Oral evidence: The indispensable ally? US, NATO and UK defence relations, HC 387
Tuesday 10 October 2017
Ordered by the House of Commons to be published on 10 October 2017.
Members present: Dr Julian Lewis (Chair); Leo Docherty; Mr Mark Francois; Johnny Mercer; Gavin Robinson; Ruth Smeeth; John Spellar
Questions 1-28
Witnesses
I: Dr Dana Allin, Senior Fellow, International Institute for Strategic Studies; Dr Nicholas Kitchen, Assistant Professorial Research Fellow, LSE
Written evidence from witnesses:
– Dr Tim Oliver and Dr Nicholas Kitchen
Dr Dana Allin and Dr Nicholas Kitchen.
Q1 Chair: Good morning. Welcome to this session, which is a renewal of the inquiry begun by the previous Committee entitled, “The indispensable ally? US, NATO and UK defence relations”. We have two expert witnesses today, and I would be very grateful if you would say a brief word about yourselves, by way of introduction and for the record.
Dr Allin: Thank you very much. Thank you for the invitation to give evidence. My name is Dana Allin. I am the Editor of Survival and Senior Fellow for US Foreign Policy and Transatlantic Relations at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
Dr Kitchen: I am Dr Nicholas Kitchen. Thank you for the invitation. I am Assistant Professorial Research Fellow at the United States Centre at the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Chair: Thank you very much indeed. I would like all witnesses and questioners to speak very clearly. I would add the fact that unfortunately at 12.30 there is going to be an urgent question, which is a procedure that happens in the early part of the day in the Chamber, on a relevant defence topic, which is why we are starting this session a little early. We hope that all of us, both questioners and responders, can be reasonably concise so as to get through our agenda by 12.25, if possible.
Q2 Ruth Smeeth: Good morning and thank you for coming. It has been nine months since Trump’s inauguration. What is your current reading of the US‑UK relationship? It is an easy question to start with.
Dr Allin: It is in abeyance. Early notions are that perhaps his hostility towards the European Union and trading relations in general, and his consequent welcoming of Brexit, would lead to a rejuvenation of the special relationship. There is no evidence that that has come to pass, partly because there is little evidence of any kind of coherence in US foreign policy right now. It is more or less in crisis mode. The crisis is in the Oval Office and the apparatus of US foreign policy, which, as you know, is somewhat depleted by a lack of appointments, but nonetheless to the extent that it is concentrated in some very able advisers at the top level, many with military backgrounds, it seems to be mostly concentrated on maintaining equilibrium and containing outbursts.
It is very hard from that situation on the US side to make a judgment about any significant changes in the UK‑US relationship. They may remain good. The baseline is a good relationship.
In the longer term I would comment that it will be diminished somewhat because Brexit will diminish Britain’s role and importance as a US ally, but that is probably a marginal difference. That is possibly not an adequate answer, but it is everything that I see so far.
Dr Kitchen: I would echo that in that there are not many adequate answers to be given at the moment. We are almost a year in since the transition process began, and we are really no further to understanding how this Administration will operate on the ground strategically or in its foreign policy. It is hamstrung, as Dana mentioned, in terms of its ability to co‑ordinate policy. I have never seen an American Administration this leaky, this capable of delivering simultaneously different policy positions from different parts of Government and not co-ordinating policy.
The hopes of some that the “grown‑ups” around the President would be able to control his outbursts, which is clearly what they spend an enormous amount of their time doing—this is agenda item one in the morning in the White House—and that they would be able to socialise this President into the normal workings of office were manifestly forlorn hopes. He is not going to change and for the UK, which has something of an obsession with the special relationship, remaining so attached to that pathology through the course of this Administration is potentially quite dangerous and has real risks for the UK, given the uncertainty around the person of the individual in the White House.
Q3 Ruth Smeeth: Several of my colleagues will come back to talk in more detail about that point. Given the volatile nature and the instability within the White House in terms of tenure of service of senior advisers, is it strengthening the military-to-military relationships?
