SNP MP, and former professor of international relations at St Andrews University, Stephen Gethins says the USA is now the least reliable partner in the NATO alliance.
Speaking on Bylines Scotland Radio on 17 February 2025, the MP said that the United States has dramatically changed the European security and defence environment.
He said there is a danger that Ukraine is hung out to dry by the US and Russia.
“The US is now the least reliable partner in NATO.”
Mr. Gethins compared current events in Ukraine with the appeasement of Germany in the run up to WW2, when the Nazis were allowed to take over large parts of what is now the Czech Republic.
Speaking about Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s forthcoming visit to President Trump, Gethins urged him to impress on Mr. Trump that the democracies of the world must work together.
“He should tell Donald Trump that if you believe you are a democrat you must work with your democratic partners. Not the Russians and the Chinese, who are bullies and aggressors. They don’t share our democratic values. “
Asked about Keir Starmer saying he was prepared to send UK troops to take part in peacekeeping in Ukraine, Gethins said:
“You cannot possibly conceive it as the UK going it alone.”
Gethins believed it could not be a conventional peacekeeping force and argued it would have to act as a deterrent and be a multinational force. It could not be a NATO exercise. He suggested that putting together such an armed presence would have to overcome numerous political hurdles.
The MP argued that it is now imperative that the democracies of Europe, including the UK, Norway, and Ukraine who are not in the EU, unite to defend the continent from aggressors.
“No one individual state in Europe has the capacity to respond on its own to the threat from Russia. We must pull together as European democracies. That includes the UK getting over Brexit.”
He said Europe has the economic and manufacturing capacity to far outweigh that of Russia, but benefiting from those advantages means united action and the political and economic structures to enable that to happen.
The SNP politician argued that the UK can’t continue to be isolated from Europe, particularly given the unreliability of the US.
“The world of 2016, when the Brexit referendum took place, is not the world of today.”
He said security and defence are about much more than weapons and soldiers. There are vital issues like energy security and food supply.
“Because of EU cooperation, EU member states are now far more energy self-reliant.”
Gethins said that rising to the new defence challenges will be hard, but the UK rejoining the European Single Market and the Customs Union is the right thing to do.
“I’d rejoin the EU.” said the MP.
Towards the end of the interview, Gethins said we are now in a global political time when it is necessary that friends stick together.
“Ukraine is our friend. It is in desperate need of friends. We must stick with Ukraine.”
NOTE: Stephen Gethins is a Vice President of the European Movement in Scotland and a Vice President of the European Movement UK.
Listen to the full interview on Bylines Scotland Radio.
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