On Monday, Andy Burnham became Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (UK) and announced his new Cabinet. Acknowledging the political shortcomings of His Majesty’s (HM) Government, he used his first speech to lay out his vision for reindustrialisation, welfare reform, and building ‘a new sense of national unity’.

While Britain looks ahead to a new administration, the challenges faced by Sir Keir Starmer, former Prime Minister, still exist. With these issues demanding the attention of the new Cabinet, this week’s Big Ask poses the following question to eight experts: What should the new Prime Minister prioritise for the rest of 2026?

Prof. Basil Germond

Professor of International Security and Co-Director of Security Research Institute, Lancaster University, and Visiting Fellow, Royal Navy Strategic Studies Centre

The new Prime Minister and Wes Streeting, his Defence Secretary, have inherited a Royal Navy that, despite chronic underfunding, remains a vital enabler of the national interest. The crisis in the Strait of Hormuz has demonstrated that the UK’s security and prosperity continue to depend on the stability of the global maritime supply chain and freedom of navigation.

In an increasingly volatile strategic and operating environment, the swift and efficient delivery of the Hybrid Navy proposed by Gen. Sir Gwyn Jenkins, First Sea Lord, and costed in the Defence Investment Plan (DIP) is essential. Combining crewed platforms and autonomous systems will strengthen the Royal Navy’s flexibility, versatility, resilience, and attritable mass. This will enhance its capacity to shape the global maritime order and exercise seapower in support of British interests, from protecting undersea infrastructure in home waters to conducting high-intensity operations in distant maritime theatres.

Alongside a sustained commitment to naval investment, two priorities stand out for 2026. Firstly, enduring investment in seapower requires greater ocean literacy across Whitehall, Westminster, and wider society. Burnham can play a central role by consistently emphasising the country’s dependence on the sea for both its security and prosperity, and by embracing the narrative of the UK as a maritime nation from the outset of his premiership.

Secondly, HM Government must be prepared to respond swiftly and decisively to increasingly overt and covert Russian provocations at sea, including within or near British waters. This requires an open-minded discussion about whether existing doctrines, rules of engagement, and decision-making processes are suited to sub-threshold activities in the maritime ‘grey zone’.

In the longer term, defending freedom of navigation, including in the Strait of Hormuz, will place service personnel at greater risk. Credible maritime leadership will therefore require not only investment, but political preparedness to make difficult decisions when deterrence fails.

Dr Timothy Less

Senior Adviser for Geopolitics, Centre for Risk Studies, University of Cambridge

HM Government’s starting point is years of national stagnation. To achieve its geopolitical goals, it must focus as much on means as on ends. There is no point in having a foreign policy if Britain lacks the power to realise it.

The task begins with greater spending on a military that has been badly degraded by years of underinvestment. Allies have noticed the gap between the UK’s international ambitions and its capacity to fulfil them. The new Prime Minister should therefore publish an accelerated, fully funded timetable for substantially higher defence expenditure. This depends on restoring economic growth, which in turn depends on removing the myriad obstacles erected by previous governments – from higher taxes and excessive regulation to industrial electricity prices that remain among the highest in the developed world.

Yet, material capability is not enough. Realising Britain’s national priorities depends on the confidence and willingness to pursue them. HM Government must be able to define the country’s interests, and not allow abstract values to substitute for strategy.

It must also foster a stronger sense of patriotism. HM Government may not be able to manufacture this by decree, but it can stop treating it with embarrassment. People will not make sacrifices for the national interest unless they feel committed to the nation.

Whether the new administration will do what is necessary remains to be seen. John Healey’s appointment as Chancellor of the Exchequer may indicate greater seriousness about defence, but I remain unconvinced of HM Government’s ability to revive the economy, or of the willingness of Ed Miliband, Foreign Secretary, to prioritise the national interest over demonstrations of virtue.

The litmus test will be Chagos.

Paul Mason

Adjunct Fellow, Council on Geostrategy

Short answer: narrative. Every action should tell a story – and while that story might have subplots, side quests, and soliloquies, it has to have a clear plot and desired ending.

That is what was missing in the Starmer era. The protagonist is the British people; the antagonist is their enemies. That of course can include Russia, Iran, and their proxies, but also rip-off landlords, scammers, and mobile phone thieves.

I say this as someone focused on national security, but without a compelling story of who we are, where we come from, and where we are headed, nothing else coheres. All the trade-offs become identity battles. Avoiding that through narrative clarity has to be the focus.

Jack Pardoe

Head of Policy, Octopus Energy, and Adjunct Fellow, Council on Geostrategy

Burnham should give a top down order on energy strategy to Whitehall: ‘maximum production; electrification’. Or, more colloquially: ‘do a Norway’.

Norway produces oil and gas but also has the highest per capita penetration of electric cars and heat pumps. It flogs fuels to the UK and the rest of Europe while reaping the rewards of electrification at home. There is no good reason – whether environmental, economic, jobs, or security – not to produce more oil and gas from the North Sea. Britain should go ahead with more home production.

Realistically, though, the UK is more dependent on oil and gas than is good for it, especially now that serious alternatives exist for consumer uses. That has inflicted severe economic damage and hinders rearmament. Electrifying transport and heating – the biggest sources of demand for oil and gas respectively – creates options for providing important energy services.

A nuclear power plant, a gas-fired plant, or renewables all fuel electric cars. Likewise with a heat pump. Petrol cars and gas boilers are limited to oil and gas and lock in dependency on those fuels – which are lacking – for what is now relatively inefficient use.

All things being equal, electrification would free up more fuel for the British industrial base, which desperately needs revitalising, or for improving our balance of payments. The priority should therefore change from the current ‘build offshore wind at any cost’ to ‘cut electricity prices’ to improve the economics of electrification.

This means not overcapitalising the electricity grid as now, removing more electricity taxes and levies, introducing nodal pricing to cut waste and unfair windfall rents in the electricity market, and reopening unaffordable grid upgrade plans to do them more cheaply.

James Rogers

Co-President (Research), Council on Geostrategy

While throwing trinkets and baubles to the public to alleviate the cost-of-living crisis may prove tempting, the new Prime Minister should hold his nerve. Short-term, populist fixes deliver nothing of tangible value; rather, they merely expand national debt without long-term gain. Instead, Burnham needs to place supply-side economic reforms at the heart of his agenda for the nation.

After two decades of sustained population growth and underinvestment, the UK’s infrastructure is creaking. The country desperately lacks reservoirs and power stations, while its roads, railways, housing, schools, and hospitals are severely strained. Streamlining planning regulations, building new homes, and upgrading the transport network are essential to lowering costs for businesses and households alike. Defence should also be leveraged: new military facilities would help to level up peripheral regions, while Britain’s defence industrial base could provide numerous new jobs.

Crucially, physical renewal must extend to public spaces, where broken window theory applies. Widespread litter, fly tipping, and high levels of petty crime leave high streets, highways, and local parks looking dilapidated and run-down, reinforcing a pervasive feeling of national decay. A coordinated effort is needed to clear up the litter – especially along highways controlled by National Highways and Transport for London – resurface roads, and bedeck town centres with new street furniture and well-maintained flower gardens.

By ensuring that public spaces are tidied up, Burnham’s new administration can demonstrate that the state can make a positive difference. This could instil renewed confidence in the British public, driving higher productivity and economic growth – a truly virtuous circle of national regeneration.

Grace Theodoulou

International Fellow, Council on Geostrategy

While not much is known about the new Prime Minister’s foreign policies, when it comes to Beijing, it is unlikely that he will veer away from Sir Keir’s trajectory of increased contact with the UK’s ‘most complex bilateral relationship’.

Starmer and his cabinet saw the complexities of adhering to Labour’s ‘three Cs’ policy on the People’s Republic of China (PRC) – ‘cooperate, challenge, compete’. A good place for Burnham to start may be to do a mini ‘China Audit’ of his own, to see what role – if any – Beijing should play in his principal aims of building more public housing, improving infrastructure, and reducing energy costs.

As with many of Burnham’s predecessors, Beijing will be waiting in the wings to provide cheaper materials to enable these policies. The PRC views the bilateral relationship with a pragmatic lens, but at what cost? And with what small print?

Among a series of unenviable tasks that the Prime Minister will inherit from Sir Keir’s departure is the British Steel saga. When British Steel’s expropriation from Jingye was completed, only last week, the Chinese former owner demanded compensation, citing Article 5 of the UK-China Bilateral Investment Treaty (BIT) – a legally binding agreement signed 40 years ago last May. Article 5 permits nationalisation if it is for a ‘public purpose related to the internal needs’ of the other contracting party, accompanied by ‘reasonable compensation’.

Whether ties are currently strong or strained, it is clear that the PRC is not going anywhere. Alongside conducting his own mini China Audit, perhaps Burnham could order a review of the UK’s current investment treaties with the PRC, to consider closing any major gaps that might allow for further fallouts as Whitehall grapples with the circular question of how to achieve green and affordable growth without compromising national security.

Dr Mann Virdee

Head of Science and Technology, The Entrepreneurs Network, and Adjunct Fellow, Council on Geostrategy

The new Prime Minister should prioritise clarity and stability.

Entrepreneurs are a pretty resilient bunch; they know how to weather a storm if they can plan for it. What they find difficult is not knowing where they stand with HM Government. When Sir Keir took office, some entrepreneurs were relieved – not necessarily because they agreed with all his policies, but simply because there was a feeling that, at last, there would be some continuity for at least five years. Two years in though, it is time for change again.

The science and technology ecosystem had come to like the Department of Science, Innovation, and Technology (DSIT). It was not perfect (being itself the product of an overnight reshuffle) but, once settled, there was a clarity and logic to it. It was a single front door and a dedicated champion for the whole sector at the Cabinet table. Now it is being folded into a new business super-department, with no standalone science and technology secretary. Where the different parts of its portfolio will end up remains unconfirmed. The risk is that the community which cohered around DSIT will fragment too – to the detriment of Britain’s effort to secure advantage in areas such as quantum and biotech.

This is the latest in a series of machinery-of-government changes where sector leaders learnt about them from media reports instead of being consulted. That disconnect erodes trust. If they abolish the department without speaking to the people it is there to support, what else might they do? Burnham has refused to rule out an ‘exit tax’ which has unsettled founders. It is also less clear where and how the country’s research and development budget will now be spent.

The UK’s propensity for playing with the machinery of government is, as James Wilsdon observed this week, a displacement activity – or, as I have previously argued, a case of politician’s syllogism. It is hard to move forward if you are continually going around in circles.

Prof. James Woudhuysen

Visiting Professor, London South Bank University

The most urgent priority must be to rebuild Britain’s defence. At the moment, the country has very little at all, making it difficult to achieve any civilian priorities.

One part of defence must be a much more stringent attitude to illegal immigration; another must be to strengthen capabilities in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and in nuclear fusion. Energy remains a key weakness of the UK’s economy and resilience. The grid needs serious attention, and the Net Zero obsession with intermittent sources of energy needs extinguishing.

To avoid social upheaval, Britain needs a programme of mass housebuilding. That will not happen until the 1947 Town and Country Planning Act is abolished, so that residential construction and new towns are possible in much wider areas of the country. A relaxed planning regime will make it possible for wholly or partly manufactured homes to have a guarantee of sales, making their success more likely.

A neglected area for action is to anticipate and ward off floods. Many homes and, even more damagingly, many small businesses are still regularly destroyed in the UK through resorting to sandbags rather than proper flood defences.

Under new management, the High Speed 2 (HS2) railway should be extended to Scotland. Speed limits on roads should be lifted, and output targets for Electric Vehicle (EV) manufacturers abandoned.

Above all, the country must organise for more real engineers and fewer social ones. Lack of technical knowledge should be a bar to recruitment to the civil service – enough with Politics, Philosophy, and Economics (PPE)!

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On 7th and 8th July, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) held its annual summit, hosted this year in Ankara. Notable pronouncements included commitments to collective defence; the creation of the Defence, Security, and Resilience Bank (DSRB), led by Canada; pledges to increase defence investment and expand defence industrial capabilities; and support for Ukraine against Russia’s full-scale invasion.

Within the alliance, the United States (US) under President Donald Trump is continuing to signal a reduction in military presence across Europe to focus on the Indo-Pacific and Western Hemisphere, with the expectation that European allies will assume a greater share of the defence burden. Being one of European NATO’s two largest defence spenders, the United Kingdom (UK) is ideally positioned to lead in doing so. As such, for this week’s Big Ask, we asked eight experts: How can Britain construct a European pillar within NATO?

Hugo Barker

Chief of Staff, Defence, Security, and Resilience Bank (DSRB) Development Group, and Adjunct Fellow, Council on Geostrategy

Ankara showed that the question for European rearmament has moved from intent to delivery. European allies and Canada added more than US$139 billion (£103.6 billion) to core defence budgets last year. What European nations still lack is the architecture to turn that spending into sustained capability.

Europe has multilateral banks for reconstruction, development, and infrastructure, but none for defence. As argued in Project Syndicate this month, higher spending alone will not deliver capability: NATO needs a defence market built on sovereign-backed finance that lowers the cost of industrial expansion and crowds in private capital.

That is what the DSRB is designed to create. At the summit itself, nine nations led by Canada signed a joint declaration supporting its establishment. The UK was not among them. It should be.

The debate in London is live: Rachel Reeves, Chancellor of the Exchequer, called during summit week for the DSRB and Britain’s own Multilateral Defence Mechanism to merge, even as ministers told Parliament that the two do different things. Either way, the UK can only shape the outcome from inside.

With a new Prime Minister imminent, joining the DSRB as a founding member would be an early, concrete signal of intent, and one that fits the incoming administration’s agenda: defence-industrial finance flows to the regions where Britain builds ships, submarines, and munitions – exactly where a government promising industrial renewal must deliver.

A European pillar built on budget lines alone will not last. One built on a durable market and durable institutions will. The UK should help to build both.

Prof. James Bergeron*

Political Adviser to the Commander, NATO MARCOM, and International Fellow, Council on Geostrategy

The European pillar of NATO is not Britain’s to construct alone. The UK would not even be the central actor, but it would be a critical one, along with France and Germany.

Why? First, as so many say, the land matters most, and the vast bulk of European territory threatened by Russia is not British. That will always place the centre of gravity on the continent’s mainland. The UK’s army and navy have downsized to the point that the country can no longer leverage the outsized role it had in the Cold War or even the post-Cold War era.

That said, an effective European pillar of NATO – one that could deliver the conventional defence of Europe – is not possible without Britain as a key participant. The UK can leverage its nuclear deterrent commitment to the alliance, along with new nuclear arrangements with France, to bolster Europe’s own nuclear umbrella. Britain leads in technology, avionics, space, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and quantum capabilities, and can play an enabling role for European defence. The City of London can help to finance that defence. The Royal Navy and Royal Air Force (RAF) continue to play irreplicable roles in the security of the North Atlantic, while the British Army’s Enhanced Vigilance Activities (EVA) deployment in Estonia has an important deterrence role. Leadership of the Joint Expeditionary Force (JEF) is also a useful complement to NATO structures.

Two geopolitical dynamics underpin such a role for the UK. Firstly, that London keeps Washington onboard. Secondly, and in tension with the first to a degree, is to deepen economic and political ties with continental NATO and the European Union (EU), the underpinning of defence solidarity. The Global Combat Air Programme (GCAP) is an excellent example. Other cooperative defence initiatives should follow.

*This response is written in a personal capacity, and does not necessarily reflect any official national views, nor those of NATO.

Prof. Klaus Dodds

Professor of Geopolitics and Faculty Dean, Middlesex University London, and Honorary Fellow, Council on Geostrategy

Britain’s strategic position has shifted in the Trump era. Recognising implicitly that the US is a volatile security partner, His Majesty’s (HM) Government has pivoted towards Norway and other JEF members, Finland, and Poland. Additionally, Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine has decisively shaped the European security landscape.

A European pillar within NATO allows the UK (and potential JEF members such as Canada) to showcase how NATO and EU/broader European priorities can and should be aligned. It foregrounds collective responsibility for continental security, and responds directly to Trump’s complaints that alliance members are ‘not doing enough’, as he told participants at the Ankara summit. Finally, it highlights the importance of aligning EU-level initiatives such as the European Defence Fund with a NATO-first mindset. All of this requires a cross-party political consensus in Britain – and elsewhere in Europe – regarding defence investment, political leadership, and NATO-European complementarity.

The UK should help to support and clarify a division of labour. NATO must remain the primary collective defence organisation, and the EU should focus on developing a defence industrial policy and investment package that responds to NATO’s operational requirements. European capacity building in toto signals to Washington that the continent is taking its responsibility for its own security seriously. The US turning away from NATO would be a disaster for Britain and European allies.

A European pillar would help to make those collective European defence efforts more coherent and signal to America, both now and in a post-Trump era, that burden sharing is mutually beneficial. While Trump will continue to amplify grievances and demands, including purchasing Greenland, the best response from Europeans is to demonstrate determination to buttress a NATO-first posture. The harsh reality remains; Russia is an ongoing threat to the UK and its European allies.

Artur Honich

Senior Defence Analyst, RAND Europe

In June, the Pentagon announced a six-month review of American military posture and basing in Europe. As the US clarifies its future footprint, burden shifting should produce ‘a stronger Europe in a stronger NATO’ (as set out in the Ankara Summit Declaration), rather than a stronger Europe in a weaker NATO.

British leadership will be important across several areas as European NATO members prepare to assume primary responsibility for the alliance’s conventional defence and deterrence. The first element of this is to implement the capability targets apportioned to the UK and deliver a fully deployable and enabled Strategic Reserve Corps.

Second, Britain’s investment in airpower, the development of ballistic and cruise missile capabilities in the 300-2,000+ kilometre (km) range, and its return to NATO’s nuclear sharing arrangements will provide significant opportunities to strengthen deterrence and develop new concepts for escalation management.

Third, the UK should further increase its role in planning and executing exercises within NATO and complementary multinational frameworks such as the JEF. If burden shifting leads to reduced American participation, European allies will need to sustain exercise patterns that signal credible deterrence by visibly demonstrating the capacity for high-intensity warfighting.

Fourth, Britain should further strengthen its representation in NATO’s command structure, leveraging the deep experience of its officers in defence planning, doctrine development, and operations.

Finally, the UK must overcome fiscal pressures to meet the agreed 3.5% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) defence spending target by 2035. This would require an additional £25 billion every year by that date beyond the commitments made in the Defence Investment Plan. Without a credible roadmap towards this, important capability areas and allies’ confidence in British leadership could be put at risk.

Liberty Hunter

Project Manager and Researcher, Ax:son Johnson Institute, and Adjunct Fellow, Council on Geostrategy

As the host of maritime command architecture, the UK occupies a credible position as the organiser of a European pillar within NATO that holds a focus on maritime security. The alliance’s Maritime Command (MARCOM) and the JEF Standing Joint Force Headquarters both sit at Northwood, meaning maritime planning and European coalition building in Britain is well practised. Geography offers other strengths: the UK, as host to His Majesty’s Naval Base (HMNB) Clyde, the closest submarine base to the Greenland-Iceland-UK (GIUK) gap, and Devonport, Western Europe’s largest naval base, can commit assets in days rather than weeks.

The JEF’s members already coordinate on the same threats that a maritime pillar would need to address: Russian activity in the GIUK gap, undersea cable and pipeline security, and the Kremlin’s ‘shadow fleet’. Britain’s leadership of NATO’s Standing Naval Maritime Group 1, and the recently selected command of Joint Force Command Norfolk, only boosts its institutional strength within this pillar.

The strategic importance of a maritime European pillar is interesting. Such a pillar allows the UK to demonstrate real European leadership as the US reorients its threat assessment toward the Indo-Pacific, while not displacing American capability elsewhere. While a European land forces pillar could be seen as duplication, a maritime pillar becomes complementary – a response to the ‘burden shifting’ that Washington demands. It reflects an alliance-wide paucity of maritime resources, such as in escort fleets, which necessitates pooling and burden sharing.

A British-led European pillar in NATO, coordinating maritime security in the North Atlantic, Baltic, and Mediterranean (all Eurocentric security concerns), is a plausible and useful model for strategists to consider.

James Langan

Adjunct Fellow, Council on Geostrategy

The UK is well placed to lead the development of a stronger European pillar within NATO by leveraging its position at the centre of several NATO-adjacent minilateral and multilateral frameworks, most notably the JEF. Comprising ten Northern European nations, the JEF provides a ready-made mechanism for coordinating regional deterrence, enhancing interoperability, and responding rapidly to emerging security challenges across the High North and Baltic regions.

Historically, Britain has been most successful when acting as the balancer of European security. The enduring foundations of the UK’s grand strategy rested on three principles: securing Europe’s sea lines of communication, safeguarding commercial trade, and building flexible coalitions of smaller states capable of resisting aspiring hegemons. This approach enabled Britain to aggregate collective power while avoiding unsustainable continental commitments. It also helped to sustain a favourable European balance of power that endures today, despite the UK lacking many of the conventional foundations of great power status – most notably a large standing army.

A contemporary European pillar within NATO should therefore be built around British convening power rather than British primacy. By strengthening the JEF, deepening defence cooperation with Nordic and Baltic allies, and integrating complementary initiatives such as the Combined Joint Expeditionary Force and Weimar+, the UK can help to aggregate European military capabilities within a coherent strategic framework.

In doing so, it would reinforce the alliance’s collective deterrence, promote more equitable burden sharing, and reduce European dependence on direct American military engagement, thereby strengthening the resilience and credibility of the Euro-Atlantic security architecture.

Matthew Palmer

Adjunct Fellow, Council on Geostrategy

Greater Europeanisation of NATO is an urgent requirement as the US becomes a more structurally unreliable ally with diverging priorities.

Britain has already proved successful in establishing an American-free European framework in the JEF, now a notable ‘pillar’ of Northern European security. This puts it in a good position to encourage the Europeanisation of NATO itself. Both within and without the alliance and the JEF, the UK should prioritise exercises with European allies to improve interoperability, ideally in contexts where US support is absent or not guaranteed.

Britain should also reduce its reliance on American weaponry and technology and replace them with European alternatives. This includes continuing to strengthen defence industrial ties both bilaterally with European nations and with the EU.

However, the UK’s influence will be constrained if it does not adequately resource its defences and show actual leadership on broadening military capacity. Britain currently holds significant structural power within NATO, but this is not guaranteed to continue. The customary holding of the Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Europe (DSACEUR) posting may not be tenable in the future, especially considering the growing power and strategic importance of Germany and Poland. Likewise, the UK’s leadership of MARCOM may also be questioned if the Royal Navy’s readiness cannot be improved.

British power – soft and hard – continues to decline due to the unwillingness to resource either defence or broader foreign policy commitments, and to make bold strategic choices. If the UK wants to remain influential in NATO, it will have to start putting its money where its mouth is.

James Rogers

Co-President (Research), Council on Geostrategy

To construct a credible European pillar within NATO, Britain must establish itself as the centre of gravity – a strategic hub around which other European allies can rotate. To avoid duplicating capabilities though, HM Government should focus resources on two essential lines of effort.

First, the UK should enhance its high-end conventional capabilities. This involves co-investing with France in critical enablers, such as strategic lift, air-to-air refuelling, and force projection platforms – including deep strike, orbital systems, and the New Hybrid Navy – to allow European forces to deploy power without the US. Simultaneously, Britain should work with Germany and Poland to build up a robust conventional deterrent on the alliance’s eastern front. From Finland to Bulgaria, the UK should forward-deploy around 300 troops to each ally, backed by force multipliers such as autonomous combat systems, to signal its geopolitical intent and compound the extension of its nuclear deterrent.

Second, Britain should re-establish a sub-strategic nuclear capability. Currently, the Royal Navy’s Continuous At-Sea Deterrent (CASD) offers only a strategic, all-or-nothing response. Reintroducing a lower-yield option would fill a critical escalatory gap, which is vital for addressing Russian non-strategic nuclear coercion. This sovereign capability would reassure eastern allies and provide NATO with flexible response options to the Kremlin’s provocation.

Ultimately, a European pillar cannot be built on institutional frameworks or political rhetoric; it demands a militarily capable core. By binding together key regional powers and restoring a full spectrum of deterrence, the UK can secure its continent and draw European allies into its defence industrial ecosystem – with all the positive implications this would have for the British economy.

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Last week, His Majesty’s (HM) Government published the long-awaited Defence Investment Plan (DIP) – the follow-up to 2025’s Strategic Defence Review (SDR). Backed by almost £300 billion, the DIP lays out how funding will be allocated to the British Armed Forces over the next four years.

However, the DIP has proved contentious within HM Government, having led to the resignations of John Healey and Al Carns as Secretary of State for Defence and Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Armed Forces respectively over its shortfalls in defence funding. As Sir Keir Starmer has also announced his resignation as Prime Minister, this week’s Big Ask posits the following question to five experts: Should the next Prime Minister reopen the Defence Investment Plan?

Samira Braund

Defence Director, ADS Group

The publication of the DIP provides long-awaited clarity for the United Kingdom’s (UK) defence sector after an extended period without a comprehensive equipment plan. While there is still more to do to meet the ambitions set out in the SDR fully, the DIP establishes an important foundation from which HM Government and industry can now build.

For industry, the priority should not be reopening the DIP, but delivering it. Stability and clarity are essential to enable businesses to invest in skills, facilities, innovation, and resilient supply chains that underpin sovereign capability. Frequent revisions to strategic priorities or funding allocations risk delaying programmes, increasing costs, and weakening industry confidence at a time when the global security environment demands greater pace.

