More fine speeches by Liz Truss - seems to be doing a lot of that lately...
If Russia follows through on it's cutting gas to unfriendly countries not paying in Rubles, Germany and a number of others are going to be out of luck, achieving the West's aim by default, and that could trigger a major global downturn - yet another crisis we don't need...Yes it will hurt Russia but as for Europe ? (Hint LNG import terminals can't be built fast enough - or export terminals in Australia...)
12m ago18.44
West must overhaul approach to international security: UK foreign secretary
The crisis in Ukraine must be the “catalyst for change” to overhaul the west’s approach to international security, the UK’s foreign secretary Liz Truss has said.
Speaking at Mansion House in London on Wednesday evening, Truss described Russia’s president Vladimir Putin as a “desperate rogue operator with no interest in international norms” and called upon the west to “dig deep” into their weapons inventories.
Faced with appalling barbarism and war crimes, which we’d hoped had been consigned to history, the free world has united behind Ukraine in its brave fight for freedom and self-determination.
Those who think they can win through oppression, coercion or invasion are being proved wrong by this new stand on global security – one that not only seeks to deter, but also ensures that aggressors fail.
We cannot be complacent – the fate of Ukraine hangs in the balance.
But let’s be clear – if Putin succeeds there will be untold further misery across Europe and terrible consequences across the globe. We would never feel safe again.
So we must be prepared for the long haul. We’ve got to double down on our support for Ukraine. And we must also follow through on the unity shown in the crisis. We must reboot, recast and remodel our approach.”
Truss said recent events over the past months must be “a catalyst for wider change”.
Now we need a new approach, one that melds hard security and economic security, one that builds stronger global alliances and where free nations are more assertive and self-confident, one that recognises geopolitics is back.”
In the short term, the foreign secretary suggested the west should be “digging deep into our inventories [and] ramping up production” of heavy weapons, tanks and planes while sanctions against Russia need to go further to include cutting off oil and gas imports “once and for all”.
We are doubling down.
We will keep going further and faster to push Russia out of the whole of Ukraine.
And this has to be a catalyst for wider change ...
The war in Ukraine is our war – it is everyone’s war because Ukraine’s victory is a strategic imperative for all of us.”