It’s very rare that I agree with Donald Trump about anything, but in his first term I applauded him for pointing out most European countries weren’t paying their way on defence. Many of them bucked up their ideas and nowadays 23 out of Nato’s 32 members do contribute at least 2 per cent of GDP – in 2014 only three did.
However, now the game has changed. The week’s summit of Europe’s leaders in Paris will, I am sure, result in a commitment to rearm and increase expenditure on defence. But can we please get away from this arbitrary percentage of GDP? Instead, each country should identify what it needs to spend money on to protect itself and wider European nations and calculate accordingly.
This should also be based on what each nation can contribute and specialise in. It’s not all based on increasing the size of our respective armies, navies and air forces. Britain is particularly good at cyber warfare, intelligence, naval power and global reach. France is good at rapid deployment and amphibious warfare while Germany excels at cyber defence and military hardware.
Poland, which already spends 4 per cent of its GDP on defence, has huge expertise in hybrid warfare and a rapidly expanding munitions and hardware manufacturing capability. I could go on.
If Trump delivers on his pledge (threat?) to decouple America from Europe, then make no mistake, Britain’s defence budget must rise to levels previously unthinkable. This year we will spend around £57 billion on defence (2.33 per cent of GDP). Labour’s strategic defence review, headed by former Nato secretary general Lord Robertson, is due to be published in March. If my sources are correct, he is planning to suggest a massive increase in defence spending, which is being resisted in No 10. That resistance may be weakening, so it would not surprise me at all if the review wasn’t delayed until the second half of the year.