Sounds Strategic Episode 16: The UK–US ‘special relationship’ and ensuring credibility in international relations
Jul 18, 2019
34:44
Dana Allin, IISS Senior Fellow for US Foreign Policy and Transatlantic Affairs and Editor of Survival, talks with Dr Kori Schake in this episode of Sounds Strategic.With the resignation of the British Ambassador to the US Sir Kim Darroch weighing heavily on the conversation, Dana and Kori discuss the impact of the episode on the UK’s ‘special relationship’ with the US, and how this may change in the future with a post-Brexit ‘Global Britain’, potentially separate from the EU.Dana challenges the assumed direct link between a state’s willingness to use force and its international credibility. As Kori and he explore, this issue came into stark focus with the aborted US strikes against Iran in retaliation for the downing of an unmanned surveillance drone in June 2019.As both an academic and editor of the IISS journal, Survival, Dana also speaks on his other area of expertise, the Israel–US relationship. As a topic covered in his latest book, Our Separate Ways: The Struggle for the Future of the US–Israel Alliance, Dana explains how the agreement around the liberal values that formed a key element of this historic alliance may come under considerable stress in the future.This episode also features a discussion on the enduring importance and impact of John Hersey’s 1946 classic, Hiroshima.Favourite Data Visualisation:‘Top 15 defence budgets 2018’, in IISS Military Balance 2019, (London: Taylor & Francis, 2019), p. 21‘Top 15 defence budgets 2014’, in IISS Military Balance 2014, (London: Taylor & Francis, 2015), p. 21Reading Recommendations:John Hersey, Hiroshima (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc, 1946)Dana H. Allin and Steven Simon, Our Separate Ways: The Struggle for the Future of the US-Israel Alliance (New York: PublicAffairs, 2016)Date of recording: 11 July 2019Sounds Strategic is recorded and produced at the IISS in London.Theme music: ‘Safety in Numbers’ by We Were Promised Jetpacks.
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