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What British PM Sunak’s first foreign policy speech made clear
The British leader, who came to power last month, promises ‘robust pragmatism’ in his first foreign policy speech.
UK’s Prime Minister Rishi Sunak came into office last month with the expectation he would initiate a phase of new, stable conditions for his party and the entire country. He must prepare a post-Brexit Britain, as the war on the European continent continues, for the new geopolitical challenges it faces.
On Monday evening, he gave his first foreign policy speech that was significant for two reasons in particular.
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First, Sunak has had no de facto foreign policy profile. Although he has made it clear that he stands by European responsibility and for the defence of liberal values, he did so without outlining a coherent and precise vision for his foreign policy.
“The assumption was that he was close to [former Prime Minister Boris] Johnson on foreign policy, so supportive of Ukraine after Russia’s invasion of their nation, supportive of the US-UK special relationship, cautious over China’s influence on the UK,” Victoria Honeyman, an associate professor of British politics at the University of Leeds, told Al Jazeera.
“Beyond that, it’s hard to know. Although obviously, there has been discussion about whether Sunak’s ethnicity and the fact that his wife has family and business interests in India might lead to better relations with India.”
Second, unlike his immediate predecessors Johnson and Liz Truss, who were foreign ministers before becoming prime ministers, Sunak has no direct experience outside of financial markets on the international stage of geopolitics. However, the lack of experience could also be an advantage.
“[Being an unknown quantity in terms of foreign policy views] meant he was likely to be less ideological and more pragmatic. Given his background as chancellor of the Exchequer and in financial services before entering politics, we can probably also expect him to emphasise economic over security or political factors more,” James Strong, a senior lecturer in British politics and foreign policy at the Queen Mary University of London, told Al Jazeera.
Therefore, his speech on British foreign policy and the role he sees Britain playing were eagerly awaited.
Liberal values
Sunak’s speech made it clear that liberal values would play a significant role and that he did indeed seek to broaden Britain’s influence in the immediate future.
“Freedom and openness have always been the strongest forces of progress,” said Sunak’s keynote speech at the annual Lord Mayor’s Banquet in London. This, however, Sunak continued, was “never achieved by standing still”.
Britain must “do more to defend its values of freedom and openness on the world stage,” Sunak added.
Robust pragmatism” is the term Sunak used to describe his foreign policy vision for Britain, which he had already displayed during his visit to Kyiv and Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy last week.
The visit underscored Britain’s continued commitment to Ukraine despite the change in leadership. After all, while Britain has been at the forefront of the Western response to Russian aggression, questions about whether Sunak could maintain the defence spending commitment were raised.
But in his speech, Sunak made clear that Britain would stand by Ukraine “as long as it is necessary”.
He committed that military aid should at least be maintained next year and possibly even increased.
In addition, Sunak announced that he would provide new support to Ukraine’s air defences to protect the Ukrainian people and the critical infrastructure.
Moreover, Sunak said that the UK must “end global dependence on authoritarian regimes – starting with Russian gas”.
However, the main question was what Sunak’s position would be on China.
In contrast to the Ukraine issue, he had provided contradictory signals in the past few weeks about how he wanted to shape relations with China in the future.
Britain’s relations with China have significantly deteriorated since UK’s former Prime Minister David Cameron and China’s President Xi Jinping famously shared a pint of beer in a pub in 2016.
“The UK has, over the last five years, tended to treat China with more caution than it had previously. This was driven by concerns over spying accusations, the approach of the US to China and concerns over investment in infrastructure projects,” Honeyman said.
The powerhouse typhoon is the equivalent of a very strong Category 4 hurricane as it approaches the northernmost island of the Philippines before turning to the north, continuing its damaging path.
Violent Typhoon Mawar, which pounded Guam with destructive winds and flooding downpours earlier this week, is continuing to churn west across the Pacific Ocean and will impact more landmasses in the western Pacific and eastern Asia next week, according to AccuWeather forecasters.
