MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

“I will use force to defend the Falklands”, Boris Johnson to the UK media

Boris Johnson will present this Tuesday a strategic review of security, defense and foreign policy, the first after the departure of the European bloc.

The United Kingdom confirmed that it will maintain a military presence in the Falkland Islands, whose sovereignty is claimed by Argentina, to “protect it from state and non-state threats,” according to an advance of the strategic review of security, defense and foreign policy that prime minister Boris Johnson will present this Tuesday, the first after the departure of the European bloc.

The Armed Forces will “deter and defy incursions into British territorial waters off Gibraltar” and “will maintain a permanent presence in the Falkland Islands, Ascension Island and the British Indian Ocean Territory,” the more than 100-page document notes, according to the newspaper The Telegraph. “I will use force to defend the Falklands”, ”declared Johnson, according to British media.

A British government source stressed that “the UK is far from abandoning its transatlantic commitments. They are being reinforced and they are held in high esteem”. The newspaper also cites the creation of the Secretariat of the Malvinas, Antarctica and South Atlantic, by Daniel Filmus, as an example of the “pressure” of the Argentine government.

According to the document, London plans to spend £ 6.6 billion (over US$ 8 billion) “over the next four years on Research and Development in areas including space, cybernetics, quantum technologies, bioengineering, directed energy weapons. and high speed weapons ”, among others.

The Defense Ministry made no secret of having space ambitions and said that the Armed Forces “are redesigning themselves to face future threats, not to fight old wars again.” The British government further decided to expand its arsenal of nuclear weapons for the first time since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. The United Kingdom will raise the maximum ceiling of its arsenal of nuclear warheads from 180 to 260, which means, an increase of 45%.

The United Kingdom will further maintain four active nuclear submarines, with one always on permanent patrol.

“Given that circumstances and threats change over time, we need to maintain a minimum and credible level of deterrence,” justified the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Dominic Raab, in statements to the radio. BBC. “This is the ultimate guarantee, the ultimate insurance policy against the worst threats from hostile states,” he added.

The document establishes in a forceful way which is the biggest “threat to security” of the United Kingdom, Russia, and the “greatest ally” of the country, the United States. “Until relations with your government improve, we will actively deter and defend ourselves against the full spectrum of threats emanating from Russia,” the strategy states.