Report of a Harkness Talk on ‘The UK – US Defence Relationship’ which took place on March 12th 2026
The Rt Hon Sir Michael Fallon KCB gave a talk to the Harkness Fellows Association on the subject of ‘The UK – US Defence Relationship’.
He began by stepping back from the current rather fraught situation to set the UK – US Special Relationship in its historic context. He regards the Defence Relationship to be its key element. Sir Michael noted that this year the US celebrates 250 years since its seccession from the UK.
He went on to say that from a British perspective, the succession gave us an ally of immense strength and vibrancy and generosity. One that has led the free world for almost a century, has defended our freedoms and our civilised values – i.e. freedom of expression, the rule of law, and the priceless right to vote out a bad government – and has made huge sacrifices of blood and treasure in doing so. Sir Michael expressed his profound admiration for the USA.
But is the Relationship still as Special as we British portray it, or have we become less important to Washington?
He began by reviewing the Economic aspects of the Relationship, which he portrayed as being as close as ever. In support of this conclusion, he cited the huge flows of trade and capital across the Atlantic, facilitated by both countries having open, free enterprise economies, a common language and similar laws of contract and competition.
UK businesses currently hold some 700 or 800 billion of US assets and the capital flows help finance our private and our public economies. US institutions help to finance our enormous UK public borrowing requirement; they currently hold some 5-7% of UK public sector bonds (Gilts).
Turning back to the Defence Relationship which he regards as being at the heart of the Special Relationship, he noted that our diminished role as a colonial power coincided with the emergence of the US as a superpower. We accepted, with as much grace as we could muster, the role of being America’s principal junior partner.
Sir Michael pointed out that we fought both world wars together and that since then our alliance has flourished. British and American forces have served side by side in almost every conflict since 1945, excepting Vietnam and the Falklands.
The breadth, range, and the depth of UK-US Defence Relationship is unique. Our militaries are deeply embedded, each in one another, in each of the five defence domains at every level (Land, Maritime (Sea), Air, Space, and Cyber).
We also have special agreements that are much envied elsewhere in Europe – sharing intelligence, cooperation between our security agencies. The two of us share membership of the big groupings, Five Eyes, the P5 at the United Nations, the G7. In addition, we both operate the Trident Nuclear Deterrent though under independent control.
Sir Michael observed that the Special Relationship does not hang or depend on the personal relationship between the President and the Prime Minister of the day, although if they are mutually aligned and with a firm and respectful relationship between them, that works well in the most testing of times.
The relationship has also survived some difficult periods. as well as periods when the personal relationship between the two leaders deteriorated.
So although we would wish the performance of the current President or his personal idiosyncrasies to be other than they are, we need to be careful about not overdoing what J.D. Vance has called “pearl-clutching.” There have previously been presidents who have been accused misdemeanours and British Prime Ministers who were not always paragons of virtue .
So clearly the Special Relationship has always been, and is still today, bigger than its principal interlocutors.
Sir Michael went on to say that the better question might be “Is the relationship weakening anyway?” He suggested there are at least four pressures on it:
Firstly, the growing imbalance in the military relationship with Britain and other European countries not spending as much on defence as the USA. These concerns are not new. They go right back to the 1990s. It was Obama who came to the NATO summit in Wales in 2014 and championed spending 2% of GDP on defence. Britain finally adopted the 2% target in 2016.
Sir Michael noted that even then there were concerns about the power and punch of British forces., There is respect for our nuclear deterrent, for our Special Forces, and for our new carriers. But successive US Defence Secretaries have bluntly questioned the UK’s capacity to field one, let alone two army divisions as well as to maintain a true blue-water navy and to purchase as many of the 138 F-35s that we signed up for.
Secondly, the increasing trend towards isolationism in the States. For example, MAGA condemning forever wars and the Under Secretary of War for Policy placing a greater emphasis on homeland defence.
Again, none of this is new. There has always been some healthy scepticism in the United States about getting involved in other people’s wars. For example, the debate about whether America should enter the First World War.
But this isolationism is also fuelled by other forces: economic grievances magnified by globalization, cultural change driving identity issues of gender and race, and the demographic pressures of large-scale immigration.
Thirdly, there is a pressure on the Special Relationship from the growing lack of confidence in its purpose. This arises from the failure of Western leadership to secure democracies in the Middle East and the Far East.
Freedom House’s recent annual survey of democracy shows only some 20% of the world’s population now lives in completely free democracies and this percentage has halved over the last 20 years.
Finally, there is the rise of China and America’s increasing preoccupation with it. Here the US is confronted with a challenge that is not just economic, but military. And they don’t really know how to handle a superpower that they’ve never really seen before.
China is outpacing America’s naval strength, centrally controlling the critical minerals that are needed for modern technology and threatening America’s technological supremacy. And they are doing so inside America’s hemisphere.
The United States security strategy now places Europe third in its areas of importance around the world. So there is pressure from the American establishment to move military assets back to the homeland, and to do more to rebuild the American defence industrial base.
So to sum up, what should we be doing about all this?
Clearly, the special relationship has declined since the heady days of Roosevelt and Churchill, or Macmillan and Kennedy, or Reagan and Thatcher.
