There used to be a comforting fiction at the heart of British foreign policy — that whatever the occasional turbulence, the United States could be relied upon as the ultimate guarantor of our security and the senior partner in a relationship so close as to need no real examination. That fiction has been quietly disintegrating for the best part of a decade. This week, it was demolished.
A leaked Pentagon memorandum, first reported by Reuters, proposed that Washington reassess its long-standing endorsement of British sovereignty over the Falkland Islands as a way of punishing the United Kingdom for declining to join American and Israeli offensive strikes on Iran. That a serious policy option of this kind could circulate inside the American defence establishment — weeks before a state visit by King Charles, no less — tells us rather more about the condition of the Anglo-American relationship than any number of reassuring photocalls at the White House. And it tells us something we would be foolish to continue ignoring.
The islands in question are the ones over which 255 British servicemen, 649 Argentines and three Falkland Islanders died during 74 days of fighting in 1982. For a Pentagon document to entertain, even hypothetically, the idea of withdrawing American recognition of the outcome of that war — as a lever in a dispute over a different conflict, on a different continent, four decades later — is not the behaviour of a friend. It is the behaviour of a patron reminding a client of the terms of the arrangement. Britain should decline the offer.
An alliance that now runs one way
None of this came from nowhere. Donald Trump’s second term has, from the outset, treated allied governments less as partners than as subordinates expected to fall into line. He has called Sir Keir Starmer “no Winston Churchill”. He has described British warships as “toys”. He has insinuated, offensively and falsely, that British troops in Afghanistan “stayed a little off the front lines” — a slur on the memory of the 457 personnel who died there, and one the Prime Minister was right to describe as “insulting and frankly appalling”.
To Sir Keir’s credit, he has not flinched. When the president threatened to rip up trade arrangements or impose tariffs unless Britain dropped its digital services tax, the Prime Minister’s response — that he was “not going to yield” to such tactics — was the correct one. When Mr Trump tried to drag Britain into offensive operations against Iran, Sir Keir cited the mistakes of Iraq and held the line, insisting that his refusal was a duty to judge British interests rather than follow an American script. “That pressure isn’t going to make me waver,” he said. “It’s not going to make me abandon my principles or values — they’re irreducible.” It is a sentiment this column does not often have cause to applaud. On this, he is correct.
The decision of the United Kingdom and the European Union to stay out of the Iran war looks more vindicated with each passing week. The strait remains closed, 20,000 seafarers are stranded in the Gulf, airlines are cancelling tens of thousands of flights, household fuel prices are climbing, and the ceasefire on which American officials continue to insist is honoured mostly in the breach. The case for a second Middle Eastern war of choice, on the old familiar premise that a state might one day acquire weapons of mass destruction, was thin when it was made and has become thinner still. Those who argued at the time that Britain should rush in behind the Americans — notably Nigel Farage and Reform UK, whose appetite for other people’s wars remains reliably undimmed — have been handed a lesson they are unlikely to absorb.
The choice Britain now has to make
The uncomfortable truth is that a country which structures its defence, its intelligence architecture and much of its industrial base around the assumption of American goodwill has very little room to manoeuvre when that goodwill is withdrawn. The Falklands memo is a warning shot, not a policy. But it is a warning shot fired in a particular direction, and we would be negligent not to read it.
The Starmer government’s response, developed quietly over the past several months and now taking shape, is the right one. Its three pillars — a deeper embedding of British defence in a more European NATO, serious investment in sovereign capability, and a diversification of our alliances beyond Washington — are not a rupture with the United States. They are the minimum insurance policy a serious country takes out when its principal ally can no longer be counted upon to behave like one.
The Security and Defence Partnership now in place with Brussels, including bi-annual summits and coordinated foreign policy; Britain’s entry into the EU’s PESCO military mobility project, so that our troops and equipment can move across the continent without depending on American logistics; and the deepening nuclear coordination with France to sketch the outlines of a European-led deterrent — all of this is long overdue. So is the target of 3.5 per cent of GDP for defence by 2035, and the new restrictions designed to stop British firms in AI and quantum technology being hoovered up by foreign buyers. So, too, is the Royal Navy’s quiet decision to concentrate more of its training and posture on the Euro-Atlantic and the Arctic rather than dispersing thin resources across the globe. AUKUS, and our technological ties to Australia and Japan, can and should continue; we are not obliged to pick one pole of the Earth at the expense of the other.
The critics are right that true independence is a matter of decades, not months. The nuclear deterrent, the intelligence-sharing relationships of Five Eyes, the deep integration of our defence industrial base with American primes — these are not things one unwinds in a parliamentary term, and nor, in many cases, should we want to. But the direction of travel matters. A Britain that knows it must, over time, be able to stand on its own feet is a Britain that negotiates from a different position than one that does not.
A sharper, more honest relationship
None of this is anti-American. It is, in the proper sense of the word, realistic. The United States has been, and will remain, one of the most important partners this country possesses. But the relationship has to be conducted with our eyes open. When an American president describes our warships as toys, threatens to tear up trade deals over a tax Parliament has chosen to levy, and entertains suggestions that he might reconsider our territorial integrity because we would not join him in bombing Tehran, the grown-up response is not to pretend none of this is happening. It is to build, calmly, the ability to say no when we have to.
Donald Trump has done British foreign policy an unintentional service. He has stripped the comforting varnish from a relationship that had grown too dependent, too sentimental and too one-sided. He has made it impossible to continue with the pretence that Britain’s interests are automatically served by American leadership. And in doing so, he has clarified what this country now needs to do — invest in itself, deepen its partnerships in Europe, diversify its friendships in Asia, and stop outsourcing its judgment to Washington.
Sir Keir Starmer did not run for office promising any of this. He has been dragged to the right conclusion by events, and by the behaviour of a president who has made the old certainties untenable. That is, in the end, the most backhanded of compliments Mr Trump could pay to British strategic autonomy. He has made the argument for it himself, and he has made it unanswerable.
It is time for Britain to stand on its own feet. The friends we need will meet us there.