The next Prime Minister should therefore ensure the full delivery of the DIP while building out a credible, fully funded roadmap to increase defence spending to 3% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by 2030 and 3.5% by 2035, consistent with Britain’s North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) commitments. Such a roadmap should provide clear milestones, sustained investment profiles, and confidence that today’s commitments will translate into tomorrow’s capabilities.

The focus should now shift from debating the settlement to accelerating delivery. Converting investment decisions into contracts, reforming procurement, strengthening export potential, and building long-term industrial capacity will ensure that the UK maximises the return on every pound invested. Industry stands ready to partner with HM Government to turn strategic ambition into enduring military capability and economic growth.

William Freer

Research Fellow (National Security), Council on Geostrategy

The answer is both no and yes.

No, because it has taken over two years of defence, national security, and investment reviewing and planning to get to the point that the DIP could be published in the first place. A reopening of the entire process risks months of delay, where major contracts might be pushed back at a time when British defence requirements and defence firms are desperate for movement from Whitehall. Starting from scratch, tempting as it may be, could cause another several-month period of drip-feeding investment.

With that said, it is evident that the DIP as it stands is below what is needed to meet the threat environment and the UK’s commitments to NATO, with many of the key investment decisions delayed to the 2030s. The next Prime Minister should overrule Treasury objections and force through – ideally with cross-partisan support – a clear and appropriate financial settlement. A year-on-year incremental increase in percentage of GDP from now to 2035, roughly 0.14 percentage points each year, should be agreed to deliver certainty.

With this agreed to, a ‘bolt-on’ to the DIP can be worked towards. This should be far more concise, plainer in language, and simply outline additional investments planned with this further uplift in spending. The air and maritime domains should be the focus, to complement the growing land domain capabilities of European allies and backfill the presumed withdrawal of American air and naval assets needed for deterrence in the Indo-Pacific.

Dr Mike Martin MP

Member, Defence Committee

Should the next Prime Minister reopen the DIP? Indisputably. Two-thirds of the DIP is unfunded, the remaining third is insufficient, and together they sign the Royal Navy’s death warrant.

The DIP fails HM Government’s threat assessment. Sir Keir says that Russia could attack NATO by 2030, yet the funded third of the plan expires that year. It requires finding £4.7 billion at the Budget and £10.7 billion in ‘efficiencies’ on a scale that the Ministry of Defence (MOD) has never achieved. Two-thirds of the investment falls after 2030 and is unallocated, subject to next year’s spending review.

Worst of all, the DIP kills the Royal Navy as we know it. The UK will end this year with five frigates, and the DIP accelerates their retirement to 2033. Their replacements will arrive after 2030, meaning the country’s frigates retire on a fixed schedule while their replacements arrive on an unfunded one. By my maths, Britain will have three frigates in 2030 – the moment of peak danger.

The UK’s destroyers will retire from 2035, and their replacement is the Common Combat Vessel (CCV), alongside other uncrewed ships. A hybrid fleet is admirable, but it only exists on PowerPoint and is unfunded, with the money coming after 2030. Expecting to get ships from PowerPoint to projecting power in nine years is implausible.

The intelligence is unequivocal: Britain must be ready for war by 2030. The new Prime Minister should scrap the Global Combat Air Programme (GCAP) to invest £8.6 billion in the fleet, fund the entire plan at the Budget, and pull every timeline to this side of 2030. Anything else would be negligent.

Paul Mason

Adjunct Fellow, Council on Geostrategy

The DIP was designed to be ‘scalable’. Like the classic Greek family villa, you can build the first storey and leave the second as a bunch of iron rods protruding from the concrete until you find enough money to complete it.

So, the general design of the DIP should not be reopened. By going for a hybrid navy; a Ukraine-style uncrewed systems taskforce; and backing AUKUS, GCAP, and the Continuous At-Sea Deterrent (CASD), plus nearly £2 billion for a digital targeting web, HM Government has made the right choices.

However, there is an obvious missing piece with Integrated Air and Missile Defence (IAMD), and that is the ‘second storey’ I would build if the money becomes available. The critical milestone is now the 2027 Spending Review. The defence sector needs to win the argument with politicians, the public, and HM Treasury that a verbal commitment to spending 3.5% of GDP by 2035, backed by a fiscal commitment to just 3%, is not sustainable.

Rob Murray

Honorary Fellow, Council on Geostrategy

Yes. Reopen the DIP. Then throw away the thinking behind it.

The SDR answered the first question: What threats does the UK face, and what capabilities does it need? The DIP tried to answer the second: How does Britain pay for them? In this, it failed.

The DIP did not fail because HM Treasury cannot count. Rather, it is because the UK is trying to prepare to fight a 21st century war with a 20th century financing model. Britain made the strategic mistake every successful organisation fears: it put the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) in charge.

HM Treasury should not decide how much security the UK can afford. It should figure out how to afford the security that the country needs. Stop asking what drones will be needed in 2035. Nobody knows. Ask one question instead: what outcomes must Britain always deliver?

The objectives laid out by the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) – i.e., the Prime Minister – to the defence chiefs should be: deter war, win if deterrence fails, out-build the UK’s adversaries, and adapt faster than they can.

The next step is to finance those outcomes. Britain has already committed to spending up to 5% of GDP on defence and security. The issue is not whether it spends more. It is whether it mobilises capital intelligently.

No great company finances transformation from cash flow alone. It mobilises capital. Nations should too. This is not financial engineering. It is how every successful multilateral bank creates fiscal space. Defence should not be the exception.

Wars are not won by defence budgets. They are won by financing systems that can out-build the other side. Capital has become a weapon of national power. The UK should start treating it like one.

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On 6th July 2016, Her Majesty’s Government published The Report of the Iraq Inquiry – the ‘Chilcot Inquiry’. Led by Sir John Chilcot, the investigation into the United Kingdom’s (UK) participation in the Iraq War found that it began before all diplomatic avenues had been exhausted, that the threat of Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs) was presented with unjustified certainty, and that the legal basis for British military action was ‘far from satisfactory’.

The UK’s entry into the Iraq War occurred during the period in which the Ministry of Defence (MOD) prioritised Counter-Insurgency (COIN) capabilities over those designed for peer conflict. As the global geopolitical stage becomes increasingly volatile, however, there are still valuable insights to be gained from examining Britain’s involvement in the Iraq War. Therefore, for this week’s Big Ask, we asked six experts – as well as Gemini, Google’s Large Language Model (LLM): What are the lessons from the Chilcot Inquiry?

Richard Ballett

Council on Geostrategy

The publication of the Chilcot Inquiry was an important moment in British history. The document showed that Her Majesty’s Government exhibited deeply entrenched bureaucratic qualities that contributed to strategic blunders, such as informal, sofa government with a small group of like-minded and ill-informed individuals, poor information flows, and a culture of ‘winging it’ rather than conducting serious planning or analysis.

The key lessons are thus the importance of serious deliberation and sourcing alternative perspectives; the imperative of rigorous, impartial assessments that provide policymakers and elected leaders with an unvarnished picture of the truth; and the need to foster a culture of challenge where officials feel empowered to speak truth to those in power.

In my own civil service career, which started shortly after the Inquiry’s publication, I saw a lot of progress in rooting out these inimical pathologies. The UK’s intelligence assessment community has significantly improved its processes and capabilities over the last decade.

The creation of the Secretary of State’s Office of Net Assessment and Challenge (SONAC) at the MOD also played an important role, by providing leaders alternative perspectives and rigorous analysis to support some of the most consequential resource and budgetary prioritisation choices made in defence in recent years. Particularly from 2022 to 2024, SONAC acted as a lightning rod of challenge, empowered voices across the department, and forced leaders in defence to question their assumptions. The external appointment of Prof. John Bew as the Prime Minister’s Foreign Policy Adviser had the same impact on other matters of national security and diplomacy. These are just three examples of where things improved.

Ten years on, the real lesson from the Chilcot Inquiry is that Britain can never take for granted the positive changes that have been gained. Multiple and overlapping initiatives like those mentioned above can become self-reinforcing when sustained over long timeframes. However, momentum can also be lost when concurrent crises hit, when the wrong people are appointed to senior advisory positions, and when the memories of strategic blunders fade, causing bureaucracies to slip back into bad habits.

The challenges that the UK will face in the years ahead will be far more serious, complex, and numerous than those faced in the early 21st century. Adversaries today are far more powerful and dangerous than the tiny rogue states and terrorists that British leaders had to contend with in the 2000s. Consequently, the UK’s rivals will be able to exploit strategic blunders in ways that Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein could only have dreamed of.

Ten years after the publication of the Chilcot Inquiry, and with Britain about to see its seventh Prime Minister enter 10 Downing Street in less than a decade, it is more important than ever before that the UK’s leaders heed its lessons.

Brig. (rtd.) Rory Copinger-Symes CBE

Senior Adviser, Bondi Partners and SecureCloud+, and Non-Executive Director, Halo International Group

The Chilcot Inquiry’s main lessons, as I see them from a military perspective, are as follows:

Intelligence: WMD judgements were presented with unjustified certainty, the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) failed to maintain analytical distance, and ministers were not given sufficiently caveated assessments – the 45-minute claim being the obvious example. The lesson is not ‘do not trust intelligence’, but ‘do not let policy eagerness convert probabilistic intelligence into public certainty’.

Post-war planning: Planning assumed a well-executed United States (US)-led and United Nations (UN)-authorised operation in a relatively benign security environment. Phase 4 (Stabilisation) got a fraction of the attention that Phase 3 (Combat Operations) did – it was an afterthought.

Endstate definition: Commanders lacked clear direction on what ‘winning’ looked like post-Phase 3: warfighting, peacekeeping, COIN operations, or nation building? Objectives need explicit redefinition at phase transition, with commanders pushing back when that has not happened.

Civil-military integration: The split between MOD-led combat operations and a separate, under-resourced stabilisation effort meant security gains were not converted into governance gains. This fed directly into the establishment of the Stabilisation Unit and its associated doctrine, but the underlying lesson is that the military can win the fight and still lose the follow-through if civilian capacity is not resourced and integrated from day one.

Resourcing: The British Armed Forces spread themselves too thin between Iraq and Afghanistan, and were sharply criticised for their slow response to the Improvised Explosive Device (IED) threat, with the Snatch Land Rover being inadequate for the environment. Urgent operational requirements need to move fast, and admit that pre-war equipment assumptions were wrong.

The overarching lesson from the Chilcot Inquiry is: do not go to war on uncertain evidence, weak process, or without a credible plan for what comes next. Reforms alone will not fix this without genuinely challenging prevailing culture. However, the real question is whether any of this has actually been learned.

Prof. Beatrice Heuser

Distinguished Professor, Centre for Security, Diplomacy and Strategy, Brussels School of Governance, Vrije Universiteit Brussel

The most popular definition of ‘strategy’ seems to be that of Arthur Lykke: it is simply about ends, ways, and means. There is an equally simple – nay, a simplistic – assumption that this describes a process; that strategy is about first defining ends (what did the US want to achieve?), then identifying the means that are needed (assumption: the means exist or can be procured in time), and finally thinking about ways to apply them.

Reality is different, as the findings of the Chilcot Enquiry emphasise: ‘[Her Majesty’s] Government should not commit to a firm political objective [i.e., identify ends] before it is clear that it can be achieved [i.e., the means exist and ways align]’. Her Majesty’s Government was criticised for having accepted military responsibilities ‘without a robust analysis...of the military’s capacity to support the UK’s potential obligations in [Iraq]’, and whether ‘a step of such magnitude should [have been] taken…having considered the wider strategic and resource implications and contingent liabilities.’

Even key American strategist-practitioners recognise that this is the more realistic approach: Donald Rumsfeld, who listened to British-American strategist Colin S. Gray, famously noted that one goes to war with the armed forces one has, rather than the armed forces one wished one had. Lykke’s definition of strategy also does not mention the crucial dialectic with the enemy…

The lesson of the Chilcot Inquiry is that the ends, ways, and means approach should be laid to rest.

Joshua C. Huminski

International Fellow, Council on Geostrategy, and Senior Vice President of National Security and Intelligence Programmes, Centre for the Study of the Presidency and Congress

Thematically, several of the most significant lessons woven throughout the Chilcot Inquiry (and the Butler Review) relate to the risks associated with the use and misuse of strategic intelligence in politics. A central failing of the Iraq War was the use of intelligence without its necessary caveats and acceptance of its limitations.

Much as intelligence professionals and politicians alike would wish to have an unfailing crystal ball, providing a palantír-like (the JRR Tolkien, not Alex Karp version) window into the thinking of adversaries, it simply does not exist. Raw intelligence is incomplete, muddled, and often contradictory. Absent its context and its origin (which often cannot be disclosed due to the risks to sources and methods), it offers only one piece of a much broader jigsaw puzzle; one for which there is no image on the box.

Moreover, as the Iraq War demonstrated, the desire to make a compelling case to justify a chosen course of action led to the manipulation and cherry-picking of intelligence to fit predetermined narratives. There was far too much twisting of data to support theories, not theories to fit data. Today, and consequently, the British intelligence community is a much-changed entity using a single common language for interpretation, providing analysis and not raw intelligence to politicians, and internally stress testing assumptions and analysis.

The run-up to Russia’s expanded offensive in Ukraine was a much different affair. Washington and London used (declassified) strategic intelligence, seeking to signal publicly that both capitals knew what the Kremlin was planning and to communicate the imminent threat to sceptical allies across Europe, as well as into Ukraine.

While the selective use of strategic intelligence (which certainly benefited from open-source intelligence) neither deterred Russia, nor convinced even Volodymyr Zelenskyy, President of Ukraine, of the risk to his country, it was nonetheless used with far more aplomb in 2022 than in 2003.

Dr Robert Johnson

Honorary Fellow, Council on Geostrategy, and Director, Oxford Strategy, Statecraft, and Technology (Changing Character of War) Centre

Much of the commentary on the anniversary of the Chilcot Inquiry will focus on the extent to which His Majesty’s (HM) Government has adhered to the principle that all policy decisions should be subject to ‘constructive challenge’ – that is, that subordinates should be willing to offer a critical review and test assumptions without fear of accusations of disloyalty. The imperative was to avoid hasty, ill-thought through, and erroneous decisions.

The track record of British governments has not lived up to that expectation. Ministerial dependence on Special Advisers (SpAds), a focus on spin or ‘narratives’, and a lack of specialisms or incentives in the civil service are the chief problems. However, the idea of accountability upwards is only part of the story.

In one respect, the failure of accountability downwards also remains. In Iraq, many soldiers were wrongly accused of war crimes by the Iraq Historic Allegations Team (IHAT) inquiry. Not a single case led to a conviction, and the investigation revealed that the lawyers responsible were inventing accusations for profit. The same approach is being taken against British veterans deployed in Northern Ireland in the so-called Troubles Bill.

It is a reminder that loyalty goes in both directions. Regrettably, that lesson has not been learned.

James Rogers

Co-President (Research), Council on Geostrategy

The Chilcot Inquiry provided a damning indictment of the 2003 Iraq War, offering enduring lessons on flawed intelligence, institutional groupthink, and the erosion of Cabinet scrutiny. One of its core conclusions – that HM Government must adhere to international law – rightly sought to curb erratic, badly planned interventions. Yet, subsequent British foreign policy has suffered from a severe overcorrection. The lesson of legality has morphed into a dogmatic legalism that blindfolds strategic realism.

Nowhere is this paralysis more evident than in the decision (now failed) to cede sovereignty of British Indian Ocean Territory, including the vital joint UK-US military facility at Diego Garcia, to Mauritius. Driven by a desire to conform to non-binding international decisions, HM Government attempted to trade away one of Britain’s geopolitical crown jewels. In an era defined by a fracturing international order and growing alignment between the CRINK – the People’s Republic of China, Russia, Iran and North Korea – such compliance does not project moral authority; rather, it weakens the UK and invites others to make claims on British interests.

Per Chilcot, this is not to say that the UK should ignore international law. While poorly planned interventions should be resisted, a mature foreign policy – underpinned by the pursuit of strategic and asymmetric advantage, as per the 2025 National Security Strategy – demands a balance between legal frameworks and cold strategic realities. If HM Government fails to maintain this equilibrium, rigid adherence to international law will cease to be a shield, becoming instead an open invitation for geopolitical adversaries. Even Chilcot’s lessons should not go unchallenged.

Gemini

Council on Geostrategy staff have prompted Gemini, Google’s LLM, to reflect on this week’s Big Ask.

The Chilcot Inquiry remains the definitive critique of British strategic decision-making, offering enduring lessons for contemporary British statecraft as it navigates an increasingly contested Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific landscape.

First, it exposed the dangers of insular thinking. The Inquiry revealed how intelligence was presented with unwarranted certainty and left unchallenged. For modern policymakers, fostering a culture of rigorous, adversarial debate – where alternative assessments and dissenting views are integrated – is paramount to avoiding critical blind spots.

Second, it underscored that formal cabinet governance is non-negotiable. The informal style of the era bypassed established bureaucratic mechanisms, undermining collective ministerial responsibility and reducing vital scrutiny. Effective geostrategy requires robust, institutionalised decision-making, a lesson that later informed the creation of the National Security Council (NSC).

Finally, its most damning indictment was the failure of post-conflict planning. The UK committed to military intervention without a coherent, fully resourced strategy for stabilisation and reconstruction. It proved that military force is merely an instrument; without a clear endgame, tactical operational successes quickly dissolve into long-term strategic failures.

Ultimately, the Chilcot Inquiry’s core lesson is that successful statecraft demands intellectual humility, institutional rigour, and a realistic alignment of military means with sustainable political ends.

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Ten years ago, on 23rd June 2016, the United Kingdom (UK) voted to leave the European Union (EU) – the first and currently only nation-state to do so. Since then, debate has raged over how Brexit affected both British and EU economic performance. Additionally, while the relationships between the UK and its European counterparts have been turbulent, they have improved in recent years in the face of Russian aggression towards Ukraine.

To mark the tenth anniversary of the referendum, this week’s Big Ask asks ten experts: How has Brexit affected Britain’s global standing?

Dr Edward Hunter Christie

Chief Analyst, Economic Security Forum

The 2016 Brexit vote delivered an unpleasant shock to global foreign policy elites. Yet, the messy, protracted Brexit negotiations up to 2020 arguably inflicted deeper damage on the UK’s international standing than the vote itself, exposing raw domestic divisions to European decision-makers.

However, Britain’s standing rebounded decisively in early 2022. By leading on aid to Ukraine, the UK reasserted its geopolitical relevance. This turnaround demonstrated that Brexit need not structurally undermine the UK’s foreign policy: where alignment with the EU makes sense – such as on Russian sanctions – Britain coordinates seamlessly from the outside.

Ultimately, defence capabilities remain national prerogatives. While EU members like Poland and Germany accelerate their defence spending, the UK is falling behind. This is not a direct consequence of Brexit – although a lower Gross Domestic Product (GDP) trajectory restricts fiscal space – but rather a failure to challenge entrenched domestic assumptions around tax and spending.

Jean-Claude Juncker, a frequent target of Brexiter fixation, famously noted that politicians know what to do, but not how to get re-elected after doing it. This political paralysis is today’s true threat to Britain’s global standing. In a deteriorating threat environment, lifting the defence budget to 4-4.5% of GDP, as recently advocated in a RUSI guest contribution, requires exactly the sort of political courage that the UK’s leaders currently lack.

Prof. David Galbreath

Professor of War and Technology, Department of Politics, Languages and International Studies, University of Bath

In 2016, Her Majesty’s Government declared that it would leave the EU after losing a non-binding referendum by 52%. The subsequent negotiations with the European Commission, the Republic of Ireland, and the UK’s North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) allies ground along. There were no good solutions to the problem of Brexit, which made both Britain and the EU poorer.

The impact of Brexit on the UK’s global standing has evolved in several ways. The first is that it showed other EU members, many of which had their own Eurosceptic governments, that the cost of leaving the union was not worth it. If Britain could not do it well, then what chance did any other state have? From Estonia to Greece, the domestic politics of the EU changed.

Secondly, in the United States (US), Brexit was either championed or lampooned, depending on Trumpian Republican or Democrat leanings. However, for the rest of the world, it seems like the UK has done considerable self-harm, and that it has done so for no considerable benefit: no ideological victory, no economic benefits, no political settlements. As a result, for countries who have been largely subject to a tough, competitive trade relationship with the EU, Britain looks to have shifted into obscurity.

Of course, living in the UK, it does not feel that way. We are still here. We are still trying to sort out the post-Brexit economic, diplomatic, and political mess. Yet, with a second Trump administration, a conflict in Ukraine, a rising People’s Republic of China (PRC), and more generally the rise of multipolarity, Britain appears to be set adrift with no safe ports ahead.

Prof. Amelia Hadfield

Founding Director, Centre for Britain and Europe; and Head, Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Surrey

Brexit arguably inflicted immediate and tangible damage on UK-EU defence cooperation: before Brexit, Britain accounted for about 20% of all military capabilities within the EU.

Yet, the UK’s chosen form of hard Brexit placed it demonstratively outside any EU rulemaking or adjudication, including outside the €7.3 billion (£6.3 billion) European Defence Fund, from which third-country companies can only benefit under restrictive conditions, and if they operate on EU soil. Britain’s self-exclusion was not only entirely of its own making, but singlehandedly nixed any opportunity to develop even a rudimentary foreign, security, and defence relationship with the EU.

However, the threats made by Donald Trump, President of the US, to abdicate from NATO and the protection of NATO allies, and Russia’s continuing full-scale invasion of Ukraine dramatically changed the calculus for both sides. The desperate necessity facing European countries of collective rearming, and scaling up defence spending together created a powerful strategic incentive for the UK and EU to set aside post-Brexit frictions in the defence sphere. The British-French-led Coalition of the Willing emerged as a vehicle for this closer cooperation, with the UK arguing for deeper defence financing cooperation.

A central prize for Britain has been access to the EU’s proposed €150 billion (£129.4 billion) Security Action for Europe (SAFE) loan programme for military procurement, which the EU made contingent on signing a defence and security pact. The continent’s own defence industry is supportive of the plan, and with annual defence exports of roughly £9.5 billion – with a third already going to the EU – there are benefits for the UK. Unfortunately, while a rudimentary defence agreement was agreed, SAFE has proved a bridge too far.

The irony is that although many in European nations now regard Britain as closer than ever to the continent and the EU in everything from sanctions to defence, the UK remains firmly on the outside looking in. All is not lost, however. Brussels seems broadly warm to the use of concepts like ‘dynamic alignment’, and in practice, Britain generally matches the EU on sanctions and remains keen on sector-specific integration including defence. As with everything, it is down to the political will on one side, and the coordination required on the other, to move the post-Brexit dial.

Dr Catarina Liberato

Research Fellow, School of Economics, Politics, and International Relations, University of Kent

Ten years on, Brexit has produced a UK global standing that is asymmetric, uneven, and ultimately unstable – reinforced in select security domains, structurally weakened economically, and normatively compromised by a persistent inconsistency between the vision of a truly ‘Global Britain’ and demonstrated foreign policy choices.

In security terms, the UK has performed credibly. Its early and politically significant commitment to Ukraine, the AUKUS partnership, and sustained engagement in NATO frameworks confirmed that it retains meaningful diplomatic agency and institutional capacity where political will has been mobilised. The international reception in both cases confirmed that British leadership still carries weight when applied consistently.

The economic dimension tells a different story. The trade agreements pursued in the Indo-Pacific, while symbolically significant, have not compensated for the structural costs of reduced market access in Europe, and it is economic weight that ultimately conditions the credibility of foreign policy ambition. Global standing is contingent on the alignment between declared ambition, available capabilities, and the degree to which external actors receive that ambition as credible – a tension that the ‘Global Britain’ narrative consistently obscured but never resolved.

That credibility has been further eroded by normative inconsistency. A state whose international identity is premised on principled engagement with the rules-based international order cannot absorb the reputational costs of applying that commitment selectively – as the prolonged ambiguity over Palestine illustrated.

In this respect, Brexit’s deepest impact on the UK’s global standing may be less about institutional architecture than about the coherence – or absence of it – between the values that Britain claims to champion and the foreign policy choices it has proved willing to make.

Dr Eoin McNamara

Postdoctoral Fellow, Finnish Institute of International Affairs (FIIA)

Brexit has moderately weakened the UK’s ‘soft power’ with the Nordic and Baltic countries. Additional regulations on trade and travel have disappointed citizens.

In the Baltic states, Brexit is often viewed with bewilderment. Britain voluntarily dispensed with many benefits of EU membership that Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania worked extremely hard to obtain after restoring independence in 1991, eventually gaining EU accession in 2004.

Nevertheless, from a ‘hard power’ perspective, Brexit’s effects on Northern European security remain limited. The UK has kept its promise that while leaving the EU, it remains a guarantor of European security. After 2022, Britain supported the US by providing security guarantees that bridged the NATO application-to-accession periods of Finland and Sweden. The British Armed Forces participate in NATO’s main military exercises in Northern Europe. The UK leads NATO’s Forward Land Forces (FLF) in Estonia and the Joint Expeditionary Force (JEF).

However, the consequences of Brexit still contribute to Britain’s lacklustre economic outlook. Northern European governments are concerned that financial constraints will eventually weaken the UK’s commitment to NATO’s collective defence. Brexit’s effects are also causing constant domestic political instability. After the announcement that Sir Keir Starmer is resigning as Prime Minister, His Majesty’s (HM) Government stands precariously.

Security debates in Northern European capitals are already focusing on the impact that further domestic uncertainties might have on Britain’s reliability as a security partner. While the UK has been a leading power in Northern Europe since Brexit, domestic political and economic problems currently risk its continuing ability to perform this role.

