UK Heads to NATO Summit Without Clear Plan for Defense Spending Goals

ABOARD THE HMS PRINCE OF WALES — The U.K. will show up at this week’s NATO summit with no long-term plan to reach alliance spending targets, something Defence Secretary Dan Jarvis told POLITICO is “mission critical” to deliver as soon as possible.

“Those were the assurances that I was giving to NATO partners when I was in Brussels a couple of weeks ago. That’s what I will be saying to people in Ankara,” he said aboard the HMS Prince of Wales aircraft carrier sailing near the Arctic Circle.

Donald Trump is on the warpath against NATO countries that aren’t spending enough on defense, and the U.S. president has also been “not happy” with the U.K.’s reluctance to help in the war against Iran.

That puts U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer in a dangerous spot as he heads to the Turkish capital for what will be his final big foreign summit before handing over power to challenger Andy Burnham later this month.

Starmer last week published the U.K.’s Defence Investment Plan, laying out defense spending through the end of the decade. It calls for the country to reach 2.7 percent of GDP for defense by next year, but has no clear path to NATO’s 2035 goal of 3.5 percent.

“Our allies want us to have fully funded, accelerated plans to reach the 3.5 percent commitment we drove. They also want consistency and clarity of leadership. We will be bringing neither [to Ankara],” said Sophia Gaston, a research fellow at King’s College London.

Jarvis refused to say whether the government was on track to meet its NATO promise, but said it is crucial to lay out a fully costed plan “as early as possible.” He did confirm that Britain has already reached the less demanding NATO target of spending 1.5 percent of GDP on security-related investment like cyber, roads and ports.

He said he will pressure the next prime minister to set out Britain’s plan to fund its full NATO commitment in next year’s spending review.

Burnham said in a radio interview last week: “I will take my responsibilities fully to fund the Defence Investment Plan.”

Last week, the Treasury confirmed that Burnham will have to find £4.7 billion in savings during his first budget to fully fund the DIP, raising the possibility of further cuts to public services.

“Other government departments aren’t necessarily going to get the money that they want to do everything that they need to do,” Jarvis said.

Jarvis was appointed to the role less than a month ago following the shock resignation of John Healey over the funding of the DIP. The plan released last week saw £15 billion in additional funding for the military, a £1.5 billion increase over what Healey had secured.

“A lot of people basically didn’t think I had any chance of getting more money,” Jarvis said, adding: “I’m not aware that anybody will kind of now underestimate my determination to get the trajectory in place at the next spending review.”

The DIP only fully funds £298 billion of defense investment until 2030; spending from 2030 to 2035 to reach the country’s strategic goals would come to at least an additional £386 billion — and that doesn’t include the tens of billions that would need to be spent on Britain’s nuclear deterrent.

The defense secretary said he expected the government to make a “long-term commitment” to the additional amount “because I think that level of funding is absolutely required.”

Jarvis also underlined that he wants to stay in the job once Burnham takes over, saying his previous two years as security minister were the “perfect apprenticeship” for the defense secretary post by giving him a good view of the Russian threat.

“I know what they’re like, I know what they can do, I know what they’ve done, I know what they want to do, and it’s our job to guard against that,” he said.

But his last task in the current government will be accompanying Starmer to Ankara, where the reception from allies is unlikely to be kind.

“The whole world, certainly NATO, has seen the row in the British government which led to the resignation of John Healey, and that will have left a message of instability, and that the British government collectively is not prepared to spend enough money on military to meet what its army chiefs say it needs,” said Bronwen Maddox, director of the Chatham House think tank.