Dr Kitchen: There are clearly a lot of people with military experience, whether continuing to serve or now retired, in positions throughout the Administration. They will have military-to-military relationships with UK military personnel and former personnel.
The issue here is that whilst the military relationships with those advisers may be strong and good, they have to deal with an American President. Their interest is not the UK national interest; it is the US national interest. Their UK colleagues’ voices will be one voice in their ear and they are but one voice in the President’s ear. The extent to which he takes advice in a rigorous and systematic fashion and weighs the balance of it is pretty slim. I would be very cautious about getting people’s hopes up for the ability of the UK to influence US policy because we have military-to-military relationships with some people who are now in a position of “advising” the President.
Dr Allin: I agree to the extent that if we are talking about the senior advisers to the President then they have their hands full with what we have just been discussing. It is often stated that a bedrock of US‑UK relations are the very special and almost intimate relations between the military establishments and intelligence communities. These have not been depleted by recent events. They are still there. In relative terms, you could say that they are even more important.
Looking at the broader picture, these are supposed to be, except in extreme conditions, in service of broader diplomatic goals, relations and co‑operation. I am not sure that they can compensate for problems in that realm.
Dr Kitchen: I would add that further down the policy-making spectrum there are a lot of military officers in more junior National Security Council type of positions. One thing that is perhaps of particular concern about some of those is the nature of their particular military experience from, for example, Iraq and how that experience conditions the way in which they think about contemporary policy challenges, particularly Iran, given the role that Iran had within the conflict in Iraq and the positions that some of these individuals then take as a result. I have heard second‑hand about people taking positions vis‑à‑vis Iran that are based entirely on a reaction to their service. In some sense they continue to fight that same war from the civilian policy‑making positions that they now hold. That is certainly something where the UK interests and the kind of positions that these individuals take up are really quite divergent.
Q4 Ruth Smeeth: So there is nothing very cheerful to report.
Dr Kitchen: I am afraid not.
Q5 Chair: On that section of the inquiry, would you be saying to us on the whole that your overall assessment is that no matter how strong the relationship remains between professional advisers and military personnel between our two countries, there is an element of uncertainty imported into the situation because eventually it all comes up against the personality of a rather unpredictable President? Is that what you are telling us?
Dr Allin: For the next three or seven years, that is the situation. Obviously the whole apparatus and establishment of US foreign policy and defence policy is going to rumble on, and to the extent that we do not face any really acute crises I would expect the relationship with the UK to be an important part of that momentum. We are talking about changes since the inauguration of President Trump. There are so many preoccupations in the United States with President Trump’s unpredictability, and there are so any preoccupations in this country with the mechanics and negotiation of leaving the European Union, that that does not leave a lot of bandwidth for major initiatives or major diplomacy.
Dr Kitchen: I would add to that—and I do not disagree with any of what Dana said—that good relationships have never translated into shared interests. Those are different things and we should not expect good relationships to produce American foreign policy that is somehow innately in the UK’s national interest. That is not how it works and it never has been.
Q6 Leo Docherty: When it comes to the security partnership between the United Kingdom and the US, is the UK in any way over‑reliant on the United States?
Dr Kitchen: In what sense do you mean over‑reliant?
Leo Docherty: Let us start with capabilities.
Dr Kitchen: You cannot think about capabilities without thinking about the purpose to which the capabilities are to be put. If you ask whether we are over‑reliant on the United States for procurement, I do not necessarily think so, no. If you ask whether we are over‑reliant on the United States for our nuclear deterrent, that is a different question to whether we are over‑reliant on the United States for refuelling operations.
Q7 Leo Docherty: Let us focus on operational capability.
Dr Kitchen: My question is: to do what? It becomes very difficult to talk about this in the abstract. If the United Kingdom wants to operate in East Asia for whatever reasons it may wish to do so, then it would seem to me that, yes, it is highly reliant on the United States. If it wants to operate in North Africa and the Mediterranean, actually, you may think that the European partnerships are more significant in terms of the operational capability.
