EXCLUSIVE: Foreign Affairs Congressman Says UK Defence Cuts Cause ‘Resentment’ and ‘Animosity’

DENVER, Colorado – A United States Congressman has blasted Britain’s defence cuts during an exclusive interview with Breitbart London.

Rep. Ted Yoho – who sits on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, with specialism in the Middle East and Terrorism subcommittees – said that the cuts that have come under David Cameron’s premiership cause “resentment” and “animosity” between the United States and United Kingdom.

Speaking to Breitbart London at the Western Conservative Summit in Denver Colorado, Rep. Yoho, Congressman for Florida’s fourth district spoke at length on foreign policy, blaming the Obama administration for showing a serious “lack of strategy against ISIS”, and refusing, like him, to define them as “Radical Islamic jihadists.”

“How can you defeat and enemy you can’t define?” he said, before moving onto Britain’s defence cuts, which have drawn criticism from politicians, members of the military, and diplomats.

Congressman Yoho said: “It breeds animosity,” stating that Britain and the United States have a common heritage, and that they needed to work together to preserve Western values – including meeting NATO requirements on defence spending.

He drew particularly on his experience of the defeat of Colonel Gaddafi in Libya, remarking that while there were lots of countries that signed up to the measures, less than half participated, leaving the U.S. taxpayer to foot the bill. “It causes resentment,” he said.

Britain’s Conservative government has presided over unprecedented cuts to the UK military, with Britain’s annual spend falling below the NATO requirement of 2 per cent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP).In June, America’s Defence Secretary Ashton Carter said that the UK had “always punched above its weight” and said that “it would be a great loss to the world if it now took action that would indicate disengagement”.

Despite this, Chancellor George Osborne is expected to cut a further £1bn from Britain’s military budget, with the Conservatives instead seeking to uphold their own legal commitment to spending 0.7 per cent of GDP on foreign aid, much of which goes unaccounted for.

Congressman Yoho also blasted the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), which he said could affect U.S. sovereignty.

“Twenty-five percent of world trade is through the United States,” he said. And when you look at the “Iran deal, and the Cuba deal”… “I don’t want Obama negotiating another thing.”

He did mention however, that it was hard to get into specifics without seeing the details of the deal – something that has dogged the Obama administration and the European Union in its pursuit of the deals.

Rep. Yoho said he didn’t want the United States having to adopt Europe’s environmental agenda, and commented on how EU regulation would negatively affect honey bees in the U.S. This was just one example, he said, and with the EU in such an uncertain place, he asked, “Why go there for trade negotiation?”