Be bold in Washington Rishi — leave America in no doubt Britain still matters

RISHI SUNAK won’t make many waves on his two- day visit to Washington D.C. this week. Few Americans have ever heard of our Prime Minister, the U.S. political and media classes are already consumed by the 2024 presidential election in their own backyard and the Biden administration has bigger concerns than the Brits — above all, China.

As recently as the weekend, a Chinese battleship overtook a U.S. guided-missile destroyer in the contested Straits of Taiwan, then veered across its bow at a distance of just 150 yards — a dangerously close encounter that underlined China’s aggressive attitude to anybody thinking of getting in the way of it re-taking Taiwan.

Even so, Sunak can make a difference on his trip if he concentrates on what really matters in Anglo-American relations.

So what should be on Sunak’s agenda? Let’s go through it in increasing order of importance.

First, he needs to explain to President Biden why UK Defence Secretary Ben Wallace is easily the best candidate to be the next Secretary-General of Nato. Wallace is up for it. He’s had his fill of British politics and boundary changes mean his constituency disappears come the next election.

And Wallace has his fans in D.C. The U.S. State and Defence departments admire the central role he’s played in Nato’s robust response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, rallying support for a pro-Kyiv international coalition from the start. For the same reasons, he has the backing of much of Eastern Europe and Scandinavia.

Sensible

His problem is that First Lady Jill Biden has decided it’s time for a female head of Nato. Just what it has to do with someone who has a fine record teaching English to disturbed children, but less experience when it comes to defence or geopolitics, is a mystery to most. But the more her husband’s cognitive abilities decline, the more influence she has in the White House. Do not underestimate her power to get her way.

The French and Germans are not keen on Wallace either, for the churlish reason that the UK is no longer in the European Union (which is daft since the current head of Nato is Jens Stoltenberg, a former prime minister of Norway, which also isn’t in the EU).

They don’t really have a candidate of their own but could swing behind Denmark’s Mette Frederiksen just to spite the Brits.

Sensible voices in D.C. will wonder aloud if it’s wise to put the world’s leading military alliance in the hands of the prime minister of a country with under 20,000 military personnel and nowhere near spending the Nato target of 2 per cent of GDP on its military.

They will also argue, at a time when Europe has the worst war on its doorstep in over seven decades, that gender might not be the best qualification for taking the top job.

But Sunak will need all his diplomatic skills to get Wallace over the line. The odds are not great.

Second, Sunak has to strengthen UK-U.S. economic and business ties. They are already immense. We export more goods and services to America than any other nationstate and run a healthy balance of payments surplus. U.S. business has almost $1 trillion (£800 billion) of investments in the UK and British business over $500 billion (£400 billion) invested in America. There is scope for much more.

If this trip has been wellprepared in advance, there should be announcements of new investment to our mutual advantage in digital technology, aerospace, defence equipment, medical technology and drugs and artificial intelligence (AI).

Sunak will propose to Biden a plan to set up a global regulator for AI, based in London. The Americans will be intrigued. The British attitude to regulation is closer to America’s than the ‘prudential’ approach which dominates cautious EU regulation (and explains why so few technological breakthroughs now happen in Europe).

Third, and most important, Sunak will need to devote every minute of his short trip to ‘ selling’ Britain as a political, economic, military and cultural power that still matters big time. This is no small task.

Rallying

Since Britain voted for Brexit the most influential and powerful parts of the American media — all the main papers from the New York Times down, the most important magazines, like The Atlantic, and the main TV and radio networks — have been universally and relentlessly down on Britain.

Taking their cue from our homegrown Financial Times, Guardian and The Economist (all well read by U.S. media, all obsessed with Brexit), U. S. media has denigrated Britain at every opportunity, as clapped out, irrelevant, a joke. The New York Times even managed to report we were reduced to a diet of boiled mutton and vegetables.

So Sunak will have to bang the drum. All is not lost. The leading role the UK played in rallying support for Ukraine and being among the first to send weapons to Kyiv has reminded U.S. decision-makers that Britain is not quite as useless as some of our homegrown media make out.

The recent ‘Aukus’ deal between the UK, U.S. and Australia to supply Canberra with state-of-the-art nuclearpowered submarines has reminded Washington that the UK has a significant role in the Indo- Pacific — as has the recent UK- Japan ‘Hiroshima Accord’, which I wrote about in these pages last month. More of the same would further reassure the Americans we are not a busted flush.

A calm but upbeat assessment of Britain’s business, financial and technological strengths when Sunak addresses the influential roundtable of America’s most important CEOs this week would do no harm and help counter the negative press.

But the U.S. political establishment will especially want to know from Sunak what steps the UK will take to support American efforts to dissuade China from invading Taiwan.

Sunak will discover in Washington that many influential voices across the partisan divide now see this as a real prospect. It would be a global disaster, ushering in a worldwide depression. So the U.S. is rightly seeking the help of close allies to bolster both overt and covert efforts to discourage China from invasion.

Britain has more to offer on this score than any other European power. Not just the Hiroshima and Aukus agreements, but membership of the ‘Five Eyes’, the world’s most important intelligence relationship incorporating the UK, U.S., Canada, Australia and New Zealand, which plays a vital role in monitoring Chinese activities.

Britain may no longer be able to field a war-fighting division (though why that isn’t possible with a £ 50 billion defence budget is unfathomable), but it would impress the Americans if Sunak was to tell them of plans to increase investment in intelligence- gathering, using more people (‘Humint’ in the jargon) and the latest technology (‘Sigint’).

Influential

The Americans know we have the capability — British intelligence gathering in Russia was pivotal in the days leading up to Putin’s invasion. Sunak just needs to show we intend to stay in the game and at the cutting edge.

America has reluctantly accepted that Brexit will not be reversed in the foreseeable future. But it still wants the UK to play a key role in European defence, security and intelligence, since we are the power closest to U.S. thinking and the one it trusts most.

Sunak needs to reassure the administration he’s up for that. The close relationship the U.S. and the UK have jointly forged with Poland, Europe’s rising military power, shows post-Brexit Britain is still an influential force on the continent, both to our own advantage and America’s.

As a very senior U.S. security official recently said: ‘It’s difficult to think of an issue in the world that we’re not closely cooperating [on] with the British.’ There is still all to play for.

So be bold Rishi Sunak. Overcome our natural British reticence to sing our own praises. Take on the U.S. media naysayers. And leave America, from President Biden down, in no doubt that the UK will still matter in the 21st century.