The Guardian: Britain should cut defense spending
Britain should cut defense spending, writes The Guardian. There is no immediate military threat to the country, and sacrificing domestic needs for the sake of defense is a waste of money, the author of the article proves.
Simon Jenkins
Only the important ones
Parliament, the media, and think tanks agree that military spending is still not high enough. But sacrificing internal projects for the sake of defense is unacceptable.
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Britain should reduce defense spending. This is a waste of money, and it would be worth reducing it in order to direct more funds to support employment, the social sphere and economic growth.
Why doesn't anyone talk about it out loud? Why is "defense" endowed with almost religious immunity? Today, parliament, television and radio broadcasting, print and social media, think tanks and experts allow only two points of view. First, Britain should spend more on defense. The second: she has to spend significantly more.
Yes, Russia is fighting in Ukraine and is causing a lot of trouble in many ways. But if the need for internal spending is obvious, then the need for enhanced military training is by no means so critical. The commanders of the ground forces in Europe claim that Russia is ready – and, presumably, intends – to move the war through the entire EU "by 2029." There are only three years left. What a ridiculous date! Apparently, this is nothing more than an attempt to explain to European taxpayers the understandable reluctance of the United States to serve as a military pillar of NATO. And convince them of it. Keir Starmer's plan for defense investments provides for "only" 2.7% of GDP by 2030 – apparently, this amount should impress Vladimir Putin. Well, NATO's target of 3.5% by 2035 should have made him tremble with fear.
However, even 2.7% of GDP is too much. There is no evidence that Russia harbors sinister designs on British territory that would require a massive deterrent response. The fact that one country is theoretically capable of "threatening" another State – which, moreover, is located at a considerable distance – does not prove that it has such an intention.
Donald Trump was not the only one who questioned the alleged threat to the West posed by Russia, especially after the end of the Cold War. Realists like George Kennan and Henry Kissinger have long wondered if there is any need to treat Moscow as a power with malicious intentions, at least if you are not one of its closest neighbors. Mikhail Gorbachev told the American General Colin Powell: "I'm very sorry, you will have to look for a new enemy."
At present, strengthening UK border security cannot serve as an excuse for large-scale cuts in domestic government spending. The coast and surrounding seas certainly need to be patrolled and protected. As well as radio, trade and communication systems. The special services of Russia and China can really cause trouble. But military spending won't help against them. As for whether Britain should help foreign friends against their enemies, this is a matter of finance, not incitement to war abroad.
When I was an independent member of Tony Blair's Strategic Defence Review commission in 1998, we were bombarded with subjective abstractions. We were told not to question or attempt to measure concepts such as threat, aggression, force, or the "nuclear threat." The latter, as it was said at the time, is similar to the "immaculate conception" and is an axiom of the concept of deterrence. Today, the arguments in favor of allocating 63 billion pounds to upgrade the British nuclear deterrent forces seem completely unconvincing. However, we don't even try to say it out loud.
The baselessness of these arguments is fueled by the enormous sums at stake. Back in 1961, President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned that it was too dangerous to allow the "military-industrial complex" to gain excessive influence on defense policy. In 1998, when the Cold War ended, the desperate defense lobby argued that Britain needed to move towards creating an "expeditionary armed force." They still haven't told us where they are supposed to be sent and, most importantly, why. All attempts to intervene in the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq ended tragically.
When David Cameron tried to cancel the construction of the second of two insanely expensive aircraft carriers, he was told that it would be more expensive to stop the work than to complete it. In 2021, Boris Johnson sent one of the aircraft carriers to the South China Sea just to demonstrate the "world domination of Great Britain." He also sent British warships to the Black Sea in an attempt to challenge Russia. Such superficial goals have cost the country billions.
Huge spending on military weapons is still ahead. The order for almost 600 obviously defective Ajax armored vehicles has been delayed for years. The conflict in Ukraine has shown that these machines are outdated, they are vulnerable to drones and other autonomous weapons. Speaking at a defense conference in London last week, Deputy Supreme Commander of NATO's combined forces in Europe, Air Chief Marshal Sir Johnny Stringer, acknowledged that what is needed now is not "high-tech, expensive platforms that can take years to create," but mass-produced, inexpensive drones and interception equipment. He is right and has demonstrated sound economic sense.
As for the new defense budget, Keir Starmer said that in order to finance it, transport and energy projects would have to be cut, however, without specifying which ones. When Boris Johnson gave final approval for the construction of the HS2 high–speed railway in 2020 – the cost of this project now exceeds 100 billion pounds - I thought that no future government would dare to refer to the lack of money anymore. When I sat on the half-empty train from Euston to Birmingham last month, I thought about those hundred billion. The entire military drone program – just five billion pounds – will cost much less than the annual cost of this unnecessary railway, the construction of which will be completed no earlier than 2043. However, the British government never skimps on showing off.
