Britain should do more to help its allies in the Gulf, including considering strikes on the Houthis, because Washington's priorities have changed and its partners must now stand together, former UK defence secretary Michael Fallon has told The National.
The US, he said, is “shifting its priorities to homeland defence, to the Indo-Pacific. And therefore, it means that in terms of Washington, perhaps Europe and the Middle East count for less than they used to”.
That shift is structural, not a passing mood. “We've also seen a change in the United States,” Sir Michael said, recalling a country that “helped us win two world wars in Europe”.
With the Gulf and Europe pushed down Washington's list of priorities, the burden falls on the allies. “I think we should be doing more,” he said. “These are our partners and friends, and we should be helping more.”
For Britain, that means being ready to act against the Houthis. “That means, if necessary, we should be prepared to consider strikes as we did two years ago” he said, alongside the US and other European nations, as in the joint US-UK air campaign against Houthi targets that began in January 2024.
Sir Michael, who served as the defence secretary from 2014 to 2017 under prime ministers David Cameron and Theresa May, was speaking in Dubai on the sidelines of the inaugural Middle East chapter of Signum Global Advisors, chaired by Charles Myers and launched by Raha Moradi, where he took part in a closed-door, onstage discussion.
It is, to borrow the Irish, a mé féin foreign policy in Washington: me, myself and I. For America's allies, the old guarantees are no longer a given.
Sir Michael was careful with his words about the White House. Asked whether US President Donald Trump was an unreliable, unpredictable partner for the Gulf and Europe, he pointed to Moscow instead. “The most unreliable person clearly is President [Vladimir] Putin.”
However, he was clear that the ground had moved. “You have an unpredictable element now,” he said. “Policy shifts suddenly.”
'Gulf security is our security'
“Gulf security is our security,” Sir Michael said. “It's our economic security. It's our energy security.”
The trade and energy flowing through the region, he said, fed straight into the British economy and inflation, “and in the end, affects interest rates back in the UK”.
“So we have a huge interest, as well as friendships and historical ties,” he said.
The pressure on those ties is rising. Since July, the Houthis have been in direct conflict with Saudi Arabia, declaring a naval blockade of the kingdom and attacking Saudi tankers in the Red Sea, while threatening to close the Bab Al Mandeb strait, the southern gateway to the Suez Canal. The Strait of Hormuz has already been disrupted by the US-Israel war with Iran.
Britain has stepped up, but only so far. In April, the RAF deployed its Rapid Sentry air-defence system to Kuwait. Last month, in the first substantial foreign policy decision of Prime Minister Andy Burnham's government, London agreed to a Saudi request for an RAF Voyager tanker to keep the kingdom's Typhoon jets in the air for longer. Ministers described it as a strictly defensive, “time-limited commitment”.
“Well, we've responded to Kuwait's call for assistance,” Sir Michael said. “The Saudis asked us for help.”
The most obvious step, he said, is to make sure the Houthis cannot disrupt the Bab Al Mandeb strait in the way Hormuz has been disrupted, which means tackling Houthi strikes “at source”.
Asked whether strikes would be a big step for Mr Burnham, he said: “It would be, and clearly, they've considered it.”
Labour has been reluctant before. In February, under Keir Starmer, the government initially refused to let the US use British bases, including Diego Garcia, for strikes on Iran, before reversing course.
Sir Michael said the government had now “reversed that decision and said they can use Diego Garcia, but I think we should be doing more than that”.
Gulf states, he said, are “with us, by the way, in the long-term battle against international terrorism”, as they were in the international coalition against ISIS.
Europe's turn to do more
The same logic applies in Europe, where, Sir Michael said, the continent had been too slow to carry its share of the pressure on Moscow.
He called Washington's diesel deal with Russia a misstep. This month, the US Treasury waived sanctions on Russian diesel sales until April 2027, and on Friday, Mr Trump signed an executive order pausing new Russia sanctions passed by Congress.
“I'm afraid it's a miscalculation,” Sir Michael said.
The volumes are too small to bring down diesel prices in the US and the deal is unlikely to move a ceasefire any further forward, he said. Mr Putin, he argued, would read it as weakness.
“He's given up nothing in return,” he said. Russia has kept up its attacks on Ukraine's civilian infrastructure, he added, and “he hasn't come to change any of his negotiating position about the future of Ukraine”.
Asked whether it undermines sanctions as a weapon globally, he said it does. “You're either all in on sanctions or you're not.”
Mr Trump, he conceded, has a point: “Where Trump is right, that our sanctions haven't been fully applied.”
Europe has been far too slow to cut its dependence on Russian oil and gas, to police the shadow fleet and to use sanctioned Russian assets to help Ukraine, Sir Michael said. “Europe keeps passing new packages of sanctions, which rather casts doubt on the previous packages.”
The EU adopted its 22nd package on October 12, the largest single round of listings yet at 1,569 individuals and entities. Brussels is already drafting a 23rd. Yet EU countries still bought €817 million ($917 million) of Russian pipeline gas and €615 million of Russian LNG in September.
Pressure on Kyiv
The stakes are highest in Ukraine. “I believe steps have been taken to convince Ukraine to capitulate,” President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told Bloomberg this week. “I am not saying that this is the goal our partners are pursuing. I don't want to think that our American partners believe the war” against Russia “could be ended sooner at Ukraine's expense. But that's how it looks.”
A capitulation would not only encourage Mr Putin, Sir Michael said. It would put Russia's near neighbours “in the firing line, whether it's Moldova, the rest of Georgia, even the Baltic states, even though they're part of Nato”.
Moscow regards those countries as its “near abroad”, he said, “and they will be much more exposed. But it will also send a signal right round the world to other countries that want to extend their borders”.
“China, of course, has ambitions to bring Taiwan formally back inside China, to extend its influence across the South China Sea.”
The idea that might makes right, Sir Michael warned, “is very dangerous for the international community”.
New age of instability
Asked whether the world is at a tipping point, Sir Michael did not hesitate. “Yes, I think we are. We're certainly in a new age, I think, of instability and uncertainty.”
He does not expect a return to the old order. “I don't think it's gonna snap back to the kind of rules-based international co-operation and international institutions that we used to respect, the United Nations, the World Trade Organisation.”
The danger, he said, is a mistake. “We're standing up to each other now,” he said, with missiles, air-defence systems and drones facing off from the edge of Romania to the islands of the Gulf.
He gives the potential example of a local battery commander who “sees something coming in on the radar, and his job is to defend”. “It turns out to be a civilian airliner,” he adds.
“You have a capacity now for miscalculation, that with so much conflict going on in both regions of the world, that somebody makes a mistake, and then there's a response, and people's lives are lost.”
For Britain and its allies in the Gulf and Europe, that is the world they must now plan for. “We are in a new age of instability, and I think this is now the new norm that we have to live with,” Sir Michael said.