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It looks as though a key NATO member and ally of the United States is going to resist pressure from Donald Trump to increase defence spending. We're talking here about the UK. The new US president has said he wants NATO members to be spending 5% of GDP on defence by 2030. Whether that's an opening gambit and he'd be willing to accept less is uncertain.
But even if he halved his demands to 2.5%, the Times has been told the UK would still disappoint him. The UK is currently at 2.3%, but if it increased that even to 2.5%, by the end of this decade, ministers think that that would require drastic cuts to other public services in the lead-up to the next general election, which a senior government source has described as a non-starter.
So if the UK says no to Trump, could other NATO members do the same? And how significant could the consequences of that be? Our guest today is Lord Dannett, a retired general who used to be head of the British Army.
Richard, you've got the British government or sources from it saying 2.5% isn't going to happen by 2030, let alone the 5% that Donald Trump is talking about. The Italian defence minister, meanwhile, says it's, quote, impossible. Friedrich Meyers, who's leading the polls in the German election and is likely to be the next chancellor, says the target is irrelevant, even though he supports increasing spending. So,
So is this 5% a bullish suggestion from Donald Trump, but ultimately completely unrealistic?
Well, Donald Trump is looking around the world and he frankly is seeing what we're all seeing, which is tensions between China and the United States over Taiwan. We see a very multifaceted conflict in the Middle East, not just East Gaza, but Lebanon as well. And then quite critically, he sees this very bloody ongoing war nearly three years now between Russia and Ukraine in Ukraine with huge casualties and protests.
realizes the implications for European security. And I think perfectly reasonably, as he has said in the past,
both during the presidential campaign and when he was last US president. He believes that Europe should take a greater share of responsibility and the financial burden for its own security. So consequently, he's upped the ante quite dramatically by saying that European countries should think about spending 5% of GDP on defence. Now, critics might say, well, he's just plucked that figure out of the air. It's totally unachievable.
But in fact, if you look back in history in the mid to late 1980s, the last decade, last years of the Cold War, that was the level of GDP spending that was going on defence. And that bought us a sufficient level of nuclear and conventional deterrence that prevented the Cold War from ever going hot.
So he's not wrong to talk about 5%. He's not wrong to talk about Europe needing to take a greater share. The challenge for our government, frankly, is are they more afraid of what Donald Trump might do in terms of slapping tariffs on us, more afraid of him than they are of Vladimir Putin, frankly, who is an approving aggressor. And frankly, who knows where he's going to get next.
So within NATO, there's a whole range of spending. And when you rank member states, Poland spends the most with more than 4% of GDP. Spain is at the bottom with less than one and a half. And the British spending of 2.3% is actually pretty average within NATO. So surely it's the classic guns versus butter argument of how governments spend their money. And they decide at a time when budgets are stretched, actually, we'll just stick with what we've got.
Well, I think the inequity that you refer to is a function of geography. It's no surprise that Poland is spending 4.1% of GDP on defense because it has a long common border with Russia. Spain is a long way away and believes that it can probably get by on what it is currently spending. And you probably can't fault that logic in many ways.
But it does come down to all European governments and our own. The business of government is to choose. The business of government is to set priorities, looking across the whole spectrum from health to social care to education, transport to other infrastructure projects, and has to make its decisions on where it's going to spend its money. And you know what I'm going to say next. We all know that the first duty of government is to protect the security of the nation. And it's 2.3%. Are we doing that?
No, I don't think we are. So if the British government doesn't go along with Trump's 5%, does that have any influence on other European countries in NATO? Does it give them top cover to ignore the US?
Well, hitherto the UK has set an example, but if we set our face against increasing our defence budget to just that little increase to 2.5%, but not for seven years, we're setting an extraordinarily bad example that others might choose to follow. If they say, "Well, if the UK is not going to do it, we're not going to do it." Uncle Sam, you'll have to continue to bail us out.
It does come back to the question that I'm used on. Is Keir Starmer more afraid of what Donald Trump could do to us than what Vladimir Putin could do to us? And I fear that Trump
He's willing to take a risk on Vladimir Putin. But Richard, in all of this, the US doesn't actually hit 5% at the moment either, does it? Obviously, in cash terms, because of the size of the US economy, they still contribute a huge amount to the NATO budget. But it's currently about 3.4% of GDP. So do you think Trump is actually going to walk the walk and match what he's saying?
Well, I think the messages coming out of the White House in the last few days are that he is planning to increase United States defense expenditure. I think the responsibilities the United States have got was frankly the world's only major military superpower. I know the Chinese are coming on, but they haven't got there by quite some measure yet.
and even the United States military is underfunded, I think we will see Trump increasing a proportion of US GDP that goes into defence. Whether it gets up to 5%, we'll wait and see. Which is why probably a lot of European countries are saying, well, the most we might consider is 3.5%, and I think, and others think, that 3.5% is about where we should be. It takes time to ramp up defence spending, to use the money sensibly. We really ought to be, we ought to have that commitment
so that defence planners and programmers can make their plans and sensibly grow the forces. Industry can have contracts placed. You can't just turn these things on overnight unless you're going to buy off the shelf from Arcosam.
At the moment, on current estimates, the British, French and German defence budgets combined are bigger than Russia's. And that's before you factor in all the spending from other NATO countries and, of course, the US. So is this actually about having the hard power to go toe to toe with Russia? Or is this push for more spending about changing the political mindset in Europe?
Well, if I was talking about political mindsets, one sort of talking about diplomacy, really, and it was Theodore Roosevelt who said the big thing about diplomacy in these conflict type situations is to speak softly carrying a big stick. Now, currently, we're speaking quite loudly with a very small stick. The point behind what I'm really saying is that the main purpose of building up our military capability is so that it says to Vladimir Putin,
the West, yes the Americans, but the European countries are now that capable that if I try something, I will not succeed. In other words, what we're spending is to deter war. We're not spending
to meet the disastrous cost of fighting a war? How much better to move towards spending 5% as we did in the Cold War days to prevent the Cold War becoming hot and currently to deter further aggression from Vladimir Putin? And if European countries don't do what Donald Trump says, if he doesn't get them to that 5% spending goal...
What happens then? We've seen him pull out of treaties and organisations that ultimately he doesn't think that he's getting a good deal from. You look at the Paris Climate Agreement or the World Health Organisation. Do you think there's a chance that he'd do the same with NATO? Whatever Trump may have said in the past, in the recent past and the distant past about NATO, I don't believe that he would ever take the United States out of NATO. Certainly European countries
member states of NATO would work extremely hard to make sure that the United States stayed within NATO, not the least of which for the nuclear umbrella, which is largely provided by the US. Yes, okay, the British and the French have a nuclear deterrent, but not of the scale of the United States. So there is the nuclear umbrella aspect. But I think also history shows that when Europe gets itself in a muddle,
as it did in 1914 and in 1939. It's not been resolved until the United States effectively comes in and helps out. And that has been the course, the case during the Second World War, continued on through the Cold War. And I think it's very much in our interests, and I think the United States' interest, for the United States to stay appropriately engaged in Europe.
However, the Europeans must take a great degree of the burden sharing, greater proportion of the burden sharing. And that's what Trump is nudging us, imploring us. You could almost say bullying us to do. Richard Dannett, Lord Dannett, thank you for joining us. That's it from us. Thank you for taking 10 minutes to stay on top of the world with the help of the Times. See you tomorrow. ACAS powers the world's best podcasts. Here's the show that we recommend.
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