Q8 Leo Docherty: Let us reflect on our shared experience in Libya, for example. Were the European powers involved in that over‑reliant on US capabilities in that specific instance?
Dr Kitchen: Both on the American side and the European side, it became rather clear that what the Europeans could do was less than what they had anticipated and less than what the Americans had anticipated they would be able to do. Whether or not that constitutes over‑reliance then becomes a matter of judgment of where the appropriate balance sits.
Dr Allin: If we are speaking about Libya, there was a view in the last Administration that the UK and France were overly dependent on the United States. Another way of looking at it was that the United States had expectations of those two countries and other partners involved in the Libya operation that they did not quite fulfil. You will remember President Obama’s famous Atlantic interview where he said that he expected more follow‑on, in terms of the post‑conflict situation from partners, than the United States saw.
In terms of over‑reliance more generally, maybe we are both tripping on the word “over‑reliant”, in the sense that the United Kingdom is a middle‑rank power that is going to have to be reliant on allies and partners, at least if it has any continued ambition in the world.
We had a test case when the incoming new President suggested that he was somewhere between indifferent and hostile to the NATO alliance. That would have been a moment, if he had carried through on that expressed hostility, when the UK and its European allies would certainly have found themselves over‑reliant on the United States. That, of course, is a long‑term historical situation. It turned out that there was enough momentum and muscle memory in American foreign policy that this has not proven to be the crisis. The credibility of the American commitment and the central scenario remains strong.
Looking from the UK’s perspective, this ought to be a wake‑up call. It is not something that the United Kingdom can take care of itself. It needs to continue to maintain strong military and strategic relations with the United States and also tend to strategic and military relations with its European allies.
Q9 Leo Docherty: To turn that question around, are there any particular capabilities that the UK has that our American partners particularly value? I am thinking of counter‑terrorism intelligence and things like that.
Dr Allin: In the intelligence realm, UK capabilities are significant and complement the US. I have a strong suspicion that there is specific country knowledge residing in both the diplomatic and intelligence services of the UK that is not completely replicated in the United States. In this area, yes, there is considerable help that the United States gets from the UK.
Dr Kitchen: I would advocate that. I would add on your last question that the flipside of what you might be characterising as over‑reliance is that that actually has implications for the United States as well. The more that American allies seek to gain—either operationally or in terms of broad sets of capabilities or strategy—strategic independence from the United States as an ally, the more they give strategic independence to the United States to be able to behave outside of alliance partnerships. It weakens, in some sense, the bonds within those alliance structures.
The depth and strategic breadth of those alliances is significant in ensuring that a President like Trump, who has held this view of NATO for pretty much as long as he has held any view consistently, becomes unable to do anything about it. If the UK was capable of standing on its own two feet strategically, the case that Trump would be able to make—“they do not need this; we do not need this”—is a much stronger one and much more difficult to manage him around for those people seeking to do that.
Chair: Dr Kitchen, you mentioned something about personality contact not necessarily affecting the pursuit of interests. I know, Gavin, you have a particular question that you want to raise in connection to that.
Q10 Gavin Robinson: We have maybe seamlessly weaved together the civilian aspects of aviation and military. I am a constituency representative for Bombardier in Northern Ireland, and obviously as this trade dispute in the civilian field continues there have been very overt references from the Canadian Government about the damage that would do to defence contracts with Boeing, and more subtle references to the potential for that from the UK Government. Could I ask you to reflect on what you believe the consequences of US Administration tariffs are, and the consequential impact that that could have on the United Kingdom and Canada’s relationship with Boeing, a strategic US defence company?
Dr Kitchen: I am not a trade expert, but on this dispute, it gets locked into an American legal civil process that presidents tend to stay out of, and Trump has so far done so. Although this is something that may represent one of these great political wins that he so craves for some of the base positions that he took up during the campaign, I expect that he is likely to stay out of this for the moment.
