LONDON, December 12. /TASS/. The UK needs to increase its "lethality," stop "outsourcing" its security to the US, and ramp up its defense spending, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Armed Forces Alistair Carns said in an interview with The Telegraph.
"For the last 50 to 60 years, we have been reliant on US security guarantees and now, with multipolar threats facing the US, they may not be as forthright as they have in the past. The reality is that [US President Donald] Trump has agreed that he’s fully in NATO and article five [the collective defense clause], but there is a resource issue where they need to look both east and west," Carns pointed out.
"In the past, in wars of choice, we’ve outsourced our lethality to others. We’ve got to make sure that we increase our lethality across all of our single services. In the past, we’ve outsourced [our security] to the US. We’ve turned around and collectively, as Europe and particularly within the UK, said we need to up our game on defense spending," he noted.
Carns also expressed disagreement with provisions of the new US National Security Strategy that criticize European countries for uncontrolled migration. According to him, the document indicates that European states should, above all, rely on themselves when it comes to strengthening their own security.