So £5 billion more a year is not a lot, but £40 billion in response to a once-in-a-decade-or-so military crisis is so bad that we must around £60 billion a year to prevent it?
I'm not sure the maths is really adding up here. If you want to make the case that defence spending is a good use of our money, then I think there are reasonable arguments for that- but I don't think this is one of them. And it seems slightly disingenuous how you've presented the numbers.
Why do you mention the absolute *increase*, and not the new absolute total? I think I know why; because that number makes your 'we must spend £60 billion a year to maybe-possibly prevent having to spend £40 billion every so often' argument look a lot weaker.
I also think it's highly questionable that we are facing any sort of "existential threat", and at least needs some justification.
This sounds plausible - except there is absolutely no probability that any country threatens any part of the UK. What we are spending money on is defence of our global “interests”, and this is where it all gets murky. In many cases, such as potential conflict with China, the interests that we are supporting are those of the USA rather than our own. Closer to home, but still a long way away, the conflict in the Ukraine was clearly promoted by western actors, including Boris Johnson with a starring role in preventing a peace agreement which was on the table and was initially acceptable to both Ukraine and Russia.
The UK has not been an imperial power for a very long time. And yet the delusions remain
British defence spending is simply not important. Britain is not an important nation or a military power. It is nowhere near Russia or China for that matter. The UK should just accept its situation as a US satellite state in the North Atlantic and instead focus on fixing the country, not buying more weapons. The author suffers from the same fantasies as the rest of the British elite, that of an overly inflated degree of self importance. The UK is not important. Time to accept this fact.
We could cover up the names, and this article would apply aptly to Canada. Underfunding, idealized portrayals/perceptions of the military (more of a fixation on "peacekeeping" in our case), empty promises backed up by fruitless studying of topics, procurement issues, halfhearted support of Ukraine mostly shown in lack of industry capacity reconfigured to manufacture needed supplies, and a failure to work towards energy independence (both nuclear and pipelines in our case). The theme of complacency is one I've been thinking of often especially in relationship to atrophying state capacity and apathetic public opinion.
All this a thousand times over. Excellent piece. I’m happy to be a new subscriber. (I see the usual pro-Russian trolls have joined us in the comments section: I always seem to see the same exact names, with the same tired talking points, looking to sow dissent. Just a coincidence no doubt…!)
Any big change to defence policy needs to come with changes to energy and industrial policy to support in (which in turn require the treasury to be forced to bend the knee). The rot of the British state goes deep.
Are you quite sure that we are the “goodies”? We are not defending the UK as an island, we are protecting our own (or often, American) political interests far away even though the empire really, really isn’t a thing anymore. When Boris persuaded Ukraine not to agree a peace settlement with Russia, leading to a war with hundreds of thousands dead, were we really doing the right thing for the right reasons?
Given that the tax burden on Brittish citizens is almost double the tax burden in America, do you have any ideas about where to get the money? Tax increases, cutting other parts of the budget, taking on higher debt levels? Realistically, someone is going to have to give something up short term, even if you will be better off long term. Tradeoffs make this stuff hard to achieve in the real world, and it's hard to explain to voters why this is in their best interest.
The fact of the matter is that U.K. politicians KNOW that Russia is no actual threat to neither the U.K. nor Europe.
(Otherwise, why send military hardware to Ukraine that is supposedly needed for defense?)
What’s at stake isn’t European, and British, freedom and independence, but political prestige. Hence the puttering around the edges, and talking about doing… SOMETHING.
"why send military hardware to Ukraine that is supposedly needed for defense" - because when you send it to Ukraine, it is actually USED for defense. As long as the Russian army is busy trying to conquer some piece of rubble in the Donbas, they're not invading anywhere else.
Since WWII America has spent so much money on defense that we are unable to provide our citizens with the needs most Europeans take for granted, like national healthcare, comprehensive education, support for family caretaking, etc. I’m happy that other countries are willing to step in where America is failing, but be aware that spending so much money on weaponry will have costs on other areas of society.
It's not as though we were about to increase the size of our welfare state but then realized defense spending was too high to make it achievable. We fail to spend more on social welfare because lots of Americans don't want to. And our tax burden is almost half what it is in the UK (16% of GDP vs 28%), which means we could double defense spending and still build a much more generous welfare state than they have if we just taxed the same rates.