When one is looking at civil or defence aviation, the big issue is China’s attempt to come into this sector in a big way. I know Bombardier has a tie‑up with China’s main aviation contractor here, and in some sense, much as for your constituents this is a serious issue, the Boeing‑Bombardier dispute here may be a sideshow from the bigger trend that is going on, which is China’s efforts to break into the sector and the challenges that that represents for both Boeing and other major American contractors, and European businesses as well.
Q11 Gavin Robinson: I do not expect you to know. The Committee expects you to talk about the trade implications. More particularly, it is US Administration tariffs and how they impact both on the relationship strategically, for example, engaging in defence contracts, and more particularly—and the Chair referred to it—on the personal relationship, be it as it may, given your comments thus far, at presidential or prime ministerial level.
Dr Allin: I do not have much to add. I do have to stipulate that I am not an expert on defence or aviation industries, or larger trade relationships, for that matter. However, to your specific question, this is an indication. I would not want to over‑interpret it. As my colleague suggested, these disputes often take place at lower levels, but this is an indication that the notion that President Trump’s or the Administration’s “America first” view of international economic relations was somehow going to exempt the United Kingdom, or Canada for that matter, was never realistic. That is about as much as I can suggest.
Q12 John Spellar: Given what you rightly identify as the long‑term issues and threats to Airbus and Boeing, does this not make the actions of Boeing and the US authorities even more extraordinary?
Dr Kitchen: Boeing does this sort of thing quite a lot. I am not qualified to judge the specifics of whether their case is a strong one here or not. There are times when Boeing has had a strong case in the past and times where its cases have been weaker.
The fact that this dispute has become front‑page news—not just something on the business pages—more broadly speaks to the fact that the increased competition from outside of the western core of defence and civil contractors will increasingly turn partnerships against each other within Europe‑US relations, or in this case within NAFTA. That is something that we may have to get used to.
Q13 Chair: We need to move on a little more quickly. I shall come back to the issues of more traditional concern, namely the extent to which the United Kingdom’s habit from time to time of taking divergent views from those of the United States, but nevertheless supportive views, is regarded as a good thing, a nuisance or an irritant. For example, if the UK were to take the view of North Korea that North Korea was susceptible to containment and deterrent, and did not have to be denuded of its nuclear capacity if that involved a war, would that be regarded as the UK injecting some healthy contribution to the debate about what should be done, or would it just be regarded as the UK being a divergent nuisance?
Dr Allin: It depends on who in the United States you are talking about. That position from the UK would be very welcome through much of the US foreign policy establishment more broadly, and even in the White House or State Department where we have seen in recent weeks—for example, from Secretary of State Tillerson—that there is an at least stated ongoing effort to seek diplomatic avenues to end or at least contain this crisis.
I am sorry to keep repeating this, but the difficulty in giving a straight answer to your question from an American point of view is that we are really in terra incognita; we are in unknown territory right now.
Q14 Chair: We are again coming back to the personality of this President.
Dr Allin: We are coming back to the disorganisation and unpredictable nature of the President.
Q15 Chair: We have the point of the President injecting this very large element of unpredictability, but can we put that to one side?
Dr Allin: My answer is that it is difficult to put that to a side given that that is at the centre of the current crisis. In general the UK commitment to a diplomatic, non‑military solution would be welcomed in much of Washington and may be something that would be held on to or waved, in a sense, as an argument against military action.
Q16 Chair: Supposing that were the British point of view, but America nevertheless embarked on military action over North Korea, to what extent would the US expect the United Kingdom to make a tangible military contribution to such an action?
Dr Allin: It would be hard for the United States to realistically expect a tangible military co‑operation if it had not consulted with the UK well in advance.
Q17 Chair: If it had consulted and the UK had said, “We think we, collectively, can deter North Korea just like we deterred Mao Zedong’s China when they got the bomb in 1964. We think that that is doable”, but America nevertheless—probably the President—decided to proceed with military action, would there not be demands made of the UK under those circumstances?
Dr Allin: In such a crisis, yes, there would be a natural tendency on the part of many Americans—and I am not just talking about the President—to expect or at least hope that the United Kingdom would participate. We had a similar situation with regards to the Iraq war with other allies in the United Kingdom and, as you will recall, those relationships were patched up rather quickly afterwards.
