FROM EIR DAILY ALERT
Foreign Secretary Is the Latest Brit To Cross the Atlantic To Beef Up ‘Special Relationship’
Aug. 21, 2018 (EIRNS)—Two weeks ago it was Her Majesty’s Defense Secretary Gavin Williamson who came to Washington to deliver orders and threats. Now it is the turn of her Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt, who was offered today a pulpit at the misnamed U.S. Institute of Peace to rail against Russia and demand the United States live up to Teddy Roosevelt’s policy and stick firmly to the odious U.S. special relationship with the Queen. The two talked tough, but these two are quite unimpressive twits.
At the USIP, Hunt singled out Russia as the number-one challenge to “the established rules of international conduct,” reciting the British Empire litany of Russia’s “aggressive and malign behavior” as seen with the unproven alleged Skripal poisoning and alleged Syrian chemical weapons stashes, equally unproven.
“And today the United Kingdom asks its allies to go further by calling on the European Union to ensure its sanctions against Russia are comprehensive, and that we truly stand shoulder to shoulder with the U.S. That means calling out and responding to transgressions with one voice wherever and whenever they occur, from the streets of Salisbury to the heart of Crimea,”
he intoned.
The second “challenge” to the old order singled out by the Foreign and Colonial Office’s Hunt in his otherwise underwhelming speech, was “the changing East-West balance of power.” By that he meant the development of China and India, which together “by 2050 ... are projected to account for a greater share of global GDP than the G7.”
Russian Foreign Secretary Sergey Lavrov took due note of who was delivering ultimatums to whom. “Our British counterparts have pretty high self-esteem,” Lavrov commented today on Hunt’s remarks, TASS reported.
“The country, which is leaving the EU as part of Brexit, is trying to dictate foreign policy to the EU, and now it turns out that London wants to dictate foreign policy with regard to Russia to Washington as well.”
It appears Hunt will be hanging around the United States for a few days. He reported in his speech that he will be meeting with Henry Kissinger in New York “in a couple of days.” No meeting with the U.S. President has been mooted, but Vice President Mike Pence was ever-ready to invite him in. The Foreign Office and the State Department issued very similar tweets today after Hunt had a
“really positive first meeting with VP Mike Pence discussing the strength of U.S.:U.K. alliance, and the international relationships which protect the values our two countries share.”
