Tag: Press Release

Thank you, Madam Chair. It is a sobering time to be appointed as the UK Military Advisor to the OSCE. This is an organisation designed to promote stability, peace and democracy in a region of over 1.3 billion people. It is truly tragic that Russia, through its illegal war of aggression in Ukraine, has wilfully violated our shared principles. Russia has attempted to conduct a multi-pronged attack on another sovereign nation, in an operation designed to subjugate Ukraine to Moscow’s will. The intention was that this would be achieved within a few days and yet, over one and half years later, Russia is now fighting a defensive battle in which it has found itself severely wanting.

From Russia’s perspective, the campaign can only be viewed as an abject military failure. Russia has failed in all of its strategic objectives. In the last week alone, the strategic situation in the Black Sea area has significantly changed. A Russian landing ship has been destroyed and a Russian submarine is probably catastrophically damaged, whilst the dry docks in which they were located will be inoperable for many months. But, to be clear, this is a situation of Russia’s own making.

Against any semblance of what the OSCE stands for, Russia has wilfully violated the values, principles and norms that it has committed to, and it has chosen to violate the basic principles of international relations. In an act of extreme desperation, Russia’s answer to the strategic entanglement into which it has voluntarily placed itself is to turn to North Korea, a State that Russia has supported UN sanctions against.

Madam Chair, in this context, what is remarkable is not so much Russia’s military debacle but something that gives cause for hope and optimism: how this situation has been confronted by the people of Ukraine. 13 September marks one year since Russia’s first recorded use of an Iranian-made Shahed drone. Russia is now manufacturing its own one-way attack drones, and these are causing widespread death and destruction. To date, over 2000 such one-way attack drones have been deployed. And yet, the enduring message that continues to emerge from Ukraine is not of a people subjugated, bowing to the will of Russia, but of a resilient people, proud and determined to stand up to this most heinous act of aggression. We hear of a people fighting for the ideals of democracy and the right to self-determination.

For they know the importance of these values. The ideals for which the brave people of Ukraine continue to fight are ideals of hope, they are ideals of peace and democracy, they are the ideals to which all members of this forum are signatories, including Russia. There can be no other option for any rational actor, therefore, but to support Ukraine in its fight against tyranny. Perhaps one day, the Russian leadership will come to realise once again, how far it has drifted from the values it also once espoused.

Until such a time, the UK, along with its international partners, will continue to stand with Ukraine in its efforts to restore Ukrainian sovereignty and demonstrate that aggression will not prevail. Thank you.

Mike thank you very much and thank you for hosting me today and thank you all for coming.

I was about to say I’ve done a bit of research but I don’t think it’s good starting a speech with an outright lie, so I’ll be a bit more honest. Members of my team have done a bit of research and I discover, because they’ve written it down here for me that the origins of the council lie in meetings between Brits and Americans in the aftermath of the First World War. And the conversation between our two countries has been a longstanding one and the work of this institution, the thinking about international relations is unsurprisingly as relevant today as it was back then.

Those meetings occurred in one of those pivot points in history and as someone who I regard not only as an important interlocutor but increasingly someone that I regard as a friend, Tony Blinken reminded us in a speech that he gave last week, we too are living through a pivotal moment because we’re at the nexus of interconnected challenges.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is not necessarily a trial of strength as the work that our two nations did through conflicts in the first and second world war but is absolutely a trial of our resolve – and the point that I have made, and the point that I will make here today and will continue to make is that the world is watching. Our resolve is being tested and we are being observed. You can applaud at any point you fancy.

Now that is not of course the only area where our resolve is being tested.

Our willingness to address issues such as climate change, how to deal with new technologies such as AI, all these things are testing our ingenuity and testing our resolve and today at the UN, this week at the UN we are reminded sadly that we are way behind schedule on the delivery against our Sustainable Development Goals.

And after the economic dislocation of the pandemic and of the war in Ukraine, I think citizens here in the US, certainly in the UK and more widely across the world are asking their governments what are you doing about it, what are you doing to act on our behalf.

Mike you’re a former US Trade Representative, a voice on the international stage and I suspect that you like me and indeed many of you in the room will understand that there is no real boundary between foreign policy and domestic policy and the idea that there is, is completely artificial but I think that it is now incumbent upon us that we pay more attention to the interrelationship between international policy and domestic policy.

Last week, Tony Blinken spoke about having a fully integrated domestic and foreign policy.

And my Prime Minister and the government he leads are also absolutely determined to address the principle concerns of our citizens, which they tell us loud and clear are about addressing illegal migration and economic growth. Those superficially appear to be domestic issues but of course as soon as you look at them in any kind of detail it becomes clear they can only be resolved through international engagement.

So that is why we are intensifying collaboration with the countries on international illegal transit routes, migrant transit routes, as well as the countries from whom people are fleeing.

We are working with international partners to break the business model of those evil people smugglers and we are deepening our economic ties with countries around the world to try and dissuade people from moving to try and remove the drivers of that migration. And I know that migration is an increasingly sensitive political issue here in the US and it is also a sensitive political issue in a number of other countries across Europe and beyond.

