be sustained, even while you differ quite strongly on how to deal with particular issues. If this happened constantly over lots of issues, over a succession of Administrations, we would have a different sort of problem, that is for sure.
The advantages to both sides in continuing with the core special relationship—we can still call it that because nobody has a better term—are still very strong. Also, you have to remember that what is going on at the moment is incredibly controversial in the United States. The Administration do not have majority support for this operation at all. One of the reasons that President Trump is getting cross with everybody is that something that he believed was going to be a quick success turned out to be far more difficult than he had been led to expect. So it is not as if we are talking about something where the two peoples have completely divergent views: even within the United States, there are more people sceptical than supportive.
Laurel Rapp: The US and the UK have a very similar assessment of the threat that Iran presents to the world. There is agreement that the nuclear programme is deeply problematic. There is agreement that ballistic missiles are threatening to Iran’s neighbours, including UK and American citizens living in the Gulf. There is agreement that Iranian proxies across the region threaten US, UK and allied interests.
Lord Lamont of Lerwick: But there was a sharp disagreement on tearing up the agreement by the US Administration.
Laurel Rapp: Absolutely right—there is a stark disagreement on how to deal with this challenge, how to deal with the threat. What is the remedy here? There are differences on whether the threat was imminent. I think very few would say that this was an imminent threat, even in the United States. And there is very stark disagreement on what the remedy is and the role that the JCPOA plays. The UK was at the table with the US as the P5+1, negotiating the Iran deal. That was the multilateral path to address this challenge. It did not address the full range of threats—there were processes that were going on elsewhere—but the UK was deeply embedded in the international sanctions regime against Iran and in some joint military operations to manage proxies. We now face a moment where the US has put forward a partial vision of what the remedy is here, but it does not seem to be gaining the purchase or the credibility to say, “This is the way to solve this problem”. The President of the US set out very ambitious goals at the outset—regime change, an Iranian uprising that will topple the regime, a historic generational moment and opportunity—but that is not coming to pass. I think very few would have made the assessment, even internally in the US, that that would be an easy way to address this challenge.
Lord McDonald of Salford: I have two additional points. The first is that in this operation, there is nothing particular about the UK; we are not isolated in our problems and we are not the only country that was not consulted and that is not alongside. So the fact that we are in very good company is relevant. Secondly, on nuclear, this is a proper vulnerability for the United Kingdom, because we require the continuous involvement and goodwill of the United States to keep our deterrent going. Sir Ed Davey has suggested in the last week that we acknowledge that and provide for ourselves that part of our programme which the US has provided. I think he and others need to do a lot of work on how much money that would involve before we go down that path.
The Chair: I think Lord Darroch has a quick supplementary on this issue.
Q251 Lord Darroch of Kew: I am not sure how quick it will be, but I will try to make it quick. Simon, in your compelling opening statement, I think your last point was that it will never go back to what it was. I just wonder whether you and all members of the panel might be prepared just to speculate a bit. Where do you think, in five years’ time or even 10 years’ time, the UK-US relationship will be? What will it look like? Do you think we will have the same level of collaboration on defence and intelligence and security issues? Do you expect the US actually to become, as that notorious national security assessment of theirs says—the National Security Strategy—much more focused on the Asian theatre and the Western Hemisphere, and much less involved in Europe and in the Middle East?
When Trump’s first term finished, Biden arrived and announced, “America is back”. You now have some quite well-placed individuals on the global scene talking about a rupture. Where are we? Do you think this is a big moment or will we look back on it in a few years’ time and think of it as a blip?
Lord McDonald of Salford: The three of us have been strikingly aligned so far but this is where we may diverge because, yes, I think that in five to 10 years the relationship will look profoundly different. One thing about President Trump that really interests me is the things that he says that are new, and at first people are outraged, but then the whole political spectrum kind of has a rethink and thinks, “Oh, he’s got a point”. In Trump 1 there was a lot about China; the warmth towards China was fundamentally re-examined, and quite a lot of the Obama crowd thought, “Yeah, that’s a fair point”, and that relationship is now in a different place.
