Britain Backs Trump on NATO Defence Spending, Says Govt

The United Kingdom backs President Donald Trump and the United States’ push for Europe to do more on defence, its government ministers have said as the defence secretaries of both nations met.

Britain and Europe have stepped up to do more on defence and the Ukraine War, Secretary of State for Defence John Healey told his counterpart the United States Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. On Friday morning, the British government clarified its position that — in contrast to some European states, which have reacted to Trump’s push for the continent to be more self-sufficient bitterly — it supports the Trump policy on NATO.

Speaking at the Pentagon on Thursday evening, Healey told Hegseth: “you challenged Europe to step up. You challenged us to step up on Ukraine, defence spending, European security, and I say to you that we have, we are, and we will further.”

NATO has required a two per cent of GDP on defence spend as a baseline minimum for a decade but many European states have been slow to catch up. Now Europe stares war in the face, talk is of raising that minimum considerably to three or even five per cent, levels last seen during the Cold War.

UK Health Minister Stephen Kinnock faced the morning media round on Friday as rotating spokesman for the government and buttressed Healey’s remarks. He told Times Radio that America is “challenging the other Nato members to step up and boost defence capability and be ready to defend our own backyard” and that it is “absolutely right” that Europe is responding.

It is “vitally important” to follow that lead, said Kinnock, who told broadcaster Sky News that: “More needs to be spent on defence, military capability needs to be made fit for purpose… the challenge has been laid and we must now show that we are equal to that challenge.”

The Labour politician was also quick to pin the state of the British armed forces on the previous Conservative government, which while a perfectly reasonable assertion also totally neglects Labour’s own role in running down the military in their last period of government between 1997 to 2010. As historic NATO spending tables show, defence as a share of national spending fell through the last Labour era, its fall only briefly arrested because Prime Minister Tony Blair decided to embark the country upon an Iraqi adventure.

Even then, defence spending was grossly inadequate for the role at hand. Soldiers were killed for want of body armour, which was in obscenely short supply because the military didn’t have the funds to buy enough of it, and British troops patrolled in soft-skinned vehicles while their better-funded American counterparts had greater access to helicopters.

As an inquiry after the war found — too late for those killed in it, of course — ‘the army didn’t have enough helicopters, armoured vehicles, or equipment’.

Rhetoric from the present government about boosting defence spending has been successful in pleasing Washington so far, with talk of the largest boost in spending since the Cold War. While this is true, the actual boost at hand is small and unlikely to result in a meaningful increase in fighting capability, being no more than bringing forward of hitting a 2.5 per cent of GDP spend to 2027.

British military commentators today — many of them recently retired senior officers, who served in Iraq — are presently in a state of great excitement about the government’s belligerent rhetoric over the possibilities for intervention in Ukraine today, warning that once again the Army isn’t equipped to do what the government may demand of it.

As reported last year, a House of Lords report found the British Army is: “too small and inadequately set up for large, prolonged conflicts like the one in Ukraine… the use of advanced technology has at times been used to justify smaller troop numbers. The war in Ukraine, however, has shown that in a conflict between two technologically capable states, technology is not a magic bullet that can swiftly end a war.”