UK is getting a defence boost aimed at sending a message to Moscow – and to Trump
‘The threat we face is more serious, more immediate and more unpredictable than at any time since the Cold War,’ PM Keir Starmer said
The United Kingdom will build new nuclear-powered attack submarines, get its army ready to fight a war in Europe and become “a battle-ready, armour-clad nation”, Prime Minister Keir Starmer said on Monday, part of a boost to military spending designed to send a message to Moscow – and Washington.
Starmer said Britain “cannot ignore the threat that Russia poses” as he pledged to undertake the most sweeping changes to British defences since the collapse of the Soviet Union more than three decades ago.
“The threat we face is more serious, more immediate and more unpredictable than at any time since the Cold War,” Starmer told workers and journalists at a navy shipyard in Scotland.
Like other Nato members, the UK has been reassessing its defence spending since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
The government announced military plans in response to a strategic defence review commissioned by Starmer and led by George Robertson, a former UK defence secretary and Nato secretary general. It is the first such review since 2021 and lands in a world shaken and transformed by Russia’s war in Ukraine, and by the re-election of US President Donald Trump last year.
Months after Britain’s last major defence review was published, then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson said with confidence that the era of “fighting big tank battles on European land mass” is over. Three months later, Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine.