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The UK government is hiking defence spending to help build up Europe’s forces against Russia — but decades of funding cuts and recruitment problems have hollowed the British armed forces out.
ADVERTISEMENTBritish Prime Minister Keir Starmer has announced a major boost to the UK’s defence budget, raising it from the current 2.3% to 2.5% of GDP starting in 2027. The spending hike will be paid for by cutting the British international aid budget, the safeguarding of which was a top commitment for previous governments.In the longer term, Starmer said, the spending hike will bring the UK’s defence spend to 3% of GDP. That figure is short of the 5% US President Donald Trump has suggested NATO partners should budget for defence, but the UK government’s hope will be that the extra outlay can soften some of his disdain toward the alliance, as well as bolstering British support for Ukraine in particular.Announcing the new spending, Starmer said the invasion of Ukraine had ended an era of peace in Europe that began with the fall of the Berlin Wall and appealed to the British public to understand that the defence of Ukraine and Europe is inextricable from domestic security.“I believe we must now change our approach to national security so we are ready to meet the challenges of our volatile world,” he said in a speech.”The reason for this is straightforward: Putin’s aggression does not stop in Ukraine. Russian spy ships menace our waters. Russian planes enter our airspace. Russian cyber-attacks hit our NHS. And just seven years ago, there was a Russian chemical weapons attack in broad daylight on the streets of Salisbury. We can’t hide from this,” Starmer said.“I know people have felt the impact of this conflict through rising bills and prices. But unless Ukraine is properly protected from Putin, then Europe will only become more unstable — and that will hurt us even more,” he added.”Furthermore, the great lesson of our history is that tyrants like Putin only respond to strength. So today I have announced the biggest sustained increase in defence spending since the end of the Cold War.”Coming just before Starmer travels to Washington to meet US President Donald Trump, whose administration is increasingly in agreement with the Kremlin on the future of Ukraine, the announcement has been broadly welcomed in the UK.However, the specifics are already being criticised.The prime minister’s claim that the increase will see a year-on-year increase of £13.4 billion (€16.1 billion) has already been rowed back by his own defence secretary, who admitted in a BBC interview that the true cash sum taking into account inflation would be “something over £6 billion”.And more than that, it is unclear whether or how the figure will address a deeper problem: a long-term atrophy of British military muscle across all its forces, one that several consecutive governments have proven unable or unmotivated to turn around.What is it good for?Senior British defence officials and politicians have warned for some time that the army is in dire straits, and some remain concerned that even the new spending is well short of what would be needed for the UK and Europe to keep the peace in Ukraine — much less fight a major land war with Russia.Speaking to the BBC the day after Starmer’s announcement, a former head of the British Armed Forces, General David Julian Richards, said that while he was glad to see the new investment being brought forward, the British military has been badly hollowed out.“When I was commanding an armoured brigade in the mid-90s, I had 120 tanks, 24 big artillery pieces, two armoured infantry battalions, and a lot more,” Richards explained. “Today, they haven’t got as much as that available to them in the British army, and there were five such brigades in Germany at that time.”ADVERTISEMENT“The whole army has got less artillery pieces, for example, than I had in my one brigade in the 90s. The Royal Navy — back in 1981, (then-Defence Secretary) John Nott was planning to reduce the size of the destroyer and frigate fleet down to 55, and there was an outcry. The Falklands happened and it stopped for a bit,” Richards said. “Today, sadly, the navy are lucky to get 12 such ships to sea. The RAF is much smaller and hasn’t got some key capabilities. So we are very hollowed out indeed.”And yet, unlike some other major powers with understaffed and underequipped militaries, the UK has recently deployed troops and assets to major conflicts, not just peacekeeping missions. So how did it come to this?Refusing the call-upWith the first decades of the century marked by gruelling engagements in Afghanistan and Iraq, the combined armed forces have been facing a serious recruitment crisis.ADVERTISEMENTAn outsourcing effort in the 2010s resulted in a significant shortfall against recruitment targets, and in 2023, the then-government confirmed that the ranks of trained regulars would be cut to 73,000. At the start of last year, an analysis by the Times found that by the 2030s, based on the current trend, the force would be 52,000 strong — a decline of 40% since 2010.Asked for comment, the Ministry of Defence told Euronews that its efforts to improve recruitment are focused on “cutting red tape”.