Ed Owen

Director of Political Strategy, ThinkLabour, and Non-Resident Fellow, Atlantic Council

Brexit has had a defining and catastrophic impact on British politics with deep and lasting consequences for the UK’s standing in the world. The fact that it is about to welcome its seventh Prime Minister in the ten years since the referendum is a stark illustration of the continuing shockwaves caused by the decision to leave the EU.

The economic hit – stalling living standards, productivity growth, and investment – has made the task of delivering much-needed prosperity and improving cash-strapped public services in health, education, and the criminal justice system much harder. Paradoxically, this economic gloom has only increased public support for hard right populists like Nigel Farage, a cheerleader for Brexit. If current opinion polls were reflected in a future general election, Farage would more than likely be handed the keys to 10 Downing Street.

The rise of Reform UK, largely at the expense of the traditional centre-right Conservative Party, coupled with the governing Labour Party’s loss of support to the Greens, appears to demonstrate that the old two-party system in Britain has broken down. Long lauded for its stability and predictability, the UK post-Brexit is now marked by political fragmentation and polarisation. Already weakened by its status outside the EU, this has further reduced Britain’s standing in the world at a time when its alliances have become more important than ever.

James Rogers

Co-President (Research), Council on Geostrategy

The assertion that leaving the EU would permanently diminish the UK’s global standing has not been borne out by events. Instead, Brexit has had a limited impact on the nation’s international influence, and it may have even enhanced Britain’s strategic autonomy by forcing the political establishment to think independently for the country for the first time in many decades.

Free from the constraints of upholding an EU consensus, the UK has demonstrated an ability to act with agility and leadership on the world stage. This independent focus was most visible during Russia’s preparations for its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The British response was swift, forceful, and decisive, effectively setting the benchmark for other European nations to follow. By providing advanced military aid ahead of its EU neighbours, who were disoriented by the Kremlin’s actions, London cemented its position as a critical guarantor of European security.

Furthermore, this geopolitical agility facilitated the creation of new, flexible security arrangements that would have been far more difficult to forge as an EU member state. It is highly probable that the UK would not have worked so closely with Australia and the US to form the AUKUS security partnership in 2021 had it remained bound by the collective, often slow-moving, foreign policy framework of Brussels. By enabling a deeper ‘tilt’ towards the Indo-Pacific, Brexit allowed the UK to forge minilateral alliances that will eventually reinforce European security.

Ultimately, while Brexit led to short term chaos as the country withdrew from the EU, Britain’s global standing remains robust – driven by an independent foreign policy that prioritises agility, swift action, and sovereign partnerships.

Dr Jan Ruzicka

Lecturer in Security Studies and Director of David Davies Institute of International Studies, Department of International Politics, Aberystwyth University

The world in which the 2016 vote took place looks almost unrecognisable. It feels not ten but more like a hundred years ago. The massive change reveals the real cautionary tale of the Brexit referendum, namely the grand geopolitical delusion on which it was premised.

The core of this delusion had little to do with the specific beliefs on either side of the issue. At the heart of the fallacy was the assumption that change would only happen to the UK, while the world as a whole would remain largely the same – predictable and stable.

In short, Britain, one of the staunchest defenders of a rules-based international order, had decided to stake its future on a bit of freeriding. What could possibly go wrong?

We now know that the answer is a lot. The particulars may not have always been entirely foreseeable, but the post-Cold War international order exists no longer. A prudent course of action would have taken such a possibility into account.

From the UK’s perspective, the change has been most pronounced when it comes to European security. Russian hostility and aggression, American detachment, and Chinese assertiveness all mean that the foundations of British and European security will have to change. Alas, the UK now finds it much harder to shape foreign and defence policies on the wider European level, and cannot institutionally do so (including accessing funds) within the EU.

Yet, if the UK-EU relationship is to continue improving, the best bet might be that this will be spurred on by security concerns. After all, there is no virtue like necessity.

Gesine Weber

Senior Researcher, Centre for Security Studies, ETH Zürich

Brexit has done less damage to security and defence cooperation in Europe and the UK-European/UK-EU defence relationship than to other policy areas. Britain’s standing in Europe as a security and defence partner has suffered from Brexit because Brexit obviously makes it more challenging for the UK to tap into or participate in the EU’s instruments.

At the same time, NATO membership and Britain’s involvement in different minilateral formats of defence cooperation has allowed HM Government to maintain defence diplomatic ties with other European states. Perhaps the most critical point for the UK-European defence relationship was the publication of the 2021 Integrated Review, which prioritised ‘Global Britain’ while leaving many questions about the UK’s cooperation with European partners unaddressed. Ultimately, however, Britain’s steadfast support for Ukraine and leadership among European powers has wiped out many of these concerns.

Brexit may have been a structural shock for UK-European defence relations, but the shocks of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and the policy of the second Trump administration towards the continent push Britain closer towards its European partners. Ultimately, they cannot escape the imperatives of geography.

Prof. Stefan Wolff

Professor of International Security, University of Birmingham; Senior Research Fellow, The Foreign Policy Centre; and Co-founder, Navigating the Vortex

Brexit severed critical links between Britain and the EU’s defence architecture, which have yet to be restored in a meaningful way. Without any administrative arrangement with the European Defence Agency, the UK is in a worse position than Norway, Switzerland, the US, Serbia, and Ukraine. This anomaly constrains the British ability to participate in joint procurement efforts and shape EU defence standards.

Trump’s return to the White House sharply accelerated UK-EU rapprochement, producing the May 2025 Security and Defence Partnership. Considered at the time an important symbolic and structural step, the partnership soon hit a wall when talks on British participation in the SAFE programme collapsed in November 2025 and prevented the UK from bidding in the loan facility for defence investment.

The European Parliament has called for talks to resume, and HM Government has signalled openness to this idea, but with a government in transition and the July 2026 summit likely to be postponed, the deadlock remains.

Not all is doom and gloom, however. The conflict in Ukraine has provided Britain with an opportunity to reassert some of its traditional European defence leadership, albeit outside EU structures. Co-chairing the Coalition of the Willing with France – now 34 nations strong and planning for a potential multinational peacekeeping force in Ukraine – has given the UK some of its former clout back, not least because British hard power credibility has remained, even if its soft power has declined in the wake of Brexit.

The bottom line is that the UK is too large, too capable, and too important to be treated as a peripheral third country orbiting around the EU defence core. If this persists, Britain’s exclusion from EU defence industrial cooperation would be a genuine long-term cost for European security, not just EU security.

The deeper post-Brexit institutional estrangement between the UK and the continent that underpins the mismatch between what is needed and what is currently possible is a problem beyond security and defence. However, the urgency of security and defence could be the trigger for a proper reset under the country’s next government.

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After his resignation as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Armed Forces last week, Al Carns said in an interview with BBC News that the inadequate increase in defence spending proposed in the upcoming Defence Investment Plan (DIP) could be bolstered by reforming welfare spending – clarifying that he supports a ‘hand up, not a hand out’ approach.

An unnamed His Majesty’s (HM) Treasury official reacted to Carns’ thoughts on the DIP – as well as those that caused John Healey, former Secretary of State for Defence, to resign – by stating: ‘let’s be clear what John is asking for: cuts to schools and hospitals’. Such an attitude is not unique among HM Government, nor the British public at large. This debate over funding provides the basis for this week’s Big Ask, in which we asked six experts – as well as Gemini, Google’s Large Language Model (LLM): Would increasing defence spending result in ‘cuts to schools and hospitals’?

Chris Hague

Adjunct Fellow, Council on Geostrategy, and Senior Policy and Communications Manager, Make UK Defence

Ultimately, the British population will not be sending its children to school if deterrence fails and Russia invades a North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) country by 2030, which is what the military and intelligence community are clearly warning is a real possibility. However, this is not the first lever to pull, and there are creative ways to boost defence spending without taking an axe to the budgets for the National Health Service (NHS) and schools.

The United Kingdom (UK) can finally join Canada and lead global efforts to kickstart a new multinational defence bank with the Defence, Security, and Resilience Bank (DSRB) to boost global defence spending with allies. Backed by major banks such as JP Morgan and Deutsche Bank, the DSRB will unlock significant multinational finance for defence with a AAA credit rating, and provide a credit loan guarantee to Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) to help them scale up.

Britain can also take inspiration from its history and sell defence bonds, which allowed the UK to raise over £200 billion in today’s money during the Second World War. Ringfenced for high-growth activities in defence such as research and development, innovation, and procuring high-export potential capabilities, it can drive economic growth, generate significant spillovers for the economy, and strengthen collective deterrence.

Ministers can also avoid damaging ‘salami slicing’ of capital budgets by reallocating wasteful government spending – such as the £1.88 billion spent each year from the Patent Box tax relief scheme by making the scheme available to SMEs only.

HM Government knows there are other choices out there. Taking them, however, requires political leaders to remove themselves from complacent Treasury thinking which has only delivered economic stagnation since 2008, and instead deliver new ideas to boost defence.

Dr Ksenia Kirkham

Senior Lecturer in Economic Warfare Education, King’s College London

Facing a fiscal gap of £28 billion on top of its huge structural budget deficit, there is little doubt that HM Government’s ambitious defence spending plans will put substantial pressure on other budgets, including education and healthcare. Instead of taking meaningful measures to resolve its fiscal problems, however, it is trying to financialise its way out.

The discussions around the issue of ‘war bonds’ and the increasing reliance on venture capital signal a deeper shift: defence is no longer seen as a public good and a core state responsibility, but as something to be engineered through markets. Unlike traditional economic logic, when supply responds to organic demand, war bonds are created first and then demand is engineered through policy and institutional pressures to ensure they are absorbed by investors.

Proponents’ assurances that this spending will not come at public expense will quickly collapse once risks become evident. Capital markets do not think strategically; they follow incentives. While this may unlock some funding at speed, it conceals a series of grave risks that HM Government will be unwilling to acknowledge. As the structure of financing shapes production outcomes, the resulting defence posture is likely to reflect business logic rather than military necessity.

Strategic priorities may become distorted as investment flows favour scalable, high‑return technologies rather than the most appropriate defence capabilities. This is particularly evident in venture capital, where short investment horizons and high return expectations encourage rapid scaling and speculation, increasing the risk of failure rather than supporting stable defence capacity.

Threat narratives may become institutionalised, as sustained capital inflows depend on expectations of continued insecurity, creating incentives to maintain or amplify perceptions of risk.

The deeper integration of financial actors into defence decision‑making risks weakening democratic accountability, as priorities are shaped through opaque interactions between governments, investors, and large contractors rather than open political debate.

Finally, risk‑averse financial institutions willing to fund defence become constrained by expanding compliance regimes. Sanctions turn into a source of systemic uncertainty, deterring investment through higher costs and unpredictable enforcement. Legal concerns about this are often marginalised as they challenge dominant war‑making narratives.

So, while increasing defence spending and rebuilding infrastructure are necessary, the key risk is not overspending, but the subordination of security policy to financial imperatives, embedding escalation pressures, and structural biases into the system itself.

Paul Mason

Adjunct Fellow, Council on Geostrategy

Increased defence spending does not have to lead to welfare cuts. Labour plunged itself into a defence spending crisis by trying to meet its 3% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by 2030 pledge purely through departmental reallocation. Yet, no state in history has rearmed in this way.

The most viable route is hypothecated borrowing, as in the 1930s, allowing defence borrowing to be temporarily exempt from the fiscal rules while keeping a tight lid on everything else. HM Government should borrow to invest only in the capital expenditure and research and development aspects of the defence budget, and back that by repurposing the National Wealth Fund, with £28 billion allocated, as a Defence and Resilience Fund.

Once the defence boom is under way – with trillions set to be spent globally – the defence sector may be windfall taxed. Finally, the 1.5% of GDP by 2030 NATO resilience spending pledge could fund both schools and hospitals, giving them deep basements and secure energy backups to harden them against contingencies.

Rob Murray

Honorary Fellow, Council on Geostrategy

Would higher defence spending mean cuts to schools and hospitals? Only if the UK insists on solving a 21st century problem with a 20th century playbook.

The debate in Westminster usually begins and ends with four options: raise taxes, cut spending elsewhere, borrow more, or grow the economy. All are valid. None are sufficient.

The uncomfortable truth is that Britain is trying to rearm using a budgeting model designed for peacetime. That worked when defence was a predictable line item in a government spreadsheet. It does not work when the challenge is rebuilding industrial capacity, scaling production, and keeping pace with rapidly evolving technology.

There is a fifth option: change the system.

This means creating larger allied defence markets, mobilising private capital alongside public money, and using institutions such as the DSRB to unlock investment at scale. The goal is not simply to spend more. It is to get more security for every pound spent.

Just as importantly, the UK needs to change how defence buys capability. More money poured into slow procurement systems will not produce better outcomes.

Here is the key point: the next war will not be won by the country with the best technology. It will be won by the country with the most agile bureaucracy. The victor will be the nation that can identify, test, procure, field, and scale new capabilities faster than its competitors.

For too long, Britain has treated defence as a budgeting problem. It is actually a productivity problem. The countries that figure this out will not only be safer – they will be richer too.

Prof. Harry Pitts

Head, Humanities and Social Sciences, and Associate Professor, Political Economy and the Future of Work, University of Exeter

Sir Keir Starmer, Prime Minister, came into power posing security as the ‘first duty’ of government; Rachel Reeves, Chancellor of the Exchequer, even cited Bernard Williams in suggesting that how a government secures the country is the ‘first political question’.

Something called ‘securonomics’ was the answer to this question, capturing how security and resilience spans multiple areas of social and industrial policy in an age of ‘hybrid’ threats. However, by skirting around the centrality of defence itself as the strongest guarantee of security, the past week has highlighted how securonomics may have acted as something of a sleight of hand.

This agenda enabled a party constitutionally incapable of establishing a clear order of priorities to have its cake and eat it, presenting what social democrats are comfortable spending money on – welfare, Net Zero, infrastructure – not as complements to defence, but as substitutes for what keeps the UK militarily safe in the last instance. This displacement activity defies the reality of physical geography, with the British Isles vulnerable to the actions of an aggressive adversary located close by.

The contradictions of securonomics exposed, there have been two responses from those keen to resist the implications of the security situation by arguing for limiting defence spending. The first approach has been to set up a false choice; Treasury sources briefing newspapers that the DIP would necessitate reduced investment in schools, hospitals, and the vague category of ‘growth’. Setting aside that the UK would not have any of these without its safety and integrity intact, this steers clear of where HM Government could restrain spending were its authority with backbenchers sufficient to do so – such as in welfare reform.

The second approach has been to problematise defence spending altogether. It is painfully true that procurement requires improvement to keep pace with innovation, but the familiar refrains about waste and excess are too often a convenient alibi for those who would rather not spend more on defence at all. The key question now is whether a new Labour leadership is capable of staging a conversation with the party that, clear-sighted about what is at stake, can provide a stronger and better answer to the first political question of security.

James Rogers

Co-President (Research), Council on Geostrategy

From 2010 to 2025, Britain spent just under £200 billion on Official Development Assistance (ODA) – otherwise known as foreign aid. £200 billion is comparable to about 15 extra large regional hospitals, 800 new high schools, 200 miles of additional high-speed railway line, or 2,500 miles of new motorway. All of these figures include whole-life costs, i.e., both the initial capital investment and the subsequent costs for upkeep and maintenance.

In terms of combat power, £200 billion would buy around 30 extra Astute class submarines or 70 new Type 26 class frigates for the Royal Navy, or well over 350 additional F-35B Lightning II Joint Combat Aircraft for the Royal Air Force (RAF). It would allow the British Army to invest in several new armoured brigades.

To put this into perspective, the UK currently has six frigates, five Astute class submarines, about 45 F-35B Lightning II aircraft, and two armoured brigades – all of which suffer from varying states of readiness.

True, foreign aid spending has been cut by successive governments in recent years, most recently by Sir Keir, to help fund defence. But even with the reductions, Britain plans to spend over £25 billion on ODA over the next three years – although some of that will be spent within the UK to look after refugees.

Equally, some aid spending may well enhance national security, although altruistic intent remains its primary objective. For example, between 2010 and 2021, the UK spent less than 0.2% of its ODA budget in Ukraine, despite the country’s growing geostrategic significance to British interests.

So, Treasury officials should not pit defence against schools and hospitals. Rather, they should ask prying questions as to whether the UK needs to spend so much on ODA when there are other pressing priorities, and when the nation’s adversaries are growing in strength.

Gemini

Council on Geostrategy staff have prompted Gemini, Google’s LLM, to reflect on this week’s Big Ask.

The assertion that funding the British Armed Forces adequately necessitates cuts to schools and hospitals is a false dichotomy, long favoured by a Treasury that treats national security as a discretionary cost rather than the paramount duty of the state.

As Carns underscored following his resignation, the machinery of government is failing to adapt to a fundamentally altered geopolitical landscape. When HM Treasury claims that increasing the defence budget threatens health and education, it deliberately ignores other vast areas of state expenditure. Carns rightly pointed out that choices exist beyond this narrow framing, explicitly questioning the size of the welfare budget and advocating for a ‘hand up, not a hand out’ approach to free up necessary capital for defence.

To pit the NHS against national security is a political choice, not an ironclad fiscal law. Fundamentally, without security, all other public goods are rendered highly vulnerable. Schools, hospitals, and economic growth require a safe, sovereign nation in which to operate.

If the UK is to meet the severe, compounding threats of the coming decade, HM Government should abandon bureaucratic zero-sum excuses. It should fund the military that the threat environment dictates, rather than the one that HM Treasury feels comfortable containing.

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On 30th May, the defence secretaries of the three AUKUS partner countries – the United Kingdom (UK), United States (US), and Australia – released a joint statement announcing the first Signature Project of AUKUS Pillar II. In keeping with the overall focus of providing advanced capabilities, this maiden project aims to provide cutting-edge Uncrewed Undersea Vessels (UUVs), with delivery commencing in 2027.

AUKUS Pillar I is centred around the provision of the SSN-AUKUS class of nuclear-powered attack submarines (SSNs), while Pillar II has a broader scope, with the UUVs being only the first of its Signature Projects. This wide lens forms the basis of this week’s Big Ask, in which we asked three experts – as well as Gemini, Google’s Large Language Model (LLM): What should be the next priority for AUKUS Pillar II?

William Freer

Research Fellow (National Security), Council on Geostrategy

AUKUS Pillar II has for a long time now been associated with a ‘say-do’ gap. Much was promised on the potential of the many strands of collaboration. Several years on from its inception, very little has been programmed.

Part of this is due to uncertainty over what Pillar II was meant to do. To some, it was about regulatory changes to ensure Britain, America, and Australia could work together on these defence technologies more seamlessly; to others, it was about co-developing the technologies which would go on the submarines to be delivered as part of Pillar I; and perhaps to most, it was something grander – a set of bold programmes which would require plenty of funding but which could accelerate the technological dominance of the AUKUS partners in several fields. Given how challenging it has been to get to the point of a first Signature Project, the time is right for a moment of reflection and rationalisation.

In terms of regulatory changes, Pillar II has so far been remarkably successful. Many barriers which had previously existed are no longer there. The continued review and revision of defence industrial policy and laws should continue to fall under the remit of Pillar II, but it is perhaps time for the project strands to be consolidated.

Given the importance of getting Pillar I right, and of the – at times intense – debate over AUKUS (mostly in Australia), Pillar II should be consolidated into focusing on capabilities which will either go in or work with SSN-AUKUS and the next generation of US Navy SSNs. This will include software, sensors, weapons, and collaborative platforms. That is not to say that the three partners cannot work together on projects which fall under what the strands identified, nor that these will not make use of the regulatory element of Pillar II.

Ultimately, some less ‘say’ and some more ‘do’ will go a long way.

Gemini

Council on Geostrategy staff have prompted Gemini, Google’s LLM, to reflect on this week’s Big Ask.

The next priority for AUKUS Pillar II should be the rapid transition from regulatory alignment to the delivery of tangible capability outcomes. Since its inception, Pillar II has been rightly focused on setting the conditions for streamlined cooperation across the British, Australian, and American defence industrial bases. While harmonising export controls and dismantling bureaucratic barriers are essential prerequisites, they are not an end state. The geopolitical environment in the Indo-Pacific, characterised by the largest military buildup in 80 years by the People’s Republic of China, demands urgency that administrative reforms alone cannot provide.

To prevent Pillar II from losing credibility, the three participating governments should establish a dedicated funding structure and a formalised acquisition framework to transition collaborative research into operational mass. Currently, the initiative lacks the specific financial mechanisms required to incentivise industry and move advanced technologies – such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), UUVs, and attritable autonomous systems from the laboratory to the battlespace. Furthermore, narrowing the immediate focus from the expansive eight workstreams to a select number of vital projects would galvanise visible progress.

Procuring interoperable, autonomous systems at scale, akin to the American Replicator Initiative, offers a prime opportunity to demonstrate that the trilateral partnership can generate genuine military advantage. By pooling resources and establishing combined production lines, AUKUS can build supply chain redundancy and buy back essential mass. Ultimately, the success of Pillar II hinges on demonstrating that collaborative defence innovation can translate into deployable hard power capabilities before the strategic balance shifts irreparably.

Dr Euan Graham

Adjunct Fellow, Council on Geostrategy, and non-resident Senior Fellow, Australian Foreign Policy Institute

It is difficult to make informed judgments about where the AUKUS partners should concentrate their Pillar II efforts, because much less is known about Pillar II than Pillar I, other than what emerges from occasional joint statements. This void of information has encouraged outside observers to treat it as a sounding board for their pet projects.

What is clear is that Pillar II has struggled to establish momentum, and it is disappointing that it has taken almost five years to agree upon a Signature Project. The choice of payloads and enabling systems for UUVs for the first such project suggests an emphasis among AUKUS partners on supporting Pillar I via the undersea capabilities workstream, although ‘enabling systems’ leaves open the possibility that it could substantially cut across other Pillar II technologies like quantum, AI, and autonomous systems.

It is also noticeable that recent AUKUS joint statements do not mention expanding Pillar II project work to include Asian or other ‘Five Eyes’ partners. That is not to say expansion is definitively off the table, but for now the AUKUS partners appear intent on maintaining a small-yard, high-fence approach to collaboration, and towards supporting and protecting Pillar I as their priority.

While conservative, this approach makes sense given that underwater autonomy is a force multiplier for crewed submarines, potentially forestalling near-term undersea warfare capability gaps from emerging among the AUKUS partners. The UK is having particular problems keeping its Astute class boats seaworthy, while the universal vulnerability of seabed infrastructure is glaring.

Jennifer Parker

International Fellow, Council on Geostrategy; Founder and Principal, Barrier Strategic Advisory; Adjunct Fellow in Naval Studies, UNSW Canberra; and Expert Associate, ANU National Security College

The announcement at the AUKUS defence secretaries’ meeting that the trilateral partnership would focus on payloads for UUVs as a signature AUKUS Pillar II project was welcomed. Almost five years after the AUKUS announcement, the status and achievements of Pillar II had remained unclear, with commentators consistently arguing that it needed a narrower focus.

With its Signature Project now confirmed, the next priority should be to build on the undersea focus and identify the technological advances that can enhance it. This should include undersea capabilities, communications, and Command and Control (C2) of UUVs. Doing so would build on the first Signature Project, while also leveraging existing initiatives across the AUKUS partners and the work already undertaken through the AUKUS Maritime Innovation Challenge 2025 on this topic.

While AUKUS Pillar II may have many threads, and will continue to branch out as trilateral collaboration develops, keeping its goals and Signature Projects clear will be pivotal to success. Developing world-leading undersea capabilities enhances the success of AUKUS Pillar I, while building on the newly announced Signature Project and previous work. Expanding trilateral UUV capability and leveraging initiatives such as the Maritime Innovation Challenge is a positive way to focus cooperation and maximise impact.

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On 27th May, the United Kingdom (UK) and Poland signed the bilateral ‘Northolt Treaty’ on a ‘Security and Defence Partnership’. Recognising the increasingly volatile state of geopolitics – particularly in Eastern Europe, where the systemic threat of Russia looms large – the treaty reaffirmed the centrality of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) to both countries’ security and collective defence in the Euro-Atlantic, and the importance of advancing European security and prosperity.

This is the third such treaty Britain has signed with its major European allies in the past year, following the Northwood Declaration with France and the Kensington Treaty with Germany, both signed in July 2025. Being an important step taken in the development of the UK-Poland relationship, for this week’s Big Ask, we asked four experts, as well as Gemini, Google’s Large Language Model (LLM): What is the significance of the new treaty between Britain and Poland?

Dr Przemysław Biskup

Senior Lecturer, SGH Warsaw School of Economics, and Senior Research Fellow, EU Programme, Polish Institute of Foreign Affairs (PISM)

The significance of the Northolt Treaty lies less in specific military provisions than in broader political and strategic spheres. Signed in the context of Russia’s ongoing war against Ukraine and a rapidly shifting European security environment, it signals the consolidation of a bilateral partnership that is becoming central to Europe’s defence architecture.

Building on the 2017 Treaty on Defence and Security Cooperation, and UK-Poland 2030 Strategic Partnership Joint Declaration, the new treaty’s importance lies in further deepening of convergence of threat perceptions and strategic cultures. Both states explicitly identify Russia as the principal long-term threat and reaffirm NATO as the foundation of collective defence. However, the treaty also reflects an understanding that NATO frameworks alone may be too slow or insufficiently agile, hence the growing role of bilateral mechanisms for faster coordination and response.