We on this side of the Atlantic have to do a great deal more to make ourselves more relevant again to the United States. We can’t change American policy or the outlook of this administration.
First and obviously, we need to rebuild our military. Unless we strengthen our armed forces again, we cannot be a reliable partner.
At the beginning of this century in 1999, the Blair government was spending 2.7% of GDP on defence. UK spending at the moment is 2.3% of GDP with a target to go to 2.5% and an ambition to get to 3% by the end of the next Parliament. Clearly we have to recommit to increased defence spending.
Second, we should be leading European NATO. When Sir Michael was in office, we were the second biggest spender in NATO. Today we rank 12th out of 32 – behind the Baltic states, behind the Nordics and only just ahead of Romania in the percentage of our GDP that we spend on defence.
So Britain needs to step up.
Britain has done well in supporting Ukraine, but we’ve only done enough to stop Ukraine losing, not enough to help them to force Russia’s forces out. European countries should be supplying more weapons and tightening sanctions.
And there is much more that Europe could be doing to deal with Russia on our continent – in London, we should be making much more difficult for Putin and his cronies to operate here.
Thirdly, we have to work with our European partners in reducing our dependencies on the United States. We may still buy American defence equipment, but we can’t keep depending on the United States for things like heavy lift, air-to-air refuelling, and surveillance aircraft. We have to start doing these things ourselves. We have to have proper missile defence.
We can only do these large-scale programmes in cooperation with European partners and we need to step up to do these irrespective of views on Brexit and Europe to make sure that we don’t have to go back and ask America for help.
We did Typhoon with Germany and Italy. We are developing our new Tempest GCAP aircraft with Italy. We have a missile deal with Poland. We have a Type 26 frigate in common now with Norway and Canada.
Fourth and finally, perhaps the most difficult thing of all is that we have to persuade America all over again that there aren’t really 3 or 4 different theatres of conflict around the World, but that we are all now enveloped in a single conflict.
In Ukraine there are Iranian drones, North Korean troops and Chinese weapons. Hamas leaders have been feted in Moscow – way beyond the Gulf. We’ve seen cyberattacks in both our countries on commerce and infrastructure, interference in our elections and democratic processes.
We are now facing a common alliance against the West, against our shared values, and increasingly we need to work together if the Special Relationship is to flourish.
Sir Michael then summed up
This Special Relationship between Britain and the United States is, when you look back at it, an extraordinary relationship. It has transcended history and seniority. It has survived very different presidents and very different prime ministers, and it’s done that because it is based on enduring common values and a system of trust.
And it will only survive if we recommit to those values and the basis of trust between us as friends.
There followed a Question and Answer session. Fellows raised a number of points for discussion.
Topics included the use of offensive cyber security, the role of asymmetrical warfare, and the importance of trust in our allies. Concerns about the current US President’s approach and relationships with allies were raised, and Sir Michael reminded the audience that the US president is not all-powerful. He’s always been subject to the courts, and he’s not won every court battle. He is also subject to elections. However, we cannot just sit by and wait for things to go back to how they were. The UK must focus both on the world, and the Special Relationship, as they are now. In his presentation, Sir Michael had set out the various steps that he thinks are needed.
Concern was expressed about the unprecedented manner of promotions and the removal of key talent within the military in the US which must be worrying for all of America’s allies. Sir Michael was confident that the British military would make the best of it but noted that had things been operating in this particular way, i.e. under the Pete Hegseth doctrines, our time in Iraq and Afghanistan might have been much more difficult.
However, we need to keep improving Europe’s contribution and we need to support the one theatre approach to world security and convince Trump of its validity.
There is much discussion in Europe about ways to enhance defence and some European countries are supporting what’s called dual use, so that their planes can carry a deterrent.
The cost of enhancing the UK’s military capacity and whether the public would support increased spending was also considered, with a lower appetite here than in countries on the Eastern frontier of Europe. Sir Michael commented that other societal targets cannot be met unless your borders are safe; look at Ukraine.
End of Q&A Session
Sir Michael was thanked on behalf of all the members present for a very engaging talk, for the comprehensive coverage of the subject, and for the historical context which helped the audience take a balanced perspective and remain hopeful about the future of the special relationship.
Speaker Biography
Sir Michael Fallon is a former UK Secretary of State for Defence and Minister for Energy. In a thirty-one year political career he served in the governments of Margaret Thatcher, John Major, David Cameron and Theresa May. Sir Michael was Defence Secretary when Russia invaded Crimea in 2014 and sent British troops to train the Ukrainian army. He led the UK’s role in the international Coalition against the Daesh in Iraq and Syria from 2014 to 2017. He was responsible for the UK’s Strategic Defence Review in 2015, and championed the NATO Alliance, working with three successive US Defence Secretaries. Sir Michael continues to write and broadcast on defence and security issues and is a frequent speaker at security conferences in the UK and Europe. He is a member of the advisory boards at the Council for Geostrategy and the Centre for Policy Studies. Sir Michael retired from Parliament in 2019. He chairs the aerospace and defence fund at BlueFive Capital and is also chairman of Aberdeen Investcorp Infrastructure Partners and a director of other companies.
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