Sunday, September 26, 2021
Judgement and Prediction: Post-Brexit UK-U.S. Special Relations
ANBOUND
The
United Kingdom Prime Minister Boris Johnson has recently claimed that the tripartite
alliance of the U.S., Australia, and the U.K. (AUKUS) is fundamentally a big
step forward for global security. He likened it as three like-minded allies building
a kind of new technology sharing partnership. Whether this is just a tripartite
relationship concerning military equipment and technology, or if it will
further deepen into a comprehensive cooperative relationship, it still needs to
be observed. However, as Churchill said in his Iron Curtain Speech that the
relationship between the Great Britain and the United States was in a kind of
"special relationship", one can say this is true in the recent
tripartite deal as well.
On
the surface, the strength of the British military is far inferior to that of
the United States. However, ANBOUND’s research report on international armed
forces indicates that the size of the security industry controlled by the
United Kingdom is with hundreds of thousands military personnel, even more than
the strength of the U.S. military. Therefore, the actual military power that UK
can mobilize is often underestimated by the outside world.