US ambassador warns UK over defence cuts
New US ambassador tells Con Coughlin Britain should be a powerful nation
THE new American ambassador to London has questioned whether the Government is spending enough on defence to maintain Britain’s position as a leading world power.
In an exclusive interview with The Daily Telegraph, Robert “Woody” Johnson, who has just taken up his position as Donald Trump’s envoy to the UK, warned that Britain might not be spending enough on defence to fulfil its global role.
At a time when the Government is giving active consideration to making further cuts to the defence budget, Mr Johnson warned that spending the minimum on defence could have a negative impact on Britain’s military capabilities.
The ambassador said: “Whether you have the capability you need to be a powerful nation going forward, I think you are going to have to determine.
“You are spending the minimum [the 2 per cent of GDP target required by Nato], and you will have to decide whether it is enough. We spend at least twice that much and we could still spend more. And we probably should spend more as well.”
The ambassador’s comments follow mounting concern within the Armed Forces over the effect the Government’s defence cuts are having on the nation’s war-fighting capabilities.
Earlier this month The Daily Telegraph disclosed that only one quarter of the Royal Navy’s fleet of warships – or major surface combatants as they are known by the military – were currently operational because of cuts.
As a scion of the family associated with one of America’s most trusted and recognisable brands, Robert Johnson, the newly appointed American ambassador to Britain, knows a thing or two about the importance of keeping the customer satisfied.
The new US representative to the court of St James is a member of the family that founded the Johnson and Johnson global healthcare empire. “We were taught to keep the customer happy,” he says.
And Mr Johnson – or “Woody” as he is known to his friends – believes the EU should apply the same principles to Britain in the Brexit negotiations.
Like Donald Trump, the US president, Mr Johnson, 70, is a successful businessman in his own right, and supports Britain’s withdrawal from the EU.
“I trust the British people to make the right decision and I feel comfortable that you made the right decision,” he said in an exclusive interview with The Daily Telegraph at the ambassador’s official residence at Winfield House, an imposing building in Regent’s Park.
And he argues that, because Britain is one of Europe’s most important trading partners, the EU should take into account the importance of the commercial relationship when reaching a deal on Brexit.
“The UK is a great customer of Europe,” Mr Johnson explained. “It is one of the best customers, and you need to treat your customer right. It is pretty logical once you get over all the emotions.”
And he added that he believed that it was in the EU’S “best interests” to strike the right deal.
“The UK should have the freedom to control movement over its borders. I think it can be worked out. I am pretty optimistic,” he said.
Before leaving for London to take up his new position, Mr Johnson was briefed by President Trump in the Oval Office, who told him that his main objectives during his four-year term in London were “to focus on prosperity and security”.
The ambassador explained that Mr Trump supported Britain’s Brexit decision because “he likes taking control. He doesn’t like being controlled. Nobody does. He likes freedom of movement, freedom of decision-making”.
The US was taking a close interest in the Brexit negotiations, not least because of the scale of American investments in the UK.
Currently the US has $1 trillion invested in Britain, with around 7,000 US companies doing business. And US businesses are still keen to invest in Britain despite Brexit because “there is a lot of good stuff going on”, although Mr Johnson said a new trade deal with the US would have to wait until the outcome of the Brexit talks was known.
Mr Johnson, who runs his own private asset management firm and owns the New York Jets football team, has been a friend of the president since the early Eighties when his daughter attended the same school in New York as Ivanka Trump.
“He is a can-do kind of person,” he said. “If someone says you cannot do something, he shows you can do it. He is a man who gets things done.”
He believes the reason Mr Trump won last year’s presidential contest was because “he is unique at capturing everyone’s imagination”, although Mr Johnson believes the president’s qualities are not better appreciated because “he does not get a fair press” in the US.
“It is a very organised effort by the media to undermine him every step of the way,” he said.
But the president attaches great importance to Washington’s relationship with the UK, which is reflected in the fact that Theresa May was the first visitor to the White House after he became president.
Although a date has still to be set for the president’s planned visit to the UK, Mr Johnson said Mr Trump’s focus was more pragmatic – “Jobs, jobs, jobs – both in the US and the UK. We want to have a healthy economic relationship”.
To that end Mr Johnson said Washington was keen to see the Brexit negotiations concluded because there were so many American companies based in Britain that depended on having a good trade flow with Europe.
“All those people’s jobs depend on these flows as the product is produced. They want to see business continue as harmoniously as possible,” he said.
And the ambassador said he was happy to use his own business contacts to build better trade links between the US and the UK.
“I will do anything I can do to encourage investment,” he said. “We do not want to take people down, we want to bring them up – we need to get people better paying jobs.”
But while the ambassador sees pursuing a “prosperity agenda” as one of his main roles in London, he also believes that security will be a vital issue, particularly following the recent Parsons Green Tube bombing which happened just a couple of weeks after his arrival in London.
And while Washington regards Britain as a key ally in tackling security issues, he questioned whether Britain was spending enough on its defence needs.
He said the country needed to assess “whether you have the capability you need to be a powerful nation going forward”. He said: “You are going to have to determine your spending. You are spending the minimum (the two per cent of GDP target required by Nato), and you have to decide whether it is enough. We spend twice that much and we could still spend more.”
Apart from prosperity and security issues, the new ambassador said he was keen to get to know the country better. As a businessman he has visited the UK “70-80” times, but he has never lived here, and is already planning trips to Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales.
He and his family are also keen to pursue their sporting interests. His two sons, who are aged eight and 11, have already played cricket at Lords and tennis at Wimbledon, and took in their first football match when they saw the recent Arsenal-chelsea derby.
Other American sports owners have shown an interest in buying English clubs but the ambassador said that was not something he will be doing during his tenure in London: “I have to be careful about potential conflicts, that I don’t favour one over the other.”
‘Trump is a can-do kind of person. If someone says you cannot do something, he shows you can do it. He is a man who gets things done’