The UK is in a slow-moving car crash with Trump over defence
Donald Trump as US President in 2018 (Credit: Gints Ivuskans / Alamy Stock Photo)
3 min read
Donald Trump’s election victory will undoubtedly have implications for both international security and defence spending, particularly in Europe.
We know that Trump wants to be a peacetime president, and he aspires to “Make America Great Again”.
He believes that wars are wasteful. He would prefer to use economic rather than military power to influence security outcomes. He recognises that the accommodation of China is the single grand strategic challenge of the age – but he wants to out-compete them, not militarily engage them. He thinks that Europe should be doing far more to meet its own security challenges.
Trump’s general view is that European Nato is getting a free ride at America’s expense
His approach is that of a dealmaker and he firmly believes that, if the United States is to continue to be the paymaster of the future world order, then he wants to ensure that the United States gets a commensurate benefit.
In the Middle East, which President Trump will see as unfinished business, he will wish to re-energise the Abraham Accords as the vehicle by which Iran is further isolated from – and Israel further cemented into – the architecture of the region. It was, after all, Iranian concerns about the imminence of further progress in the Arab world’s acceptance of the state of Israel that prompted the horrific violence of 7 October 2023.
In East Asia, President Trump does not want to be sucked into a fight to preserve the independence of Taiwan. He is prepared to sustain arms supplies to Taiwan as part of the deterrent to pre-emptive Chinese military action.
Concurrently, he wants to onshore microchip production, attempt to outmatch China in technological global leadership, and use tariffs as a means of securing economic advantage.
In Europe he will want to bring the war with Ukraine to an end, but it is far less certain what he considers to be acceptable conditionality. Rather than conclude the war instantaneously, he may choose to double down on support for Ukraine to create the circumstances for a more acceptable peace. But he will do so in ways that fall short of risking Russian humiliation and the danger of nuclear escalation.
Trump’s general view is that European Nato is getting a free ride at America’s expense. He does not see why America should continue to be the external security guarantor for a region of the world that is quite capable of affording its own defence.
More specifically, however, it has been a consistent theme of US presidents that they hold the United Kingdom to a higher standard. This is understandable, because the UK is a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council and its defence budget carries the additional burden of paying for an independent nuclear deterrent.
In this context, I feel as though I am watching a slow-moving car crash. On the one hand, our government is conducting – during wartime – a strategic defence review that will necessitate new investments but that appears, in public at least, to be capped in financial terms at 2.5 per cent of GDP. On the other hand, there is an incoming US president who will consider three per cent of GDP as the entry-level cost of Nato membership.
Quite how a president whose defining characteristics are unpredictability and the art of the deal will react to this situation is potentially very discomforting indeed.
Lord Houghton is a crossbench peer and former chief of the defence staff and armed forces
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