Sir Keir Starmer’s meeting with Donald Trump on Thursday may be the most consequential of his premiership. It is not just Ukraine’s future that is in the balance but the very future of Nato that is at stake.
If that sounds dramatic, think back just a few years. I first met President Trump at the Nato summit in Brussels in July 2018. He had a showdown with Angela Merkel and nearly pulled America out of the alliance. Key members of his staff flew over from Washington to talk him out of it.
Trump was not bluffing. His anger at European freeloading on defence was palpable. And he had a point.
Most people recognise it is not fair for the United States to spend 3.4 per cent of GDP on defence when many European Nato allies do not even spend 2 per cent.
After today’s announcement to increase defence spending to 2.5 per cent of GDP by 2027 the UK is an honourable exception. But even after that, a vast imbalance remains: the Foreign Office told me that between a third and a half of the cost of defending Europe is being paid for by American taxpayers. If you want to know why we don’t have a seat at the table on Ukraine, look no further.
In some ways, Western unity in the face of Russian aggression has been impressive. But the uncomfortable reality is we have been doing just enough to keep Ukraine in the game but not enough to allow it to win.
What sort of strategy is that? Time after time Britain has had to urge our allies to supply tanks and missiles that actually give Ukraine a chance to turn things around. All too often it has been a fruitless exercise.
Trump promised repeatedly to rip the plaster off the wound. Now he is doing so, it will be painful.
The question for us is whether Ukraine ends up being like South Korea or South Vietnam. The former is a flourishing democracy that has found a way to prosper next door to an aggressive and unpredictable neighbour. The latter was subsumed, humiliatingly, into an autocratic regime.
Keir Starmer is rightly pushing for a Korean solution. Because South Korea has 29,000 American troops to guarantee its border he has offered British troops as part of a European force to protect sovereign Ukraine.
But they can only do so with an American air defence “backstop” – which rather sums up the problem.
So to get to the right answer on Ukraine we need to solve the bigger issue of defence capability. That means telling Trump we will remove once and for all the unfairness of American taxpayers funding European defence. We need to make today’s vague commitment to spend 3 per cent of GDP in the next parliament a firm one with dates and numbers attached.
Such a commitment would carry huge weight because, when it comes to defence, where Britain leads others follow. When David Cameron persuaded Nato to adopt the 2 per cent target in 2014 at the Newport summit, we were one of only three Nato countries to meet it.
Now 23 countries do – and Europe spends nearly $400 billion more on defence annually than it would have done.
The likely new Chancellor of Germany, Freidrich Merz, spoke this week of the need to “strengthen Europe as quickly as possible, so that we achieve independence from the US”.
Although it was interpreted by some as a repudiation of the traditional German Atlanticism, in reality Nato is more likely to hold together if Europe now steps up to the plate.
Both he and Starmer have parliamentary terms that outlast Trump. Their most important mission is surely to make sure Nato does too.
Finding more money for defence will not be easy after the disastrous mistakes in Rachel Reeves’s budget. But if we are going to grow the economy, we urgently need to get more people off welfare and into the 800,000 job vacancies that currently exist.
If, over the next five years, we reduce the number of adult welfare claimants to 2019 pre-pandemic levels, we would save around £40 billion a year. Life would be better for the individuals involved – and the welfare savings would more than pay for increasing military spend.
Of course it would be challenging to deliver – but perhaps easier for a Labour government that would not be accused of being uncaring.
The temptation will be to go for smaller welfare savings and a smaller increase in defence spending – perhaps waiting for others to catch us up.
With this US president that will not wash. Britain has taken an important step in the right direction. It needs to finish the job.
The Rt Hon Jeremy Hunt MP served as foreign secretary in 2018-19 and chancellor of the Exchequer in 2022-24
Sir Keir Starmer’s meeting with Donald Trump on Thursday may be the most consequential of his premiership. It is not just Ukraine’s future that is in the balance but the very future of Nato that is at stake.
If that sounds dramatic, think back just a few years. I first met President Trump at the Nato summit in Brussels in July 2018. He had a showdown with Angela Merkel and nearly pulled America out of the alliance. Key members of his staff flew over from Washington to talk him out of it.
Trump was not bluffing. His anger at European freeloading on defence was palpable. And he had a point.
Most people recognise it is not fair for the United States to spend 3.4 per cent of GDP on defence when many European Nato allies do not even spend 2 per cent.
After today’s announcement to increase defence spending to 2.5 per cent of GDP by 2027 the UK is an honourable exception. But even after that, a vast imbalance remains: the Foreign Office told me that between a third and a half of the cost of defending Europe is being paid for by American taxpayers. If you want to know why we don’t have a seat at the table on Ukraine, look no further.
In some ways, Western unity in the face of Russian aggression has been impressive. But the uncomfortable reality is we have been doing just enough to keep Ukraine in the game but not enough to allow it to win.
What sort of strategy is that? Time after time Britain has had to urge our allies to supply tanks and missiles that actually give Ukraine a chance to turn things around. All too often it has been a fruitless exercise.
Trump promised repeatedly to rip the plaster off the wound. Now he is doing so, it will be painful.
The question for us is whether Ukraine ends up being like South Korea or South Vietnam. The former is a flourishing democracy that has found a way to prosper next door to an aggressive and unpredictable neighbour. The latter was subsumed, humiliatingly, into an autocratic regime.
Keir Starmer is rightly pushing for a Korean solution. Because South Korea has 29,000 American troops to guarantee its border he has offered British troops as part of a European force to protect sovereign Ukraine.
But they can only do so with an American air defence “backstop” – which rather sums up the problem.
So to get to the right answer on Ukraine we need to solve the bigger issue of defence capability. That means telling Trump we will remove once and for all the unfairness of American taxpayers funding European defence. We need to make today’s vague commitment to spend 3 per cent of GDP in the next parliament a firm one with dates and numbers attached.
Such a commitment would carry huge weight because, when it comes to defence, where Britain leads others follow. When David Cameron persuaded Nato to adopt the 2 per cent target in 2014 at the Newport summit, we were one of only three Nato countries to meet it.
Now 23 countries do – and Europe spends nearly $400 billion more on defence annually than it would have done.
The likely new Chancellor of Germany, Freidrich Merz, spoke this week of the need to “strengthen Europe as quickly as possible, so that we achieve independence from the US”.
Although it was interpreted by some as a repudiation of the traditional German Atlanticism, in reality Nato is more likely to hold together if Europe now steps up to the plate.
Both he and Starmer have parliamentary terms that outlast Trump. Their most important mission is surely to make sure Nato does too.
Finding more money for defence will not be easy after the disastrous mistakes in Rachel Reeves’s budget. But if we are going to grow the economy, we urgently need to get more people off welfare and into the 800,000 job vacancies that currently exist.
If, over the next five years, we reduce the number of adult welfare claimants to 2019 pre-pandemic levels, we would save around £40 billion a year. Life would be better for the individuals involved – and the welfare savings would more than pay for increasing military spend.
Of course it would be challenging to deliver – but perhaps easier for a Labour government that would not be accused of being uncaring.
The temptation will be to go for smaller welfare savings and a smaller increase in defence spending – perhaps waiting for others to catch us up.
With this US president that will not wash. Britain has taken an important step in the right direction. It needs to finish the job.
The Rt Hon Jeremy Hunt MP served as foreign secretary in 2018-19 and chancellor of the Exchequer in 2022-24