International Standing and NATO Leadership Ambitions

Sky News, The full story first. The is set to announce funding for drones and autonomous vehicles over traditional frigates and destroyers. And this is why. How Does a banana trigger a CIA backed coup Do AirPods herald the arrival of a new global order LED lights say about the future of humanity? Hi I'm Et Conway, and in each episode of my new podcast, Stuff Matters, I take an object, crack it open, and reveal the world shaping forces hidden inside. This is economics told through the things we think we understand. Search Stuff Matters on your podcast app to listen and follow I'm Mari Aurora in Fil, and the Defence invvestment planlan looks like it's finally upon us, a delayed and controversial strategy that triggered the resignation of the Defense Secretary John Heeeley just a couple of weeks ago. The UK will replace a fleet of big expensive destroyers with smaller budget warships and drones, with the aim to rearm the military for less cash than officers say they need And with the NATO summit taking place next week, this could be Kirstarmer's parting gift to the man who looks certain to replace him, Andy Burnham So what's expected to be in the plan and what does it tell us about the goovernment's future priorities? Well, I'm with Sky's Deense and seecurity editor, Deborah Haynes to find out Thank you so much for being with us today to try and make sense of all of this. We've been talking about the Defence invvestment planl for a long time. Start us off with what the MOD is looking to invest in. The Ministry of Defence is obviously having to evolve its thinking to reflect the sort of modern nature of war. and obviously Ukraine, you've seen lots of drones being used there. When Al Khans resigned a few weeks ago as Armed Forces minister, he sort of left really sort of slating this defence investment plan for not learning enough lessons from Ukraine and being too focused on expensive large legacy platforms And that actually there should be a lot more cheap, expendable, autonomous equipment. And that's not just drones that fly around in the sky. it's also drones that float on the sea under the sea, roll around the ground. However, it's always a balance And people are very quick to notice that, while yes, there's an announcement, that as part of this investment plan, the Royal Navy is ditching, buying a next generation of very expensive, very powerful destroyers. and instead going to get budget warships. They're calling it a common combat vessel, which is going to be a replacement for a large destroyer when they come out of service it's going to be part of what's been called the hybrid Navy. So you're going to have these budget warships that will be able to command lots of uncrewed boats that will be on the surface, under the surface, and also flying around. But you know China, the US, Russia, other large countries where big navies are investing both in large warships and drones. So there really does need to be a mix and it's may be a reflection also of limited budgets as well as the need to evolve. So you'll see a plan that will contain a lot of compromise, and I think there'll be a lot of effort to make the UK sound as though it investing in hard power, but it will be important to look at what's not in the plan, what is being cut and where the compromises are. You talk about the fact that this is to an extent modernisation, looking forward to the future, the way that warfare is changing, and there's been this big in Westminster, hasn't there about the way that we're not learning from Ukraine, we're not learning lessons from conflicts that are happening at the moment. So how much of this is potentially a really positive move toward the future, the way that things are going? And how much of this is a money saving exercise? The whole thing is a complete mess I mean, everybody's fixated on the Defense investment plan. It's taken on a sort of a mythical status. when actually what it really should have been was the funding settlement four The Dense review, no one's talking about the deffense review. So the strategic deffense review was supposed to be this landmark document that was published a year ago. that came out in June and a few months later the Defense investment plan, which is what it's called, should have set out the funding to deliver this defence review. So the review is the thing that's the underpinning document, and that set out plans to transform the armed forces. So the Army Navy Air Force, also space and Cyber command to meet the current threats, everybody focused on the potential for Russia to launch an attack on NATO by twenty thirty But this plan was always restrained by money. And the Prime Minister was initially being pushed to give a date for lifting defence spending from around two point three percent of GDP spent on defence to two point five percent review was really predicated on a much smaller defence budget with the reviewers unhappy with that and saying that their plan was designed to be ramped up if the money got increased. The fundamental point is the plan was not affordable. So when the guys had to come along and draw up the investment side of things, It bec very evident, it was evident right from the start that the money wasn't there, which means that if you were going to deliver this transformation as set out in this review with the money that had been made available by the Treasury, there would have to be significant cuts, which would not be a good look for the UK when it puts itself out as a leading member of NATO And so there you go queueing months of wrangling between the MOD and the Treasury, which resulted a few weeks ago in John Healley resigning extraordinary as Defense Secretary saying the money just isn't enough. Deborah, as a country, are we putting ourselves in danger by relying on new and to a certain extent, unproven technology and making these compromises in spending So the UK really lacks in its long range missiles and its air defense systems and its ability to wage war with uncrwe systems. People say and I agree that it's dangerous to shift purely driven on fiscal constraints to cheap stuff at the expense of the expensive stuff, You want to have both and the question is that balance. There is a real problem when you're looking at, for example, the Type forty five destroyers, currently they are the only bit of kit that we have that can defend against incoming ballistic missiles. and even that capability is limited because it hasn't got the most advanced weapons systems on board those ships. And so you are gambling that capability currently untested on crwe systems and these new common combat vessels, which haven't even yet been designed ordered. One naval expert, Tom Sharp was saying to me it does seem a bit of defeatist to be giving up the ambition that it was going to be called the Type eighty three destroyer, which would have been the next generation of that kind of powerful warship giving up that vision for an untested hybrid concept. What we heard from Admiral Sat Tony Radicin when he said, you know, this is more