As NATO leaders gather in Ankara this week, one of the people most likely to shape the alliance\u2019s future is not in the room. Within weeks, Labour lawmaker Andy Burnham is expected to become the United Kingdom\u2019s next prime minister, inheriting the political, fiscal and industrial challenge of turning NATO\u2019s new ambitions for Europe into military capability.<\/p>\n
Burnham, a self-identified socialist in the \u201csoft left<\/a>\u201d tradition, is widely expected to continue<\/a> outgoing Prime Minister Keir Starmer\u2019s solid commitment to NATO. But London can\u2019t do it alone. And across the English Channel, France is confronting a reckoning, as the far-right NATO-skeptical National Rally gains ground<\/a> ahead of next year\u2019s presidential election to decide who will succeed President Emmanuel Macron. The relationship between London and Paris, Europe\u2019s two nuclear powers, could become the political center of the continent\u2019s security architecture just as the ideological distance between their governments widens.<\/p>\n For all of Europe\u2019s political complexity, no elected leader will sit closer to the junction between U.S. military power and European security than the U.K.\u2019s next leader. As custodian of one of Europe\u2019s two independent nuclear deterrents and Washington\u2019s closest defense partner on the continent, whoever walks through the black door at No. 10 Downing Street will carry responsibilities that extend far beyond Britain\u2019s shores.\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As NATO leaders gather in Ankara this week, one of the people most likely to shape the alliance\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7225,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[1647,47],"class_list":["post-7224","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-britain","tag-europe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7224","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7224"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7224\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7225"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7224"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7224"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7224"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}