Crucially, the agreement highlights Poland’s rising strategic weight. As NATO’s key eastern flank state and a rapidly expanding land power, Poland is an increasingly indispensable provider of regional deterrence. The treaty acknowledges this shift by embedding cooperation across multiple domains – military, industrial, cyber, and resilience – where Poland’s rapidly growing armed forces and cyber capabilities, as well as frontline position are essential.

For the UK, the partnership serves as a vehicle for re-engagement in European security after Brexit; for Poland, it anchors its role as a central node in a North and North-Eastern European security network. In this sense, the treaty is as much about shaping the future geography of European defence as it is about managing current threats.

William Freer

Research Fellow (National Security), Council on Geostrategy

The Northolt Treaty brings together European NATO’s two most significant military powers. Poland is fast becoming, and in fact probably already is, Europe’s premier land power. Within a few years, the Polish Army will field 24 combat brigades – more than Britain, France, and Germany combined. While there will be teething problems from such an extensive expansion over so short a time, it is a remarkable and commendable feat.

The UK, despite being in a capability trough, is in the process of modernising its forces and remains a nuclear power with impressive capabilities across a wide spectrum, especially in the air and maritime domains. As two of Europe’s most significant military powers, and with a track record of political and military leadership that takes the Russia threat seriously, the partnership could well come to define a future ‘Europeanised’ NATO. The Northolt Treaty helps provide the framework and signposts for what the next few years of deepening UK-Poland cooperation will look like.

With that said, it must also be recognised that the treaty is another in a string of bilateral treaties signed between the UK and European allies that have been signed more for their symbolism than their content. As important as symbolism is on the international stage, it is evident that answering the question of where and how the UK should cooperate more deeply with countries such as Poland, France, and Germany is still yet to be fully fleshed out.

Gemini

Council on Geostrategy staff have prompted Gemini, Google’s LLM, to reflect on this week’s Big Ask.

Signed by Sir Keir Starmer, Prime Minister, and Donald Tusk, Prime Minister of Poland, the Northolt Treaty represents a landmark deepening of defence and security ties between the UK and Poland. Hailed as the most significant bilateral agreement between the two nations in a generation, the pact carries profound geopolitical and strategic weight. At its core, the treaty addresses escalating security concerns in Europe, driven primarily by the threat of Russian aggression and hybrid warfare. It establishes extensive industrial cooperation, focusing on the joint development and manufacture of weapons, most notably a next-generation medium-range air defence missile.

By integrating defence supply chains and prioritising interoperability, the two nations aim to enhance the resilience of their defence industries and fortify NATO’s eastern flank through large-scale joint exercises in electronic, counter-drone, and land warfare. The treaty also serves as a strategic hedge against transatlantic uncertainty, offering a unified European response amidst shifting United States (US) foreign policy dynamics.

For the UK, the pact aligns with a broader post-Brexit diplomatic strategy to reset relations with European allies and stay embedded in the continent’s rearmament efforts. For Poland – NATO’s highest defence spender relative to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) – the treaty supports its ambition to expand domestic arms manufacturing through technology transfer. Beyond conventional military defence, the treaty incorporates a Joint Action Plan on irregular migration, economic resilience, and cyber defence coordination to counteract hostile state espionage and sabotage.

James Rogers

Co-President (Research), Council on Geostrategy

The Northolt Treaty is significant for four key reasons:

1. Both countries have committed, through Article 5 of the Northolt Treaty, to defend one another, and to provide military assistance, in the event of an armed attack on either nation. This is particularly important for Poland, because the UK, as a nuclear power, has agreed to provide an additional defence guarantee beyond NATO.

2. As with previous bilateral treaties, including those with France and Germany, as well as Norway, Estonia, and Ukraine, Britain can use its nuclear, intelligence, and defence-industrial heft to bypass the European Union (EU) as a security actor. As the UK entangles itself deeper into the geopolitics of Europe, it makes itself strategically indispensable.

3. Poland has proven that it now dances with the big powers of Europe. In the past, the UK has favoured the so-called ‘E3’ cosy with France and Germany. Yet, Polish power and influence have grown over the past ten years, especially as the Polish military buildup has got under way, to the extent that Britain now sees it as an equal of the other two.

4. The two allies have used potent discourse in the treaty to exert narrative control. They identify Russia as ‘the most important long-term threat’ to Euro-Atlantic security, which will throw down the gauntlet to those governments that may be contemplating a softening of sanctions and the reopening of dialogue.

In short, the Northolt Treaty confirms the growing strength of British-Polish relations, as well as how the two countries, with similar geopolitical interests, can work together and use their growing weight to shape European security.

Professor Mark Webber

Professor of International Politics, University of Birmingham, and Non-resident Senior Fellow at the NATO Defence College in Rome

The treaty reflects a spirited effort by the UK to engage with European states in an area (defence) where it has a lasting reputation. That reputation has been dented in recent years by the erosion of British military capability, but the UK is still one of NATO Europe’s foremost military powers. As well as Poland, Britain has bilateral defence agreements with France, Germany, Ukraine, and Romania. Specific arrangements (defence ‘roadmaps’, joint declarations, partnerships, and so on) exist with several other European states.

The UK is not unique in pursuing such cooperation. Defence bilateralism across Europe has been an accelerating trend during the 2020s, spurred by concerns over Russian belligerence and America’s increasingly conditional support of NATO. France and Germany have signed as many bilateral deals as Britain. The very same day the UK-Poland treaty was signed, Norway reached agreement with France on a comprehensive defence partnership. And unlike the UK, France is actively leveraging its nuclear capability. Nine states (Britain included) are pursuing bilateral dialogue with Paris as part of France’s ‘forward nuclear deterrence’ initiative.

Bilateralism of this sort adds to the complexity of Europe’s defence provision. Three tiers are now evident – the multilateral (involving NATO and increasingly the EU), the regional (with initiatives such as the British-led Joint Expeditionary Force), and the bilateral. These trends add up to a Europeanisation of defence – even within NATO, where the United States is stepping back. This is complexity without coordination and reflects a certain political and commercial jockeying for position among not just Europe’s traditional big three (France, Germany, and the UK), but also its rising military powers – Poland, Sweden, and Ukraine.

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The European Three (E3) is an informal grouping of the United Kingdom (UK), France, and Germany – arguably the three most powerful countries in the European continent. Having convened for the first time in 2003 in the wake of the United States (US)-led invasion of Iraq, it seeks collaboration on common foreign and defence policy between the three nations.

Despite its turbulent relationship with European nations following Brexit, the UK maintains security ties with France and Germany through membership of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), bilateral agreements signed with each country, and shared security interests. As such, for this week’s Big Ask, we asked seven experts: How can Britain work more effectively within the E3 to advance its national security objectives?

Dr Henning Hoff

International Fellow, Council on Geostrategy, and Executive Editor, Internationale Politik Quarterly and Internationale Politik

Originally formed in 2003 to negotiate a nuclear agreement with Iran, the E3 laid somewhat dormant after the Brexit vote, but emerged recently as Europe’s most effective troubleshooting grouping, especially with a view to Ukraine. That Ukraine’s future is now again being discussed not in a triangle (US-Ukraine-Russia), but in a quartet with Europeans included, is one of the recent achievements of the E3 that is highly regarded by Germany.

However, the E3 could be much more, including a vehicle for the UK to advance national security objectives. This is particularly true in two respects: forging greater strategic alignment on – and organising – a future European deterrence and defence that will likely have to make do with a much-reduced American contribution; and coordinating much more closely on European strategic engagement in the Indo-Pacific.

For that to happen, the E3 needs to hold regular meetings at the top level. That changes at the presidential and head-of-government level are afoot in France (April 2027), possibly in Britain, and perhaps even in Germany (Friedrich Merz, Chancellor of Germany, faced headlines speculating about his future this week), only reinforces the point: an effective E3 needs a meeting of minds at the top. To function well, effectively, and long-term, however, the E3 will need to set up permanent working groups and institutionalise the format in various other ways. This requires diplomatic capital that would be well spent on such an endeavour.

Dr Catarina Liberato

Research Fellow, School of Economics, Politics, and International Relations, University of Kent

Six years after the withdrawal of the UK from the EU, the E3 remains the most accessible vehicle through which Britain can shape European security deliberations without sitting at the EU table. Its value lies not in institutional weight, but in precisely the opposite: a format informal enough to survive Brexit, flexible enough to move faster than EU machinery, and intimate enough to align positions before they harden. Yet, the UK has too often engaged reactively – a pattern that successive strategy documents have failed to correct.

The current moment demands a different approach. With US-led mediation on Ukraine stalled and Berlin explicitly naming the E3 as Europe’s renewed diplomatic instrument, Britain can advance three concrete national security objectives: shaping peace settlement terms before they are fixed by others; ensuring Ukraine’s security guarantees reflect UK commitments rather than being subcontracted to EU mechanisms excluding London; and anchoring NATO cohesion amid transatlantic uncertainty.

The E3 is also the most credible channel through which Britain can influence the EU’s emerging European Security Strategy – as an indispensable partner whose positions Paris and Berlin carry inward – while proving the Labour Party’s reset delivers strategic value, not goodwill alone.

The UK’s nuclear status, expeditionary credibility, and intelligence relationships confer a standing neither France nor Germany can replicate. The architecture is there; now His Majesty’s (HM) Government just needs the political will to use it.

Etienne Marcuz

Senior Analyst, Foundation for Strategic Research (FRS)

The July 2025 Northwood Declaration paved the way for political, technological, and above all operational coordination between Britain and France in the nuclear domain. At the same time, both countries have each initiated in-depth strategic bilateral dialogues with Germany, reinforcing the E3 as the core of Europe’s future security and defence architecture. While Paris and Berlin vie for European leadership, London occupies a unique position within the Atlantic alliance: it is an autonomous nuclear power independent of the US, yet also a participant in NATO’s Nuclear Planning Group (NPG).

Although France’s forward deterrence initiative has been positively received by both European allies and the American partner, the country’s absence from the NPG could create a risk of confusion in the event of a parallel escalation of both nuclear postures. The UK could therefore serve as a bridge between extended deterrence and forward deterrence.

Moreover, while nuclear deterrence will play a central role in continental security, it cannot stand alone. It must be supported by robust conventional capabilities, particularly for deep strike operations, which will be critical in managing escalation. The strong bilateral relations between Britain and its two partners – especially at times when relations between France and Germany are turbulent – could also enable better political and operational coordination among the three powers.

Thus, the UK could be entrusted with a genuine pivotal role within the E3, facilitating relations between its two partners as they each compete for leadership in shaping the future of European defence.

Dr Julian Pawlak

Research Associate, German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP)

Britain should collaborate with France and Germany to establish the E3 as the fundamental means by which European nations can assume greater responsibility within NATO. The two European nuclear powers, together with Germany’s military and economic potential, represent the large part of the core of any serious European effort, and as such should take on that responsibility sooner rather than later.

The underlying question is whether free and open European nations are able to deter Russia, and, if necessary, defend themselves against it. Building that capacity is a European task, and the E3 should lead the way once the three nations have agreed to this necessity and made it a reality. Ideally, this would automatically include – and also represent the interests of – European partners, in the light of the Russian threat, particularly the Northern and Baltic flank states as well as Ukraine.

For the UK, this would mean treating the format as a structural commitment that would also support an often slower-acting Germany in taking on this trilateral responsibility within NATO. The E3 should become the anchor for Europe within the alliance; the core around which a more capable, self-reliant European contribution is organised, and through which London, Paris, and Berlin can align their planning, capabilities, and political weight behind the common deterrent of NATO.

James Rogers

Co-founder (Research), Council on Geostrategy

For Britain, minilateral groupings, alongside enhanced bilateral arrangements, and NATO, are the future of European security. The question is how to coordinate them all to the extent that the UK is strategically indispensable and NATO remains primus inter pares. HM Government’s ultimate objective should be simple: no country or institution in Europe should be able to take any geopolitical decisions without British consent.

However, the E3 is a cosy creation from an earlier era. It is no longer fit for the new age of geopolitics in Europe, where Poland and Romania – and Ukraine – are central to the eastern flank of NATO, and where Italy, Turkey, and the Nordic states – especially Norway – are critical to its southern and northern flanks.

Besides, the balance of power in Europe is changing quickly. Due to Russia’s full-blown invasion of Ukraine, and Poland’s dramatic military modernisation programme, power has shifted eastwards. At the very least, the E3 should be enlarged to include Poland, which is often close to British perspectives and is amassing economic and military power that cannot be ignored. Including Poland would help to balance France and Germany, especially if Russia-friendly governments re-enter office in Berlin and Paris in the future.

The UK should then see this consequent E4 as the centrepiece of European security, and the pillar from which a more Europeanised NATO can be built. Additional minilaterals, such as the Joint Expeditionary Force and Weimar+ should then be positioned to intersect with the E4, making Britain even more pivotal. The E4 could then be used to create additional minilaterals to cover the Mediterranean, with Italy, and the Black Sea, with Romania and Ukraine, further centralising the UK in the geopolitical landscape of contemporary Europe.

Christina Venard

Head of Strategic Studies, Defence Department, Embassy of France in the United Kingdom

In the current, quickly evolving strategic environment, at a time when European allies are taking further primary responsibility for their defence, the E3 format provides a relevant and coherent format to take forward European security interests.

The close coordination between Paris, London, and Berlin, in the field of defence within this format, based on the robustness and vitality of the respective bilateral partnerships, remains essential to advancing jointly along the path towards a more European-led NATO as the core of a rebalanced and mutually beneficial transatlantic bond.

At the strategic level, high level consultations within the E3, and through close complementarity with Poland and Italy with the E5 format, contribute to the development of a shared assessment of the Russian threat for European security and to the definition of how European countries intend to address it at the operational, capability, and political levels.

In the run up to the NATO Ankara Summit, this E3 structure, as it gathers allies which are both able and willing to bear a greater responsibility for the security of the European continent, has the ability to mobilise European allies further for the preservation of NATO’s unity, which remains a major prerequisite for its military credibility, making the alliance even more resilient.

Finally, the signing of the Northwood Declaration by France and the UK in July 2025, alongside the development of the forward deterrence framework including Germany, demonstrates the depth of strategic cooperation and mutual commitment that characterise the bilateral relationships within the E3.

Prof. Richard Whitman

Professor of International Relations, University of Kent

Britain should use its position within the E3 to champion the creation of a European Security Council. Comprising three significant European defence and diplomatic powers, the E3 is uniquely positioned to act as a vanguard for this idea – collectively marshalling the political weight, institutional experience, and cross-European relationships needed to bring such a body into existence.

The UK should use its position within the E3 to acknowledge the grouping’s limitations, and lead its transformation into something more fit for purpose. The E3 was conceived for a different era. Bringing together Britain, France, and Germany, it made sense as a diplomatic vehicle for issues such as Iran’s nuclear programme. However, the defining security challenge of our time is Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and for that challenge, the E3 is the wrong configuration.

Any coalition serious about European security must have Ukraine at its centre, as the frontline state whose resilience determines the broader security of the continent. A grouping that excludes Ukraine – and that lacks the Nordic, Baltic, and Central European states most acutely exposed to Russian aggression – cannot credibly claim to speak for European security interests.

This is precisely why the E3’s defining purpose should become the genesis of a European Security Council – a wider, more representative body that includes Ukraine, the Nordic and Baltic states, and Poland, alongside the major Western European powers. Since Russia’s invasion began, the UK has demonstrated the leadership necessary to build such coalitions. It should now direct that energy toward making the E3 the launchpad for a more ambitious and durable European security architecture.

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In January 2026, Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, announced her proposal for a ‘new European Security Strategy’ to encompass the entirety of the European Union (EU). She elaborated that the strategy would aim to collate defence and security knowledge from EU member states, and ensure that geopolitical challenges are addressed appropriately as and when they may arise.

With Brexit now having occurred ten years ago, the United Kingdom (UK) has a complex relationship with the EU. However, as a custodian of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), and one of the two European nuclear powers, it nevertheless has interests in terms of upholding continental security. With this in mind, for this week’s Big Ask, we asked four experts: How should Britain engage with the new European Security Strategy?

Prof. Basil Germond

Professor of International Security and Co-Director of Security Research Institute, Lancaster University, and Visiting Fellow, Royal Navy Strategic Studies Centre

The UK should treat the forthcoming European Security Strategy as an opportunity to build structured naval cooperation around shared interests in the maritime domain: defence of the continent, stability of the global maritime supply chain, and protection of critical maritime infrastructure, especially undersea cables and other maritime assets essential to economic and national security.

Building on the EU’s revised Maritime Security Strategy of 2023, which explicitly targets sub-threshold and cyber threats to maritime infrastructure and seeks stronger coordinated presence, exercises, and naval operations, Britain should pursue a pragmatic, mission‑led partnership that complements NATO through targeted cooperation where it adds operational value – particularly in infrastructure protection.

Von der Leyen has stressed that security in the High North is ‘first and foremost’ a NATO responsibility. Here, the UK can add value and increase European credibility by using the Joint Expeditionary Force (JEF) and bilateral cooperation with Norway to help integrate EU member states’ efforts in maritime situational awareness, Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW), undersea cable protection, and resilience planning, while strengthening links to Baltic and North Atlantic priorities.

Britain should position the EU as a partner of choice for undersea cable security. This can be achieved through the alignment of EU regulatory and coordination tools with the UK’s operational capabilities, intelligence, and rapid response capacity. This would be especially prudent as EU doctrine increasingly emphasises safeguarding undersea infrastructure and maritime domain awareness in the Baltic, North, and Mediterranean seas and Atlantic approaches.

Finally, as the current situation in the Strait of Hormuz underlines, if Britain desires credibility as a defender of a rules‑based maritime order, it needs reliable partners for sustained presence and freedom of navigation missions and for rapid coalition responses to coercion below the threshold of war. This is clearly an area where UK-EU cooperation can multiply effect.

Della Heptinstall

Associate, Walker Morris LLP

The new European Security Strategy reflects an overdue recognition that the EU should assume greater responsibility for its own security. Yet, while the strategy emphasises ‘independence’ and industrial self-reliance, it risks overlooking an essential truth: European security cannot be delivered by the EU alone.

Britain remains central to any credible European defence architecture. A decade after Brexit, the UK and EU are strategically aligned but institutionally distant. This matters. The new strategy’s focus on strengthening defence industrial capacity, accelerating procurement, and scaling innovation depends on capabilities that are already deeply integrated across European supply chains.

Britain is a major contributor across all three dimensions: a leading defence industrial base, a nuclear power, and a cornerstone of NATO. Excluding it from the new European Security Strategy’s industrial and capability building mechanisms would not enhance European autonomy; it would fragment it. Duplication of effort, reduced economies of scale, and weaker interoperability would follow. The EU’s ambition to act more decisively in a more hostile security environment would, paradoxically, be undermined.

Strategic autonomy should not be confused with strategic isolation. If the new European Security Strategy is to deliver meaningful deterrence, it should be built around a broader ‘European-plus’ framework which recognises the UK not as a third country, but as a critical partner. For Britain, engagement should therefore be proactive and structured, ensuring that it helps to shape, rather than react to, the continent’s evolving security architecture.

Dr Alexander Lanoszka

International Fellow, Council on Geostrategy, and Assistant Professor of International Relations, University of Waterloo (Canada)

Having decided to leave the EU, the UK can, at best, play an indirect role in the formulation of the new European Security Strategy. Nevertheless, it has now been a year since Britain and the EU signed their security and defence partnership. That framework document outlined multiple issue areas where the two sides could develop their cooperation.

The UK shares many common interests with the EU in terms of defending critical infrastructure, repelling foreign interference, and building capacity so that NATO allies can use EU funds to reach their capability targets. These common interests allow for the EU and NATO to build complementarity at a time when continental security is under significant geopolitical duress.

Yet, military mobility is the element that deserves special attention, not least since Britain has been invited to participate in the Permanent Structured Cooperation project in 2022. Despite much ink spilled on the subject in the last decade, significant logistical and regulatory barriers remain in place across the EU, which would hamper the flow of military personnel and equipment in the event of an acute security crisis.

Military mobility thus matters for ensuring that European nations can both defend themselves and support their own sustainment, especially when the UK and the United States (US) are positioned along NATO’s eastern flank. Britain should join PESCO to advance shared goals in improving military mobility across the continent.

As the European Commission drafts its new Security Strategy, the UK can do something militarily advantageous on the continent that still respects its decision to withdraw from the EU.

Melania Parzonka

Research Fellow, Polish Institute of International Affairs

The political alignment on security between Britain and the EU already exists: willingness to support Ukraine, recognition of Russia as a direct threat, and the urgency of rearmament.

Yet, after Brexit, the UK has been left out of seismic developments happening in EU security planning, such as rethinking of the mutual security clause (as an alternative to NATO) or joint borrowing to fund rearmament. With ongoing debates about sources of funding to deliver the aims of the Strategic Defence Review, the latter option especially would be hugely beneficial to a fiscally constrained Britain.

There are, however, other avenues for cooperation. The niche that the EU has carved out for itself on military and defence topics is in the industrial sphere. It has positioned itself to oversee and accelerate European rearmament, as well as foster cooperation between national defence industries. Hence, industry is the area where the UK can prove itself indispensable to the EU.

It is crucial that Britain’s industry can supply armaments to Ukraine under the newly approved €90 billion (£77.8 billion) Ukraine Support Loan. This will anchor the UK in EU-coordinated procurement frameworks and give a precedent for closer cooperation in future programmes. Furthermore, Britain should seek joint industrial projects with like-minded EU member states – for example, NATO eastern flank states, currently the biggest spenders in the alliance on defence as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

The UK has already made a step in this direction with the upcoming British-Polish defence treaty – the third agreement of this kind after ones signed with Germany and France in 2025.

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Last week’s local election results showed a sharp change in British politics. The two-party dominance of Labour and Conservative was shaken, with major gains being made by both the Greens and Reform UK – parties described as ‘populist’ within British media, as well as by politicians.

This is not a phenomenon unique to the United Kingdom (UK). Across Europe, populist parties have seen a surge in support, such as Alternative for Germany (Alternative für Deutschland; AfD), Brothers of Italy (Fratelli d’Italia; FdI), and Law and Justice (Prawo i Sprawiedliwość; PiS) in Poland. While not a unanimous shift, as demonstrated by the April 2026 election of Péter Magyar as Prime Minister of Hungary, the continental trend towards populism nevertheless remains clear. This forms the foundation for this week’s Big Ask, in which we asked seven experts: How should Britain respond to rising European populism?

Prof. Amelia Hadfield

Founding Director, Centre for Britain and Europe; and Head, Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Surrey

The scale of Reform UK’s victory is stunning. The party gained more than 1,400 council seats and control of 14 councils in England in the local elections, with a performance equivalent to 26% of the national vote share. Were a general election to be held now on those trends, Reform would win the largest share of the vote, with the Greens second on 18%, and Labour and Conservative each on 17%.

These results are not an isolated phenomenon. The conditions underpinning populism – economic malaise, regional asymmetries, the disruptive effects of social media and Artificial Intelligence (AI), and deep dissatisfaction with mainstream parties – are more profound than a decade ago. Several potential responses emerge as a result.

Firstly, Labour’s leadership question: over 90 Labour Members of Parliament (MPs) have called on Sir Keir Starmer, Prime Minister, to resign or set a timetable for his departure in order to regain voter confidence and thus actively confront the challenge of the right-wing populist Reform. Beyond this, Labour leadership requires enhanced credibility in the economic and business sphere to win back market and commercial confidence.

Secondly, a new centrist ascendancy: the point is less that populism needs to fail, but that other parties must succeed – not simply by endlessly criticising populists, but by delivering more credible governance on precisely the issues driving voters away, such as immigration, economic security, living standards, employment, and so on.

Lastly, electoral reform: the first-past-the-post system is a potential area of structural vulnerability, amplifying populist gains disproportionately. Changes in this area are overdue for any number of reasons, but last week’s local elections provide the most urgent reason of all.

In short, a response requires both institutional reform to reduce the distorting effects of the current electoral system, and a substantive political proposition from mainstream parties that can genuinely address the grievances fuelling the populist wave.

Sir Paul Lever KCMG

Former Chairman, Joint Intelligence Committee, and former Ambassador of the United Kingdom to Germany (1997-2003)

So-called populist parties thrive because they represent the concerns of significant parts of the electorate. In Germany and France, they have been demonised and excluded from power because of the baggage of their perceived political inheritances: national socialism in the case of AfD, East German communism in the case of Die Linke, and the Vichy regime in the case of the National Rally (Rassemblement National; RN).

Reform UK and the Greens in Britain do not suffer from this problem, and it would be a mistake to characterise them as extremist or beyond the political pale. Their policies should be challenged where appropriate, but other parties should be prepared to cooperate with them where there is common ground.

If Reform is the biggest party in the House of Commons after the next general election, Nigel Farage should be given the chance to form a government. Otherwise Britain risks ending up like Germany; with a succession of unnatural and potentially unstable political coalitions that do not properly reflect the popular mood.

However, the most urgent requirement is to change the UK’s electoral system, which in an age of multi-party politics is no longer fit for purpose. To be credible, a government needs to be based on the support of a majority of those who vote.

Ed Owen

Director of Political Strategy, ThinkLabour, and Non-Resident Fellow, Atlantic Council

Reform’s success in the local elections was the clearest sign yet of the threat it poses to Labour and to wider mainstream politics at the next general election.