With Trump 2 but also going back to Trump 1, Europe’s security dependence on the United States is something which we cannot make the case for anymore. We look at the figures and there is quite a lot of sleight of hand, but it is still the case that about 40% of hard defence capabilities within European NATO are American now. I know that the Democrats are as unhappy as this Administration that that remains the case 80 years after the end of the Second World War, and 35 years after the end of the Cold War. So it feels to me as if something there is shifting and it needs to shift, and we, the UK, with our European allies and neighbours, need to rethink. It is a difficult rethink because it is an expensive rethink. As the Chair has reminded us, there is a war on our continent right now, so if the Americans are going to do less in Europe for Europeans, Europeans are going to have to step up, and that will feel fundamentally different.
Laurel Rapp: I moved from Washington to London two months ago, and I have been struck by the project that I am sensing: a project to unwind a lot of relations between Washington and London and other European capitals. On the one hand I understand it, because the way that these dependencies have been built over time, this connective tissue or dependency, is now being weaponised in some ways. But on the other hand—I will speak from a US interests perspective—these ties are enormously beneficial to the United States. The military co-operation we have been discussing, the economic and cultural ties, the people-to-people ties, university exchanges: these are long-standing ties that have materially benefited the United States and the American people. So this project is a distressing one for me in some ways, because this is a way that the US has centred its security, principally around the transatlantic relationship, and we are seeing a departure and indeed a rupture, you could say, in that objective.
A future US Administration may try to recentre that relationship, but it is not just going to be for the future US leader to decide what those relationships look like. You need to sell that vision to other countries. So the UK, Europe and others may say, “A more diversified set of partnerships and a more flexible relationship with Washington that can be turned off and on, where dependencies will not be as weaponised, is in the national interest of this country”. I do not see that as in the interest of the United States in the long term with a future Administration, Republican or Democrat, who will likely see the enduring material value—although maybe not to the degree the US traditionally has—that these partners can provide each other.
Professor Sir Lawrence Freedman: I agree with both of those comments. You have two things. First, what happens in 2028? Who wins the next Presidential election? I think a President Vance would be far more America First and less interventionist. We do not know what the other possibilities are at the moment. Secondly, what is happening in Europe itself, what has happened with Ukraine, and what has happened with Russia? That is essentially the security challenge to which they are trying to respond.
I think it has been the case since the Obama Administration—arguably, you can go back almost to the early days of the Cold War—that the Americans have always been a bit frustrated that the Europeans have not done more for their own defence, and these issues of burden sharing have never quite gone away. I think we have reached the point now, and this came during Trump’s first term—although, as I said, you can trace it back to particular debates under Obama as well—that the Europeans really are in a position to do a lot. It is not a question of abandoning it and doing without the US; clearly we are not going to be able to replace in the UK everything that the Americans do for us on the field; that would be absurdly expensive and not the best use of our resources.
But the idea that the main European countries together cannot cope with Russia, which has a GDP less than each of them, is not tenable over the long term. We should be able to cope. We have already taken over from the Americans the support of Ukraine. But I think that is just baked in. I cannot see us going back to a situation where we allow ourselves to be so dependent on the United States for our own security, without wishing to break all the other relationships. I think a lot depends on what happens with these two: with Ukraine and with Russia.
It is also worth keeping in mind what is going on in the rest of the world. What is happening at the moment is a big challenge to America’s allies in the Gulf. Qatar and the Emirates literally invested a lot in Trump—they are feeling a bit let down at the moment, to say the least—while, in the Indo-Pacific, Japan, South Korea and Australia are all having to make big calculations. At least in Europe we have the advantages of NATO and of pretty close relationships with other major powers in our region, which is not necessarily the case elsewhere.
