The 'special relationship' may not be so special anymore |
The ‘special relationship’ may not be so special anymore
The “special relationship” between the U.S. and the United Kingdom — so named by no less than Sir Winston Churchill himself — may not be special anymore.
I attended last week’s fourth London Defence Conference, called by some the new Munich Security Conference by the Thames. Among the 800 participants were many of the most senior foreign, defense and security officials from the U.K., Europe and Japan.
“Readiness” was the conference’s subject, with the question “Ready for what?” as its sub-theme. The answer: Ready for the recrudescent Russian military threat; ready for Vladimir Putin’s appetite for further aggression against the West after the war in Ukraine is finally resolved — presumably in Moscow’s favor.
About 58,000 U.S. service personnel died in Vietnam. I pointed out that, after the Vietnam War and the withdrawal of U.S. military forces beginning in 1973, it took the U.S. 17 years to recover from that and finally impose a crushing defeat on Saddam Hussein’s army in the Kuwaiti desert in 1991. Could Russia recover as quickly as the U.S. did, when it has suffered over a million casualties, of which a significant number were killed, and much of its equipment was disabled in combat?
Also, why would Putin risk a war with NATO when, in every category except tactical nuclear weapons, the alliance has overwhelming numerical advantages? Three of NATO’s members — the U.S., the U.K. and France — are also nuclear armed.
Overshadowing the........