[Daily Mail, where America gets its news] We will undoubtedly ask, in years to come, how the issue of defence played no part in the 2024 General Election.
| That is Britain’s general election, not America’s. |
There was just a momentary spat when the Conservatives boasted that they would increase defence spending from its current level of 2.3 per cent to 2.5 per cent of GDP ‘by 2030’, while Labour said they would reach 2.5 per cent ‘when conditions allow’.
The latter is a meaningless statement, but the Conservatives’ claim is hardly a triumph of resolve.
And it is extraordinary that the greatly increased likelihood of Donald Trump being (re)elected President, following the cruelly public exposure of Joe Biden’s incapacity in their so-called debate last week, has still not caused the issue of defence to be raised in our own election.
It could hardly be clearer that Donald Trump, returned to the White House, will not just demand that we and other European countries pay much, much more of the costs of defence against the depredations of the insatiable warmonger in the Kremlin: he actually has no intention of assisting us.
Last month, it was revealed that Trump had told the European Commission President, Ursula von der Leyen: ‘We will leave, we will quit Nato. And by the way, you owe me $400 billion, because you didn’t pay, you Germans, what you had to pay for defence.’
It is said this was some sort of bluff; Trump’s negotiating tactic to get Europeans to cough up more.
Not according to John Bolton, who was his National Security Advisor: ‘I was there when he almost withdrew [from Nato], and he’s not negotiating. His goal here is not to strengthen Nato, it’s to lay the groundwork to get out.
A fortnight ago, I was at a lunch the leading Westminster think-tank Policy Exchange held for the man whom many tip to be National Security Advisor in Trump 2.0: Elbridge Colby.
The formidably articulate Colby, who served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defence during the first Trump administration, shocked the British military panjandrums present with his strong intimation that he did not necessarily see a Russian attack on a European Nato member as a reason for the U.S. to send its forces into action.
He was unmoved as one of the guests pointed out that when the U.S., after 9/11, sought backing for its invasion of Afghanistan (where Osama bin Laden lurked), all its Nato allies sent troops in support, too.
Colby, like Trump, regards China as the only serious threat to U.S. interests, and believes all Washington’s military strategy should be directed against Xi Jinping’s plans for ‘Asian hegemony’: Beijing taking control of the archipelago of islands that runs from Japan, via Taiwan, to the southern edge of the South China Sea.
So, Colby told us, Europe must be ‘de-prioritised’, ridiculing what he called ‘the idea we should break our spear in Europe, which is much less important to the American people’.
Afterwards, when I spoke to him, Colby said: ‘You need to realise I’m moderate on this, compared with many in the Republican Party.’
He added: ‘Your Prime Minister says he will put 2.5 per cent of the UK’s GDP into defence. Why not 3.5 per cent? That’s what America spends.’
Fair point. Half a century ago, when there was no war in Europe, 5 per cent of our GDP was spent on defence.
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