Q252 Baroness Fraser of Craigmaddie: We have heard a lot about the UK and the US increasingly diverging on how they sense global threats, in particular from Russia and China. The Middle East is nothing new but, fundamentally, we have always had shared values. Take Lord McDonald’s point about the Americans sometimes having a point. Underneath it all, we tend to have shared values and a shared idea of who the good guys are and who the bad guys are.
To what extent do recent operations in Iran demonstrate any sort of comprehensive strategic divergence between the US and the UK? Has the American response to our non-involvement at the beginning differed from its previous response in, say, June 2025? Are we able to assess the potential damage? Is it just money? When we talk about the damage to our defence capabilities in standing up to Trump, is it just money and the nuclear deterrent, or is there something more fundamental?
Laurel Rapp: There is a fundamental question around what the US strategy towards the Middle East is. It is then about mapping that against how the UK sees it.
The US strategy across several years is illustrated in quite plain language in the National Security Strategy. I agree that that sometimes has limited utility in directing any President’s actions, but the viewpoint here from a strategy perspective is that the Middle East will be less important to the US over time. It will be less important because the US is pursuing an energy dominance strategy. Unleashing US domestic production will mean that the US is the swing producer of the world and that it is no longer the Gulf, despite how Iran is playing out. The way in which the US negotiated or managed relations with the Gulf in particular was through a hydrocarbon relationship in exchange for security guarantees. When that comes to be challenged and that founding assumption is gone, there is a reworking of what the US’s role in the Middle East will be. That is according to this US Administration, but I think that it may hold moving forward as well.
What is difficult to untangle here is that the Iran operation is inconsistent with how US strategy has gone to date. If you were simply following the letter of grand strategy, the US would not have chosen to enter into this conflict. When we looked at the bigger threats to the US in the world, the Western Hemisphere and China were mentioned. The National Defence Strategy talked about having limited US resources and having to use them wisely. You can see those resources as you watch carrier groups transit to the Middle East and away from the Western Hemisphere; you are seeing the unfolding of this strategy in real time. This will have, as we saw with Iraq, generational consequences for US involvement in these regions, even if this war does not go on for decades—and I very much hope that it does not and do not expect that it will.
Lord McDonald of Salford: Throughout my career, the UK and the US mostly agreed on the Middle East. I served in Saudi Arabia. Oftentimes, it felt as though we were the junior partner in an agreed approach. We still agree, I think, but we clearly disagree on the methods to pursue our interests: that is now a very sharp disagreement.
I do not think that June 2025 was particularly significant because, fundamentally, it was an Israeli operation that the Americans finished for them. We were never in the frame. What trouble me much more are our disagreements over Russia and China. It feels as though the US has the potential to be much more aggressive towards China than the UK needs to be or should be. That is a possible parting of the ways that lies ahead. On Russia, this US Administration and President are way too accommodating and understanding—even supportive—of the Russian President, more so than the United Kingdom and the rest of Europe.
Baroness Fraser of Craigmaddie: What about assessing the potential damage to our defence of standing up to Trump?
Lord McDonald of Salford: We get about 70% of our defence matériel from the United States. We are highly dependent. This may be a moment to diversify. The French have never been so dependent: right now, the Élysée is happier with that choice than Downing Street is.
Professor Sir Lawrence Freedman: I just think that the entanglement between the UK and the US is very difficult to unravel. It will take years, even decades. It is business: a lot of it is very good business for the United States, and some of it is quite good business for the UK. So, although I agree that the direction of travel should be to diversify, in practice, we have to be realistic. Some time ago, we made a bet on our relationship with the United States, and we are living with that bet now. I do not think that it will necessarily do a lot of damage. As I indicated before, the issue is much more about how much we are prepared to spend and how much we can improve our own internal processes, as Lord Robertson so eloquently demonstrated in his review; those are our main priorities.
