By investing in areas overseas that are challenged by poverty and conflict, we help reduce the likelihood of the consequences of those challenges, such as terrorism, irregular migration, and humanitarian disasters, reaching the United Kingdom.
The former Conservative leader argues that “we need to make a greater commitment to the rise in defence spending – if only to give a greater lead to the Europeans to do the same.”
The UK’s current #BeKind mindset must change if as a society we are ever to reach the level of military readiness aspired to by our NATO partners.
Training UK citizens in basic military skills would mean that if war came, a larger and more capable military base could be mobilised more quickly, thereby de-risking the prospect of being overwhelmed and defeated in the first stages of a conflict.
Labour have not even firmly committed to spending 2 per cent of GDP on Defence and are vulnerable. But we cannot counterattack them without ammunition.
The UK needs to be prepared for a possible reality in which the EU may be a more significant player in European defence and security.
The West needs to learn again that appeasement does not work.
In 2021 Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States began a consultation process to upgrade Canberra’s submarine capability – AUKUS. That now looks highly prescient.
If you believe the role of our Armed Forces is to save lives by convincing potential aggressors that we would defeat them, then we are palpably failing.
Amidst all the sound and fury prompted by Trump on both sides of the Atlantic, the highly inconvenient truth is that he is correct. In the defence context, too many European countries have been delinquent for decades.
Despite European NATO’s technological superiority over Russia, we will struggle to defend against a Russian attack: only Finland and Poland have land equipment on the necessary scale.
Sombre warnings from politicians and generals are entirely at odds with decades of what can be fairly described as a deeply unserious approach to defence.
Rishi Sunak should build on the recent progress in Northern Ireland to impress upon Dublin the urgency of stepping up our efforts to counter Russian, Chinese, and Iranian threats to our joint security.
Another quarter of them said they didn’t want the party to win, but to have enough MPs left to form a decent Opposition and hold the new government to account.