The Hill News

I spent last week in the Midwest â€" traveling to Chicago, St Louis and then to Fulton, Mo., for events marking the 65th anniversary of Churchill’s “Iron Curtain” speech at Westminster College.  I used my speech in Fulton to reflect both on how much has changed in the world since Churchill’s day, and on some constants of international relations that he would well have recognized.

Despite the rise of new powers such as China and India, it is striking to see how much of today’s global security and prosperity still flows, as it did in Churchill’s day, from the transatlantic alliance, and particularly the US-UK relationship.  At Fulton, and in a separate speech in St Louis, I pointed to a relationship in defense, intelligence and counter-terrorism that is closer than any other and makes our countries and the world more secure; to an investment relationship that creates a million jobs in the US and the same number in the UK (indeed UK investment here ! is a staggering 570 times China’s); and to a partnership in science and innovation that remains the world’s strongest, with 50 percent of all science and all ten of the world’s top universities (and 26 of the top 30) in either the US or the UK.

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