Despite already achieving the status of strongest tropical cyclone on the planet so far this year, Mawar may strengthen further and then aim for portions of the Philippines, Japan and Taiwan beginning Sunday, with more flooding rainfall and strong winds expected.
Super Typhoon Mawar is seen on AccuWeather Enhanced RealVue™ satellite May 27, 2023.
As of Saturday afternoon, local time, Mawar was a powerful typhoon centered several hundred miles to the west-northwest of Guam, packing winds equivalent to that of a strong Category 4 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson hurricane wind scale (maximum sustained winds of 130-156 mph, or 209-251 km/h).
According to the Japanese Meteorological Agency (JMA), the governing body which monitors and tracks tropical cyclones in this portion of the western Pacific tropical basin, the ‘violent’ designation is given to typhoons with maximum sustained winds of at least 121 mph (194 km/h).
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“Mawar is forecast to maintain intensity, or even strengthen slightly, as it continues to track westward across the Philippine Sea into this weekend,” said AccuWeather Lead International Forecaster Jason Nicholls.
The Philippine Sea is a marginal sea located within the western Pacific Ocean, bounded by the Philippines to the west and the Mariana Trench to the east.
The AccuWeather EyePath® forecast calls for Mawar to peak at the equivalent of a Category 5 hurricane (maximum sustained winds of at least 157 mph, or 252 km/h). After that, the storm will maintain or lose some wind intensity as it begins to impact land again.
“The typhoon is expected to bring heavy rain and strong winds to northern Luzon in the Philippines from later Sunday through Tuesday, local time,” said Nicholls.
Much like what happened in Guam earlier this week, the eye of the typhoon is expected to remain to the north of Luzon when it approaches early next week. However, there will still be impacts, and AccuWeather meteorologists warn that the storm is likely to be the equivalent of a Category 4 hurricane around then.
“The amount of rain that falls and the strength of the wind in the Philippines will depend on how close the storm gets before making an expected turn to the north,” added Nicholls. Despite that uncertainty, even the outer rain bands of a tropical system like Mawar can bring flooding downpours and damaging wind gusts.
As Mawar approaches the Philippines, the country’s weather bureau, the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (PAGASA), took over from the JMA in monitoring the typhoon as of early Saturday morning, local time. At that point, the typhoon gained the designation of ‘Betty’ in the Philippines.
In this photo provided by the U.S. Coast Guard, downed tree branches litter a neighborhood in Yona, Guam, Thursday, May 25, 2023, after Typhoon Mawar passed over the island. The powerful typhoon smashed the U.S. territory of Guam and continued lashing the Pacific island with high winds and heavy rain Thursday, knocking down trees, walls and power lines and creating a powerful storm surge that threatened to wash out low-lying areas. (Chief Warrant Officer Adam Brown/U.S. Coast Guard via AP)
Ahead of the expected impacts this weekend, officials in the Philippines are preparing. Sea trips around the archipelago nation are being suspended, an official with the Philippine Ports Authority told CNN. Additionally, operators of smaller boats are being warned against fishing and sailing in the waters off the coast.
By next week, after Mawar impacts the Philippines, AccuWeather forecasters expect the typhoon to take aim at portions of Japan and Taiwan as it begins to slow in forward speed.
“Despite an expected loss in wind intensity as the typhoon churns to the north, Japan’s Ryukyu Islands and eastern Taiwan could also endure impacts during the middle and latter portion of the week,” said Nicholls. “Eventually, the southern Japan mainland could endure impacts by next weekend.”
Mawar has already caused substantial damage
Mawar has already carved a powerful and destructive path since it was first designated as a tropical system over the open waters of the Pacific back on May 19. Just two days later, it became the first typhoon of the 2023 season and the strongest storm the planet has seen so far this year less than a week later.