Let me say one other thing on the values point. There are two things worth noting about this Administration. First, they are not a human rights Administration. The President does not really care. We saw this with Venezuela. The Venezuelan Opposition were very excited about Maduro being abducted but they soon realised that the Administration were happy to do a deal. With Iran, you may start off with talk of a popular uprising, which was always unrealistic, but it is clear from the way in which Trump has spoken that he was hoping for a split in the regime that would give him somebody with whom to deal and to talk about oil. So we have tended to frame things in one way and the Americans have tended to frame things in another. Biden framed things in terms of democracy, freedom and so on, but that is not this Administration’s approach.
Secondly, there is real divergence between the way in which the Trump Administration approach domestic politics in the United States and liberal democracy in Europe. Again, this is obviously a hot issue in the United States—it is not as if Trump has great support for a lot of what is being done—and it creates a tension in that, if the things that are going on were happening in other countries, we would be expressing disapproval.
This goes back to the earlier point that was made about Vance’s speech, with his accusation that Europe has gone all woke and so on. There is a divide at that level. I do not know whether it will last until the next Administration—I hope not—but it is there at the moment.
The Chair: At least the crackling has not lasted to the end. I understand that you can hear us now.
Professor Sir Lawrence Freedman: I can hear very well now.
The Chair: The technicians are to be thanked for that. Baroness Crawley?
Q253 Baroness Crawley: Thank you very much, everyone; this has been fascinating. How do you think the US actions in Iran will affect the wider geopolitical environment as far as the axis of resistance is concerned? We are talking about Iran, China, Russia and North Korea. Is this a seminal point for strengthening that axis, do you think?
Lord McDonald of Salford: It looks as though you are asking Professor Freedman.
Professor Sir Lawrence Freedman: As I can hear, I will come in. The axis of resistance is used in two different ways. The one that the Iranians talk about most is Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis and so on. I think the assumption before this started was that that had been badly dented by, essentially, the Israeli assaults on Hamas and Hezbollah, both of which eventually had to agree ceasefires—and in Iran, too. What I think we are seeing at the moment is a depth and resourcefulness in elements of that resistance. We have not spoken much about what is going on in Lebanon, which is pretty grim, but the fact that Hezbollah has been able to strike Israel as much as it has is an indication that these sorts of operations, which you think are eliminating vast swathes of capability, still leave a lot. That is an issue that will be relevant in the future—they will claim whatever they claim.
On the wider axis, which is China, Russia, Iran and North Korea, it is there, but Iran does not have much help from anybody. Russia is reported to have provided intelligence information and, obviously, it has helped modify the Shahed drones, because it has been using them against Ukraine, so Iran has feedback on all that, which has helped it, but that is about as far as it has gone. Putin has been pretty careful about what he has said and promised. China is trying to get special favours for itself: one reason why the strait may not be mined is so that Chinese tankers, or Iranian tankers going to China, can get through. China is calling in special favours. So the axis is there, but I do not think it coheres particularly. I do not think they meet as a group and agree on a strategy, but they have a common opposition to the West and the United States, and are, by and large, all quite happy to see splits in the alliance.
Laurel Rapp: I agree very much with Sir Lawrence that this is not a formal alliance in the way we think about alliances in the West, but, beginning with the Ukraine conflict and moving on to Iran, there are some linkages we are seeing, and it is hard to publicly understand what the extent of this co-ordination looks like.
I look at this in two ways. The first is whether, as a result of this Iran operation, the sort of ideology that this group is promoting—this anti-western ideology and narratives about western overreach—has been weakened or strengthened, especially as these countries try to sell their vision, which is not monolithic but made of individual visions, to middle powers in the global South. There is now more evidence to say, “Yes, look at this US and western overreach”. That is one piece.
The second piece is whether, specifically, China and Russia have the means to advance the visions they each have, which are distinct. How have Russia and China fared in the last weeks? From Russia’s vantage point, oil prices are way up and some sanctions have been relaxed, so the mid-term financial trajectory of Russia has been significantly improved. In China’s case, yes, China is a huge importer of oil, but it is also increasingly energy self-reliant and self-sufficient, so the financial toll that it is now facing from Iran is less than one might have imagined. In both these domains, we have advantages in this one camp.[1] This is the longer story of how US and partner military involvement in the Middle East has gone for the last two decades, where you have countries that sat back and watched—China in this case—but were busy, in the meantime, building out development, building regional partnerships and building their military capabilities. I think we will see that here as well, to China’s benefit in the long run.