Dr Kitchen: There are many undefined variables in this hypothetical. I have a couple of more general comments. First on the influence of the British position within Washington foreign policy debates, yes, it may be a useful point for advocates of a particular position to wave: “The British agree with me”. In no way is that sufficient to win the day, it is certainly not necessary, and the extent to which it makes a significant difference is really an open question. I can think of no major strategic choice that the United States has taken in which the United Kingdom has been seriously influential in determining that choice. I can think of minor issues where the UK has extracted a concession from the US position that it was going to take—for example, the second resolution of the UN over Iraq. However, did that change the policy or the course of events? No, absolutely not.
In terms of North Korea and the question of whether the UK would be expected to make a military contribution in the event of military action on the Korean peninsula, I am not sure what the specific military contribution would be. The United States has allies and its own Pacific Fleet in the region. The idea that it may seek to enlist British military capabilities in such a regional space—
Q18 Chair: It would be symbolic, wouldn’t it?
Dr Kitchen: Yes, but if the UK had argued against the activity in the first place then there would be no sense in making a symbolic contribution. The UK was perfectly happy staying out of Vietnam, for example, which is a closer analogy to what might take place on the Korean peninsula.
Q19 Chair: Finally from me, we have discussed the question of the elephant in the room—or at least the Oval Office—and the problem of so much depending on the personality of Donald Trump and whether he is pursuing some deep strategy, or whether his activities are more capricious. Given that we face that problem, how would each of you advise the UK Government to proceed in dealing with the US Administration? Just one or two hints would help because of our time constraint.
Dr Allin: I would advise the UK Government to be consistent in its adherence to certain principles, values and interests that it had before Donald Trump became President and that it presumably will have afterwards. These include climate change issues, the commitment to the Iran deal, and opposition to Russian meddling in the Baltics, or the Western Balkans for that matter. A degree of consistency from the United Kingdom Government—I am not saying that we have not seen it—would probably be the strongest contribution that Britain could make, and continuing to emphasise—because I think I have heard it emphasised—that, despite the preoccupations of Brexit and some acrimony that enters into Brexit negotiations, the general European consensus on these issues that Britain has shared still exists.
Dr Kitchen: I would echo that. It seems to me that the German position here vis‑à‑vis the Trump Administration is one that strikes me as self‑confident and not necessarily hamstrung by pathologies of a special relationship, which the UK sometimes suffers.
The issue is not just the President. It is, within the Administration, infighting between various different factions and camps as to the direction of US grand strategy. Yes, the Bannons of this world appear to have been marginalised, with the possible exception of Stephen Miller; I think he was responsible for the UN speech and you saw that national sovereignty view come through. Even that being the case—and there will be fluctuations in the approach because of those tensions within the Administration—understand that this is an Administration that will be towards the fringes of the spectrum of American grand strategy, as opposed to an Obama Administration that was more squarely and reasonably in the middle of those, and that presents the UK with risks. Jumping in too fully with this Administration has potential risks associated with it.
Q20 Chair: So caution is your advice.
Dr Kitchen: Yes.
Q21 Mr Francois: Gentlemen, does President Trump’s support for the United Kingdom’s decision to leave the European Union mean a better bilateral relationship than might otherwise have existed?
Dr Allin: Not in the long term, I do not believe. As I indicated initially, I do not see any particular evidence, even in this Administration, that it is improving bilateral relations. President Trump welcomed Brexit; he said so clearly. He has also expressed genuine hostility towards the European Union, which Prime Minister May and other members of your Government have taken pains to say that they do not share.
The long‑term issue, to be frank, is that just as the Obama Administration warned, the exit of the United Kingdom is at least marginally going to increase the importance of Germany and France as strategic partners of the United States in contrast to the United Kingdom. That is a marginal difference. It will not mean the end of very close and important relations between the US and UK, but if there is any effect, that is what it is going to be.
