Jan 12, 2020, 3:34 AM
The UK is abandoning its alliance with Trump as the United States 'withdraws from its leadership around the world'
The UK is threatening to tear up its defense alliance with the US after President Donald Trump's Iran crisis triggered a rupture between the two countries.
UK Defense Secretary Ben Wallace told The Sunday Times that the UK was looking to forge stronger alliances with other international partners that shared its priorities.
He said the US under Trump risked withdrawing from its global leadership role.
Wallace told The Sunday Times that the UK was increasingly looking for alternative international allies.
"Over the last year we've had the US pullout from Syria, the statement by Donald Trump on Iraq where he said NATO should take over and do more in the Middle East," Wallace said.
"The assumptions of 2010 that we were always going to be part of a US coalition is really just not where we are going to be."
Wallace said the UK would need to reduce its dependence on US military assets.
"We are very dependent on American air cover and American intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance assets," he said. "We need to diversify our assets."
Wallace told the paper that the UK would increasingly need to turn to other allies that more closely shared the UK's interests.
"Regardless of what the US does ... we are going to have to make decisions that allow us to stand with a range of allies, the Five Eyes [intelligence partnership with the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand] and our European allies where our interests converge," he said.
Wallace also said Trump threatened to tear up the US's intelligence-sharing relationship with the UK.
Wallace also said the Trump administration had threatened to cut off its intelligence-sharing partnership with the UK if Johnson's government pursued its plan to allow the Chinese technology company Huawei a role in building Britain's 5G network.
"They have repeatedly said that. They have been clear about that," he told the paper.
"President Trump, the national security adviser. The defense secretary said it personally to me directly when we met at NATO. It's not a secret. They have been consistent.
Those things will be taken into account when the government collectively decides to make a decision on it."
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