US President Joe Biden will receive Rishi Sunak at the White House Thursday to discuss issues of Ukraine, NATO and artificial intelligence, but the British Prime Minister especially wants to celebrate a rediscovered friendship between the two countries.
Sunak will remind the US president, who is very proud of his Irish roots, that he also has very distant British ancestry. He will present him with a copy of a book on ship discipline written by his predecessor, Christopher Biden, in the nineteenth century.
And it is not known what gift he will present to Sunak, the White House, which will try to avoid repeating the fatal mistake of 2009, when then-President Barack Obama handed Gordon Brown an assortment of CDs that could not be read in Britain for technical reasons.
However, the meeting will certainly be cordial, with the improvement of bilateral relations over what they were in the era of Boris Johnson and Liz Terrace.
Press conference
Rishi Sunak resides as a distinguished guest at Blair House, near the White House, and occasionally receives foreign dignitaries. It has earned the status of “the most elite hotel in the world”.
After meeting in the Oval Office just before noon Thursday (local time), the White House planned a joint press conference, something that does not happen systematically when Joe Biden receives guests.
The two men had met several times on the sidelines of international summits or to launch major military cooperation with Australia.
The United States has repeatedly praised the British commitment to support Ukraine. Washington also appreciates Rishi Sunak’s firm stand against China.
Sunak should take advantage of this good understanding to confirm his ambitions to regulate artificial intelligence, an area that remains unregulated although the European Union and the United States are discussing it.
Speaking in Washington, Rishi Sunak announced that the first-ever Global AI Summit will be held in London this fall.
British media reported that he would discuss with Joe Biden the nomination of his defense minister, Ben Wallace, to lead NATO.
NATO
The US President is conducting diplomatic negotiations before the summit of the Western defense alliance, which will be held next month in Vilnius (Lithuania), during which the Westerners want to send a strong message regarding Ukraine.
In this context, Biden will receive, on Monday, the current Secretary-General of the NATO, the Norwegian Jens Stoltenberg, whose term ends in October, and Washington has nothing but praise for him.
Last Monday, Joe Biden received Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, whose name was put forward to become the first woman to lead NATO.
On trade, Sunak is expected to be more conservative.
He has given up on the quick realization of what has long been a primary goal of the post-Brexit UK, which is to sign a free trade agreement with the United States.
Like other foreign leaders, he will seek exceptions to Joe Biden’s policy of industrial sovereignty, embodied in key investment legislation called the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).
London especially wants preferential treatment for car manufacturers in the field of electric batteries, which is very strategic.