We don’t have the energy on hand to do anything. We have no cheap coking coal to make steel, therefore no 6” shells. We have no real diesel supply (now North Sea is done) to propel expensive legacy equipment into the face of £2k mavic drones that will destroy them. We have no chips , if you know what I mean , to engage in electronic warfare at scale of Ukraine or Syrian theatres. Manpower prefers fries to chips…
We are absent men of 85kg 1.9m tall, from druggy places like stoke or wales etc. they are replaced by …you name it.. 45% of schoolchildren are not traditional cannon fodder , and won’t fight at all except for perhaps non trad religious concepts. So no manpower. .. you make it sound easy our gdp is bigger than Russias! Our gdp includes gambling, illegal drugs and sex work, done to boost the numbers, Russia…it’s all resources and manufacture (of arms…cutting edge see Kinshal, armata T94, KA50 etc etc…. U.K. looking at electrifying the army land rovers…what a joke. Then there DEI and all the political commissars …they won’t fight either , except for ‘equal rights’… with there mouths. No
cheap steel, we’re cooked….no energy , not even cooked…Back to privacy I fear.
Are you suggesting if we were still in the EU we'd have 'soft powered' Russia into not invading Ukraine?
Soft power is a joke/meme. Ultimately nations secure their interests with economic and military power (or through credible diplomacy which relies on said economic and military power).
Cultural exchange is more a bonus product of having good relations. Soft power includes things like food aid and disaster assistance, that generate good will that fosters good relations, including commercial opportunities, *without* the expense of hard power. In some cases the objective may be to improve material conditions in the recipient country enough to avert a refugee exodus, or terrorism, that could otherwise hurt you, and which would be costlier to address militarily.
"Soft power includes things like food aid and disaster assistance, that generate good will that fosters good relations, including commercial opportunities, *without* the expense of hard power." Does it? a) odd that disaster assistance (which involves soldiers and helicopters and stuff) is counted as "soft" power, and b) is there any evidence that food aid > commercial opportunities and good relations? Are Ethiopians well disposed to the "West" because of Live Aid?
On that Clegg clip, I remember back around 2014 signs construction sites started popping up all around Sydney with signs letting us know a metro station would be there in 2023/24, at the time that seemed so far away, but today I’m zipping around Sydney on driverless trains that come every 4 minutes
The thing is though, the construction, the cost and the local traffic and noise hassle that construction brings all happened under a Liberal State Govt while the opening and the benefits all happened under a Labor State Govt and I do wonder if cynical politicians look at that and think ‘that’s why big infrastructure projects aren’t worth it’
Now i think that’s stupid, everyone who catches the metro knows it’s the liberals who built it (and I’m a rusted on Labor member saying this) but I do worry stupid politicians who mistake cynicism for smarts don’t realise that’s a stupid way to think
Here in America there was this giant infrastructure project in Boston that ended up being called "The Big Dig". There's a great podcast that goes back and tells the story about what happened, I highly recommend that anyone who cares about infrastructure should listen to it. Basically this big project is an enormous success today but at the time everyone hated it. It's a complex subject and I don't know that every problem here is transferable to the UK, but infrastructure is going to continue to get harder to build until we manage expectations and stop trying to make everyone happy.
The phase 'Boris Bike' springs to mind. While the infrastructure challenge is not as large as kind of Metro you're talking about, it began and ended under different Mayors and we can all see how that went in terms of credit capture.
Down in Victoria the Andrew’s Labor Govt elected in 2014 had its key infrastructure project being replacing all the level crossings with tunnels or bridges, that one was really smart politically because even though each individual one caused a lot of local hassle for the few months it took to complete, it was started and finished between elections and those locals got to see the benefits, and especially for a Labor Govt having real tangible proof that government could do things that made your life better, no more giant traffic jams at level crossings, knocking up to 10 minutes off your commute in places like Numnawadding that got double trains keeping the gates down on a main road near a freeway exit, is key for the party that believes in Govt helping people, they went from a surprise one seat win in 2014 to the Danslide election of 2018 with voters bringing up the level crossing removal project repeatedly in exit polls and focus groups
We have hit a good equilibrium in Australia at the moment where State Govts are judged on service delivery and infrastructure projects, so we are getting a bunch of stuff built, any time you go to any of the State Capitals after a few years away the whole cityscape is changed and cranes and diggers are operating everywhere, i wouldn’t want to be a State Govt running on balancing the books or increasing regulation at the moment, voters have come to expect big infrastructure projects from new State Govts
"We are able to build ships that can cross oceans with ease, we are able to keep their crews healthy (or at least stop them constantly dying), and we are able to protect them by applying naval or diplomatic power wherever they travel around the globe".