In an increasingly fragmented electoral environment, Reform won support across Britain and has, for many voters, become the vehicle of widespread disillusionment with the political system. Its access to significant financial support from big donors like Christopher Harborne, a cryptocurrency billionaire living in Thailand, and wider ideological backing from an American administration determined to sow political division across Europe, gives it hope that it can seize national power.

Yet, while Reform won almost 1,500 English council seats and is now the second largest party in the devolved parliaments of Scotland and Wales, its vote share across the country was down compared to this time last year. The party is now coming under greater scrutiny from the media and others, and does appear – for the moment, at least – to have peaked in popular support at around 25%, both in last week’s elections and in national opinion polls.

To counter Reform, it will be vital for the Labour administration, first and foremost, to show delivery on the issues that feed support to Reform – the cost of living crisis, irregular migration across the English Channel, and poor public services. Alongside this, it also needs to demonstrate a clear values-driven approach that can mobilise anti-Reform support. Labour has lost more support to the Greens than to Farage, and this needs to be won back if the party is to see off the populist wave at the next general election.

The current upheaval in the Labour Party that has followed the local elections demonstrates that the party has woken up to the real threat posed by Reform: it has less than three years to prevent a Farage-led government in Westminster.

James Rogers

Co-founder (Research), Council on Geostrategy

‘Populism’ is often conflated with the political extremes, or parties or political forces that promise to deliver a better society, but lack any concrete or funded policies. Citizens in European countries, including Britain, appear to be voting for these parties more forcefully. Even in highly established, organic democracies, such as the UK, Sweden, or the Netherlands, populist forces appear to be in the ascendancy. Britain’s recent local elections only confirm this point, where the established parties did not perform well.

Populism is not organic. It is a symptom of the failure of established political parties to improve the lives of the citizens of their respective countries. It is also a response to globalisation, open borders, and the broader political orthodoxy of the past 30 years, which never recovered from the dislocation of the financial crisis of 2007-2008. If these problems are not addressed, populists will gain further traction in the UK and in parts of Europe, potentially becoming more extreme with every passing year.

At home, Britain should react to populist forces by overcoming the grievances that give rise to them. It should lead the reform of outmoded treaties (or withdraw from them if they no longer work), do far more to stymie undocumented migration, and put cheaper and sovereign energy, and economic growth – especially in poorer regions – at the forefront of the national enterprise.

In Europe, the UK needs a new political vision for the continent, which it projects throughout European nations. This vision should offer concrete solutions to the economic and geopolitical realities of the age.

Clinging tenaciously to the established order in Europe, as it faces stagnation, as well as dislocation from within and without, will no longer work. It is time to be bolder.

Dr Michael Toomey

Lecturer in International Relations, University of Glasgow

Reform UK has achieved overwhelming back-to-back victories in British local elections in 2025 and 2026. It is not surprising that there may be a sense that Britain is about to embrace a broader trend in European politics of far-right populist parties knocking on the doors of governmental power. However, appearances may be deceptive.

Firstly, a Reform government in 2029 is not a foregone conclusion. Its 2026 results reflected a 4% drop in its vote share from the year before, and its opinion polling shows a trend of decline. Throughout the local elections campaign, Reform candidates were curiously absent in terms of their public presence, suggesting that voters were casting a vote for Farage himself rather than an actual candidate – an inherently more difficult phenomenon to replicate in the higher profile atmosphere of a general election.

Secondly, Reform is not a new phenomenon in British politics. Farage himself has been an elected representative since 1999. Many of the most high-profile members of the party are cast-offs from a Conservative Party that seems to be in almost terminal decline. Indeed, Reform UK seems to be largely absorbing the Conservatives, with its populism reflecting a hardening of pre-existing Conservative policy and rhetoric rather than a sea change in British politics. This might place a ceiling on its potential for growth.

Finally, the idea that Reform is part of a European populist far-right juggernaut poised for political power does not hold up to scrutiny. In only a handful of cases have populist far-right parties managed to form governments, often with slim or fleeting majorities. In other cases, such as in France and Germany, far-right parties lead in opinion polls but remain unlikely to take power due to their polarising nature.

Instead, in the UK, the remainder of 2026 is more likely to be a harbinger of the adoption of a different European trend: fragmentation. With seven viable political parties, this could portend a razor-thin Reform landslide in 2029 (à la Labour in 2024), or a gridlocked and unstable Westminster.

Prof. Simon Usherwood

Professor of Politics and International Studies, The Open University; and Visiting Research Fellow, Centre for Britain and Europe, University of Surrey

There is a domestic and an external dimension to the rise of populism. At home, political parties across the ideological spectrum need to recognise that populists have been very effective at tapping into people’s feelings of disengagement and disempowerment in politics. Populists offer simple solutions to complex problems, aided by the apparent inability of the political ‘elite’ to make complex solutions produce clear effects.

Since politics is not going to get any easier, the response has to be one of drawing people into the process and encouraging them to see that solutions are not like online shopping – i.e., one click and it is done – but require a deep and persistent grasp of the issues. Giving people a stake and a role in politics will help to re-base expectations and to leverage the wider impact of social changes to affect desirable outcomes.

However, this cannot be a national endeavour: it should also have a collaborative international part. Supporting and strengthening democratic processes across national borders will be essential in limiting the erosion of norms and practices that has been seen in recent years. Being vocal about core British values of rule of law, human rights, and liberal democratic process should be matched by action to encourage allies and to sanction challenges to these ideals.

Prof. Stefan Wolff

Professor of International Security, University of Birmingham; Senior Research Fellow, The Foreign Policy Centre; and Co-founder, Navigating the Vortex

The rise of populism in Europe takes different forms and presents different challenges for the UK. For example, sovereigntist-nationalist parties like AfD are broadly Eurosceptic, ‘Make America Great Again’ (MAGA)-aligned, Kremlin-leaning, and inclined to fracture European Union (EU) cohesion, including on Ukraine.

Illiberal conservatives like PiS are also Eurosceptic and MAGA-aligned, but have a hardline stance on Russia and have adopted a more Atlanticist tradition – but with support for Ukraine more qualified and conditional. Nativist statists like the RN in France have tried to distance themselves from MAGA, but cannot be relied upon when it comes to an enduring commitment to the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) and support for Ukraine. And these are just the populists on the right wing…

None of these parties are in power yet, but with a presidential ballot in France and parliamentary elections in Poland (where a PiS-supported candidate won the presidency last year) both scheduled for next year, there is a chance that this might change. Germany’s fragile coalition government might also collapse before its full term is up in 2029.

This suggests both opportunities and vulnerabilities for Britain. The opportunities include more flexible security partnerships based on the logic of a ‘coalition of the willing’. There is already a proliferation of different, more-or-less permanent minilateral formats serving distinct but overlapping purposes and cutting across the traditional NATO and EU structures. The UK leads the Joint Expeditionary Force (JEF), co-leads the ‘Coalition of the Willing’ future Ukraine-based reassurance force, and is part of the European Three (E3) and the Ukraine Defence Contract Group (the Ramstein Group).

This is a sensible approach that plays to British military and diplomatic strengths and mitigates the consequences of both Brexit and the second Trump administration. However, this is just mitigation, not elimination, and additional vulnerabilities remain. Among them is the buildup of right-wing populist momentum across the continent that could add to the seeming inevitability of a Reform government. Even without this, the UK might find itself with a shrinking number of credible and capable security partners in the future.

Preparing for such an eventuality will require doubling down on the Strategic Defence Review, as well as investing more in the resilience of Britain’s own democratic processes and institutions so that the country remains a dependable ally for its remaining partners on the continent.

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The royal state visit of His Majesty King Charles III to the United States (US) has drawn substantial media attention, both during and after the four-day tour. Much has been made of His Majesty’s speech to Congress in particular, with multiple outlets praising it as a ‘masterclass’ in diplomacy – including ones outside of the United Kingdom (UK).

At a time when the US under the Trump administration is expecting its North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) allies to increase defence spending and assume greater burden sharing, hard power has been positioned as the most important factor in British foreign policy. However, His Majesty’s visit has reignited discussion on the benefits of soft power. This provides the basis for this week’s Big Ask, in which we asked six experts: Did the King’s visit to America reaffirm the importance of soft power?

Evie Aspinall

Director, British Foreign Policy Group

In an increasingly volatile global environment, it can be easy to focus purely on the need to strengthen hard power – how much ammunition, how many troops, and how equipped is the UK to be able to deter an enemy? These are critical questions, but they often ignore the fact that much of Britain’s standing and influence in the world stems from its soft power: from the fondness leaders derive from their time spent studying in the UK, from its reputation for upholding international law, and from the global intrigue and prestige that follows the Royal Family.

State visits then are an excellent diplomatic tool for Britain, creating powerful symbolic moments that help build a sense of warmth, humanness, and depth to bilateral relationships. This has helped to shape the UK’s position in the world throughout history, from King George VI’s visit to the US prior to the Second World War to the Royals’ embrace of a post-apartheid South Africa.

All that said, has His Majesty’s visit to the US saved the ‘special relationship? No. But that is as much about Donald Trump, President of the US, as it is about the soft power of the Royal Family. Where leaders are traditionally won over by alliances and friendship, Trump has shown a blatant disregard for the traditional rules of the international order, and for American allies and partners.

His Majesty’s visit will have temporarily softened relations, buying Britain a reprieve from Trump, but it will not have changed his long-term calculus when it comes to the UK and Europe. However, that does not mean that soft power does not work, and the value of a light reprieve in the current circumstances should not be underestimated. What it does mean is that soft power, including that of the royals, should be recognised as a key part of the full British diplomatic toolkit, which should be utilised alongside a wide range of other levers in order to support the UK’s security and prosperity in a fast-changing world.

Joshua C. Huminski

International Fellow, Council on Geostrategy, and Senior Vice President of National Security and Intelligence Programmes, Centre for the Study of the Presidency and Congress

His Majesty’s visit to the US was an unqualified logistics and presentational success. It was a masterstroke of pomp and circumstance, pitch-perfect messaging (and cheeky humour), and a rare and exceedingly fleeting moment in Washington where everyone came together to celebrate something objectively good.

Most importantly, it pleased Trump. He is nothing if not attracted to the trappings of power, holds a special place in his heart for the Royal Family, and has a nostalgic view of the UK. His Majesty’s visit, therefore, ticked every presidential box.

As much of an objective win as the visit was, whether it counts as a soft power success is ultimately determined by what happens next in British-American relations. It is worth stating that too much emphasis is placed on soft power; states act out of national self-interest (even the US, and well before Trump became President), not simply because they like a counterpart. Likeability, even among allies as close as the UK and US, does nonetheless make relations easier.

Trump has (for now, at least) toned down his rhetorical attacks against Britain and the state of its armed forces, which had reached such levels that Buckingham Palace and 10 Downing Street were considering postponing the visit. If His Majesty’s trip tamps down the rhetoric against the UK and – more importantly – helps to course-correct the seeming downward direction of the special relationship, then the high-risk gamble of using the Crown in a febrile political environment will have paid off. If it only buys a few weeks of quiet on social media, the investment may well not have been worth the gain.

The herculean efforts of Whitehall and the Embassy team in Washington, who worked so diligently to ensure the visit happened as smoothly as it did, should nonetheless be followed by concerted policy action if His Majesty’s (HM) Government hopes to leverage the visit to maximum effect – well beyond the shortened attention span of Washington’s policymakers and (social) media pundits.

Dr Vincent Keating

Associate Professor, Centre for War Studies, University of Southern Denmark

Many commentators have argued that His Majesty’s visit was a masterclass in diplomacy that reinforced shared historical values between the two states, even drawing praise from Trump. But does this diplomatic success actually reaffirm the importance of soft power?

Firstly, the ability of cultural or ideological content to generate soft power depends heavily on its resonance within other states. In this regard, the visit played to multiple audiences. Conservatives appeared to admire King Charles’ status as a monarch and his references to Christian values, while liberals appreciated his remarks to Congress regarding the limits of executive power. His Majesty successfully provided ideological resonance across the political spectrum, which is beneficial to the cultivation of soft power.

Secondly, soft power is not merely a popularity contest. Fundamentally, it is the capacity to influence another state’s foreign policy. Therefore, to claim that the visit enhanced British soft power, the US, or at least key constituencies within it, must become more aligned with the foreign policy objectives of the UK. Whether a single visit by a prominent figure can move this needle and permanently transform American perceptions or whether pre-existing transatlantic ideological divides will cause a rapid return to the historical baseline remains highly uncertain.

Therefore, while the visit illustrates that projecting soft power remains feasible despite increasing global ideological polarisation, the conversion of this resonance into the tangible desired foreign policy alignment likely requires a sophisticated and sustained diplomatic effort.

Dr Ksenia Kirkham

Senior Lecturer in Economic Warfare Education, King’s College London

Framed as ceremonial diplomacy, this off-protocol visit by His Majesty to the US was indeed an exercise in last-resort British soft power.

King Charles broke from established neutrality to deliver a political signal. His message was implicitly directed toward a Democrat audience, effectively lobbying against Trump’s security and foreign policy agenda. However, what appears as an exercise in damage limitation rather than diplomatic confidence will only have limited impact as geoeconomic realities kick in.

From a geoeconomic perspective, the symbolic soft power performance contrasts with prospective decline for both states. For the UK, its ever-growing sanctions regime has realigned energy and financial markets in ways that gradually erode British competitiveness while offering few compensating gains.

The UK’s economy is dangerously exposed to higher energy prices from the disruption to shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, and will remain so for as long as HM Government remains committed to a policy of managed decline of North Sea oil and gas production. By contrast, the US, despite its disastrous Iran strategy, remains in a comparatively stronger position, both as a key exporter of Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) and by virtue of its geographic distance from the primary zones of escalation.

Overall, while ceremony and warmth may ease friction in the short term, soft power is unlikely to correct the structural imbalance between the two countries. The People’s Republic of China (PRC) will be the key variable in this equation. Britain should avoid being drawn into another conflict (potentially more devastating than previous wars) and instead pursue a more balanced set of relations, rather than further entrenching its subordinate position within the intensifying American-Chinese geoeconomic rivalry.

Thomas Nurcombe

Research Manager, Coalition for Global Prosperity

His Majesty’s visit to the US came after months of tension between the White House and 10 Downing Street. Indeed, three weeks before King Charles landed in America, Trump compared Sir Keir Starmer, Prime Minister, to Neville Chamberlain.

The visit provided a brief respite from the transatlantic strain. Trump declared that the US has ‘no closer friends’ than the UK, while His Majesty emphasised the importance of British-American cooperation, with AUKUS featuring prominently. Trump is evidently receptive to the Royal Family’s soft power, and this has helped to paper over current political frictions.

Nevertheless, the challenges facing the special relationship run far deeper than tensions between political leaders. The partnership rests less on sentimentalism than on the UK’s ability to advance shared interests through intelligence cooperation, military capability, and global influence.

This is increasingly under pressure. The Ministry of Defence’s £28 billion shortfall, a reluctance to designate the PRC as a threat, and Britain’s waning international influence – often allowing the rise of Russian and Chinese influence – are all weakening the foundations of the relationship.

A stronger British defence posture, particularly in the High North, will be key to preserving the relationship over the long term. The UK should also align its wider foreign policy tools more closely with the strategic competition against Russia and the PRC. If it fails to increase its strategic value to the US, the damage to the special relationship could prove irreparable, and no amount of soft power will be enough to compensate.

Prof. Richard Whitman

Professor of International Relations, University of Kent

Soft power is notoriously difficult to measure, and its effects are difficult to assess. It also cannot bridge significant divides in outlook or policy between two states. A state visit is more than an expression of soft power; it is an important piece of diplomatic action which a host state can use to signal that it values the preservation or deepening of a foreign policy relationship.

For HM Government, ‘deploying’ the House of Windsor to host and conduct state visits allows the UK to use what Walter Bagehot called the ‘dignified’ part of government to stimulate goodwill towards Britain. This function was well demonstrated during His Majesty’s visit to the US.

The visit clearly had importance and significance for Trump. His demeanour during the ceremonial and public events of the trip clearly demonstrated that he has a strong affinity for a key institution of the British state. His Majesty’s address to Congress was a masterful delivery in form and substance of the UK’s foreign policy philosophy, aspirations, and significance to a key constituency with which HM Government needs to maintain influence – regardless of whoever occupies the White House.

The visit was a masterclass in how the Royal Family can be used as an affective foreign policy tool by Britain, impacting perceptions of the country. It is a reminder that whatever the external perceptions of the government in office, the Royals’ unique appeal creates an affinity for Britain that can be used to national advantage.

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On 26th March, Mark Carney, Prime Minister of Canada, participated in a virtual meeting of the Joint Expeditionary Force (JEF), the ten-country rapid response coalition dedicated to security in the High North. Following this, Gen. Jennie Carnigan, Canadian Chief of the Defence Staff, met with counterparts from JEF nations in London in early April.

These actions suggest an increasing likelihood that Canada will join the JEF – a possibility discussed amid tense relations with the United States (US) and growing adversarial interest in the High North, as well as the expanded ‘Wider North’. This provides the foundation for this week’s Big Ask, in which we asked nine experts: Should Canada join the JEF?

Minna Ålander

Analyst, Stockholm Centre for Eastern European Studies (SCEEUS), Swedish Institute of International Affairs

The JEF is currently the best military cooperation instrument available to like-minded countries in Europe and beyond, given that it does not necessarily require participating countries to be either European Union (EU) or North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) members. Finland and Sweden were already members of the JEF before joining NATO, and the United Kingdom (UK), Norway, and Iceland are not EU member states. As Canada contributes to NATO presence in Latvia, Canadian forces are already on the ground in the Wider North.

The expected reduction of American contributions to NATO’s defence plans makes it imperative that Northern European countries and Canada ensure that they are able to defend the wider High North and North Atlantic on their own. Given that the Nordic countries and UK are directly exposed to Russian interests in the North Atlantic, they need to ensure strategic depth, reinforcements, and supplies from across the Atlantic. Canada’s inclusion is therefore long overdue.

Another country that should be upgraded from enhanced partner to full member of the JEF is Ukraine. There is currently no institution in the European security architecture that could integrate Ukraine in any short timeframe, but membership in the JEF would help it to become interoperable with Northern European NATO forces and give JEF nations invaluable insights into Ukraine’s battlefield experience. Red teaming in exercises with Ukrainian drone operators, such as in the Swedish-led Aurora 26 exercise, is a resource which the JEF should make more structured use of.

Prof. Klaus Dodds

Honorary Fellow, Council on Geostrategy, and Professor of Geopolitics and Faculty Dean, Middlesex University London

Canada should be invited to join the JEF immediately. Ottawa enjoys a close military relationship with many JEF members, including Britain, and has already worked closely with the group. Membership could – and should – be framed as graduated recognition of operational and strategic realities.

The fundamental reason for Canada’s membership is twofold. Firstly, the relationship between Ottawa and Washington has been turned upside down as a direct consequence of the repeated belligerence of Donald Trump, President of the US. Carney’s speech at Davos in January 2026 spoke of ‘rupture’, and did not need to cite Trump directly. The US is no longer a ‘reliable’ security partner for Canada, Denmark, and the UK.

Secondly (and because of the first reason), a coalition of like-minded northern hemispheric countries stretching from Canada to Finland addresses both the persistent unreliability of Washington and the ongoing threat posed by Russia.

The creation of an expanded Euro-Atlantic coalition will enhance interoperability and deterrence capabilities, tempered by a recognition that Ottawa is embarking on a defence rebuilding process; the ‘Build at Home’ Defence Industrial Strategy. Currently, dependence on the American security umbrella remains high.

However, even enhanced participation by Canada would signal a collective recognition that the North Atlantic and Arctic are part of a shared Wider North. Russia is a common foe. Full membership of the JEF would come later, with guarantees that Ottawa could meet operational requirements.

It is worth noting that Canada was invited to join JEF in 2013 but declined. 13 years later, the strategic optics and operational realities appear very different in the Wider North.

Dr Anisa Heritage

Senior Lecturer, Department of Defence and International Affairs, Royal Military Academy Sandhurst

There is strong mutual strategic and operational logic to Canada joining the JEF. Its flexibility in dealing with sub-threshold threats and its specific focus on maritime security, critical infrastructure protection, and rapid deployment in the High North and Arctic are mutually beneficial.

With Canadian membership, the JEF would become the transatlantic operational framework for High North and Arctic activity, addressing the existing geographic gap across the North Atlantic and Arctic Circle. Canadian membership would increase the JEF’s deterrence credibility, and signal to adversaries that Euro-Atlantic security remains deeply connected across the High North, Baltic, and North Atlantic theatres.

Formalising Canadian membership cements already deepening military collaboration across domains. From a British Armed Forces perspective, Canadian membership would enhance existing Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) and basing capabilities essential for Arctic security. In the land domain, Canadian forces are recognised for their proficiency in sub-zero temperature survival and warfare, maintaining dedicated Arctic training units.

Canadian JEF membership would also bring potential future benefits, such as increased force pooling with a culturally aligned partner (with operational experience of American Command and Control) and cutting costs on critical kit procurement.

However, there are caveats. High North security is increased if the JEF possesses credible, deployable capabilities. Although Carney recently announced that Canada is now investing 2% of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) into defence, this is well below the JEF average. In addition, Canadian procurement and warfighting modernisation lag behind JEF counterparts, leading to concerns that Carney can only virtue signal rather than offer real capability or military readiness right now.

Canadian membership of the JEF is logical. However, it needs to address significant deficiencies in its current military capabilities and warfighting readiness, and increase its military commitments if it is to contribute meaningfully to the coalition.

Anthony Heron

Research Associate and Deputy Editor-in-Chief, Arctic Institute

The question should not be whether Canada should join the JEF, but why it has taken this long to consider it seriously.

Canada is more than just a capable Arctic nation; it is Europe’s most steadfast North American partner at a moment when reliability cannot be taken for granted. As the US retreats from its traditional role as guarantor of the international order, Canada has signalled a clear-eyed pivot towards deeper European engagement. JEF membership would formalise what is already a natural strategic alignment.

The military case is compelling. Canada brings world-class Arctic capabilities, a sophisticated understanding of High North maritime operations, and an armed forces culture that is deeply interoperable with existing JEF members. The Greenland-Iceland-UK (GIUK) gap and the increasingly contested High North are precisely the domains where Canadian expertise and assets would strengthen the framework’s collective posture.

There is also a political dimension that matters. Expanding the JEF to include Canada would send an unambiguous signal – to Moscow, Beijing, and Washington – that European security architecture is deepening rather than fracturing. At a moment of transatlantic uncertainty, such a signal has value beyond military utility.

The JEF was built to secure the northern maritime environment. Canada belongs in it.

Linas Kojala

Chief Executive Officer, Geopolitics and Security Studies Centre

Canada joining the JEF could make strategic sense, but the real question is whether it would produce more deterrence – not merely one more political format.

What is seen today is a wider search for new security arrangements. Countries are adjusting to changing geopolitical realities and less predictable American priorities. This explains the renewed interest in the JEF, deeper EU-Canada cooperation, and even the debate in Canada about closer links with the EU – strikingly, Abacus Data found that 48% of Canadians support their country becoming an EU member, even if this remains politically and legally remote.

From a Lithuanian and Baltic perspective, Canada’s interest in the JEF is not abstract. The Baltic Sea, the North Atlantic, and the Arctic are now part of the same strategic theatre. Russian military pressure, sabotage risks, ‘shadow fleet’ activity, and threats to critical infrastructure connect these regions.

Canada would bring Arctic knowledge, Atlantic geography, maritime capabilities, and political weight. It also maintains an important military presence in Latvia. For the JEF – especially after the enhanced partnership with Ukraine – this could add useful dynamism. However, formats do not deter Russia by themselves. Defence spending, readiness, ammunition, air defence, military mobility, and political will matter more than the organisational flag under which leaders meet.

Dr Alexander Lanoszka

International Fellow, Council on Geostrategy, and Assistant Professor of International Relations, University of Waterloo (Canada)

Joining the JEF would align with Carney’s efforts to diversify Canada’s security relationships away from the US while tightening existing bonds with key allies and partners. Geographically, the arrangement makes sense for Canada. Aside from being an Arctic country like the Nordic states, Canada leads the multinational brigade in Latvia. That the JEF has a maritime and expeditionary focus thus complements what Canada is already doing on land in the Baltic region.

For European allies, Canadian participation is attractive because it helps to implicate North America further into their own continental security. Participating in the JEF also lends greater coherence to Canadian defence and foreign policy than some of the other efforts that Carney has made to broaden Canada’s strategic relationships, most notably the recent deals with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and Qatar.

That said, although being part of the JEF might make sense for Canada, Canadian defence planners cannot sidestep the important question of what sort of force posture their country should have, and should support financially. Trying to have everything while being everywhere all at once will amount to little if attention is still spread unevenly and capability gaps remain wide.

Unfortunately, such has been the general tendency in Canadian foreign and defence policy – even when times get difficult, as they are today. The JEF is a worthy venture, but some experts have observed that it has already suffered from insufficient attention and resourcing from its existing members. On its own, Canada cannot address those possible shortcomings – and it may yet contribute to them if its own participation ends up being an afterthought.

Dr Eoin McNamara

Postdoctoral Fellow, Finnish Institute of International Affairs (FIIA)

JEF membership is appealing for Canada. At Davos, Carney announced an ambitious vision to lead an evolution in multilateralism in cooperation with other ‘middle powers’. Membership in the JEF would be another step towards realising this vision.

Politically, this would galvanise Canada’s links with the UK and the Nordic-Baltic region, an already effective network in defining the European security policy agenda. Canada faces similar Arctic security challenges as the Nordic states. JEF membership would offer Canada some extra military benefits beyond NATO, through more multinational exercises in cold weather operations and Arctic warfare.

