By James Johnson
20/02/2025
Source
Keir Starmer has made a big offer on European security as a response to Trump’s critics regarding unfair common hold in security guarantees for Ukraine.
However, Starmer’s expression of faith contradicts what is acknowledged in Whitehall and among Britain’s military chiefs: Britain’s armed forces are a little shambolic.
Great Britain fondly regards itself as NATO’s de facto European commander-in-chief.
The UK has the second largest defense budget of any NATO country, behind the US, and extensive experience of military operations over the past few decades. Along with Paris, London has only two European atomic weapons.
That Keir Starmer on Monday committed British peacekeepers to supporting any future peace agreement between Ukraine and Russia was not a huge surprise to British allies, especially with US President Donald Trump pushing Europe to play a far greater role in Ukrainian security.
In fact, the fact that Britain has the largest European military force in NATO may be more indicative of the defensive capacity of Europe than of its own power.
John Healey, the defence secretary, said that when he joined the government last year, he discovered that Britain was not ready to fight a war.
Failed agreement
The UK’s share of defence spending as a percentage of GDP fell dramatically after the end of the Cold War and reached a plateau at the beginning of the 21st century.
Since then, the exact level has fluctuated up and down. But Britain now spends about as much on defence, in relative terms, as it did at the start of the Iraq war in 2003.
While reducing troop numbers, recent governments have prioritised spending on modern high-tech equipment.
Ex-Prime Minister Boris Johnson argued in 2021 that “the old concepts of fighting big tank battles on European land mass are over,” saying “there are other, better things we should be investing in … in the future combat air system, in cyber — this is how warfare in the future is going to be.”
It’s a line that has aged quickly. A few months later, Russia invaded Ukraine. It was a protracted land war. But it was in line with a long-held consensus in the West.
“No military is big enough,” Trump’s former national security adviser, HR McMaster, said at an event in London on Monday, adding the US Marines were bigger than the British Army.
“[It’s] something we can tell ourselves lies about because we have this really fancy equipment and more FPV drones or something,” he said. “But actually [victory] often goes to the side with the bigger battalions.”
The British government seems aware of the need to urgently increase troop numbers, given the very real prospect of British troops now being deployed overseas, even in a peacekeeping capacity.
Starmer is expected soon to announce a major increase in defense spending on an accelerating timescale – even as the Treasury is pressing government departments across the board to make savings.
In addition, the UK government has already begun to introduce reforms to reduce the lengthy recruitment times for new British Army personnel.
A MoD insider, who was granted anonymity to discuss internal government thinking, said the upcoming UK defence review, due later this spring, would announce a package of measures to improve benefits for British military personnel in a bid to improve retention.
“The biggest issues we hear from current service personnel are around pay, childcare and housing,” they said. “Expect to see something in the defence review on all of these areas.”
Figures match
However, these reforms will take years to work their way through the system – and may do little to help the government cobble together a potential peacekeeping force in Ukraine.
In January, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said “at least 200,000” peacekeepers would be needed if the war ended at the negotiating table.
Starmer would have to lead the charge if Trump’s insistence on no American troops in such a force holds, and if Germany and Poland stick to their apparent opposition to sending troops. Richard Dannatt, a former head of the British Army who served under the last Labour government, told the BBC on Monday that “we don’t have the numbers and we don’t have the equipment to put a large force on the ground for any length of time”.
“If Keir Starmer wants to do that, that’s fine, the British army will always be there, but here we go again: We’ve got to have the right number of people with the right amount of equipment and the right amount of training, and start funding that now,” he added.
Asked several times on Monday whether Britain had enough troops to send a significant peacekeeping force to Ukraine, Starmer’s spokesman refused to answer.
Discussing the details of a peacekeeping force would be “premature”, he added.