Before I was 8, I had spent 5 months at sea and crossed the Atlantic diagonally (from UK to Argentina and back) 7 times, covering over 50,000 miles. The sturdy Blue Star Line ships - less than 10,000 tons - carried mainly frozen beef, but also a couple of dozen passengers.
We crossed the ocean with ease, no one became seriously ill let alone died, and we were never “interfered with” by hostile warships. Nor did we sight a single Royal Navy vessel.
No support there for chucking yet more billions into the maw of the armaments industry, I’m afraid.
You could cross those oceans because America crushed all the pirates, so you're welcome. Yet another way our military funding makes the world safe so you can make money in peace. Read the history of what happens to ships at sea with no Navy to protect them. Read about what happened to American ships when we disbanded our Navy after the end of the Revolutionary War. Within a few years we had spent 20% of our national budget in ransom to pirates to get our sailors back. So we rebuilt the Navy and crushed them for good. You're welcome.
Fascinating. An entire article about defence in which the word "nuclear" appears only in a civilian context. It's an article about defence costs, and the cost of our protection being enormous, when nuclear deterrent is extremely cheap.
I believe that Canada could provide for its own defence against territorial aggression (say, Russians showing up in our Arctic Islands if they had something to mine) for the price of about one F-35.
The Agni V missile is costed at $6M, though I'm sure India would want to charge some profit and insist on jobs for their maintenance techs.
For $100M, several (a very classified number) could be offloaded at the port of Churchill, MB, and be run up the Churchill River along with about 100 other barges with similar-looking fake missiles..and go hundreds of km upstream into the woods.
They have a range of 7000km and would be 6580 km from Moscow.
The whole "defense is expensive" notion runs on the current absurd system in which conventional wars are still permitted, instead of being forbidden by MAD.
After Oppenheimer & gang "blew up the world", the military-industrial complex had to find a way to make a world with war still thinkable, so they've developed a system in which conventional wars can still be applied by nuclear powers to non-nuclear powers, because the other nuclear powers don't dare interfere. (That still depends on MAD! Might as well embrace it.)
Destruction without limit can be, and has been, inflicted on non-nuclear powers like Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan (2x) and now Ukraine, and nobody can step in.
I do not want that for Canada, and I don't believe any level of conventional power can protect me from Russia, at all. Only nukes, and I no longer trust America's to be there.
Buy the Agni V. THAT, my friends, would be "serious".
Canada has the scientific know how and industrial base to build it's own nukes (physics package and delivery middle system) why would you be reliant on a foreign power with its own agenda including using it's huge diaspora to achieve foreign policy goals and in which a large proportion of the middle/upper class have a massive grievance against Anglos?
I am British and think our nuclear weapons should be entirely British (regardless of cost) and America is much more a reliable partner than India.
A very good point, but even Nukes won't be enough. Assume that a group of hostile powers takes over Europe, without conventional arms you can't do anything to stop them. Next they form an embargo and stop all trade from coming in. You'll still find yourselves at their mercy, no matter how many nukes you have.
Starts with: “Assume a group of hostile powers takes over Europe”, which two nuclear states: UK and France. Even the USA doesn’t pretend it can win a war with a nuclear state. So I’m just not going to worry about that scenario.
So £5 billion more a year is not a lot, but £40 billion in response to a once-in-a-decade-or-so military crisis is so bad that we must around £60 billion a year to prevent it?
I'm not sure the maths is really adding up here. If you want to make the case that defence spending is a good use of our money, then I think there are reasonable arguments for that- but I don't think this is one of them. And it seems slightly disingenuous how you've presented the numbers.
Why do you mention the absolute *increase*, and not the new absolute total? I think I know why; because that number makes your 'we must spend £60 billion a year to maybe-possibly prevent having to spend £40 billion every so often' argument look a lot weaker.