Dr Kitchen: Good will is not the same as the national interests of the United States of America. Trump is avowedly a nationalist. That might mean that he is keen on other projects that look like nationalist projects or that eschew liberal internationalist supranational institution-making. It means that when a nationalist gets into a situation of a negotiation over anything, what does he want out of that? He wants to win. The UK is going to be no different from that, pre‑Brexit or post‑Brexit, apart from the fact that you might say that it is no longer a member of a bloc of 500 million people negotiating against a large United States; it is now a smaller, single entity and therefore presumably easier for the United States to extract concessions from if it is that kind of a disagreement in the negotiation process.
Q22 Mr Francois: Following on from that, what impact does the decision to leave the EU have on the traditional role of the UK as a bridge between Washington and Brussels?
Dr Kitchen: I am not sure that has ever really existed. Particularly over the last half a dozen years the Americans have spoken to the Germans a lot more; if they wanted to ring up Europe then they would ring up the Germans. The UK’s relationship with the European project has long been so ambivalent that efforts to be this bridge have always been temporary at best. What do you need a bridge for? There are telephone lines and things like this. It strikes me as an odd metaphor and one that does not reflect the reality of political interaction between either side.
Dr Allin: I would say that for the first time I find myself in a position of disagreement with my colleague. I agree with him that the notion of the UK as a bridge was sometimes over‑rated, but I can think of specific instances where it existed and was important. For example, I consider the diplomacy that led to the JCPOA with Iran a triumph of trans‑Atlantic, but particularly of European and therefore UK, foreign policy. The moment when the European Union decided that it would not import another drop of Iranian oil was a crucial moment in those negotiations. I am not a student of the detailed diplomacy within the European Union that led to that EU decision, but there is a general view in the United States that Britain was one of our partners in the European Union that was obviously hugely influential towards a goal that was very closely in line with American goals.
Talking about the future and how that bridge may be strengthened or diminished is inherently hypothetical, but looking at the very recent past that is a very concrete example of how the bridge worked. On the face of it, it seems that that role will be diminished when the UK does not have the same voice within the European Union.
Dr Kitchen: I would add that on JCPOA I do not disagree, but that bridge was the person of Catherine Ashton as much as anything else.
Going forward in terms of the future for the bridge, if you wish to use that metaphor, you now have a bridge that leads from Washington to London, but there is no idea of what the extension of the bridge that goes to Brussels or continental Europe looks like. We have plans for a future partnership. I read them this week and they are incredibly vague in terms of where the foundations of the bridge will be, how many lanes it will have and where those specific things will go. At the moment and looking to the future, there does not seem to be a lot there.
Dr Allin: I would add one more point. Whatever the validity of the idea, it is something that was common currency or commonly held in the United States, which was the reason that the Obama Administration so vociferously and strongly—maybe counter‑productively—argued against Brexit.
Q23 Mr Francois: There are a number of initiatives underway in European countries to engender greater co‑operation and integration on defence. What attitude, if any, will the US Administration have towards that?
Dr Kitchen: I do not think that it understands what those are in any deep sense, certainly at the national security policy‑making level as yet, in terms of how we have understood it. I am not a particularly keen observer of how the United States has responded to the common foreign security and defence policy initiatives, but it seems to me—to continue the trans‑Atlantic bridge metaphor—that the United States will become more comfortable with those instruments if the UK is somehow involved with them. To Dana’s point on that, that is almost certainly true. On the question of what the UK’s status with those instruments will be—they are currently intergovernmental and the UK has a veto—it would seem that the UK will be in less of a position to influence them post‑Brexit than it currently is. That would likely be an element of concern for the United States, but I say again that they can talk to the Germans themselves.
Dr Allin: I honestly do not know the answer to this question. If you look back at history, the United States was to some extent ambivalent and in some cases hostile to European defence co‑operation to the extent that it was seen as duplicative and overly complicated in terms of the preferred relationship with NATO. During the elder Bush Administration this was at a great turning point in world history, and there was actually concern of the European Union constituting itself as a rival superpower. Those concerns are not widely held today for obvious reasons.
