British defence secretary Sir Michael Fallon welcomed the remarks of U.S. President Donald Trump Tuesday but in doing so made clear he disagreed with the president’s choice of direction on Afghanistan.
The United Kingdom is regarded as one of the United States’s oldest and most valuable military allies — one of the only NATO nations that to this day continues to spend the minimum agreed amount of national defence, in common with the United States, Poland, Estonia, and Greece.
Yet despite this, the response of the UK government has been muted. Downing Street told Breitbart London they had no comment. Speaking for the Ministry of Defence, Secretary Fallon implied despite Trump’s focus on fighting terrorism rather than nation building Britain would be continuing down that route regardless.
In a statement released after President Trump made a major speech on his changing direction on Afghanistan, the British politician made a show of praising the president’s apparent change of heart, calling “the U.S. commitment very welcome”. Contradicting Trump’s desire to move away from nation building, Fallon alluded to the doctrine of the George W. Bush and Tony Blair years of creating governments abroad.
As President Trump apparently moved towards a conventional, establishment view on Afghanistan, away from his campaign promises of reducing American involvement abroad, Fallon said: “In my call with Secretary Mattis yesterday we agreed that despite the challenges, we have to stay the course in Afghanistan to help build up its fragile democracy and reduce the terrorist threat to the West.”
Yet that is clearly not what the president had said. Speaking Monday evening, President Trump said the Afghan people would have to “take ownership of their future”, and of the United States: “We are not nation-building again, we are killing terrorists.”
Fallon also talked up Britain’s involvement in the Afghanistan theatre, in which the vast majority of British units have withdrawn. Speaking as a leaked plan in Washington to deploy an additional 4,000 soldiers to Afghanistan featured in the news cycle, Fallon made political hay out of the UK’s own component, remarking: “It’s in all our interests that Afghanistan becomes more prosperous and safer: that’s why we announced our own troop increase back in June.”
Yet this diminutive increase amounted to just 85 more troops on top of the 500 already there. The British troops in Afghanistan are presently engaged in training Afghan national forces including police and army.
There are presently around 8,400 American troops in Afghanistan.
Other NATO nations have also weighed in on the Afghanistan plan. The German Federal government, who provide less than 1,000 troops to the Afghanistan stabilisation process said in a statement Tuesday: “The federal government welcomes the willingness of the United States to continue to engage in Afghanistan in the long term. Our common goal is to ensure that there are no terrorist attacks on Afghan soil.”
Follow Oliver Lane on Facebook, Twitter: Follow @Oliver_Lane or e-mail: olane[at]breitbart.com
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