UK boosts defence spending in response to Russia and China
LONDON (AP) — UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak pledged Monday to increase military funding by 5 billion pounds ($6 billion) over the next two years in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the “epoch-defining challenge” posed by China.
The increase, part of a major update to UK foreign and defense policy, is less than military officials wanted. Sunak said the UK would increase military spending to 2.5 per cent of gross domestic product “in the longer term,” but didn’t set a date. Britain currently spends just over 2 per cent of GDP on defence, and military chiefs want it to rise to 3 per cent.
The extra money will be used, in part, to replenish Britain’s ammunition stocks, depleted from supplying Ukraine in its defence against Russia. Some will also go towards a UK-US-Australia deal to build nuclear-powered submarines.
“The world has become more volatile, the threats to our security have increased,” Sunak told the BBC during a visit to the US. “It’s important that we protect ourselves against those.”
Sunak met US President Joe Biden and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in San Diego on Monday to confirm next steps for the military pact, known as AUKUS, struck by the three countries in 2021 amid mounting concern about China’s actions in the Pacific.
Under the deal, the UK and Australia will build new nuclear-powered, conventionally armed subs from a British design, with US technology and support. Most of the UK construction will take place in shipyards at Barrow-in-Furness in northwest England, with the first subs completed by the late 2030s. Australia will also buy up to five Virginia-class subs from the US.
The three leaders said the submarine plan “elevates all three nations’ industrial capacity to produce and sustain interoperable nuclear-powered submarines for decades to come, expands our individual and collective undersea presence in the Indo-Pacific, and contributes to global security and stability.”
Britain last produced a defence, security and foreign policy framework, known as the Integrated Review, in 2021.
The government ordered an update in response to an increasingly volatile world. The new report, released Monday, said “there is a growing prospect that the international security environment will further deteriorate in the coming years, with state threats increasing and diversifying in Europe and beyond.”
Moscow’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine upended European security order, and the review said Russia poses “the most acute threat to the UK’s security.”
The UK is also increasingly concerned about what the government calls “the epoch-defining challenge presented by the Chinese Communist Party’s increasingly concerning military, financial and diplomatic activity.”
The defence review said that “wherever the Chinese Communist Party’s actions and stated intent threaten the UK’s interests, we will take swift and robust action to protect them.”