I am not familiar with any particular Trump Administration deliberations or views on European defence co‑operation separate from NATO.
Q24 Mr Francois: Lastly, it may be too early, but do you know if there has been any US Government reaction to the recently‑published UK position paper on the future partnership in defence and foreign policy between the UK and the US?
Dr Allin: I am not aware of any.
Dr Kitchen: I am not aware of any either. It comes back to the over‑reliance point as well. To the extent that the Europeans are prepared to move in a separate direction—the Italian “Schengen for Defence” proposals suggest something like that, and the French and Germans have proposals as well—the logic, rationale and ability to make the argument for the United States to continue to be committed to European defence becomes more difficult to make. You may find the balance of where that argument sits in Washington, which has always been in favour of a strong commitment to European defence, eroding and shifting somewhat.
Q25 John Spellar: Can we distil that down to looking at it not so much from our point of view but from the point of view of the United States? What would they actually want most? What would be their desired position of the relationship between the UK and European partners, on the basis of the assumption that we have exited the EU?
Dr Allin: There is a difficulty in that when you ask what the American view is you are likely to get my view. I try to avoid that, but you can discount this to a certain extent. This is my view of the American interest.
The American interest, in narrow defence terms, is for a strong UK with an adequate or more than adequate defence budget. As I look at UK politics, or the politics of any allied democracy—the United States is somewhat exceptional in this regard—defence spending is inevitably, unavoidably, a marginal activity. There is a certain amount of space in it that is provided not really by national will but by economic growth. Marginal differences in growth are of considerable importance when we are talking about defence spending.
The first thing would be a relationship with the EU that maintains UK prosperity. Not being an economist, but following these issues fairly closely, that suggests something as close to membership of the single market as possible. I realise that that bridge is maybe burned or crossed, but as close as possible would be not only in the UK interest but in the American interest, in terms of having a strong, prosperous and therefore outward‑looking partner.
The same things would apply to the UK’s strategic and diplomatic relationship with the European Union. In a sense this is even more difficult, but anything that preserves United Kingdom influence, even if the formal seat at the table no longer exists, in a large European construction is in the American interest.
Dr Kitchen: The United States would want any relationship fixed as soon as possible. Uncertainty is not what the United States wants to see in any region of the world with which it is engaged. Europe should, for the United States, be an area which is, “part of the West. We have that. We do not need to worry about it. Anyway, we are interested in Asia as the pre‑eminent strategic challenge of our time”. In this sense, Brexit and the fact that the European Union and United Kingdom will be spending all of their time and energy over a period of years focusing internally on themselves is something that is likely to be an irritant to the United States. The extent that they have to engage with that process that diverts their focus and their resources away from what they think is really important, which is the Asian region, is something that they really do not want to have to do. There would also be some concern about the impact of that uncertainty within Europe on the stability of the European‑Russian strategic arrangement.
However, I echo what Dana said. The United States wants to see parts of the world that are stable and prosperous, and so however the UK and European Union get to something that looks like that, that is what will be favoured.
Q26 Johnny Mercer: Turning to defence spending briefly, quite a lot has gone on in the airwaves recently about this. What do you think of the US Ambassador’s criticisms last week of the level of UK defence spending? Is this part of a strategy? Did those instructions come from Washington, or was this individual speaking a bit too honestly?
Dr Allin: I do not know if it was part of a strategy, but it does not really need to be. As you know, it is a consistent American impulse to criticise the levels of defence spending of European partners in general. In the specific case of the UK, there is a general view among US defence experts that United Kingdom capabilities have slipped. The relationship is obviously affected by the hangover of the Iraq war. Diminished UK public appetite for joining the United States in military operations—you of course saw the Commons vote on Syria—could have been a crisis in UK‑US relations, except for the way it turned out.
This is a common American refrain that was usually directed towards other European partners, notably the Germans, but now more attention has been focused on the UK.
