UK has fingers in its ears over Trump’s defense threat

LONDON — The U.K. must face up to hard truths on defense — just don’t ask it to look too closely at the special relationship with America.

Westminster is braced for the impact of the government’s latest “strategic defense review” — a major piece of work attempting to identify the biggest threats facing the U.K. and how to meet them. 

The report is expected to devote more than £1 billion to technology for quicker strategic decisions, as well as distilling the military lessons of the war in Ukraine.

But when it comes to defining Britain’s place in the world, the task for the review’s authors — led by former NATO Secretary-General and Labour peer George Robertson — is a far harder one.

The review will have to address the implications of Donald Trump’s message that he wants to pull back from the United States’ role in defending Europe — an uncomfortable shift in a relationship long seen as a cornerstone of British security. 

Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Defence Secretary John Healey and the wider British military establishment have consistently sought to emphasize the strength of the transatlantic partnership under Trump, refusing to engage with suggestions that the U.K.’s security calculation might be changing.

But some members of parliament and analysts are already warning this represents a dangerous blind spot for the U.K. government, which there seems to be little appetite to address.

“I’m afraid the top brass never went to see ‘Love Actually,’” said Nick Witney, former head of the European Defence Agency — a reference to the 2003 rom-com where a U.K. prime minister stands up to the U.S. president. 

The dilemma

While reviews of recent years dwelt on “Global Britain” and the “Indo-Pacific tilt,” the latest version was always likely to see a sharp swerve back toward Europe, necessitated by the harsh reality of war in Ukraine. 

Starmer’s government acknowledged this from the outset, stating that the review should take a “NATO first” approach. 

Yet the sands have shifted again since the SDR was launched last summer, with the return of Trump and his pivot away from protecting Europe.

Malcolm Chalmers, deputy director of defense think tank the Royal United Services Institute, argues this will mean a reevaluation of the priority given to the U.K.’s European alliances “in order to hedge against the probability of at least some American withdrawal, and the possibility of something much more radical.”

To make matters harder, it’s difficult to judge just how far Trump will resile from the United States’ traditional burdens — from a slight shift in the orthodoxy to a radical change of focus, for example toward containing Iran.

Fiona Hill, a former adviser to the president on Russia, recently warned of “a genuine rupture in the relationship between the U.S. and its allies.” | Michael Reynolds/EPA

Patrick Porter, professor of international security at the University of Birmingham, said: “Whatever it is, it’s significantly different from what we had for generations. You would have had this even without Trump, but he has accelerated things.”

At least one of the SDR’s authors seems well placed to assess the threat from Trump’s change of direction. Fiona Hill, a former adviser to the president on Russia, recently warned of “a genuine rupture in the relationship between the U.S. and its allies.”

Nonetheless, Porter predicted: “I think what you’re going to get is a very untidy mix of recognizing changed circumstances while clinging on to the old world order.” 

What are the pinch points?

The U.K. is heavily reliant on the U.S. for several key aspects of its defense network, including intelligence-sharing, the nuclear deterrent and F-35 fighter planes.

Mike Martin, a Liberal Democrat MP and former army officer, called for a rethink of the intelligence the U.K. shares with America in the wake of the Signalgate scandal, saying: “When you share intelligence you obviously want to know if these people are trustworthy.”

A second MP working on defense matters, granted anonymity to speak candidly, said that when it comes to reducing Britain’s dependence on the U.S., “we should be asking ourselves, publicly and privately, what does that look like.”

That view is seldom reflected, even in private, by ministers or officials, as they stick religiously to the line that there is nothing contradictory in the U.K. and U.S.’s calculations about their own defense.

U.K. Ambassador to the U.S. Peter Mandelson argued in a speech last week that Trump “is doing Europe a favor by confronting us” with the notion that “we must become less dependent on America while remaining inseparably linked to America.”

There seems to be little signal that Britain’s public assessment of its relationship with America will change as it tries desperately to keep Trump in the room for peace talks on Ukraine.

Future risks

Trump’s cooling on U.S. involvement in Europe presents an additional strategic risk for NATO allies.

Witney, currently a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said there is a lack of direction when it comes to identifying where Western countries need to beef up key capabilities.

“With the Americans having one foot out of the door, everybody is saying ‘we must take more responsibility’ but there just is no forum,” he argued. “It’s very hard to see where the sensible, collaborative, pooled efforts can come from if we haven’t even got a way of working out together where our priorities lie.”

Donald Trump’s cooling on U.S. involvement in Europe presents an additional strategic risk for NATO allies. | Pool photo by Francis Chung via EPA

While a host of European countries including the U.K. have announced a boost to defense spending, it may be easier to raise the overall envelope than to take coordinated decisions on where to actually direct it.

Joint initiatives have been in short supply beyond the European Long-Range Strike Approach — and U.K. access to an EU defense fund is out of reach for now.

If this remains the case, the U.K. and its continental allies may struggle to meet the challenge that underpins the entire SDR: how to protect against Russian aggression in a world where America is moving on.