However, it is doubtful that Canada currently holds the military capacity to commit effectively to the JEF, although Ottawa does understand that it must rebuild its military before taking on further transatlantic commitments. Unable to rely as much on its alliance with the US, Canada’s independent defence capacity is under pressure to cover serious security challenges in the Arctic, the Atlantic and the Pacific.

Canada already leads NATO’s multinational Forward Land Forces (FLF) battlegroup in Latvia. Therefore, while JEF membership is politically attractive for Canada, Ottawa has other pressing military priorities, which means that committing to additional JEF commitments is a challenge. More broadly, the JEF holds political attraction as a function of an influential Northern European security community.

However, this must not overtake the need for JEF members to commit sufficient military resources. Developing military capabilities remains key if the JEF’s strategic relevance is to continue.

Matthew Palmer

Adjunct Fellow, Council on Geostrategy

The short answer is a very tentative yes.

Caution must be expressed when it comes to the expansion of minilateral organisations like the JEF. The JEF’s strengths come not just from its flexibility, but the like-mindedness and, importantly, the geographical proximity of its members. While not originally focused on Northern European security, it has naturally moved in that direction as a result of geographic logic and Russian aggression.

The JEF’s structure is also fundamentally based on the UK as by far the largest power; being the primary framework nation into which other JEF allies plug in. For this reason, alternative proposals of inviting other large nations such as Germany or Poland are unwise, as it would complicate the structure and politics of the organisation. It should also be remembered that, fundamentally, the JEF is a medium-sized military headquarters. With expansion might come greater responsibility, which would require an increase in resource and authority.

If another NATO country was to join the JEF, Canada would be by far the most likely candidate. A growing area of focus for the JEF is arctic security, in which Canada has both significant interest and expertise. The flexibility of the JEF would allow Canada to participate in an Atlantic security architecture outside NATO, and without American involvement. Furthermore, the JEF’s flexibility would allow for broader engagement of European nations in Canadian maritime security if required. However, clarity on what all parties expect to receive and contribute to an expanded JEF would be crucial in order to avoid strategic drift and diluting the core purpose and advantages of the organisation.

Ryan Wu

Policy Researcher and Susan Strange Fellow, Helsinki Geoeconomics Society

Canada commands the longest Arctic coastline, yet, for decades, Ottawa has neglected this geostrategic asset. Carney’s CA$40 billion (£21.7 billion) northern rearmament and preparation for ‘large-scale conflicts’ mark a paradigm shift in Canadian defence policy. Canadian accession to the JEF as a full member would bring the Wider North into an integrated geopolitical space, binding the Arctic, GIUK gap, and North Atlantic into one theatre of deterrence under British leadership.

Canadian sovereignty is now under strain from three directions. Washington’s coercion of Canada and Greenland, including Trump’s refusal to rule out use of force, has destabilised the Article 5 security guarantee. Russia’s remilitarisation of the High North projects the power of its Northern Fleet through the Bear Gap, while sub-threshold warfare targets critical undersea infrastructure across the Euro-Atlantic.

The PRC poses the least-confronted long-term strategic risk. Its entrenchment through dual-use hydrographic mapping of submarine corridors and Polar Silk Road shipping exploits vulnerabilities in Canadian surveillance and investment screening infrastructure. NATO’s consensus architecture was not built for this convergence of threats, which is why Canada is turning towards the middle-power coalitions called for in Carney’s Davos speech.

Canada needs Europe, and Europe needs Canada. Canada’s Arctic Archipelago and strategic position over the Northwest Passage would extend the JEF’s maritime reach across the North Atlantic into North American Arctic waters. In return, Ottawa would secure a minilateral coalition where shared threat perception is matched by defence spending and hard-power commitment, strengthening transatlantic economic security.

Beijing’s ‘near-Arctic’ posture is designed to exploit the fault lines between North American and European command structures. Only the JEF, with Canada as its 11th member, can close them. Accession would formalise the end of Arctic exceptionalism, stake the first claim in Canada’s Arctic power ambition, and open the door to deeper economic integration with the EU.

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His Majesty’s (HM) Government has shelved the process of transferring the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT) – the controversial ‘Chagos deal’ – to Mauritius amid fluctuating relations with the United States (US) since early 2026. Having first agreed to cede the archipelago in 2024, the United Kingdom (UK) signed the deal with Mauritius in May 2025, which included retention of the joint British-American military base on Diego Garcia for a cost of at least £101 million per year for 99 years.

While HM Government adhered to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruling that the detachment of the Chagos Archipelago from Mauritius was wrongful, it was advisory, not legally binding. Thus, considering the most recent development in the BIOT deal and the UK’s loss of face on the global stage, for this week’s Big Ask, we asked seven experts: Is Britain overly subservient to international law?

Dr Hillary Briffa

Adjunct Fellow, Council on Geostrategy, and Senior Lecturer in National Security Studies, King’s College London

The UK is not overly subservient to international law. The BIOT case indicates a different problem: inconsistency. Britain is usually happy to invoke international law when it supports its wider foreign policy position, but more hesitant when legal rulings cut across strategic interests or the legacies of empire.

From the Mauritian perspective, Chagos is a decolonisation issue. It goes to the heart of how independence was handled, and whether that process was lawful. In 2019, the ICJ concluded that Mauritius’ decolonisation had not been completed lawfully because the Chagos Archipelago had been detached before independence. The United Nations (UN) General Assembly then backed this position, and called on the UK to end its administration of the islands.

The ruling is salient beyond the BIOT itself. For small states, international law is one of the few tools available to push back against raw power. If larger states brush aside rulings when they become inconvenient, the message is stark: rules only apply when you are weak. This is not a good look for a country that regularly presents itself as a champion of the ‘rules-based international order’.

There are other issues too. Diego Garcia still carries major strategic value, and the rights and wishes of Chagossians must be taken seriously. Even so, the proposed deal showed that legal principle and strategic interest can be reconciled. Sovereignty could pass to Mauritius while the base continues to operate under lease.

Therefore, the real question is whether Britain is willing to follow international law even when it is not the easiest option, because doing so strengthens its credibility, shows that its principles are applied consistently, and gives real meaning to its support for a rules-based international order.

Brig. (rtd.) Rory Copinger-Symes CBE

Senior Adviser, Bondi Partners and SecureCloud+, and Non-Executive Director, Halo International Group

The question contains a flaw. International law is not a buffet from which nations select convenient portions. You are either a signatory to its frameworks or you are not. To describe the UK as ‘overly subservient’ to obligations it has voluntarily and formally undertaken is simply to describe a nation honouring its word.

The real issue is not subservience, but interpretation. Britain’s courts and political culture have developed a habit of reading international obligations in their most expansive form. Where treaty language is ambiguous, the UK defaults to constraint. France deploys its military across the Sahel with minimal legal hand-wringing. Hungary defies European Court rulings with impunity. Britain ties itself in knots over the removal of a single foreign national.

This distinction matters acutely in the Indo-Pacific. The UK’s AUKUS commitments and its broader strategic focus eastward demand credibility – which comes from being a reliable partner. Yet, export licensing delays, legal constraints on intelligence cooperation, and institutional caution about sub-threshold operations all erode that credibility.

The People’s Republic of China (PRC) does not agonise over legal interpretation. It shapes facts on the ground – in the South China Sea, in Taiwan’s approaches, and in its economic coercion of regional partners – while remaining nominally within the letter of international frameworks. Britain, meanwhile, applies the spirit of those same frameworks with a rigour that its adversaries find baffling and its allies find frustrating.

The BIOT dispute crystallises this perfectly. A decision with profound basing implications for Diego Garcia – and therefore for British and American power projection across the Indian Ocean – became entangled in legal and moral obligations that, however genuine, carried strategic costs that were either ignored or underweighted.

The UK does not need to abandon international law. Rather, it needs to rediscover the confidence to interpret it – as every serious state does – in light of its own national interest. That is not subservience. That is sovereignty.

Deniz Güzel

Adjunct Fellow, Council on Geostrategy, and English-qualified lawyer

The shelving of the BIOT deal is a welcome turn to a saga which the UK should never have entertained. It submitted to a lawfare campaign orchestrated by Mauritius, which mobilised votes at the UN General Assembly against Britain’s sovereignty over the territory, triggering an advisory opinion from the ICJ that considered the UK’s administration of the territory to be a ‘wrongful act’.

In 2024, David Lammy, then Foreign Secretary, claimed that the deal would strengthen Britain’s ability to challenge Russian and Chinese violations of international law in Ukraine and the South China Sea. This supported the view of Lord Hermer, Attorney General, that the UK should rebuild its reputation as a leader in international law by first honouring its legal obligations.

However, while Britain frets about the consequences of ignoring a non-binding opinion on the BIOT or constrains itself through a restrictive approach to military targeting in Iran, the PRC and Russia will continue to breach and instrumentalise international law to achieve objectives contrary to British and allied interests. The UK should not assume that its ‘goodness’ is enough, and should recognise that the legal domain is now a central arena of strategic competition that it must navigate. By clinging to a nostalgic and idealised vision of international law, Britain risks rendering itself strategically weak and unprepared for a harsher world.

The UK should, therefore, integrate lawfare into its broader strategic outlook, enabling it to identify and counter hostile legal campaigns, reassess treaty commitments that impose outdated constraints, resist over‑expansive judicial interpretations, and shape international law in emerging domains such as space. Only by adopting a proactive, rather than restrictive, approach to international law can British interests be protected effectively on the international stage.

David Landsman OBE*

Chair, British Foreign Policy Group

International law differs from domestic law for the political reason that states have sovereignty. Sovereign states choose whether to accede to treaties and to accept international laws. They may do so as a condition of their relationships with others – e.g., European Union (EU) members accepting the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) – but the decision is still political. No international body has the legitimacy of a sovereign nation.

International organisations, including courts, only have authority if their sovereign members choose to accept it. In practice, their decisions can be influenced by states’ political interests. There is also the risk of a ‘principal-agent’ conflict if an organisation and the professionals associated with it advance their own interests and values distinct from the views of its members. Appeals to an ‘international rules-based system’ are political rather than legal, and in a multipolar world, more contested.

Rules are, of course, essential for trust in business, and international agreements on arms control and the environment, for example, bring wider benefits. However, the UK needs to be clear-eyed about its and others’ interests, and more selective about the commitments it makes: caveating them where national interests require, and opting out where necessary.

Not complying with laws a country has accepted destroys trust: refusing to comply is legitimate and should be respected. The latest version of HM Government’s Ministerial Code, which requires ministers to comply with international law on par with national law, is an abrogation of the sovereign state’s duty to its citizens and their interests.

*This response is written in a personal capacity, and does not necessarily reflect the views of the British Foreign Policy Group.

Dr Timothy Less

Senior Adviser for Geopolitics, Centre for Risk Studies, and Convenor, Geopolitical Risk Analysis Study Group, University of Cambridge

I agree that Britain has become overly subservient to international law. For a succession of governments, homage to international law has become the guiding principle of foreign policy at serious cost to the UK. The BIOT deal is the clearest example of this, but the same applies in multiple arenas – from the recent decision to deny American access to British military bases to policy on asylum and immigration.

I base this view on three considerations.

First, the primary duty of any government in the international arena is to uphold national interest. That does not mean disregarding international law. On the contrary, the UK has an interest in promoting a rules-based system that provides predictability and order. But, where international law comes into serious conflict with national interest, the latter should prevail.

Second, international law is not law in the same sense as domestic law. It is not enacted by a sovereign legislature or enforced by a central authority. Rather, it is a body of norms, treaties, and agreements on how states should behave in the international arena, and is inherently more flexible and contingent than domestic law – to the point that states can resile from treaties that contravene their interests.

Third, in today’s geopolitical climate, excessive deference can be counterproductive. The logic of self-restraint presumes adherence to international law by other states – especially Britain’s adversaries. However, that is not the world we inhabit today, if ever we did.

The UK’s opponents ignore, reinterpret, or instrumentalise international law to advance their own interests, and for Britain to bind itself rigidly to it is to place the country at a strategic disadvantage, or worse – as in the case of the BIOT deal – to undermine its national interest.

Dr Danielle Reeder

Freelance security and defence consultant

A major theme within the ICJ’s advisory opinion on the legal consequences of separating the Chagos Islands from Mauritius concerned the principle of self-determination and the human rights implications of colonial rule. Neither the method of ending the UK’s administration over the Chagos Archipelago, nor the manner in which the deal was executed, can be deemed as having seriously foregrounded these particular legal issues.

The drafters of the BIOT deal were correct in understanding that decolonisation is not a political choice, despite the way the deal is currently being discussed. It is a mandated condition of modern international relations. It is merely a fact that maintaining 20th century colonies into the 21st – and 22nd – centuries is logistically problematic.

That is not to say that Britain’s hands were tied, or that the deal was adequately comprehensive – poor upfront explanation to the public, renegotiating on terms overly favourable to the new Mauritian government, and U-turns based on winds of change from Washington all deserve critique.

Maintaining vital military assets abroad should not be conflated with maintaining colonies, even if the current location of bases are credited to a colonial past. Trying to posture to any state, particularly Russia or the PRC, through lawfare cannot have a controlled effect. The UK is in no position to be drawn into bygone spheres-of-influence policy, or continue simply to react to American decisions du jour.

The various pitfalls of the BIOT deal are not indicative of subservience to international law. They signal a problem with Britain’s purported vision of its global leadership model. The UK has to mind the ripple effects of being seen to ignore international law, but it must also consider its strategic coherence – which it is currently struggling to do effectively.

The Rt. Hon. Anne-Marie Trevelyan

Minister for the Indo-Pacific (2022-2024) and Secretary of State for International Trade (2021-2022)

Shelving the handover of the BIOT to Mauritius demonstrates a belated understanding that Britain’s Indo‑Pacific posture rests not on words, but on hard power and the needs of critical allies. Diego Garcia is one of the most globally strategically important islands, underpinning the UK’s Five Eyes power projection capability. It is remote, unglamorous, and indispensable.

Washington’s refusal to agree to changes to the UK-US Treaty, which would enable the giveaway, is a clear reminder that interdependence and trust with Five Eyes partners must be the determining factor in Britain’s decisions. Even when individual leaders are throwing tomatoes at each other, the deep ties and reasons for the alliance are undiminished, and must be protected.

The BIOT deal is not an isolated issue; it sits squarely within the UK’s need to be a serious Indo‑Pacific actor. HM Government has remembered what disruption to choke points does to British economic security vis-à-vis the Strait of Hormuz and consequent energy price hikes. If this happened in the Malacca or Taiwan Straits, it would affect everything from food and phones to chips and cheap Chinese imports. The UK cannot assume someone else will protect its economic interests – it has to be there.

From the South China Sea to the Red Sea, freedom of navigation is under daily pressure. Diego Garcia supports persistent maritime domain awareness, enables rapid response operations, and underwrites deterrence across those key chokepoints.

By shelving the deal, Britain has – perhaps accidentally – chosen strategic continuity over legal resolution. That choice will reassure partners living in this increasingly contested region where sub-threshold coercion, attacks on undersea cables, militarisation of sea lanes, and the weaponisation of legal ambiguity is a daily reality.

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On 25th March, the United Nations (UN) adopted a resolution that declared the transatlantic slave trade to be the ‘gravest crime against humanity’. Spearheaded by Ghana, the resolution received 123 votes in favour, three against, and 52 abstentions – including from the United Kingdom (UK).

While not legally binding, such UN resolutions often carry geopolitical significance. Given the controversy over the righteousness of reparations for the slave trade, and the fact that the British taxpayer would potentially be on the line were such reparations to be initiated, should the UK not embrace a more forceful position? This question forms the basis of this week’s Big Ask, in which we asked four experts: Was Britain right to abstain from the UN vote on slavery reparations?

Prof. Lawrence Goldman FRHistS

Lecturer (CUF) in Modern History, University of Oxford, and Executive Editor, History Reclaimed

Yes, the UK was right to abstain, because the transatlantic slave trade was not a crime in Britain – or anywhere else – during the period when Britain was involved in it (roughly from the 16th century to the early years of the 19th century).

It is looked upon it differently today, of course, but until 1807, when the slave trade was abolished by Parliament, it was, however horrendous, not illegal. It would be against all the principles of English and Scottish law to criminalise retrospectively something that was once legal.

In addition, the following points should be noted:

1. The UN resolution makes no mention of the Arab slave trade out of Africa, which sold even more Africans into the Ottoman Empire and the Near East generally than were transported across the Atlantic; and

2. The first stage of West African slavery involved the capture and enslavement of Africans by other Africans, who sold their captives at the ports to European traders.

Why does the motion not ask for reparations from Arab and African nations that also captured and sold slaves? Also important to note is that in 1807, when Britain became the first major nation to outlaw the trade, more people around the world laboured as forced labourers – whether as slaves, serfs, or indentured servants – than as free men and women.

In short, the UK was right to abstain, because the motion does not condemn all slavery and human sale; only that undertaken by ‘Western’ nations.

Prof. Toni Haastrup

Chair, University Association for Contemporary European Studies (UACES), and Professor, International Politics, University of Manchester

Britain’s abstention on the UN vote on slavery reparations is a political choice. It is not a principled position. It is an evasion.

To be clear, reparations are not simply about financial transfers between governments. They are about confronting the ongoing legacies of colonialism; the dispossession and the structural inequalities, often gendered, that shape the realities of Africa and African-descendent people globally.

The past is not behind us. It is present in every trade arrangement that perpetuates extraction, every multilateral institution that centres ‘Western’ interests as universal ones, and every decision that reproduces a hierarchy of whose lives are grievable, whose sovereignty is protected, and whose destruction is permitted.

The UK’s abstention at this moment signals a refusal to reckon with these issues. Britain has indeed already helped to develop the architecture of accountability through instruments such as the Basic Principles on the Right to Remedy, which it is now choosing to step back from when being asked to move from rhetoric to action.

What makes the abstention particularly telling is its timing. As Official Development Assistance (ODA) budgets are slashed, and many commitments to justice are quietly being hollowed out, this feels like another nail in the coffin for the idea of a progressive ‘Global Britain’.

So, no, the UK was not right to abstain. It was wrong.

Prof. Alan Lester

Professor of Historical Geography, School of Global Studies, University of Sussex

Britain was wrong to abstain not just on moral grounds – its dominance of transatlantic slavery in the 18th century was one of the greatest crimes against humanity ever – but also because agreeing to reparations talks may well be in the UK’s long-term interests.

To get one thing straight, reparations have been deliberately misrepresented by those opposed to any kind of conversation. They are not the transfer of trillions of dollars, charged to British taxpayers. US$19 trillion (£14.2 trillion) is the amount calculated by Brattle Group consultants as theoretically owed, were the UK ever to pay the wages of generations of enslaved workers, compound interest, and damages for the trauma of racialised captivity.

This is not what the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) and its African allies are seeking. They are asking for talks that might ultimately result in agreed bespoke measures (as happened between Germany and Israel after the Second World War). The outcome would most likely be as follows:

• First, an apology and recognition that the scars of transatlantic slavery persist in racial and geographical inequalities maintained through indebtedness, multinational mis-invoicing, punitive debt, and exploitative resource extraction; and

• Second, an agreement on long-term measures of support, such as debt relief, assistance with health care, low-carbon energy transfer, and climate change adaptation.

The refusal even to begin a conversation is denting British moral leadership, creating distrust, and preventing the formation of sorely needed new alliances. Reparative discussions could revive the Commonwealth as a meaningful entity, embracing African countries with some of the world’s most critical minerals that are now being assiduously courted by the People’s Republic of China (PRC). With reparations talks, the UK has a chance to enhance a much-diminished global status, free of dependency on the United States (US).

Martin Plaut

Senior Research Fellow, Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London

The answer to the question must be ‘yes’. Slavery is a critically important question, but the way it was posed before the UN was badly misguided. The resolution calls for ‘recognition of the transatlantic slave trade and slavery as the gravest crime against humanity’. By framing the call for action in this manner, the full horror of African enslavement is obscured.

No recognition is given to the far longer, equally substantial, and just as brutal trade across the Indian Ocean. There is no reason to single out the transatlantic trade when it accounted for perhaps 20% or 25% of Africa’s historic enslavement.

The trade with Arabia, or that controlled by Arabian nations, was at least as large as that undertaken by the Europeans or Americans. It began much earlier and continued into the 1960s or 1970s. Should the modern Arab countries not also be approached for reparations if this debate is to encompass the whole gamut of enslavement?

Indigenous slavery by Egypt, the Sokoto Caliphate, and Ethiopia (to name just three) is ignored. So too is the role of indigenous elites in historic enslavement, for which they too should be held to account.

Most importantly of all, the resolution fails to tackle contemporary chattel slavery in at least five African states today: Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Libya, and Sudan. The African Union, Arab League, and UN have all failed to put pressure on member states to end this notorious practice.

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Since its inception in December 2022, the Global Combat Air Programme (GCAP) has existed as a trilateral initiative between the United Kingdom (UK), Italy, and Japan, aiming to develop a sixth-generation combat aircraft. Other countries, including Germany, Saudi Arabia, and India, have also expressed interest in becoming involved in the programme, with Poland becoming the most recent to do so at the tail end of last week.

John Healey, Secretary of State for Defence, has expressed Britain’s openness to expanding the GCAP partnership in response to Polish interest. At the same time, however, Japan has signalled concern over what it perceives to be budgetary stalling by the UK. Building upon these developments, for this week’s Big Ask, we asked eight experts: What is the future of GCAP?

Dr Przemysław Biskup

Senior Research Fellow, Polish Institute of International Affairs, and Senior Lecturer, Warsaw School of Economics (SGH)

Poland’s interest in GCAP reflects the need to expand its air power in the longer-term perspective in response to requirements for deterrence on the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation’s (NATO) eastern flank. However, official communications concerning Polish participation in the programme emphasise rebuilding national aerospace industrial capabilities in the 2030s.

A comparison with Poland’s negotiations with Saab regarding the A26 Blekinge class submarine programme is instructive. The Swedish offer is structured around technology transfer, co-production, and the development of domestic industrial capacity, including Polish shipyards’ involvement in construction and lifecycle support.

By contrast, GCAP appears to require pre-existing advanced capabilities. Poland’s contribution could focus on component manufacturing, software integration, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and uncrewed systems, rather than the core platform design. For Britain and Italy especially, Polish participation would strengthen already intensifying defence-industrial cooperation, including programmes concerning frigates, rotary aviation, and air and missile defence. Moreover, it would reinforce GCAP’s position relative to the rival French-German Future Combat Air System (FCAS) programme.

However, Poland is testing parallel pathways. Cooperation with South Korea on the KF-21 Boramae fighter aircraft programme offers a credible route to industrial participation, on top of existing programmes in land warfare systems and FA-50 light combat aircraft, with proven potential for technology transfers. Engagement with Sweden on a successor to the JAS 39 Gripen multirole fighter aircraft presents yet another option.

The trajectory that could secure GCAP’s future growth would be a tiered expansion model, in which partners such as Poland are integrated into high-value industrial chains. This would enable the programme to shift the balance among non-American combat air initiatives in its favour.

Arun Dawson

PhD Candidate, Freeman Air and Space Institute, King’s College London, and Advisory Associate, Oxford Analytica

First flight in 2027 and entry into service in 2035 – at least, that is the plan. In practice, the scale and complexity of GCAP’s ambition make that challenging.

Beyond the technical risks – of which there are many – a central question is whether partner nations can reconcile immediate readiness requirements with long-term capability. The UK’s repeated delays in publishing a Defence Investment Plan, critical to funding GCAP, raise doubts on both counts. The frustration of its partners is palpable, as is the resulting erosion in deterrence.

GCAP nevertheless remains attractive relative to other sixth-generation fighter efforts. It promises the survivability, range, and connectivity required to operate in highly contested airspace while reinforcing industrial and operational sovereignty. Growing external interest is therefore unsurprising, but should be treated cautiously.

However appealing they may make the economics, additional partners risk diluting the programme’s current strengths: alignment of strategic intent and a pragmatic approach to collaboration. A lower-risk pathway for prospective collaborators may instead lie within the wider Future Combat Air System initiative, particularly in uncrewed elements designed to operate alongside the core platform.

These tensions show that GCAP is as much a test of statecraft as it is of metalwork and digital architectures. Can participating nations conceive and execute long-term strategies that combine military, economic, and diplomatic considerations – despite external shocks – to secure their national interests? If so, the future of GCAP is the future of Britain.

Wg. Cdr. Ben Goodwin MBE*

Adjunct Fellow, Council on Geostrategy

Whether a pocket of the air littoral over trenches or a suppressed corridor deep into enemy territory, combat air power is needed. GCAP will be part of the mix of systems to achieve this, and the programme is focused rightly on range and payload, the sine qua non of air power.

Autonomy is in an avalanche of development. It strikes me that we are at something like a Jackie Fisher moment, particularly for air power: an inundation of autonomous, cheap weapons, with very long range.

Range and payload still matter. These roles should be the boundaries of GCAP’s design. The bleeding edge of technology should sit in the supporting systems with which GCAP will integrate, be they weapons, decoys, or jammers: software-defined, autonomous systems.

Alongside range and payload, industrial impact and service entry date drive the programme. The design and manufacturing investment made by the UK – currently budgeted at over £12 billion – should advance British manufacturing capabilities sustainably and significantly, all the way along the supply chain. This is closely linked to when GCAP will be fielded. When the threat changes, so does the mission – the UK must be able to design and manufacture rapidly.

