Britain is struggling to accept the end of Atlanticism

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The writer is FT investment editor

Questions are about Britain’s national security, which pass even in the secret corners of Whitehol. Answers can be too painful. Donald Trump’s contempt for European allies throws just such a matter. As far as I can say, no one dared to ask that, so it goes here. What will the government do if the US president decided to turn off his nuclear missiles?

The more you need to lose, the greater the temptation to avoid promising that everything can worsen. The nature of man is facing cold logic here. The more serious the shock it is, the more important it is to think unattractive.

This is the position that Sir Keir Starmer’s government leaves itself by the Trump administration with an application to make bilateral Ukrainian peace with Vladimir Putin. This will see that Russia will expelled, Ukraine has oblivated to refuse the territory and reject NATO security guarantee. Washington’s European allies would have been provided to the borders during the correct transformation of this force of continental security architecture.

Trump’s message – NATO and American security guarantee, which has been in peace since 1945, is painful for all Europeans, no less than former communist countries. The unique vulnerability of Britain is more than half a century in uncontrollable atlenism. Dependence is thrown into unknown freedom to leave the EU.

Since Suez’s debut, the last trumpet of the empire, Britain’s security rested with Washington’s “special relations”. The Armed Forces are configured by the Americans to fight the war, and the intelligence services of the two peoples are intertwined. It remains nuclear energy only because the United States supplies dental missiles to carry atomic wars. When the ministers talk about a rooted defense strategy in NATO, they mean the United States.

So no one should surprise that the styster, who goes to the White House next week, is to make a brave face a bold one-sided. It is entirely at the British EMOLLELIENCE tradition to Washington. There is nothing new, which is in a suggestion that Streping Street, Starmer could act as a “bridge” between Trump and other European leaders. Metaphor is painful. When Tony Blair threw his Lot with George Bush, he found that the bridges turned around.

But then Blair once told me that it saw that as the “duty” of British prime ministers to participate in the occupation of the White House. The choice for the stage seems to be able to form the alliance somehow somehow and admit that Britain needs a completely new foreign policy. So far, there is nothing else, officials say in special relations at once.

As for nuclear restraint, it has never been really independent. That’s why the generations of British politicians claim that they are always about. When John F Kennedy agreed in 1962 The submarine-operated missiles will be appointed NATO. As for independence, the best MacMillan could agree that Britain could return them to extreme emergencies.

The same goes for the updated Trident, on which the government intends to spend tens of billions of pounds to keep the restraining operational a few decades. The Prime Minister may have the idea of ​​”clicking the button.” But only Americans can keep the system operational. The UK is building warheads, but damages missiles from US reserves. So if the US president does not have the key to “turn off”, he can take effect.

All this remained completely hypothetically hypothetically, of course, as long as the restraining remedy was part of the common commitment to NATO as an anchor of Western security. And to be clear, I have not heard any hints that Trump will discuss transaction transformation. But the world has changed. Nothing can be considered the president who chooses Putin as an ally and wants to include Canada as the 51st country, Greenland captivated and seized the Panama canal from Denmark.

Trident has been a symbol of the “feature” of the relationship. But it sits on the pillar of the establishment of the NATO Alliance, which is cracked. Someone should ask the awkward question. And when formulating the answer, they must start with geography. European and British security is inseparable. They have always been.