Much has already been written about how the election of Donald J Trump to the White House for a second Presidential term might affect US support to both Ukraine and Israel . Equally significant, however, is the potential effect his administration’s foreign policy might have on the defence postures of European nations in general and on the UK’s in particular. In his first term in office Trump was vocal in his criticism of what he saw as Europe’s reluctance to pull its weight in sharing the defence burden in NATO .
At one point he even threatened to pull the USA out of the Alliance altogether. At that time few NATO members were meeting the NATO benchmark of spending 2% of their GDP on defence. Today the majority of NATO members have stepped up to the plate and have reached, or breached, the 2% threshold.
Britain currently achieves roughly 2.3%, but that figure is inflated by all sorts of skulduggery like including military pensions and aid to Ukraine . But however you look at it the UK is going to have to up its game in terms of defence spending.
The Labour administration may have pledged an increase to 2.5% of GDP “when circumstances allow” but Trump may remove their luxury of choosing when that might be. Most credible British military commentators think it should be upped to 3% right away, and some are calling for 5%.
The woeful state of Britain’s Armed Forces are well documented elsewhere and there’s no need to repeat that sorry tale here. Suffice to say that t.