As the Nato summit begins, May must ignore pleas for more defence spending – here’s why

The UK’s military endeavours have killed hundreds of thousands of people, displaced millions and cost billions of pounds. We need a new approach to foreign policy and national security: one that is based on conflict avoidance rather than military solutions

Theresa May is under pressure from Donald Trump, her own cabinet colleagues and the military establishment to increase military spending. This is why she should say no to all of them.

The prime minister may be having a very tough time with Brexit, but, assuming she’s still in office, she will have another major foreign policy headache when the Nato summit begins on Wednesday.

Voices from across the military establishment, at home and abroad, are calling for her to significantly increase the UK military budget, and there is no doubt it will be high on the agenda when the defence bloc meets in Brussels.

Two years ago many of these voices successfully lobbied for the government to commit to spending 2 per cent of GDP on the military, but now the latest arbitrary figure they’re demanding is 3 per cent.

It’s clear where the White House stands, with Donald Trump threatening to pull the US military out of Ukraine and to pull out of Nato exercises unless the UK and others increase their military budgets. The US defence secretary has already intervened, warning that unless the UK spends more the White House may turn to France as its closest ally.

A lot of domestic pressure is coming from her defence minister, Gavin Williamson. Last month he was quoted on the front page of the Mail on Sunday calling for May to spend an extra £20bn on equipment for the military and threatening to “bring her down” if she didn’t. “We need investment to maintain Britain as a world-leading military power with influence all over the globe,” one of his supporters told the paper.

His lobbying has been echoed by a report from former Tory defence minister, Philip Dunne, which claims UK prosperity is dependent on military spending and support for the arms trade.

Underpinning their case is the argument that the UK military is underfunded and under-resourced. It’s a common line, but it's also a totally erroneous one.

At present the UK has one of the largest military budgets in the world. It owns huge stockpiles of extremely deadly weaponry and spends a greater proportion of its GDP on the military than any other European country except for Estonia and Greece.

In any case, the question isn’t just one about raw numbers. It’s also about what kind of country the UK wants to be on the world stage. What kind of “global influence” do Williamson, Dunne and the military establishment want?

Over recent years the desire of successive prime ministers to prove their global influence has seen the UK joining bloody military interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya.

These wars have killed hundreds of thousands of people, displaced millions and cost billions of pounds and created even greater political instability. All three wars have destroyed vital infrastructure and created the kind of circumstances under which even greater levels of conflict and violence has flourished.

If we consider the invasion of Afghanistan, which tends to be regarded as the most successful of these interventions, UN data shows that over 40,000 civilians have been killed or injured as a result of conflict in the last four years alone.

Likewise, the war in Libya has been a disaster. The instability that followed the removal of the Gaddafi regime led to a bloody civil war and the growth of terrorist groups. Those that were able to train there following the breakdown include Seifeddine Rezgui who went on to kill 38 people, including 30 UK tourists, on a beach in Tunisia.

These wars have failed on their own terms, and created chaos in the region, but the impact hasn’t just been felt abroad. If anything these interventions have also increased the threat of terrorism in the UK.

This point is shared by former MI5 head Baroness Manningham-Buller, the Joint Intelligence Committee and the Defence Academy, a think tank linked to the Ministry of Defence. All three of them have said that foreign wars, particularly citing the catastrophe in Iraq, have increased the threat of terrorism on UK streets.

And then we get to the issue of Russia, which Williamson famously said should “go away and shut up”.

There is no doubting the Russian state’s appalling human rights record, or its aggressive military policy. However, the current rhetoric about its threat to the UK needs to be put in context. Russia’s military budget, which declined by 17 per cent in 2017, is already eclipsed by that of Nato.

Do Williamson and his colleagues really believe that new aircraft carriers and fighter jets will do anything to change Russian policy? It is simply not plausible that UK military spending is a factor in Russia’s calculations, or that the UK military, however large, could ever be enough to deter Russia from using covert tactics against Nato states.

What is needed going forward is not more of the same. It is certainly not more weapons and a commitment to maintaining “global influence” with the barrel of a gun. It is not a focus on interventionism and doing everything possible to maintain a counterproductive and deadly “special relationship” with the US at all costs.

It is a new approach to foreign policy and national security; one that is based on conflict avoidance rather than military solutions to every problem and foreign interventions that leave a trail of destruction and do nothing to keep us safe.

Andrew Smith is a spokesperson for Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT)