The New Defence Budget: Is the UK bending to US pressure?

On brand with a spate of new isolationist policies, the Trump administration is adamant that NATO members fund more of the mutual security afforded by the alliance. While members are only obliged to spend 2% of their budget on defence, recent US administrations have gradually upped the ante on those falling below the spending threshold and on all member nations to spend even more. In the UK, defence spending has been stagnant since the end of the cold war, hovering just above 2% since the early noughties. However, if last Autumn's Budget was anything to go by, spending has already tacitly increased and Downing Street is planning to boost defence to 3% of the budget by 2027.

As early as 2018, President Trump had a terse exchange with then NATO General Secretary Jens Stoltenberg over most member nations falling below the 2% spending requirement set out in the treaty charter. Since then, the Biden administration quietly echoed the rhetoric of the previous incumbent meaning that US pressure on NATO members to up spending is unlikely to abate even after Trump leaves office for a second time. Subsequently, every NATO member has increased defence spending over the past few years in a bid to ameliorate American threats to void Treaty Article 5 or to leave the alliance altogether.

With the recent pledges to increase defence spending, the Labour government clearly intends to preserve the goodwill of our powerful neighbours. This comes as no surprise given that downing street has already been quietly deriving policy from their new white house counterparts. For instance, by cutting UK foreign aid spending to 0.3% and increasingly supporting the US led prospect of a quick and compromising peace deal for Ukraine.

President Trump has also mounted further pressure by informally voicing intentions to link member defence spending with access to more favourable trading terms with the US. This aligns with many of the administration's new policies designed to bluntly leverage US economic power on the world stage, such as the Canada-Mexico tariffs. It does however seem unlikely that the UK will go as far as the 5% NATO spending demand which the Trump team started brandishing shortly before the president's inauguration given holes in government finance for, amongst other things, the NHS. Only time and the evolving global security situation will tell exactly how much the UK and the rest of NATO is willing to pay for the continued support of the USA.