we know it s been pretty clear that this was not a decision that the british particularly wanted to take at this moment. what does this and what s happening in afghanistan tell us about britain s influence in washington, its military capability and its ability to adopt a leadership role, do you think? well, it s not at all surprising that the foreign policies of the uk and us should be diverging, because they re the principal members of nato, and nato has been in an existential crisis ever since the cold war ended. it was devised, if we all remember, as an adversary to the soviet bloc and the communisty bloc, and when communism collapsed and there was no more soviet union to oppose, the obvious question is what is nato for? and within ten years of communism collapsing, we had 9/11 and the rise of islamist terrorism, and so nato became, basically, a counterterrorism outfit, and that was its impetus, that was its raison d etre.
capability and its ability to adopt a leadership role, do you think? well, it s not at all surprising that the foreign policies of the uk and us should be diverging, because they re the principal members of nato, and nato has been in an existential crisis ever since the cold war ended. it was devised, if we all remember, as an adversary to the soviet bloc and the communisty bloc, and when communism collapsed and there was no more soviet union to oppose, and within ten years of communism collapsing, we had 9/11 and the rise of islamist terrorism, and so nato became, basically, a counterterrorism outfit, and that was its impetus, that was its raison d etre. so that s why biden can say the reason that we were able to pull out of afghanistan, that we wanted to pull out of afghanistan, was that we felt we had
janet, let s begin with what this means, if we can, a little bit, for the uk. borisjohnson has been trying to develop an independent foreign policy. we know it s been pretty clear that this was not a decision that the british particularly wanted to take at this moment. what does this and what s happening in afghanistan tell us about britain s influence in washington, its military capability and its ability to adopt a leadership role, do you think? well, it s not at all surprising that the foreign policies of the uk and us should be diverging, because they re the principal members of nato, and nato has been in an existential crisis ever since the cold war ended. it was devised, if we all remember, as an adversary to the soviet bloc and the communisty bloc, and when communism collapsed and there was no more soviet union to oppose, the obvious question is what is nato for? and within ten years of communism collapsing, we had 9/11 and the rise of islamist terrorism, and so nato became, bas
borisjohnson has been trying to develop an independent foreign policy. we know it s been pretty clear that this was not a decision that the british particularly wanted to take at this moment. what does this and what s happening in afghanistan tell us about britain s influence in washington, its military capability and its ability to adopt a leadership role, do you think? well, it s not at all surprising that the foreign policies of the uk and us should be diverging, because they re the principal members of nato, and nato has been in an existential crisis ever since the cold war ended. it was devised, if we all remember, as an adversary to the soviet bloc and the communisty bloc, and when communism collapsed and there was no more soviet union to oppose, the obvious question is what is nato for? and within ten years of communism collapsing, we had 9/11 and the rise of islamist terrorism, and so nato became, basically, a counterterrorism outfit, and that was its impetus, that was its rais
collapsed, there was no morris soviet union to oppose. the obvious question is what is nato for? and within ten years of communism collapsing, we had 9/11, and the rise of islamist terrorism and so nato became basically a counterterrorism outfit, and that was its mantra. so that s why biden can say the reason that we are able to pull out of afghanistan that we wanted to pull out of afghanistan was that we felt they resolve the terrorism problem in afghanistan. they killed bin laden, they got rid of al-qaeda in afghanistan, so that has got nothing to do with the original conception of nato, which was to act not only as a military adversary, but as an ideological adversary, but as an ideological adversary to the soviet union. by now we seem to be in his peculiar vacuum where there is an entirely