Cameron urges US not to abandon Ukraine

Britain’s top diplomat is in Washington today hoping to realise an important, albeit ambitious, aim: persuading isolationist Americans not to abandon Ukraine. 

Curiously, while Democrats are the ones running the country, Republicans are the prime target of David Cameron’s charm offensive. 

A meeting this afternoon with his American counterpart Anthony Blinken served as a key opportunity to discuss strengthening support for Ukraine as well as the vital issue of ending the bloodshed in Gaza. But, on the former matter, it is not Blinken who needs persuading. 

The Foreign Secretary’s trip comes as $60 billion of aid for Ukraine remains held up in Congress, with Republican lawmakers refusing to approve the extra funding until more cash is agreed for US border security first.

Following talks with Cameron, Blinken reiterated his party’s line, labelling it “imperative” that the House get a vote through on Ukraine aid “as quickly as possible”.

But, without a shift in stance from senior Republicans, his words will have little tangible effect. 

Hence Cameron’s trip last night to an infamous Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. 

The Foreign Secretary spent Monday evening dining with Donald Trump – a man he labelled “protectionist, xenophobic, misogynistic” after quitting Downing Street in 2016. 

It was the first meeting between a senior UK minister and the former US President since Trump left office in 2021. Cameron has been tight-lipped about the evening. This afternoon, he told reporters it was a “private” meeting, covering “a range of important geopolitical subjects”.

Trump’s campaign team, meanwhile, has said that the two discussed “the need for Nato countries to meet their defence spending requirements”. 

Some have questioned Cameron’s decision to pay a visit to a presidential candidate with no current role in office. But he is sensible to do so: Trump is the primary driver of calls to scrap aid to Ukraine and, if current polls are anything to go off, he’s the man most likely to be sitting in the Oval Office come November. 

Not all Republicans object to further aid for Kyiv – former presidential candidate Nikki Haley and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell are cases in point. But, as November’s election draws closer, a growing number of Republicans may be tempted to back his isolationist policies to win favour with him in the event of his return to office. 

Nor are those leaning into his “America First” policy widely out of step with public opinion. Recent polls indicate roughly 45 per cent of Americans are concerned that the US – Kyiv’s biggest military funder – is spending too much supporting Ukraine on the battlefield. That’s compared with 24 per cent of Americans who felt similarly six months after the war began. 

Ukraine scepticism isn’t exclusive to Trump supporters. In fact, a horseshoe effect is emerging. A growing number on the far-left are objecting to their “interventionist” government spending billions on a distant war while a quarter of Americans go to bed hungry and universal healthcare remains a pipeline dream.  

How much influence does Britain’s top diplomat really have to persuade them otherwise? All he can do is remind them that defending the faraway land of Ukraine ultimately equates to defending their own national security. And, as Cameron warned today, allowing Putin to re-draw borders by force “would be heard clearly in Beijing, Tehran and North Korea.”

As for Trump and Cameron’s dinner discussion on NATO, it is not unreasonable of Trump to demand that other European members pull their weight when it comes to defence spending.

Though perhaps Cameron should have reminded Trump – who has threatened to pull out of the alliance altogether – that only one country has ever taken full advantage of NATO’s guarantee of collective security. 

The treaty’s article five clause that labels “an attack on one an attack on all” – the feature that renders NATO membership such a hot ticket – has been invoked only once in the alliance’s 75-year history: by none other than Washington, to call for collective defence of America in the wake of 9/11. 

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