What this reminds me of is the need to strengthen our traditional alliances and also to build additional ones. In terms of strengthening our pre-existing alliances I’m very pleased that Prime Minister Sunak and President Biden signed the Atlantic declaration earlier this year, it’s about reinforcing one of our strongest friendships in the world, it forms part of a continuum of close working relationship, it’s the first Atlantic charter signed by Prime Minister Churchill and President Roosevelt, whatever happened to those guys did they make it in the world? I don’t remember, but it is part of a longstanding friendship and it has reminded us once again in a time of conflict in the European continent how important our bilateral relationship is.

Whilst we look at the horrors that are being perpetrated against the Ukrainian people by the Russian armed forces, we are reminded that once again at a time of need, the United States of America and the United Kingdom and others of course, have really stepped forward and are playing a leading part, once again in defending democracy and freedom.

The US is the leading supplier of military aid to Ukraine and I pay tribute to your nation’s generosity. And the Ukrainians are making the most of their support. And I know sometimes there’s frustration with the pace of their counter-offensive, I’ve had military briefings, and whilst I don’t want to bore you with the details, the Russian occupying forces have spent a huge amount of time and effort fortifying the whole of that southern part of Ukraine, meaning that any advance would inevitably need to be both slow and methodical. But the support of the US, the support of the UK the support of other nations around the world, both NATO members and further afield has made a difference.

It gave the Ukrainians a fighting chance at the beginning of this conflict. Those depth strike capabilities, those long range missiles that the UK and others are now providing are enabling the Ukrainians to target logistics hubs, communications hubs, command control hubs giving them the ability to methodically push back against Russia.

Putin believed that he could outlast Ukraine and outlast Ukraine’s friends around the world. He was wrong. Because time is not on Russia’s side. Some brutal statistics.

Russia has suffered many times more fatalities in combat in just over eighteen months than the Soviets did during their 10 years in Afghanistan. That level is unsustainable.

As we saw Prigozhin and the Wagner Group with their attempted mutiny, cracks are appearing, and again I quote Tony Blinken, cracks are appearing in the Russian system and the longer this conflict persists the longer those cracks will work their way through the system. Putin is scared of a mass mobilisation.

His circle of friends both in Russia and internationally is shrinking.

Last year, only four countries defended Russia in a UN General Assembly vote on Ukraine.

And whilst the world’s largest economies met last week in New Delhi, he was finalising his plans in a solitary summit with an impoverished dictator.

That is the damage that Putin’s poor decision making has done to his own country.

And so, the lesson I take from that is that we need to maintain our resolve. Putin’s calculation was that he could outlast us. We have to prove him wrong. And we have to prove him wrong not just to ensure that the conflict in Ukraine has a proper and good resolution where the Ukrainians get their country back, but because every current dictator and would be dictator and future potentate will look at how we respond to this challenge and they will factor that into their calculations about future actions.

So we need to send the message loud and clear that we have the resolve, we have the strategic patience, that we will do the right thing until this is resolved. Because if we do not then we will invite further aggression which we will then inevitably have to deal with at some point in the future.

Ukraine will not give up. The UK will not abandon them. And we will continue to advocate for the international community to lend them their support.

Now, obviously Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is not the only issue that we have to discuss. There are many, many challenges on the world stage.

I’ve recently returned from a trip to Beijing, where I spoke with the Chinese government about areas where we have deep, deep disagreements. For example, their treatment of the Uyghur Muslim minority in Xinjiang, their failure to abide by commitments freely entered into over Hong Kong, their aggressive posture across the Taiwan Strait.

But, of course, I also engage with them on some of the issues that are important to all of us: the economic recovery, post conference, how we make sure that we benefit from AI, and that we address the challenges and potential dangers of that technology. And so we don’t have the luxury of dealing with only one challenge or one situation at a time. We have to look holistically. The United Kingdom has always been a globally focused country. We enjoy good working relationships with the United States, as I’ve already said, and our other friends in the Americas, our European friends and colleagues, but also we have enhanced our focus on the Indo Pacific region, where of course we have long standing friendships and we intend to enhance those.

So to give myself some time to answer your questions, I will summarize by saying that the challenges the world presents us are legion. But we do have the opportunity to make positive progress. We do have the opportunity to get the Sustainable Development Goals back on track.

It is going to mean that we work with our traditional friends and allies, but it also means that we have to give voice to the emerging powers in the world. The UK has encouraged an expansion of the United Nations Security Council for example, we believe that India, Brazil, Germany, Japan should have permanent membership, and Africa really deserves a louder voice on the world stage.

We think there needs to be change, evolution, and modernization of the international financial system so that we can apply the really big bucks held in the private sector to some of the challenges that we need to address. My Prime Minister has recently announced to the G20 a $2 billion commitment from UK to the Green Climate Fund to reinforce the value that we place on the natural world and the future of our children.

So there are plenty of things that we can discuss. I throw myself open to questions from the floor. You can ask me anything you like. There are three caveats. There are some things that I don’t know. You probably find that hard to believe, but nevertheless, it’s true. There are some things that I do know that I’m not going to tell you about. And other than that, I am quite willing to answer questions on any subject that either I’ve covered here that are maybe in your heads