Dr Kitchen: We should not be surprised at this. Gates did this very strongly, in very strong terms when he was Defence Secretary under Obama. If it was an instruction then it is a standing instruction in that sense. It is what all major alliance partners do to their junior partners to prevent them freeriding. We should not expect that to be any different from the norm in this situation.
The focus for me is on capabilities when the UK reacts to that kind of criticism. The United States is saying, “We want our alliance partners to step up. We do not want you to freeride on our security provision”. We seem to have decided that the way to respond is to set up a GDP-based level of defence spending. That seems to me a strategically incoherent way of going about planning for defence, in that you have to work out what your strategic goals are and therefore what means and which capabilities are suited to achieving those goals, and that actually if that came out as 1.8% of GDP but you were able to explain to the Americans what it was that you were actually able to contribute then they would be fine, whereas we are now in a situation where we say, “We will find a way of showing that we are spending 2%, but we still cannot refuel in order to mount an air campaign across the Mediterranean”.
I would therefore be more concerned about the UK’s strategic reaction to this when it does defence reviews than about the refrain from Washington.
Q27 Johnny Mercer: It is interesting. We can all assume, particularly with what is going on at the moment, further reductions in what is available financially in terms of UK defence and so on, and what the US’s reaction to that will be. My question is: does that matter?
Dr Allin: I do not know if there is a game theory construct that explains this. For a long time you had a problem, or maybe an advantage, in Europe that repeated calls for greater burden‑sharing and repeated complaints about the level of European defence spending were something that, from the European point of view, in a sense made people feel bad but was not necessarily a matter of crisis because there was a general and correct recognition that the United States could not afford to leave its European allies in the lurch. The banking analogy is that if somebody owes you $1 million that is his problem; if he owes you $1 billion that is your problem. The United States may have seen Europe as, in some sense, insolvent, but it still had to bail it out.
Having the first President in American post‑war history who seems like he might mean it—that he might leave Europe in the lurch if the Europeans do not pay more for defence or build up more effective defence forces—was something new and a matter of considerable concern. As I said at the outset, this is the one area in President Trump’s early and rather radical pronouncements where the continuity of American foreign policy has shown itself still to be strong. On balance, I would say that the American commitment to the defence of Europe has not been deeply called into question.
On the other hand when you have statements like you have had from candidate and then President Trump, countries are bound to hedge or to think about other arrangements. If that hedging includes greater provisions for one’s own defence then I suppose that that is a good thing, but there are other forms of hedging that could be less constructive for trans‑Atlantic relations and international affairs.
Q28 Chair: To wrap up, if there were to be a sudden diminution in the strength of Britain’s armed forces as a result of the fact that our spending on defence has declined from 5% of GDP in the 1980s to 3% in the mid‑1990s, even after the peace dividend had been taken, to barely 2% now, do you think that the impact in Washington would be significantly to diminish the value of Britain in the eyes of America, or do you think that we perhaps over‑rate the extent to which they watch what we do under a microscope?
Dr Allin: I personally think that the problem is that this diminution of defence capabilities comes at the same time as a lessening of diplomatic capabilities and influence within the European Union, and so that is a diminishment overall. It is hard to see that that would not have some effect on American perceptions of the value of the UK as an ally. From some conservative commentators and defence experts, such as Eliot Cohen in the United States, you already see commentary to this effect.
Dr Kitchen: The United States would be less concerned about spending dropping than about capabilities declining. They are not the same thing. The thing that is probably of more concern is, following the Syria vote, the extent to which the United Kingdom’s political structures are likely to be able to automatically support American positions on significant issues and intervention, and whether the UK’s public opinion—and the sense in which the UK has gone down a more parliamentary route to taking these decisions—will allow politicians in Parliament to provide that support. There is some American responsibility for that as well. The reputation of the United States in the world in the last year has taken an enormous hit, and it was actually in pretty good shape 18 months ago.
Chair: Thank you both very much for sharing your expertise with us today. We look forward to further hearings in this inquiry, but for the time being we will bring this to a conclusion.