GCAP cannot do everything. However, the flexibility of its great range and payload, and its timely delivery, will make it a potent air platform for the constantly developing technology that Britain and its allies will need to deploy.

*This response was written by the author in a personal capacity. The opinions expressed are his own, and do not reflect the views of His Majesty’s (HM) Government or the Ministry of Defence.

Air Marshal (rtd.) Sir Christopher Harper KBE FRAeS

Member of the Air and Space Power Group, Royal Aeronautical Society

Having worked on international combat air programmes in the past, I can see both the promise and potential pitfalls associated with GCAP. As a relatively young officer in the Royal Air Force (RAF), I was involved in the design and development phases of the Eurofighter Typhoon; I later had some responsibility for bringing the aircraft into operational service. Those experiences left me in no doubt as to the challenges inherent in multinational collaboration.

GCAP is central to the future credibility of the UK’s air power. It offers a pathway into the sixth-generation era – something that cannot be taken for granted. Through the involvement of BAE Systems and numerous other British companies, the programme also carries significant economic weight, supporting highly skilled jobs and the growth of the wider defence-industrial base. It may also represent the UK’s last realistic opportunity to play a leading role in the development and manufacture of a crewed combat aircraft.

Against that background, I would welcome Poland joining GCAP. There is a clear geostrategic case; Poland is a committed NATO ally that invests heavily in defence. Furthermore, an additional partner could bring greater resilience and a more capable end product, while reinforcing the programme’s relevance to European security and enhancing interoperability.

However, expansion of GCAP would not be without risk. Multinational programmes struggle with bureaucracy and competing priorities, which can lead to sclerotic decision-making. Adding another partner could also complicate consensus on requirements, workshare, and export policy.

That said, such challenges are manageable. With lessons learned from past programmes, clear governance structures, proper and timely exploitation of technologies – such as digital safety assurance and certification – and well-defined roles within both the GCAP International Government Organisation (GIGO) and Edgewing, the risks of increased complexity could be contained.

A broadened partnership would enhance resilience and legitimacy. Poland’s inclusion in GCAP should thus be supported.

Dr David Jordan FRAeS FRHistS FRSA

Co-Director of the Freeman Air and Space Institute, and Senior Lecturer in Defence Studies, King’s College London

GCAP has enormous potential, although the planned 2027 maiden flight of the demonstrator aircraft will mark the first point at which a proper analysis of potential can begin to be made. With increasing mistrust over American supply of advanced combat aircraft and the trouble facing the FCAS project, the programme may become a huge export success.

All three GCAP nations need an aircraft with Tempest’s proposed capabilities of ‘stealth’, long range, heavy weapons load, and a sophisticated sensor suite. The three partners all have advanced aerospace industries, and GCAP’s potential to drive technological advances in industry and gain export success is considerable.

GCAP’s capabilities make it an attractive proposition to other countries with similar needs for advanced combat aircraft. In recent months, India and Poland have been mooted as possible new partners. It has even been suggested that the serious difficulties over FCAS might lead to Germany joining GCAP.

The reaction from the current partners has been polite at best. Japan has concerns about introducing new partners, and it is not hard to see why.

While diversification may increase funding for research and development, there are risks. Questions of workshare apportionment would be inevitable with more partners, although this might be ameliorated by a model not dissimilar to that of the F-35 Lightning II, in which partners can participate at ‘tiered’ levels.

The danger of work apportioned on the basis of project politics rather than ability to deliver has occurred in previous collaborations, and would need to be avoided, along with parochialism that seeks design leadership or greater control over the programme. If such pitfalls can be evaded, the admittedly limited evidence so far suggests GCAP could be a major success, even as a larger project than first envisaged.

Perhaps the biggest challenge so far lies in the growing concerns over the UK’s failure to produce a coherent defence investment plan. Japan, wishing to avoid delay, is particularly concerned, and there is a sneaking suspicion that HM Treasury might wish to delay investment decisions to make in-year savings, even if past experiences shows this increases programme cost overall. Sir Keir Starmer, Prime Minister, has sought to reassure Tokyo, but, it seems, not entirely successfully.

While GCAP’s future should be assured, it will need to rely on partners taking a long-term view and advancing together – whether as a trio or a larger collective.

Dr Alexander Lanoszka

International Fellow, Council on Geostrategy, and Assistant Professor of International Relations, University of Waterloo (Canada)

On the surface, Poland’s expression of interest in joining GCAP signals a promising future for the planned sixth-generation fighter aircraft. With an additional partner involved in the project, the costs involved with the design, production, and eventual operation of the aircraft could be diffused more broadly, so as to allow participants to achieve economies of scale.

Moreover, the more allies of the United States (US) that collaborate with one another without America, the less reliant they should become on Washington. Even the US might welcome this development – whatever the implications for its own aerospace and defence contractors – if it is as serious about burden-sharing as it says it is.

Yet, such optimism should be tempered. News of Poland’s stated interest should be balanced against news of Japan’s growing scepticism over the programme itself. London and Tokyo appear to have different perspectives on the timelines involved for the GCAP, as well as the scope of technological ambition that it should achieve. Funding gaps on Britain’s part also draw concern from Japan.

The result may be that Tokyo could resist any new entrants to the programme in order to restrain the complexity of an already very complicated and technically demanding endeavour. Whatever the long-term success of GCAP, uncertainty over cost, timetables, and project management will persist for the foreseeable future.

Rena Sasaki

PhD Student, School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University

The most plausible future for GCAP is not unlimited enlargement, but a stable core of the current partners combined with carefully staged forms of external participation. From Tokyo’s perspective, GCAP is not simply an international industrial project. It is the successor to the F-2 multirole fighter, and a strategic effort to preserve Japan’s freedom of modification, high readiness, and a domestic defence-industrial and maintenance base, while still meeting the service entry target of 2035.

This is why expansion is a double-edged sword. Additional partners could ease cost pressures, widen the production run, strengthen export prospects, and deepen the supply chain. These incentives are real. However, bringing in new core members too early could reopen disputes over requirements, workshare, technology protection, and governance, and in turn threaten the programme’s schedule.

For Japan, then, the preferred model is core stability first, selective widening second. Countries such as Poland may still be valuable as future customers, industrial participants, or partners in specific areas, but not necessarily as immediate co-equal members of the governing core. Tokyo’s priority order is clear: protect the timeline and sovereign operational flexibility, and only then broaden participation in ways that reinforce – rather than dilute – the strategic purpose of GCAP.

Gesine Weber

Senior Researcher, Centre for Security Studies, ETH Zürich

If a Polish participation in GCAP materialises – although at the moment, this is still a big ‘if’ – this step would further deepen trends that are already observed in the European security order. It is also very telling about the future of the European Union (EU) as a security actor, and about EU-only cooperation in security and defence.

First, Poland joining the GCAP would highlight the importance of minilateral initiatives in European security and defence for key players. Second, it would also imply that Poland, the EU member state with the most significant defence spending as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), is not looking towards EU partners for defence cooperation.

When more partners join GCAP – itself a project that unites European nations and Japan – these decisions also clearly demonstrate that European security and defence is increasingly being built across theatres. Despite the EU’s considerable funding initiatives, cooperation with partners outside the union remains an attractive option.

Lastly, Poland joining GCAP after previously expressing interest in FCAS is yet another blunder for the French-German project, as it shows that other EU members would prefer to look elsewhere rather than hedge their bets on a project that even the leading nations seem to have lost faith in.

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Five years ago, on 16th March 2021, the Integrated Review was published. Entitled ‘Global Britain in a Competitive Age: The Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy’, the strategy appraised and redefined the United Kingdom’s (UK) position in the world. When announced in February 2020, Her Majesty’s Government ‘committed to hold the largest review of the UK’s foreign, defence, security and development policy since the end of the Cold War.’

But what impact has the Integrated Review had on British foreign and defence policy? Was it really as ambitious and extensive as promised? To mark the fifth anniversary of the strategy’s publication, for this week’s Big Ask we asked five experts: What has the Integrated Review achieved five years after publication?

Dr Robert Johnson

Honorary Fellow, Council on Geostrategy, and Director, Oxford Strategy, Statecraft, and Technology (Changing Character of War) Centre

Since the publication of the Integrated Review, the international security situation has deteriorated rapidly. While deterred from a direct attack on the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), Russia still harboured the ambitions it articulated in its ultimatum of December 2021: to divide the alliance and to ‘de-militarise’ Eastern Europe, rendering these sovereign states into no more than clients of the Russian Federation.

The Kremlin chose to invade Ukraine with overwhelming force, but also to continue its attacks on the UK using ‘hybrid’ measures. Let us not forget that Russia used both a chemical weapon and a radiological weapon on British soil, killing people in the UK.

The objective of the Integrated Review was to bring together the various levers of government – in defence, security, finance, aid, and the economy– to serve agreed national interests and counter such sub-threshold action. But the unity of purpose has not been sustained.

Energy policy today is at odds with the objectives of energy security. Legal instruments appear to protect the rights of individuals who are a security risk, while legislation seeks to prosecute soldiers who served in Northern Ireland. Separating the Strategic Defence Review (SDR) and National Security Strategy (NSS) has created different priorities.

In sum, since the Integrated Review was published, Britain has taken a retrograde step, does not exhibit foresight, and does not have a coherent national strategy.

Charles Parton OBE

Honorary Fellow and Chief Adviser, China Observatory, Council on Geostrategy

No British political party would disagree with the objectives that the Integrated Review set for the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Shorn of repetition, it promised to:

• Invest in enhanced PRC-facing capabilities;

• Pursue a positive trade and investment relationship;

• Protect national and economic security (e.g., critical national infrastructure, sensitive technology, critical supply chains) and values (calling the PRC out where it threatened values, interests, or existing agreements);

• Introduce legislation to give the security agencies and police necessary powers; and

• Cooperate in tackling transnational challenges.

The PRC was labelled ‘the biggest state-based threat to the UK’s economic security’. However, the review did not add ‘and also to national security’ (by contrast, Xi Jinping, General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party [CCP] is clear that economic and national security are the same thing).

The scorecard is wan. Both the Conservative and Labour governments have been strong on slogans (‘protect, align, engage’; and ‘cooperate, compete, challenge’), but weak on strategy and clear guidance.

Investment in educating civil servants on the PRC (sadly not at the senior levels) has risen, as has consultation of China experts, although claims of having set up a ‘China Experts’ Advisory Group’ suggest a more structured approach than the reality of ad hoc meetings. Unlike its predecessor, the current government has pursued a more positive trade and investment relationship, although its belief that British growth is dependent on the PRC shows a lamentable understanding of how the CCP thinks and operates.

On security and protection, there have been advances in legislation (e.g., the National Security and Investment Act, National Security Act, and Procurement Act), but laws are only as good as their implementation. The new National Protective Security Authority is a renaming of MI5’s Centre for the Protection of National Infrastructure. It provides businesses and other organisations with expert security advice, and the Research Collaboration Advisory Team aims to raise awareness in science and technology research institutions as to when working with the PRC is acceptable or not.

Those who hoped that HM Government’s ‘China Audit’ would be a cracker saw only a damp squib.

James Rogers

Co-founder (Research), Council on Geostrategy

The Integrated Review was a revolutionary document. Rather than acting as a conventional ‘national security strategy’, its aim was to initiate the intellectual reset of British foreign, security, and defence policy. It challenged the post-Cold War complacency and flawed assumptions of successive governments. It dismantled the idea that the world was improving and that integration was a desirable end goal, and acknowledged the stark reality of geopolitical competition, state-based threats (such as those from Russia), the blurring lines between peace and war, and the centrality of the sovereign national powerbase. It served, in many ways, as a genuine grand strategy for the 2020s.

The Integrated Review’s impact has been extensive. It inspired a new strategic vocabulary within the institutions charged with crafting and delivering British foreign, security, and defence policy. Today, they focus less on international development and multilateralism, and more on ‘strategic advantage’, establishing new minilateral frameworks to counter rivals, rebuilding and extending Britain’s nuclear deterrent, and forging partnerships that link the Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific. Indeed, the UK’s participation in AUKUS in late 2021, and its robust response to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, are difficult to imagine outside of the Integrated Review’s intellectual framework.

Ultimately, the Integrated Review began to sweep away the harmful assumptions of previous eras. It established a robust intellectual foundation for the future, upon which the Integrated Review Refresh (IRR), the SDR, and the NSS, have all subsequently built. There is still work to be done to strengthen Britain further, but the Integrated Review marks the moment where the ‘ship-of-state’ began to turn.

Gray Sergeant

Research Fellow (Indo-Pacific Geopolitics), Council on Geostrategy, and PhD Student, Department of International History, London School of Economics and Political Science

There is ample evidence to say that HM Government has delivered on the Integrated Review’s promise to ‘tilt’ to the Indo-Pacific. Over the past five years, the UK has joined the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), established AUKUS, and has become an Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) Dialogue Partner. Meanwhile, Britain has deepened ties with key partners including Australia, India, and Japan.

With support across the House of Commons for these developments, the region is a permanent pillar of British policy (to use the lingo of 2023’s IRR).

But where does this pillar stand in comparison to other interests and regions of the world, and what is next for the UK’s engagement? These questions are most pertinent when it comes to promoting national security.

Geography is destiny, and when it comes to defence there was never any question that, beyond Britain’s shores, HM Government’s priority is the defence of Europe. Government ministers are also quite correct to say that ‘NATO-first’ does not mean ‘NATO only’. Yet, the SDR fudges what comes next, recommending ‘the Middle East and the Indo-Pacific as the next priority regions’.

Is this not a disguised way of saying ‘third’? Indeed, this is saying something given the UK’s seeming inability (unwillingness aside) to defend its interests in the Gulf over the past few weeks. Moving forward, if the Indo-Pacific is to remain a genuine pillar rather than an afterthought, Britain should prove that last year’s Carrier Strike Group deployment was a stepping stone to sustained operational engagement, not just a curtain call.

Dr Marc De Vore

Adjunct Fellow, Council on Geostrategy, and Senior Lecturer, School of International Relations, University of St. Andrews

The Integrated Review stands out for its systematic and rigorous assessment of the international environment. Rather than a mere cost-cutting exercise, it began from first principles and then defined the UK’s strategic priorities. It diagnosed the Indo-Pacific region as the epicentre of future international relations, featuring both the fastest-growing economies and the world’s greatest systemic challenge in the PRC. The Integrated Review’s recommendation logically followed from this – an Indo-Pacific ‘tilt’ – wherein increased military and diplomatic engagement with the region would yield economic and geopolitical gains.

No modern British strategy document was as well thought-out as the Integrated Review. Equally, no modern British strategy document has become so rapidly obsolete.

While the Integrated Review defined Russia as an ‘acute threat’, it received second billing to the PRC. The Kremlin’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, however, changed this equation. Although Russia may be a power in decline, today it stands out as the greatest threat to the UK and European nations due to the following factors:

1. Its willingness to suffer over one million casualties in a war of aggression;

2. Its penchant for engaging in nuclear brinksmanship; and

3. Its systematic engagement in sub-threshold warfare.

The other thing that has changed is the United States (US). Part of the grand bargain implicit in the Integrated Review is that Britain would support America in the Indo-Pacific, while the US would continue to underwrite European security. Donald Trump’s re-election as President of the US fundamentally shifted this equation. Disdainful of NATO, covetous of allies’ territory, and incapable of making long-term commitments, the US is today a weak rod for the UK to lean upon in formulating its foreign policy.

Ultimately, the Integrated Review was a masterful document for its time, which turned out to be very short.

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In early March, Emmanuel Macron, President of France, announced a major shift in France’s nuclear doctrine. Speaking at Île Longue nuclear submarine base in Brittany, Macron stated that the French nuclear arsenal will increase from 290 warheads – a number unchanged since 1992 – to an undisclosed amount, and that France will begin to collaborate with its non-nuclear allies across Europe to develop ‘forward deterrence’ against adversaries.

Unlike the British nuclear deterrent, which is thoroughly strategic, the ‘force de dissuasion’ is a broader deterrent, but one which has, until now, only protected France. While the change in French nuclear posture reflects the increasingly volatile state of international relations, it will also have an impact on the United Kingdom’s (UK) nuclear calculations. This forms the basis of this week’s Big Ask, in which we asked nine experts: How will France’s shift in nuclear doctrine affect Britain?

Dr Henning Hoff

International Fellow, Council on Geostrategy, and Executive Editor, Internationale Politik Quarterly and Internationale Politik

Macron’s proposals – essentially, to take the first steps towards ‘Europeanising’ the French nuclear deterrent – should be a moment for the UK to rethink its own approach to nuclear deterrence, including the question of its dependence on the United States (US). Although it would mean a quicker and more extensive increase in British defence spending than currently envisaged, the UK considering this and joining the effort would be advantageous – certainly when viewed from Berlin.

Friedrich Merz, Chancellor of Germany, has always been clear that he would want to see both European nuclear powers – Britain and France – engaged with Germany in this effort. While closer French-German cooperation on nuclear deterrence is now underway, many questions, some of huge consequence, are far from being resolved. It is true that the UK, which already works closely with France on nuclear issues, playing its own new role in the context of European nuclear deterrence would make the effort more complex.

However, it would also make European nuclear deterrence more stable and balanced in the longer term. Germany remains highly unlikely to build its own nuclear deterrent, but hosting British as well as French weapons would lead to a stronger posture in case of an American withdrawal, and to Berlin’s decision-makers sleeping more soundly.

There are also further, greater benefits. As Macron (rightly) argued at the Munich Security Conference in February 2026, nuclear deterrence is the ‘cornerstone’ of European defence integration; cooperation in this field will ‘trickle down’ into other domains. It could pave the way for a shared strategic culture soundly underpinning European security – including a strong British element.

Linas Kojala

Chief Executive Officer, Geopolitics and Security Studies Centre

From a Baltic and Northern European perspective, France’s shift is very welcome – and it should be understood correctly. It does not displace the US’ strategic deterrent, which remains the supreme guarantee of European North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) security. The UK’s deterrent continues to play an important complementary role, while France is adding a more explicitly European dimension to the overall deterrence debate.

Thus, the British role only increases. The UK has assigned its nuclear forces to NATO since 1962, and in June 2025 decided to buy at least 12 F-35A Lightning II Joint Combat Aircraft and join NATO’s Dual-Capable Aircraft (DCA) mission. This was certainly noticed in the Baltic states.

That is not symbolic. It reinforces Britain’s role as the key European connector between the American nuclear umbrella and European nations’ own deterrent contribution, and also shows that the transatlantic bond continues to evolve in practical ways despite political turbulence.

So, the broader significance of France’s move is strategic. Paris itself has said that its new cooperation with Germany will ‘add to, not substitute for’ NATO’s nuclear deterrence and NATO’s nuclear sharing arrangements. This signals that Europeans are thinking more seriously, and more long-term, about continental security at the strategic level. That is good news for the UK, and for the Baltic region.

Philippe Lefevre

Doctoral Fellow and PhD Candidate, University of Surrey

Standing before the nuclear-armed Le Téméraire submarine, Macron’s speech highlighted the extent to which French nuclear and military posture has adapted more successfully to the realities of the security crisis facing European nations than Britain’s has. Demonstrated further in recent days with the deployment of the French Navy to Cyprus in lieu of the Royal Navy’s own deployment due to delays, France’s shift in nuclear doctrine is a wake-up call to the UK to start taking its own nuclear arsenal more seriously, and could encourage many similar moves for Britain’s own nuclear posture.

The European countries interested in participating in this new forward posture should also convince the UK that it is in its interests to be more multilateral and engaged. By creating a unified joint European nuclear umbrella with France, covering further nations beyond just those with forward presence, Britain and its allies can hedge against the worst possibility of a complete reduction of American deterrence.

France’s shift also draws attention to the UK’s lack of a tactical nuclear arsenal, highlighting a key gap in the British nuclear posture. While debate still rages over cost, and conventional versus nuclear munition benefits, the UK should at least respond to France’s shift with its own understanding of the role of its nuclear arsenal, where its gaps lie and how it intends to fill them, lest others answer this question with aggressive posturing of their own.

Etienne Marcuz

Senior Analyst, Foundation for Strategic Research (FRS)

Macron’s speech announced a major shift in France’s nuclear deterrence policy: for the first time in its history, Paris invited eight of its closest allies to participate directly in its nuclear operations through the new concept of forward deterrence.

Britain holds a privileged position in this French initiative, both due to its status as a nuclear power and the deep strategic ties that have bound the two countries for decades. The Northwood Declaration of July 2025 already broke new ground by mentioning the possibility of political, technological and – most importantly – operational coordination between the two nations’ nuclear deterrents.

The forward deterrence concept will significantly enhance the resilience of the UK and France’s strategic forces, opening the door to the deployment of nuclear assets on each other’s territory – potentially including strategic submarines. Furthermore, Royal Air Force (RAF) participation in French air-based nuclear operations could enable it to regain expertise lost with the withdrawal of the WE.177 gravity bomb from service in 1998, potentially paving the way for a future national programme.

Above all, this doctrinal evolution and the coordination of British and French deterrents will provide a solid foundation for a European security and defence architecture in the face of adversaries, particularly Russia.

James Rogers

Co-founder (Research), Council on Geostrategy

In some ways, France’s decision to establish forward deterrence – by deploying nuclear-capable aircraft to a plethora of European partners, albeit on a temporary basis – means very little. It will play a relatively small role in boosting the defence of Europe, as the Kremlin knows that these aircraft could soon be withdrawn if they apply serious pressure.

Without extended deterrence (an explicit and durable entanglement whereby a nuclear-armed nation stations forces on the territory of a non-nuclear-armed ally), a nuclear opponent may think it can force concessions. In some ways, France’s forward deterrence may even undermine the defence of Europe for the simple reason that it is so ambiguous.

In other ways, the French decision may attract desperate allies who believe the established order in Europe is coming apart. This would provide France with greater influence over the future direction of continental security, alongside all the economic and industrial benefits that come with it. France – not the UK – would become strategically indispensable.

What Britain should do now is straightforward: establish its own sub-strategic nuclear weapons and delivery programme. For one, this would provide the UK and its allies with the means to match Russia’s potential escalatory steps – the Kremlin possesses nuclear forces at all levels, and has demonstrated a propensity to leverage its nuclear status for geopolitical effect. For another, if this could form part of a British-led sub-strategic nuclear sharing system – perhaps based on the F-35A Lightning II and Tempest airframes – with a select group of European nations (such as the Nordic states, Poland, Germany, Italy, Romania and Turkey), the UK could re-centralise itself at the heart of European geopolitics.

This would also provide European allies with greater incentives to buy into the British defence-industrial base, yielding positive trade-offs for future economic growth and technological innovation.

Dr Jan Ruzicka

Lecturer in Security Studies and Director of David Davies Institute of International Studies, Department of International Politics, Aberystwyth University

From the UK’s perspective, there are two ways to read Macron’s speech.

Firstly, several of the announced changes carry distinct benefits to Britain. At the rather modest, though symbolically significant, end of the spectrum, France now joins the UK in embracing ambiguity about its number of nuclear warheads, which it will no longer make public. Much more profound is Paris’ signalled willingness to loosen its notorious nuclear independence, and to ‘conceive our deterrence strategy within the depth of the European continent’.

While this falls short of the British nuclear commitment to European allies within NATO, France’s move may bolster the UK’s existing efforts and even provide some relief. Pointedly, the brief statement from His Majesty’s (HM) Government statement following Macron’s announcement concluded with the following sentence: ‘We welcome the proposals set out by President Macron to cooperate more closely with allies on nuclear issues.’

The other reading of how France’s shift will affect Britain is less optimistic. It reveals that France possesses independent nuclear capabilities that are simply not at the UK’s disposal currently. Sceptics will certainly raise doubts about the depth of France’s commitment to other European countries, as well as the reliability and credibility of forward deterrence. And they may well have a point, insofar as any form of extended deterrence is, at best, iffy.

The fact remains, however, that France can engage in a political-strategic initiative of a kind that Britain currently cannot.

Julien Lalanne de Saint-Quentin

Adjunct Fellow, Council on Geostrategy

The commitments announced at Île Longue can be read less as a rupture than as an extension of the 1998 Saint-Malo Declaration: that Europe must be able to act while remaining anchored in sovereign capabilities and Atlantic realities. That the UK was explicitly named in Macron’s speech is significant in itself. It suggests that, despite the rhetorical habits of the post-Brexit period, Paris still sees London as a central strategic partner when the most serious questions are at stake. It places Britain right inside the intellectual architecture of European deterrence, even as France insists – rightly – that nuclear decision-making remains wholly national.

For all the old doctrinal reserve, the reality has long been one of interdependence, even in the North Atlantic and on the approaches to the Continuous At-Sea Deterrent (CASD) bastion. The underwater battlespace allowed a measure of ambiguity: interdependencies could exist without being too visibly acknowledged by those who prefer the more reassuring language of complete autonomy.

The air component is different. By its very nature, it is less able to conceal the practical ecosystem on which it depends. In that sense, Macron’s forward deterrence concept does not so much create interdependence as makes it harder to continue pretending that it does not exist.

Geography matters enormously. Faslane and Île Longue are very close to one another, and the maritime approaches to one bear directly on the security of the other. Although the UK and France each defend their own goal, the same opposing forward can threaten both at once, and the midfielder screening the defence is therefore protecting both goals simultaneously. Capabilities designed to secure the approaches, clarify the tactical picture and complicate hostile action against the bastion are not peripheral enablers; they form part of the credibility of the posture itself.

France’s contribution will therefore remain absolutely central to the protection of CASD, while a more explicit recognition of allied interdependence gives fuller credit to the wider ecosystem within which that protection is achieved.