I also think it's highly questionable that we are facing any sort of "existential threat", and at least needs some justification.
This sounds plausible - except there is absolutely no probability that any country threatens any part of the UK. What we are spending money on is defence of our global “interests”, and this is where it all gets murky. In many cases, such as potential conflict with China, the interests that we are supporting are those of the USA rather than our own. Closer to home, but still a long way away, the conflict in the Ukraine was clearly promoted by western actors, including Boris Johnson with a starring role in preventing a peace agreement which was on the table and was initially acceptable to both Ukraine and Russia.
The UK has not been an imperial power for a very long time. And yet the delusions remain
British defence spending is simply not important. Britain is not an important nation or a military power. It is nowhere near Russia or China for that matter. The UK should just accept its situation as a US satellite state in the North Atlantic and instead focus on fixing the country, not buying more weapons. The author suffers from the same fantasies as the rest of the British elite, that of an overly inflated degree of self importance. The UK is not important. Time to accept this fact.
We could cover up the names, and this article would apply aptly to Canada. Underfunding, idealized portrayals/perceptions of the military (more of a fixation on "peacekeeping" in our case), empty promises backed up by fruitless studying of topics, procurement issues, halfhearted support of Ukraine mostly shown in lack of industry capacity reconfigured to manufacture needed supplies, and a failure to work towards energy independence (both nuclear and pipelines in our case). The theme of complacency is one I've been thinking of often especially in relationship to atrophying state capacity and apathetic public opinion.
All this a thousand times over. Excellent piece. I’m happy to be a new subscriber. (I see the usual pro-Russian trolls have joined us in the comments section: I always seem to see the same exact names, with the same tired talking points, looking to sow dissent. Just a coincidence no doubt…!)
Any big change to defence policy needs to come with changes to energy and industrial policy to support in (which in turn require the treasury to be forced to bend the knee). The rot of the British state goes deep.
Are you quite sure that we are the “goodies”? We are not defending the UK as an island, we are protecting our own (or often, American) political interests far away even though the empire really, really isn’t a thing anymore. When Boris persuaded Ukraine not to agree a peace settlement with Russia, leading to a war with hundreds of thousands dead, were we really doing the right thing for the right reasons?
No one had to "persuade" Ukraine to not surrender to the invader.
Given that the tax burden on Brittish citizens is almost double the tax burden in America, do you have any ideas about where to get the money? Tax increases, cutting other parts of the budget, taking on higher debt levels? Realistically, someone is going to have to give something up short term, even if you will be better off long term. Tradeoffs make this stuff hard to achieve in the real world, and it's hard to explain to voters why this is in their best interest.
The fact of the matter is that U.K. politicians KNOW that Russia is no actual threat to neither the U.K. nor Europe.
(Otherwise, why send military hardware to Ukraine that is supposedly needed for defense?)
What’s at stake isn’t European, and British, freedom and independence, but political prestige. Hence the puttering around the edges, and talking about doing… SOMETHING.
"why send military hardware to Ukraine that is supposedly needed for defense" - because when you send it to Ukraine, it is actually USED for defense. As long as the Russian army is busy trying to conquer some piece of rubble in the Donbas, they're not invading anywhere else.
Since WWII America has spent so much money on defense that we are unable to provide our citizens with the needs most Europeans take for granted, like national healthcare, comprehensive education, support for family caretaking, etc. I’m happy that other countries are willing to step in where America is failing, but be aware that spending so much money on weaponry will have costs on other areas of society.
It's not as though we were about to increase the size of our welfare state but then realized defense spending was too high to make it achievable. We fail to spend more on social welfare because lots of Americans don't want to. And our tax burden is almost half what it is in the UK (16% of GDP vs 28%), which means we could double defense spending and still build a much more generous welfare state than they have if we just taxed the same rates.
