The UK’s current Strategic Defence Review (SDR) is hobbled from the start and the country needs to spend significantly more than the 2.5% it envisages, a former Chief of the General Staff has told a Newcastle University audience.
General Sir Patrick Sanders was delivering a public lecture* as Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer was preparing to attend an emergency summit called by French President Emmanual Macron on Monday (17 January) in response to the war situation in Ukraine.
European leaders, including Sir Keir, fear that the United States under President Donald Trump is about to abandon the NATO alliance which has protected Europe from potential Russian aggression for 76 years.
The SDR, the first since 2015, was established by the government in July 2024 and is due to report in the first half of this year. It is being led by Lord Robertson, a former NATO secretary general, with Fiona Hill, Chancellor of Durham University, and General Sir Richard Barrons, a former Commander of Joint Forces Command.
Its parameters include commitment to the UK’s independent nuclear deterrent, a NATO-first defence policy, reinforcing UK homeland security, support for Ukraine, maintaining UK defence ties to the Indo Pacific region, the Gulf and the Middle East, and delivering the AUKUS alliance with Australia and the U.S.
Finally, says the Government: “As set out in the Labour Party’s Manifesto, the Government ‘will set out the path to spending 2.5% of GDP on defence.’ This will be dealt with at a future fiscal event.”
‘Chronic lack of readiness’
Sir Patrick told his Newcastle audience that the conjunction of a dangerous geo-political environment and a fiscal crisis was more serious than that faced by any defence review since the 1960s. He said:
“I have a few problems with these terms of reference [the parameters]. The first is that they are input constrained, which is an odd place to start.
“Second, SDR is a bit of a misnomer if you are not going to nest the SDR in grand strategy. Instead, what we have is an SDR which is constrained into six broad tasks…They are all viable, valuable outcomes, but they are not nested within a broader sense of any grand strategy.
“And thirdly, there’s that 2.5%. Just to situate that 2.5% in context: in 1936 we were spending 2.9% of GDP on defence, in 1939 it rose to 9%, in 1945 it was 50% and in 1990 it was 4%.” Current defence spending is 2.3% of GDP.
Sir Patrick added: “We are facing an era that looks and feels a little bit like the 1930s but we are constraining ourselves to 2.5%. The implications of that are essentially that even if we spend 2.7% we will not be able to address the chronic lack of readiness of the British armed forces in the near future. So sadly we have hobbled [the SDR] from the start.
“Why have we chosen to do that? Well, I think that one of the consequences of us being this very lucky generation is that we have suffered from contemporary amnesia both as a public and in our politicians. We have lost sight of the fact that historically this period is ahistorical, that sadly war is the norm in human history.”
Actions needed, said Sir Partick, were prioritising the nuclear deterrent; strengthening homeland defence including mobilising society’s willingness to fight for the country; focusing on the here-and-now, including building the industrial base; putting NATO first; and focusing on quick-win technologies.
He went on: “This is expensive. This comes at significant cost. The real figure that defence needs probably to put its house in order and to address the decline we have suffered in the last 50 years is somewhere between 3% and 4% and choosing to spend on guns rather than butter.
“But the alternative is so much worse, and we have to pay the price of some of the oversights and the mistakes and complacency of our politicians and indeed the voting public. But the good news is that national security is also economic prosperity.”
*Newcastle University Insights Lecture: Defending the UK in Unprecedented Times. General Sir Patrick Sanders. The lecture can be viewer here:
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