Letters: Where to find Britain’s best dripping

Open arms

Sir: The latest magazine (29 March) has two references to American military capabilities, from Rod Liddle and Francis Pike. Mr Liddle suggests that the prevalent attitude over there is that we ‘Yerpeans’ should have contributed more to the recent strike on Yemen (‘America first, Europe last’). He may not have known it was RAF tankers which enabled the US fast jets to attack. (This also escaped the Signal group chat.)

Mr Pike suggests that the US navy’s carriers are suddenly vulnerable to modern weapons (‘Carriers of bad news’). As an excellent historian, he will concede that commentators have been writing off naval carriers’ effectiveness for decades. He is right to say that the Americans will have to evolve new technologies to defend their ships. Fortunately, the US Department of Defence is the most successful developer of aerospace and military technologies in the world by far; it shall remain so. US forces will surely prevail in any arms race, whatever apparent advantages pop up from time to time, normally via their enemies’ propaganda. And I’m hopeful the UK’s Ministry of Defence will always be their first call for real support. In my experience, US leaders (military or otherwise) do not think all Europeans are bastards.

Black hole

Sir: As Rod Liddle suggests, we really ought not to be surprised at America’s impatience about us ‘not pulling our weight’ on defence. When President Lyndon B. Johnson pressed Harold Wilson to support the US in Vietnam, to his credit Wilson resisted. Dean Rusk as secretary of state is claimed to have said: ‘All we needed was one regiment. The Black Watch would have done – but you wouldn’t.