like NATO thirty first than NATO first. and he was trying to kind of almost point the finger at Kir Starmer, I suppose. But actually, I mean, this is going to be Andy Burnham's problem now. on the Tony Radicin point. that's the former Chief of the Defense staff was just underlining the reality that at the moment, NATO has a league table of ranking at thirty two member states for how they're doing with their pledges to rearm And right now the UK is second from the bottom. up only by Iceland, which doesn't even have a military, which is woeful given that the UK presents itself as the leading European member of NATO and NATO first is the mantra that rides all the way through the defefence review. So it is a terrible position. It's embarrassing. and it's also dangerous because it means that our ability to deter threats is now clearly very weak and also our ability to support our allies is not where it needs to be. So in terms of the stability question everyveryone in deffense knows that right now, The defefense investment plan and we haven't seen it yet, but as we expect it to be, is not good enough. If we are serious and Kist Armor himself said this that we need to be ready for a potential war with Russia between Russia and NATO By twenty thirty, which is four years from now and by twenty thirty means it could happen at any point between now and then. justust thinking we can incrementally increase defence spending rather than make the fundamental kind of reprioritisation that would be needed were we to take not just actual hard defence, but wider national resilience more seriously, It's just not credible at the moment. So no, there's not stability. Instead, there's incredible instability, uncertainty, lack of the rapid investment that needs to happen. Let's talk about the money for a second. Now the reporting is Stan Jarv has got an extra billion or billion and a half more than John Heeeley had, still nowhere near as much as the MOD wanted, of course Do we know yet whether that is actual real uplift or kind of what they call treasury trickery? Do we know any of that yet? I think it's really important to talk about the numbers because there's a figure that's bounded around about twenty eight billion pounds which The gap. in what the Ministry of Defence was originally scheduled to be purchasing compared to the actual budget over the course of four years. But that doesn't count for the transformation that the Defense Review is supposed to bring And it also doesn't count for the idea of needed to be ready for war by twenty thirty. And so the actual deficit is much, much bigger than twenty eight billion pounds. That's the first thing to say. So when you put it in that context, an extra billion or a billion and a half, it just doesn't touch the sides. It's just not serious money if you're talking about a serious fundamental shift in rep prioritizing the UK's defences. And make the point again, in terms of NATO countries, all thirty two Member States and they're committed declarations of what they are intending to do in terms of rearming and rebuilding hollowed out armed forces. The UK is thirty first out of thirty two, which is a terrible position to be in. When it comes to this NATO summit, coming up in just a matter of days. How much do you think NATO allies and the U.S are going to really take this seriously. and actually, how do you think they're going to feel about this little uplift? Well I think the UK is going to come under a lot of pressure again. So last year's summit in the Hague was this really big high pressure moment for NATO. It was Donald Trump's second term in office, he already berated the alliance during his first term and there was all of this concern about him making good on threats to pull the US out of NATO, which would be the end of the alliance were that to happen And so on the second time around, Mark Rutter was like bending over backwards to sort of charm and woo the U.S. president. You remember the whole daddy stuff that he sort of was moed about saying. and it was quite excruciating to listen to the fawnning of the U. S. president, but it did keep Donald Trump on side. so there wasn't like some nightmare moment of Donald Trump not turning up or walking out halfway through, which is what people had been wanting to guard against This time around, Donald Trump is angry with the UK and with Europe over their in his view, failure to back the U. S on Iran and angry at what is still a fairly feeble European capability to defend themselves without the US. And so the UK, given that it is placed, that it places itself and has always been as a nuclear power, it should be a leading member of NATO. The number two military commander in NATO has always been a British officer Given all of that, the fact that the UK is doing so woefully in rearming's a particularly bad look. it's a particularly bad fact. and I do think it means that for Kir Stahmer it's going to be pretty uncomfortable when he meets with Donald Trump and everybody else next week. Okay, I have a bonus question for you, Deborah, just because I am so curious about what your perspective is on this. There's been reporting that the Prime Minister Kiristama not for much longer is looking to potentially become the new NATO Secretary genereneral. What do you think of that when he has presided over a government that, as far as NATO and the US is concerned, hasn't really funded defense enough? I mean, it's completely delusional if it's true I don't understand why he thinks he would be a good fit to be the next Secretary genereneral of NATO. I genuinely don't because I've not seen this is just my opinion, I've not seen anything from him to demonstrate that he truly understands what it means to be a country that's ready for war. There is a massive gap. between his rhetoric, and he keeps on talking about how this government has presided over the biggest increase in defence spending since the end of the Cold War. That's a completely meaningless benchmark because since the end of the Cold War, the UK has systematically reduced its defense spending. So yes, okay, it's going up again now, but it's not going up fast enough. He's just lost his defense secretary over this And then much more broadly than that is the fact that being part of NATO is not just being part of an alliance where all allies come together to defend one member state that's under attack. it also involves each member state having their own national defence plan their own plan for wider national resilience KS Arma hasn't even been able to initiate a promised conversation on defence, which is something that he actually made. And also when the Alliance last year and people inside the Alliance will remember this well if Sakir Stahmer really is banding his name around to become their leader They will remember when allies in twenty twenty five were trying to come up with an agreement for increasing defense spending to meet Donald Trump's demands. They wanted to increase it from a baseline of two percent of GDP on defense. to three point five percent of GDP on core defense. The UK underkissed armor