Lord McDonald of Salford: I have two very quick points. First, I would push it even further than Professor Freedman and Laurel: there is no coherent bloc among this axis of resistance, they are partners of convenience. They are not allies. There is no obligation to come to each other’s defence—and they have not. It is looser. Secondly, although some of the reaction and narrative will be about American overreach, what will have been noted in capitals across the world and in the global South is that the beginning of this operation was phenomenally successful: the Americans took out all 40 leaders in one hour. You know, if you have a problem with Washington, I think that makes you think again. I think the capital that is probably most rattled by what has just happened is Havana.
Professor Sir Lawrence Freedman: Just to note that it was the Israelis who took out the leaders. It was not the Americans: they were concentrating on military targets. Trump complained that the Israelis had taken out too many leaders.
Lord McDonald of Salford: There was no one left to lead.
Professor Sir Lawrence Freedman: Yes, no one was left.
Lord McDonald of Salford: I still repeat that, on the back of what happened in Caracas.
Q254 The Chair: I will post the final question myself. Our report is about US-UK relations. We want to make recommendations to the Government, because the Committee’s role is to do that, not simply to produce a nice think-tank report. Could each of you perhaps give us a couple of recommendations that you think should be in there for what the British Government should now be doing? Laurel, do you want to start off?
Laurel Rapp: Sure. In the Iran context, the key piece is to seek a clear plan. If the UK is going to be involved in military operations, it needs to know what the very discrete objectives are, what the UK role is, and what other allied and partners’ roles will be. Absent that, it is risky to sign on to something over the long run. On the broader piece of diversification, building out partnerships makes sense in this environment, and doing it thoughtfully, responsibly, with risks in mind and with partners that have shared values—this is with Europe; not so far beyond that—but also in a way that is flexible and reversible when you have US Administrations who are more amenable to consultation and joint co-operation in the service of shared interests.
The Chair: I love that thought: flexible but reversible. There is politics for you.
Lord McDonald of Salford: She has been here two months already. Building on what Laurel just said, I will concentrate on security. The Americans will always be our friends and allies, but we are getting the message: we know we have to do more to help ourselves, so we are going to get on with that. Even though, as Professor Friedman says, this will be a very long project, we are going to make a start, and we will start with our European neighbours. We, with our neighbourhood, need to do more about European security.
Professor Sir Lawrence Freedman: We agree that we need to do more with other European countries, and we are doing that. The way that Britain, France and Germany have worked together over the last year has been pretty good, and we need to encourage that. Obviously, we know some of the issues about the UK being able to join in with EU defence programmes have become problematic, but that needs to be overcome from both sides.
With regard to the United States, we have to remember that this is a very complex political system, with lots of different players and strands and so on; that, as I hope is being done anyway with our new ambassador, we need to work with the whole American political system; and that, after November, or at least after January, it is reasonable to expect that Congress will become much more important. We need to be building up our relationships with Congress, with Democrats but also with Republicans who have got disaffected with this Administration. We have to work with the Administration in some way. What has changed—mainly with Greenland—is that we reached a point where we could not actually fudge it, so we had to say, “This cannot be our position. We cannot accept this”. We have to be prepared to do that—forcefully when necessary, constructively if possible. We have to stay true to our own interests and values as we still try to find ways of working with this Administration.
The Chair: Thank you very much. Earlier today, at a breakfast, I heard the present position of the United States described as a “pickle”, which I thought was wonderfully English restraint in describing a serious, massive challenge and dilemma facing the United States and the world today. Anyway, I think you have helped to clarify matters for us today. We are very grateful to you for coming along and giving us the benefit of your wisdom. Thank you so much.