We don’t have the energy on hand to do anything. We have no cheap coking coal to make steel, therefore no 6” shells. We have no real diesel supply (now North Sea is done) to propel expensive legacy equipment into the face of £2k mavic drones that will destroy them. We have no chips , if you know what I mean , to engage in electronic warfare at scale of Ukraine or Syrian theatres. Manpower prefers fries to chips…
We are absent men of 85kg 1.9m tall, from druggy places like stoke or wales etc. they are replaced by …you name it.. 45% of schoolchildren are not traditional cannon fodder , and won’t fight at all except for perhaps non trad religious concepts. So no manpower. .. you make it sound easy our gdp is bigger than Russias! Our gdp includes gambling, illegal drugs and sex work, done to boost the numbers, Russia…it’s all resources and manufacture (of arms…cutting edge see Kinshal, armata T94, KA50 etc etc…. U.K. looking at electrifying the army land rovers…what a joke. Then there DEI and all the political commissars …they won’t fight either , except for ‘equal rights’… with there mouths. No
cheap steel, we’re cooked….no energy , not even cooked…Back to privacy I fear.
War game this..
We didn’t leave the EU in 2016.
We redoubled our efforts for Europe instead.
Defence.. security..?
All the wars you speak of were wars of choice.. or keeping the Yanks happy...or got into with some very mixed messaging.
Now.. since 2016... it's got existential
We did what Putin wanted and did brexit!
The chronology of geopolitical losing:
Crimea
Brexit..!!!
Trump
Ukraine.
Our EU membership was the soft power equivalent of 10 divisions and a fleet or two.
Now... it's tool up time!!! Ffs.
Are you suggesting if we were still in the EU we'd have 'soft powered' Russia into not invading Ukraine?
Soft power is a joke/meme. Ultimately nations secure their interests with economic and military power (or through credible diplomacy which relies on said economic and military power).
Soft power makes opportunities for economy and diplomacy - and is vastly cheaper than forcing comparable options by military hard power.
Does it? Lots of Brits do Yoga and watch Anime but does that give India or Japan influence over our domestic politics?
Or does the leverage they have come from hard economic assets they own in the country? Tata, Nissan etc?
Cultural exchange is more a bonus product of having good relations. Soft power includes things like food aid and disaster assistance, that generate good will that fosters good relations, including commercial opportunities, *without* the expense of hard power. In some cases the objective may be to improve material conditions in the recipient country enough to avert a refugee exodus, or terrorism, that could otherwise hurt you, and which would be costlier to address militarily.
"Soft power includes things like food aid and disaster assistance, that generate good will that fosters good relations, including commercial opportunities, *without* the expense of hard power." Does it? a) odd that disaster assistance (which involves soldiers and helicopters and stuff) is counted as "soft" power, and b) is there any evidence that food aid > commercial opportunities and good relations? Are Ethiopians well disposed to the "West" because of Live Aid?
Most disaster assistance was conducted by USAID.
https://2012-2017.usaid.gov/what-we-do/working-crises-and-conflict/responding-times-crisis
On that Clegg clip, I remember back around 2014 signs construction sites started popping up all around Sydney with signs letting us know a metro station would be there in 2023/24, at the time that seemed so far away, but today I’m zipping around Sydney on driverless trains that come every 4 minutes
The thing is though, the construction, the cost and the local traffic and noise hassle that construction brings all happened under a Liberal State Govt while the opening and the benefits all happened under a Labor State Govt and I do wonder if cynical politicians look at that and think ‘that’s why big infrastructure projects aren’t worth it’
Now i think that’s stupid, everyone who catches the metro knows it’s the liberals who built it (and I’m a rusted on Labor member saying this) but I do worry stupid politicians who mistake cynicism for smarts don’t realise that’s a stupid way to think
Here in America there was this giant infrastructure project in Boston that ended up being called "The Big Dig". There's a great podcast that goes back and tells the story about what happened, I highly recommend that anyone who cares about infrastructure should listen to it. Basically this big project is an enormous success today but at the time everyone hated it. It's a complex subject and I don't know that every problem here is transferable to the UK, but infrastructure is going to continue to get harder to build until we manage expectations and stop trying to make everyone happy.
The phase 'Boris Bike' springs to mind. While the infrastructure challenge is not as large as kind of Metro you're talking about, it began and ended under different Mayors and we can all see how that went in terms of credit capture.
