Liam Fox will be Britain's new defense minister
(BRUSSELS2) The new Conservative British Prime Minister, David Cameron, confirmed this earlier in London, announcing the agreement
coalition with the LibDems. The member of his cabinet in charge of Defense will be Liam Fox. A doctor who was the Conservatives' shadow defense minister during the campaign.
Born September 1961, trained at Glasgow Medical University, he later served as an Army Health Officer with St John Ambulance. In 1992, he was appointed Parliamentary Private Secretary to then Home Secretary William Hague (a man who would be his alter ego at Foreign Affairs in the new Cameron government). After other second rank posts, he was appointed Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs (1996-1997). In particular, he concludes a peace agreement in Sri Lanka, the Fox Peace Plan, between the government and the rebels, which will not really be followed, but still remains one of the possible bases for peace in the region.
At the fall of the Major government, he became one of the main leaders of the Tories, first as shadow Minister of Health, then after a short stint as "shadow" in Foreign Affairs, he became in 2005 the "shadow" Defense. In 2005, he was a candidate to lead the Conservative Party; he finished third in a competition won by... David Cameron.
His task as Minister of Defense in this coalition government will not be easy because defense constitutes with Europe one of the profound subjects of difference with its coalition partners. On this point, the Tories are closer to Labor than to the LibDems. The LibDems are indeed demanding a complete overhaul of defense policy, also including nuclear deterrence, Trident. They call for deeper investment in the personal equipment and protection of soldiers in Afghanistan. Without however going so far as to demand a withdrawal, they would like to see a date set. Finally, they want the United Kingdom to turn more towards Europe than towards the United States.
Liam Fox is a convinced Atlanticist, skeptical of integration and very critical of the role of the European Commission in particular. He considers that the development of a European security and defense policy is useless because it will drain national forces and duplicate NATO. Naturally he considers that the provisions of the Lisbon Treaty on defense are not really useful. Convinced of the usefulness of intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan (two countries he visited on several occasions), and a supporter of the American "surge", he never ceased to weigh up the British effort and the weak effort of the Europeans, arguing for better burden sharing. He had also criticized the poor planning of the post-invasion phase in Iraq as well as the poor equipment of the British troops.
(Nicolas Gros-Verheyde)