“This government inherited a recruitment crisis, with targets being missed every year for the past 14 years and is taking decisive action to stop the long-term decline in numbers,” a spokesperson said. “While there are positive signs with increases in the numbers joining the Armed Forces and less people leaving, there is much more to do.”ADVERTISEMENT”This government is committed to fixing recruitment, and we have already given personnel the largest pay rise in decades, scrapped 100 outdated recruitment policies, and passed legislation through the House of Commons to introduce a new Armed Forces Commissioner to improve service life.”That last point alludes to another major project for the army, which is trying to rehabilitate its image after a number of scandals stretching back years and decades.Most recently, an inquest heard allegations that a 19-year-old soldier found dead in her barracks in 2021 had been sexually harassed by her seniors, and that female soldiers in general had to endure a hostile environment caused by their male colleagues’ behaviour.British forces’ record in their recent deployments has also tainted their image. The army’s elite SAS unit, for one, is under intense scrutiny after a senior whistleblower alleged that “rogue” troops he commanded had murdered Afghan prisoners.ADVERTISEMENTHis complaint led to a major investigation and the release of thousands of documents that paint a picture of horrific abuse potentially constituting war crimes — as well as multiple failures to investigate allegations that had been flagged to civilian government.The Ministry of Defence spokesperson told Euronews that the government is committed to supporting the Afghanistan inqury, that “there is no place for bullying, harassment or discrimination in the military”, and that the government “is totally committed to making the reforms that are needed to stamp out inappropriate behaviour and hold people to account.””We have already made a number of changes, introducing a zero-tolerance policy on sexual harassment, establishing the Victim Witness Care Unit, and ensuring powerful sanctions are in place to deal with unacceptable behaviour. But we recognise there is much more work to do,” they added.The litany of revelations in recent years does not add up to an attractive career path, and the recent beginnings of a current reckoning with Britain’s imperial history have not improved the military’s allure to the younger Britons it needs to recruit.ADVERTISEMENTA telling incident came during last summer’s election campaign, when then-Prime Minister Rishi Sunak floated the possibility of introducing compulsory national service.While the proposal would have included non-military options, the fear that the government might implement something resembling conscription for the first time since 1960 was met with outrage from large parts of the electorate.Playing catch-upIn this context, the government’s announcement of a major boost to defence spending invites the obvious question of what the new money will be spent on, how quickly new materiel can be bought or built, and who the military will be able to recruit to use it.Whatever the answers, time is short. With Trump becoming critical of Ukraine and facing accusations by Kyiv of effectively endorsing the Russian government’s narrative of its three-year-long invasion, Europe is scrambling to respond, both for the sake of Ukraine and to prove it can ensure its own security in the event Trump abandons the US’ role as Europe’s ultimate security guarantor.ADVERTISEMENTFor the major powers contributing to Ukraine’s defence, the aim is to quickly come up with a common European security response to Russia that can at minimum provide a credible deterrent to future conflict with the Kremlin. But various early suggestions of sending European troops to Ukraine in some capacity are yet to coalesce into a specific proposal with multinational support — and as Davis told the BBC, the scale of the task must not be underestimated, given Russia’s behaviour and intentions.“President Zelenskyy himself initially said 100,000-200,000 troops. You’ve then got to rotate those,” he said. “The idea that you’re going to send a few peacekeepers in berets to reassure the Ukrainians, I think, is crass.”Instead, he suggested that the necessary buildup of capabilities should be directed towards Ukraine itself.ADVERTISEMENT“We need to be very grown-up about this and live within what is actually physically and militarily possible rather than what our political leaders sometimes would aspire to do,” Davis said.