Although typhoons regularly impact Guam, Mawar has since achieved a strength, both in wind intensity and minimum central pressure, not seen in the tropical basin as a whole since deadly Typhoon Surigae in 2021 or in that specific part of the basin near Guam since Typhoon Damrey in 2000.
When it impacted Guam on Wednesday, the typhoon unleashed strong winds of over 140 mph (225 km/h) snapped trees, ripped roofs off of buildings and brought more than 2 feet of rain in just hours.
“We’re looking out our door and what used to be a jungle looks like toothpicks, like a scene from the movie ‘Twister,’ with trees just thrashed apart,” Landon Aydlett, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Guam, told The Associated Press.
While damage and power outages were widespread, the AP reported that there were no fatalities and only minor injuries as Mawar moved through.
President Biden approved a disaster declaration for the island late Thursday, which will allow federal funding to flow to the United States territory to aid in the recovery effort in the coming days and months.
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The country’s defence ministry says Russian ‘intelligence-gathering’ aircraft spotted near its coasts along the Pacific Ocean and Sea of Japan.
Japan scrambled fighter jets after spotting Russian “intelligence-gathering” aircraft off its coasts along the Pacific Ocean and Sea of Japan on Thursday, the country’s defence ministry has said.
One Russian aircraft travelled from Japan’s north down along part of its west coast, while the other took a similar route along the opposite coast and returned the same way, the Joint Staff office run under the defence ministry said in a brief statement.
“In response, fighters of the Air Self-Defence Force’s Northern Air Force and other units were scrambled,” it added.
There was no further information on the incident, which comes days after Japan hosted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the summit of Group of Seven (G7) – a grouping of rich nations – in Hiroshima city.
Japan has joined Western allies in sanctioning Moscow over its February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, and has warned of the threat posed by Russia.
Its latest security document, which once called for enhanced ties and cooperation with Russia, now warns that Moscow’s military posturing in Asia and cooperation with China are “a strong security concern”.
Last May, Chinese and Russian military jets carried out joint flights near Japan immediately after a meeting of the United States-led Quad grouping in Tokyo. India and Australia are other members of Quad.
And more recently, Moscow has carried out military exercises, including test-firing missiles, in the Sea of Japan.
Russia considers Japan to be a “hostile” country – a designation it shares with all European Union countries, the US and its allies, including the United Kingdom and Australia.
Tokyo had complex relations with Moscow before the invasion of Ukraine in February, and the two sides have yet to sign a post-World War II peace treaty.
Attempts to do so have been hampered by a long-running dispute over islands controlled by Russia, which calls them the Kurils.
France has banned domestic short-haul flights where train alternatives exist, in a bid to cut carbon emissions.
The law came into force two years after lawmakers had voted to end routes where the same journey could be made by train in under two-and-a-half hours.
The ban all but rules out air travel between Paris and cities including Nantes, Lyon and Bordeaux, while connecting flights are unaffected.
Critics have described the latest measures as “symbolic bans”.
Laurent Donceel, interim head of industry group Airlines for Europe (A4E), told the AFP news agency that “banning these trips will only have minimal effects” on CO2 output.
He added that governments should instead support “real and significant solutions” to the issue.
Airlines around the world have been severely hit by the coronavirus pandemic, with website Flightradar24 reporting that the number of flights last year was down almost 42% from 2019.
The French government had faced calls to introduce even stricter rules.
France’s Citizens’ Convention on Climate, which was created by President Emmanuel Macron in 2019 and included 150 members of the public, had proposed scrapping plane journeys where train journeys of under four hours existed.
But this was reduced to two-and-a-half hours after objections from some regions, as well as the airline Air France-KLM.
French consumer group UFC-Que Choisir had earlier called on lawmakers to retain the four-hour limit.
“On average, the plane emits 77 times more CO2 per passenger than the train on these routes, even though the train is cheaper and the time lost is limited to 40 minutes,” it said.
It also called for “safeguards that [French national railway] SNCF will not seize the opportunity to artificially inflate its prices or degrade the quality of rail service”.
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