Down in Victoria the Andrew’s Labor Govt elected in 2014 had its key infrastructure project being replacing all the level crossings with tunnels or bridges, that one was really smart politically because even though each individual one caused a lot of local hassle for the few months it took to complete, it was started and finished between elections and those locals got to see the benefits, and especially for a Labor Govt having real tangible proof that government could do things that made your life better, no more giant traffic jams at level crossings, knocking up to 10 minutes off your commute in places like Numnawadding that got double trains keeping the gates down on a main road near a freeway exit, is key for the party that believes in Govt helping people, they went from a surprise one seat win in 2014 to the Danslide election of 2018 with voters bringing up the level crossing removal project repeatedly in exit polls and focus groups
We have hit a good equilibrium in Australia at the moment where State Govts are judged on service delivery and infrastructure projects, so we are getting a bunch of stuff built, any time you go to any of the State Capitals after a few years away the whole cityscape is changed and cranes and diggers are operating everywhere, i wouldn’t want to be a State Govt running on balancing the books or increasing regulation at the moment, voters have come to expect big infrastructure projects from new State Govts
"We are able to build ships that can cross oceans with ease, we are able to keep their crews healthy (or at least stop them constantly dying), and we are able to protect them by applying naval or diplomatic power wherever they travel around the globe".
Before I was 8, I had spent 5 months at sea and crossed the Atlantic diagonally (from UK to Argentina and back) 7 times, covering over 50,000 miles. The sturdy Blue Star Line ships - less than 10,000 tons - carried mainly frozen beef, but also a couple of dozen passengers.
We crossed the ocean with ease, no one became seriously ill let alone died, and we were never “interfered with” by hostile warships. Nor did we sight a single Royal Navy vessel.
No support there for chucking yet more billions into the maw of the armaments industry, I’m afraid.
You could cross those oceans because America crushed all the pirates, so you're welcome. Yet another way our military funding makes the world safe so you can make money in peace. Read the history of what happens to ships at sea with no Navy to protect them. Read about what happened to American ships when we disbanded our Navy after the end of the Revolutionary War. Within a few years we had spent 20% of our national budget in ransom to pirates to get our sailors back. So we rebuilt the Navy and crushed them for good. You're welcome.
Fascinating. An entire article about defence in which the word "nuclear" appears only in a civilian context. It's an article about defence costs, and the cost of our protection being enormous, when nuclear deterrent is extremely cheap.
I believe that Canada could provide for its own defence against territorial aggression (say, Russians showing up in our Arctic Islands if they had something to mine) for the price of about one F-35.
The Agni V missile is costed at $6M, though I'm sure India would want to charge some profit and insist on jobs for their maintenance techs.
For $100M, several (a very classified number) could be offloaded at the port of Churchill, MB, and be run up the Churchill River along with about 100 other barges with similar-looking fake missiles..and go hundreds of km upstream into the woods.
They have a range of 7000km and would be 6580 km from Moscow.
The whole "defense is expensive" notion runs on the current absurd system in which conventional wars are still permitted, instead of being forbidden by MAD.
After Oppenheimer & gang "blew up the world", the military-industrial complex had to find a way to make a world with war still thinkable, so they've developed a system in which conventional wars can still be applied by nuclear powers to non-nuclear powers, because the other nuclear powers don't dare interfere. (That still depends on MAD! Might as well embrace it.)
Destruction without limit can be, and has been, inflicted on non-nuclear powers like Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan (2x) and now Ukraine, and nobody can step in.
I do not want that for Canada, and I don't believe any level of conventional power can protect me from Russia, at all. Only nukes, and I no longer trust America's to be there.
Buy the Agni V. THAT, my friends, would be "serious".
Canada has the scientific know how and industrial base to build it's own nukes (physics package and delivery middle system) why would you be reliant on a foreign power with its own agenda including using it's huge diaspora to achieve foreign policy goals and in which a large proportion of the middle/upper class have a massive grievance against Anglos?
I am British and think our nuclear weapons should be entirely British (regardless of cost) and America is much more a reliable partner than India.
A very good point, but even Nukes won't be enough. Assume that a group of hostile powers takes over Europe, without conventional arms you can't do anything to stop them. Next they form an embargo and stop all trade from coming in. You'll still find yourselves at their mercy, no matter how many nukes you have.
Starts with: “Assume a group of hostile powers takes over Europe”, which two nuclear states: UK and France. Even the USA doesn’t pretend it can win a war with a nuclear state. So I’m just not going to worry about that scenario.
Wrong, we think we can win any war. It just takes resolve.