The United Kingdom has said it will campaign for NATO baseline defence spending for all members to increase from two per cent to two-and-a-half, although it barely hits the lower level itself.
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced on a miliary visit to NATO ally Poland on Tuesday that the government intended to increase its spending on defence from a little over two per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) to two-and-a-half by 2030. Just a day later, the UK government said it would also be chiding other NATO members to do the same.
It is estimated by the alliance that two-thirds of members will hit 2 per cent of GDP on defence, a remarkable leap forward given just three countries managed that ten years ago in 2014. Whether many nations could be cajoled to spend even more, short of the alliance actually being attacked, is unclear.
UK defence minister Grant Shapps told broadcaster Sky News on Wednesday that: “We’re now saying we think that should be 2.5%. We think in a more dangerous world that would make sense. I will be arguing that, and I know that the prime minister feels strongly about it, when we go to the NATO 75th anniversary summit which is in Washington DC.”
The calls clearly echo longstanding calls by former U.S. President, and now again Presidential candidate Donald Trump for NATO members to pay more, and to pay a fair share of collective defence. While a perspective that these calls for NATO members to do more had harmed the alliance persist in some quarters, the alliance itself has made clear Trump’s tough talk has strengthened it.
WARSAW, POLAND – APRIL 23: NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, left, and Britain’s Prime Minister Rishi Sunak address a press conference at the Warsaw Armoured Brigade on April 23, 2024 in Warsaw, Poland. The Polish prime minister hosted a meeting with his British counterpart and the NATO secretary general in which the trio discussed support for Ukraine. (Photo by Alastair Grant – Pool/Getty Images)
On Tuesday, Prime Minister Sunak outlined his vision for a grown British military budget while visiting a Polish military base. He said it would be wrong to be complacent “In a world that is the most dangerous it has been since the end of the Cold War”, and said the adversaries of NATO are aligning. “We must do more to defend our country, our interests, and our values”, he said.
Sunak said the increase in spending would be the “biggest… for a generation”, a “landmark moment, and a “generational investment”. While the increase from nearly 2.3 per cent as it was in 2023 to 2.5 per cent by 2030 is meaningful, the Prime Minister’s rhetoric perhaps oversells the increase: even at 2.5, British military spending as a proportion of the total economy would be low by historic levels, and was there as recently as 2009.
In recent years the UK has been able to claim it hits the 2 per cent floor only because NATO rules allow military pension spending to be counted towards the total.
Nevertheless, if British defence spending is poor, it is worse in most of Europe’s NATO members. Generally, the continent is carried by a handful of large economies with relatively big militaries — the UK, France, Germany, Poland — while the NATO alliance overall is underwritten by the United States’ enormous spending at 3.5 per cent of the largest economy on earth.
Sunak boasted these changes would secure “our place as by far the largest defence power in Europe”. The Daily Telegraph notes among the promises for this new spending is for the United Kingdom to establish its own version of the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which will be dubbed the Defence Innovation Agency, to develop new weapons.
The planned increase of spending — which would have to survive at least two general elections’ worth of future governments to be realised over the next six years — comes amid a steady drumbeat of warlike rhetoric across Europe, as political and military leaders react uneasily to Russian aggression in Ukraine. Shapps has been one of those voices, and said earlier this year that the West is “at the dawn of a new era”, and is no longer post Cold War, but is now rather “pre-war”.
Poland is also very much engaged in these discussions, with of the head of Poland’s National Security Bureau Jacek Siewiera claiming last year warning NATO had three years to prepare for a Russian attack against Europe. This is how long it will take for Russia to recover from its Ukraine war, he said. This week, Poland has said it wants nuclear weapons on its territory to deter Russia, and to prevent the country becoming a Ukraine-like “buffer state” that could be “sacrificed” by America to keep a broader peace.
Poland Fears It Would be Buffer State ‘Sacrificed’ by the United States, Wants Nuclear Weapons to Guarantee Safetyhttps://t.co/XEwV9HTJGz
— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) April 23, 2024