Prof. Sir Hew Strachan FBA FRSE

Bishop Wardlaw Professor, School of International Relations, University of St. Andrews

First, Macron’s speech is the most significant from any head of state in a generation. It challenges Britain to be as forthright and strategic. With major conflict in Europe, and Middle Eastern strikes whose justification rests on countering nuclear proliferation, it is no longer possible not to discuss nuclear weapons.

Yet, the UK insists on treating them as ‘political’, and therefore somehow separate from national strategy. The procurement of the next generation of nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs) dominates the defence budget without a public rationale like that of France.

Second – and related – Macron was clear about France’s readiness to use nuclear weapons if need be: ‘You have to be feared if you want to be free’. France will possess a triad of nuclear weapons: SSBNs, nuclear cruise missiles and air-launched capabilities. Its target is resilience, including a second-strike capability. Britain is currently vulnerable; dependent at any one time on a single, tired SSBN on (an increasingly lengthy) patrol.

Third is the biggest change of all: Macron abandoned France’s long-cherished autonomy in nuclear doctrine. He did not mention NATO, to which the UK’s SSBNs are allocated, even if their implications for Europe’s defence are opaque. Nor did Macron name the US. The defence strategy of Donald Trump, President of the US, stresses deterrence by denial, which failed to prevent Russia’s threats to escalate in Ukraine. Instead, France has embraced forward defence, and is pursuing a series of bilateral relationships, beginning with Germany.

Air Marshal (rtd.) Edward Stringer CB CBE

Director, iJ7 Ltd., and Senior Fellow, Policy Exchange

France’s refreshed nuclear posture is clever signalling. It sends the message that France is reinvesting in serious hard power. In reality, there is little in Macron’s speech at Île Longue that promises significant increased capacity. However, the conceptual component of deterrence has been altered for the better – and I would say better for the UK too.

There will be a lot of devil in the details to be sorted before Macron can deploy French nuclear weapons forward to allied countries, and thus engage other European powers in a putative ‘Euro-deterrent’. Such weapons will, in any case, as Macron admits, always be triggered by the President of France alone.

But that sense of tying European powers together is real. Furthermore, via the Northwood Declaration, Britain is tied more closely to the French nuclear effort. As well as this, France is tied closer to the US via the UK (acting as an intermediary), whose nuclear deterrent is intimately entwined with the American enterprise.

Whatever the robustness of the extended deterrence of the US, a more concrete European defence and nuclear posture is a bonus – all the better to deter foes and keep America onside. Gen. Hastings ‘Pug’ Ismay would have understood this…

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Following weeks of preparation and military build-up in the Middle East, the United States (US) and Israel launched an offensive against Iran on 28th February. Strikes on Tehran eliminated many senior Iranian figures, most notably Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Supreme Leader of Iran, who was confirmed dead early on 1st March.

Iran retaliated by launching missile strikes against countries throughout the Middle East, while an Iranian drone targeted a Royal Air Force (RAF) air station at Akrotiri on Cyprus on 1st March. Although Britain initially appeared reluctant to show overt support for ‘Operation EPIC FURY’, Sir Keir Starmer, Prime Minister, announced on Monday that the United Kingdom (UK) will allow the US to use British air stations to strike Iran. This development forms the foundation for this week’s Big Ask, in which we asked eight experts: Should Britain embrace a tougher approach towards Iran?

Dr Hillary Briffa

Adjunct Fellow, Council on Geostrategy, and Senior Lecturer in National Security Studies, King’s College London

The UK should take a tougher line with Iran, but this does not equate to escalating. ‘Tough’ should mean making it crystal clear that attacks on British people and territory will bring consequences, and showing that the UK can protect what it uses to operate overseas.

Last weekend’s events, particularly RAF Akrotiri being targeted and Britain allowing America to use its air stations, mean that the UK is now closer to the sharp end, whether it intended to be or not. That makes clear red lines (and committing to them!), stronger air and missile defence, and tightly defined basing permissions essential – while avoiding broad, open-ended escalation.

A ‘small states’ lens helps to explain why Iran puts pressure on places like Cyprus and Gulf ‘hosts’ such as Bahrain, Qatar and Kuwait. Iran often targets the ‘hosts and hubs’ that keep free and open nations’ operations running. These sites are militarily vital, but politically sensitive.

When Iran strikes or threatens such sites in smaller countries, it is not just trying to punish the UK or US. It is also trying to split coalitions by forcing smaller partners to carry the immediate risk: public fear, domestic backlash, economic disruption, political upset and so on.

So, a tougher British approach should prioritise protecting forward hubs (via integrated air defence, drone defence and maritime security); signalling that attacks on the UK’s bases will trigger proportionate, legally grounded responses against launch infrastructure; tightening financial and shipping enforcement against Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)-linked networks in coordination with Gulf states considering tougher measures; and keeping de-escalation channels open to avoid turning small partners into permanent battlegrounds. It should also be matched by parliamentary scrutiny at home.

By taking these steps, Britain can get tougher on deterrence and resilience, while saying no to maximalist mission creep.

Dr Matthew Ford

Associate Professor in War Studies, Swedish Defence University

Sir Keir’s response to Operation EPIC FURY has been appropriate and entirely understandable. The British Armed Forces are already stretched, and it makes little strategic sense to extend them further. At present, the services face serious recruitment and retention problems, compounded by the persistent lack of habitable service accommodation.

If the UK struggles with both recruiting personnel and looking after those already serving, it should come as no surprise that it cannot put more ships to sea or generate additional formations for operations. Britain’s defence commentators know all of this, yet the clamour to do more with less continues to dominate the discussion.

If the UK’s commentators want the country to defend its global interests, then defence spending must increase. Without sustained economic growth, however, such ambitions remain little more than rhetorical devices designed to attract political attention.

The prospects for meaningful growth amid current geopolitical upheaval appear slim. Banking on growth therefore amounts to kicking difficult strategic choices down the road in the hope that events will allow Britain to continue avoiding them. Yet, hoping to do more globally while ignoring the immediate security challenges in Europe – challenges that the US has repeatedly told its North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) allies to prioritise – is the epitome of bad strategy.

William Freer

Research Fellow (National Security), Council on Geostrategy

Before answering whether a tougher stance on Iran is needed, the UK’s interests must first be established. These can be summarised broadly as:

1. Avoid being dragged into a conflict which (so far) has no clear endgame;

2. Protect British people and allies;

3. Mitigate wider economic spillover effects;

4. Minimise fallout for the relationship with the US; and

5. Maintain the credibility of British political will and military capability.

On count one, His Majesty’s (HM) Government was wise to stay out of the initial strikes. On count two, although left underprotected – a Type 45 is only now being prepared to aid in the defence of Akrotiri – the limited British forces in the region are performing well.

However, on counts three, four and five, the UK is not doing great. Here, a tougher stance on Iran would make a lot of difference, and do so without putting the first two interests at risk.

America is frustrated at Britain, Iran lashing out has spooked markets – most importantly shipping insurance – and the decision to downplay the drone strike on Akrotiri risks emboldening other potential foes in the future – particularly pertinent as Coalition of the Willing plans are being worked on.

If another strike occurs and the UK is unwilling to launch a token retaliation strike against a non-nuclear and defanged Iran or its proxies, it should give up the pretence that it would be willing to defend its deterrence force in Ukraine. A tougher stance (although still well short of participation in Operation EPIC FURY) would be a good idea.

The details of what this would entail cannot be outlined in such a short format as this, but proscribing the IRGC as a terrorist group and preparing a limited retaliatory strike in the event of another attack on Akrotiri would be a good start.

Joshua C. Huminski

International Fellow, Council on Geostrategy, and Senior Vice President of National Security and Intelligence Programmes, Centre for the Study of the Presidency and Congress

Regrettably, it appears that the Prime Minister managed to choose the worst possible option as it relates to American military operations against Iran. While there was likely no good option, there was indeed a less bad option that could well have satisfied – if only partially – the critical audiences in Washington and London.

By initially refusing to allow the US to use British bases for its operations against Iran on legal grounds (necessary for domestic political considerations), Sir Keir set himself up for direct conflict with Donald Trump, President of the US, for very little gain. Trump is decidedly less interested – if at all – in international law, and focuses instead on what allies and partners can do for his country.

The Prime Minister said no, and received nothing in return except Trump’s predictable ire and a regrettable demonstration of the toothlessness of his objections. By contrast, Friedrich Merz, Chancellor of Germany, and Emmanuel Macron, President of France, have been much more supportive; actions recognised favourably by Trump.

From the start, Sir Keir could have said that while the UK could not support offensive military operations on legal grounds, it could instead deploy alongside American forces or Gulf allies in a purely ‘defensive’ counter-missile and counter-drone role. This would have seemingly satisfied the Prime Minister’s legal concerns and domestic political considerations, while reaffirming British reliability and credibility and softening the rejection for Trump.

Indeed, deciding after the fact to deploy British forces to defend Cyprus and sail HMS Dragon to the region (which should have been done in the first place) only reinforces that Sir Keir’s original decision was ill-considered and politically costly.

Dr Louise Kettle

Assistant Professor in Politics and International Relations, University of Nottingham

British political parties are divided over entering the conflict with Iran; the Liberal Democrats and the Green Party remain firm in their stance of non-intervention, while the Conservatives have called for more offensive action to defend British interests. For now, the Prime Minister appears keen to avoid some of the mistakes made by the Blair government over Iraq.

As a result, there has been a considerable emphasis on the legalities of supporting the American-Israeli operation and the perceived lack of a ‘phase four’ post-combat plan. If lessons from the past are to be heeded, these elements should be resolved before the UK becomes involved in any offensive action.

Consequently, the question becomes less about being tough towards Iran, and more about the challenge to remain firm in policy as the requirement for defensive (and offensive) activity mounts. The pressure to inch further into the conflict will increase exponentially as it becomes more protracted, and if Iran continues its response across the region. Britain has already emphasised its responsibility to protect its citizens, interests and allies, while Trump has made his displeasure at the UK’s initial response well known.

Nonetheless, Sir Keir would do well to remember one of the other most significant lessons, identified by the ‘Chilcot Report’ – the independent Iraq Inquiry report – in 2016: ‘The UK’s relationship with the US has proved strong enough over time to bear the weight of honest disagreement. It does not require unconditional support where our interests or judgements differ.’

This approach is more challenging when the US Government is under a Trump administration, but will remain true in the longer term.

Dr Timothy Less

Senior Adviser for Geopolitics, Centre for Risk Studies, and Convenor, Geopolitical Risk Analysis Study Group, University of Cambridge

Yes, Britain should adopt a tougher approach towards Iran.

The UK has a clear strategic interest in confronting a regime which is openly hostile and threatens its allies across the Middle East. Iran has just attacked British sovereign territory in Cyprus – a further reminder of the regime’s willingness to target the UK.

Britain has a strategic interest in aligning with America; its closest and most important ally on which it depends for external security. London shares Washington’s interest in breaking up the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) international relationships – first Venezuela, now Iran – to ensure it does not attain superpower status.

There is also a strong moral imperative for challenging a regime which has caused so much suffering since 1979, from its repression and impoverishment of the Iranian people, to its sponsorship of terrorism in other parts of the Middle East. Furthermore, against the backdrop of protests at home, the uniting of Arab countries in opposition to Iran, and ongoing attacks by the US and Israel, there is a reasonable chance that, if the UK were to join the anti-Iranian coalition, the regime in Tehran would be seriously weakened and could potentially fall.

At a point when some – including Trump – are expressing doubts about whether Britain is a serious country, HM Government would do well to align itself with an initiative that not only advances the UK’s interests and ends the rule of a murderous tyranny, but might actually work.

Dr Marina Miron

Postdoctoral Researcher, King’s College London

This question emerges at a politically sensitive juncture. The Prime Minister faces sustained criticism for privileging foreign policy engagement over urgent domestic priorities, while transatlantic relations are undergoing visible strain. In this context, any shift in Britain’s posture towards Iran carries both strategic and political implications.

A more neutral or restrained approach would represent a departure from earlier patterns of the UK’s foreign policy, particularly the interventionist tendencies associated with the Blair era. Yet, a tougher stance would not be without cost.

Britain is currently seeking to strengthen its defence capabilities and reduce reliance on America. Escalating tensions with Iran could expose the UK’s military assets abroad to retaliation and increase the risk of entanglement in a wider Middle Eastern conflict. The vulnerability of British bases, such as those in Cyprus, underscores the potential political, financial and military consequences of miscalculation.

None of this suggests that inaction is a viable strategy. Rather, it highlights the need for conceptual clarity. Before adopting a more confrontational approach, the UK should define its foreign policy priorities and determine whether such a move genuinely serves its national interest. If so, policymakers should carefully calibrate the diplomatic, economic and military instruments employed to avoid overstretch.

A sustainable Iran policy requires strategic discipline grounded in long-term objectives, rather than solely reactive responses to shifting geopolitical pressures.

Prof. Richard Whitman

Professor of International Relations, University of Kent

With the US and Israel launching a war of choice against Iran, Britain’s interests are to protect its own bases, secure the safety of UK nationals and offer protection to allies in the region. The immediate task is defensive: to reinforce force protection, counter-drone and air and missile defences; and share threat intelligence with allies and partners.

There is also the need to craft a more agile public diplomacy. Britain’s public messaging on its response to reasonable requests made by America has been obfuscatory at best.

Crucially, this is a moment for the UK to reset its strategy towards Iran. Over two decades of nuclear diplomacy, as part of efforts alongside Britain’s European Three (E3) partners France and Germany – together with the European Union (EU) – has not yielded a substantive change in moves by Iran’s theocratic regime to acquire the capacity to build a nuclear weapon and necessary delivery systems. American and Israeli military actions have upended the prolonged attempt to create safeguards and restrictions on Iran’s nuclear programme, and have made enforced nuclear disarmament a credible proposition.

The Iranian regime has acted as a key ally of the Kremlin, as demonstrated by Tehran’s diplomatic and material support for Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Reducing Iran’s capacity to support Russia can only benefit the UK in its pursuit of its primary European security concern – namely, ensuring that Ukraine attains peace through military capabilities and meaningful security guarantees.

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Tuesday marked four years since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began. The ‘special military operation’, which Vladimir Putin, President of Russia, expected to last only a handful of days, has degenerated into a grinding war of attrition reminiscent of the Western Front during the First World War – and has cost the lives of over one million people fighting for the Kremlin.

Russia has also made itself an international pariah. Its economy suffers difficulties, and free and open nations continue to uphold sanctions regimes against the Kremlin while providing political, financial and military aid to Ukraine. Ensuring Kyiv emerges triumphant is a top strategic priority for the United Kingdom (UK), as continental security hinges on preventing further Russian aggression against sovereign European nations. As such, for this week’s Big Ask, we asked eight experts: Four years on, what should Britain do to expedite a Ukrainian victory?

Dr Przemysław Biskup

Senior Research Fellow, Polish Institute of International Affairs, and Senior Lecturer, Warsaw School of Economics (SGH)

Over the past four years of Russia’s full-scale invasion, the UK has played a disproportionately significant role in sustaining Ukraine. Britain moved early in providing lethal aid; trained Ukrainian personnel; supplied advanced defence systems, financial assistance and shared intelligence; and coordinated sanctions and diplomatic support across North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) and the Group of Seven (G7). This engagement was institutionalised through the 2024 UK-Ukraine Agreement on Security Cooperation, and deepened by the 2025 100 Year Partnership Declaration, signalling a long-term British commitment to Ukraine’s sovereignty, reconstruction and defence integration.

Nevertheless, expediting a Ukrainian victory into the conflict’s fifth year now requires translating this activism into durable strategic leadership. As the United States (US) reduces its conventional presence and political bandwidth in Europe, the UK should assume greater responsibility within NATO, particularly as a pivotal northern flank power securing the Arctic and North Atlantic approaches.

However, such leadership must rest on capability. Britain should accelerate modernisation and expansion of its armed forces in line with NATO’s funding thresholds from the 2025 summit in The Hague, rebuilding deployable mass, replenishing munitions stockpiles and scaling defence-industrial output through sustained procurement. Meeting these requirements will need a much more open and comprehensive domestic debate on defence prioritisation within fiscal and budgetary constraints.

If the UK is to anchor European deterrence and help bring the invasion to a favourable conclusion, defence requires a structurally higher priority in public expenditure.

Ian Bond

Deputy Director, Centre for European Reform

The first thing Britain needs is to be honest with itself about three things:

1. Peace is not around the corner. Putin has no interest in peace, except on terms that amount to Ukraine’s surrender;

2. Ukraine’s resilience is not infinite. European nations cannot rely indefinitely on the Ukrainians’ ability to withstand the terrible conditions the Kremlin is inflicting on them without breaking;

3. Donald Trump, President of the US, is not on Ukraine’s side, nor that of European countries. Trump has sought to bully Kyiv into making concessions that would fatally undermine it militarily and politically, almost guaranteeing renewed conflict in Europe.

Against that background, the UK and its allies and partners must treat Ukraine’s security as their own: if Ukraine loses, Putin will target another state, perhaps a NATO ally. They should step up sanctions, including by seizing ‘shadow fleet’ tankers transporting Russian oil. They should invest in rapidly increasing defence production, for themselves and Ukraine, even if that means an increase in budget deficits. And they should put aircraft in the skies over Ukraine to blunt the Kremlin’s efforts to destroy Ukraine’s economy and society – all without waiting for a peace deal or an American ‘backstop’ that will not come.

None of those steps will guarantee that Ukraine defeats Russia and regains territory, but without them, a Russian victory will become more likely.

John Foreman CBE

British Defence Attaché to Ukraine (2008-2011) and Russia (2019-2022)

Ukraine will not prevail militarily, nor restore its 2022 borders, let alone those of 1991, by force.

Ukrainian fighting spirit and ingenuity, together with support from free and open nations, have slowed but not stemmed Russia’s grinding military advance. Ukraine remains at a disadvantage in terms of personnel, materiel and money, and is under significant battlefield and societal pressure. Russia can mobilise more of its national strength, even if it has to date proven unable to leverage its numerical advantage decisively.

Locked in a trial of endurance to exhaust each other’s will and capacity to fight on, it will be resources, not warfare, that will prove decisive, assuming equal commitment to the cause by both sides. For his part, being unserious about peace, Putin is determined to subjugate Ukraine. For theirs, Ukrainians do not support a peace deal on the Kremlin’s punitive terms.

In this war of attrition, it is the party being attrited that will lose first. With the US havering, Britain and other free and open European countries must act to ensure this is not Ukraine, instead making the war too costly for Russia to continue. The reactive incrementalism of the past four years, providing just enough aid for Ukraine’s survival but not to allow it to regain the initiative, should be replaced by doing the following:

1. Instituting concerted proactive policies to provide Ukraine with durable financial and economic support;

2. Removing battlefield, support and logistic bottlenecks;

3. Assisting Ukrainian domestic defence production, in particular for deep strike; and

4. Enhancing and actually enforcing economic sanctions against Russia.

Dr Alexander Lanoszka

International Fellow, Council on Geostrategy, and Assistant Professor of International Relations, University of Waterloo (Canada)

Carl von Clausewitz once observed that ‘everything in war is very simple but the simplest thing is difficult.’ Indeed, identifying what Ukraine needs for achieving victory is straightforward: in the absence of direct military intervention on the part of others, Ukraine must receive robust and persistent defence industrial support so that it can not only withstand attacks on the ground and in the air, but can also undermine Russia’s ability to occupy its territory for good.

Unfortunately, European countries have been slow in stepping up military production to backstop Ukraine’s defence needs. They are yet to produce a coherent, well-resourced vision for how Ukraine could inflict strategic defeat on Russia. These failures illuminate why Washington exerts as much influence on Ukraine’s future as it does under Trump.

Thankfully, the UK has been one of the most clear-eyed and forward-thinking supporters of Kyiv, assuming key leadership roles in coordinating military aid while vouching for its interests in international discussions. Yet, much more remains to be done.

The new Ukrspecsystems factory in Britain offers a model for further defence industrial cooperation between the two countries. Such investments reinforce the fighting ability of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, and ensure that no agreement on European security can be struck at the expense of Ukraine or, for that matter, the UK and other NATO allies.

Philippe Lefevre

Doctoral Fellow and PhD Candidate, University of Surrey

While Ukraine’s victory mostly hinges on Ukraine, with outside European actors increasingly becoming irrelevant amid their reticence to perform real conflict-changing actions, Britain at least has the strongest set of available tools to help attain a Ukrainian victory. These revolve around three core pillars: troops, trade and ties.

For troops, it has been suggested that British forces – as many as 5,000-15,000 personnel – could be deployed to Ukraine to perform non-combat roles. This does not go far enough. For the UK to make a real impact, a wider-ranging operation should be considered to secure and protect key cities, such as Kyiv, Lviv and Uzhhorod. This would allow Ukrainian troops to be remobilised towards the frontline and facilitate the reopening of civilian and permanent military logistics, as well as providing British troops real learning in warfare if positioned closer to the front.

In trade, the UK has been entrepreneurial, but this should be deepened. Alongside pushing for loan relief, Britain should use trade mechanisms to keep the Ukrainian economy strong, encouraging its opening into the UK and other European nations. This supports Ukraine’s ability to last economically until victory, and its attempt to mitigate the exploitative practice of operating and taking capital away from Ukraine itself.

Lastly is ties, referring to the need to keep Ukraine in the diplomatic picture. At the United Nations UN) and NATO, in discussions with the European Union (EU), and especially in bilateral relationships in Asia and Africa, Ukraine should be highlighted hand-in-hand with Britain. The more the UK can support in tackling misinformation and pushing back Russian influence, the more pressure can be kept away from Ukraine to capitulate to false negotiations.

While pride can be taken in the UK’s role in Ukraine, it pales in comparison to what individual Ukrainians are doing to reach victory. It is within Britain’s grasp to help Ukraine win if it really wanted it to. Let us at least meet them halfway.

Matthew Palmer

Adjunct Fellow, Council on Geostrategy

Beyond the current level of support, the UK should hasten its activity in three key areas. The first is to work with allies proactively to counter and defeat Russian activity abroad, including neutering the Kremlin’s ability to fuel its invasion. Continued dismantling of the ‘shadow fleet’ and severing the supply of key European components that are still found in Russian weaponry are priorities, as are combatting Russian influence operations, both in European nations and in key middle-ground powers.

The second is to build up its military and industrial capacity significantly, both to rearm its own forces and to supply Ukraine. A strong British military is required to constrain Russian strategic options, while uninterrupted flows of UK equipment – especially critical enablers – can contribute decisively to a Ukrainian victory.

Finally, Britain should continue to argue successfully for the necessity of a comprehensive Russian defeat for global security to both domestic and foreign audiences. War fatigue, budgetary pressures and hostile narratives – especially from populist parties – will all contribute to declining support for Ukraine if left to fester. British politicians should continue to explain clearly to both the British public and audiences abroad why the benefits of a Ukrainian victory far exceed the potential costs.

James Rogers

Co-founder (Research), Council on Geostrategy

From autumn 2021 to summer 2022, the UK led the European response to Ukraine. Not only did it provide vital political support for the Ukrainians, but it also led the way in issuing lethal weaponry, advice and intelligence, as well as support from other European allies.

More than that, it reinforced deterrence along NATO’s central front, not least by providing Sweden and Finland with security assurances once they decided to join the alliance. Britain saw Russia’s imperialist assault on Ukraine as a threat to national and European security, but it was also keen to re-establish its position as Europe’s leading power after the tumult of Brexit. Other Europeans took note: the UK did much to re-establish its strategic indispensability.

Britain needs to return to the confidence and boldness of that era. It is fine to plan for after a potential settlement, but first the Kremlin must be brought to heel. Waiting for the US to act or lead is no longer tenable; the UK’s interests in Ukraine are greater than those of the Americans.

Along with Germany, Britain should convene a vanguard of like-minded European countries alongside Ukraine, and establish a clear plan for Ukrainian victory within two to three years. It should then provide the political cover and resources, alongside its European allies, to fund the Ukrainian war effort.

With clear and decisive British and European backing, Russia may lose the will to continue, enhancing the prospect that its grisly war will come to an end.

Dr Marc De Vore

Adjunct Fellow, Council on Geostrategy, and Senior Lecturer, School of International Relations, University of St. Andrews

So many changes have overtaken the world in the past four years that the UK must force itself to remember the destabilising nature of Putin’s aggression. Knowing what is at stake in Ukraine should buttress Britain’s commitment to it.

What the UK should immediately do is board and seize shadow fleet tankers transiting the North Sea and English Channel to export Russia’s oil and gas overseas. It is a national disgrace that Britain has not stopped and boarded a single shadow fleet vessel while France has boarded two, Sweden and Finland have boarded one each, and Germany has forced one to turn around. Russia’s warmaking depends on its oil and gas exports, which Britain has tolerated due to its lack of imagination.

The UK should also work alongside its European allies and partners to extend anti-drone and anti-missile defences over western Ukraine. American and British fighter jets shot down Iranian drones and missiles bound for Israel, proving that manned aircraft can protect civilians from drone and cruise missile attacks efficiently.

Are Ukrainians less deserving of protection than Israelis? Does the UK have less of a commitment to Ukraine’s security than Israel’s? If the answer to either of these questions is no, then Britain should league together with close European allies, deploy fighter jets to Polish and Romanian airfields, and from there declare an air protection zone extending over western Ukraine.

The fate of Russia’s full-scale invasion is still up for grabs, and Ukraine’s security is indissociable from the UK’s own.

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