Rishi Sunak landed at Andrews Air Force Base on Wednesday for a two-day visit that will likely see Britain's prime minister pitch for a greater role for his country on the global stage. Sunak, who has a looming election back home and faces dismal Tory polling figures, will be hoping to reinvigorate the much-touted “special relationship” between London and Washington.
Further aid to prop up the Kiev regime is anticipated to be high on the agenda, particularly against the backdrop of the recently-launched offensive of Ukraine's troops. "Kiev forces attempted an offensive in seven directions with the forces of five brigades, but were stopped, suffering significant losses," Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu said on Tuesday.
Thursday's talks can be expected to focus on gifting Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky ever more weapons. Rishi Sunak has continued the warmongering stance on the Ukraine crisis that his predecessors Boris Johnson and Liz Truss embraced.
“I agree with the NATO secretary general: Ukraine’s rightful place is in NATO,” Sunak recently went on record as saying, adding that, "We... will continue backing Ukraine, not just now but for years into the future.”
Britain’s government has so far spent close to £4.6 billion ($5.7 billion) arming Kiev to fight the US-led proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, while its sanctions on Moscow disrupt the economy at home. From providing battle tanks to Ukraine, which opened the way for other NATO members to follow suit, the UK has progressed to dispatching its Storm Shadow cruise missiles to Kiev. Furthermore, the first phase of training of Ukrainian fighter pilots to fly F-16 fighter jets will be held in the United Kingdom, US media reported in May, citing a UK government spokesperson.
During the sitdown with Biden, Sunak is expected to seek approval for UK Defense Secretary Ben Wallace’s candidacy as the next head of NATO. Sunak earlier raised the topic of Wallace's appointment to the post of secretary general of the alliance on the sidelines of the recent meeting of the leaders of the G7 countries in Japan’s Hiroshima, a media report noted.
While Wallace is known in the UK government for his central role in creating an international coalition to support Ukraine, as well as an increase in defense spending in the country up to 2.25% of GDP, his candidacy might not be supported by France and Germany, it has been reported.
Mutual trade ties are also on the agenda of Rishi Sunak's debut official White House visit. Reportedly the prime minister will seek to overcome the White House refraining from attempts to restart the stalled negotiations on a free trade agreement (FTA).
Furthermore, featured in talks will be potential fallout from Joe Biden's $370 billion US Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) - a package of tax breaks and subsidies for clean technologies. Amid already soaring energy costs pummeling the European economy, the green subsidy package triggered trade tensions and disagreements, with Brussels fearing it could lure major producers away from the EU to relocate to America.
When meeting, Joe Biden and Rishi Sunak are expected to discuss a joint approach to China. Amid the NATO's expansion to the east in the Indo-Pacific, creating military replicas of the alliance in the region, such as AUKUS, Britain has recently rewritten comprehensive defence and security review and labelled China as an “epoch-defining challenge."