Are Britain and America drifting apart?

Coffee House Shots

The Spectator

News, Politics, Government, Daily News

4.4 • 2.1K Ratings

🗓️ 4 September 2021

⏱️ 14 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In a speech this week, Joe Biden said America will focus more on threats from Russia and China and less on foreign interventions. The US President signalled that his country would return to using 'over the horizon' drone strikes against terrorist targets, and would need to prove it was 'competitive' in combatting emerging threats.

Ben Wallace, the defence secretary, addressed this in an interview with The Spectator last week. He said: 'If America makes the decision that it needs to tilt more, the question for the West, for Europe, for the United Kingdom and for other nations is: are we going to go with them? Do we backfill? Or do we do both?'

So will Britain follow America, or will it instead make more of its bilateral relationships with European countries like France? Cindy Yu speaks to James Forsyth and Katy Balls.

Transcript

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0:20.6	Hello and welcome to the Saturday edition of Coffee House Shots.
0:23.7	I'm Cindy Yu and I'm joined by James Forsyth and Katie Balls.
0:28.1	So on Tuesday night, Joe Biden signaled a shifting American foreign policy.
0:31.9	Here's what you had to say.
0:33.7	The world is changing. We're engaged in a serious competition with China.
0:41.2	We're dealing with the challenges on multiple fronts with Russia.
0:46.0	We're confronted with cyber attacks and nuclear proliferation.
0:51.1	We have to show up America's competitive to meet these new challenges in the competition
0:56.0	for the 21st century.
0:59.2	And we could do both, fight terrorism, and take on new threats that are here now and will continue
1:06.6	to be here in the future.
1:08.8	And there's nothing China or Russia would rather have, would want more in this competition
1:14.6	in the United States to be bogged down another decade in Afghanistan.
1:19.6	Where does this leave the UK with its own defence strategy?
1:22.6	James, tell us first about the American position.
1:25.6	What is it at the moment?
1:31.8	So I thought the Biden speech was interesting for two reasons.
1:35.7	One, he is essentially saying that when it comes to dealing with terrorism,
1:40.2	the US is going back to its pre-9-11 position.
	...

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