The News
The UK will cut its international aid budget in order to raise defense spending, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said Tuesday, as European countries scramble to shore up their defenses in the face of a US retreat.
The commitment amounts to the “biggest sustained increase in defense spending since the end of the Cold War,” he said, adding that it was necessary because “tyrants like [Russian President Vladimir] Putin only respond to strength.”
The UK will raise defense spending to 2.5% of GDP by 2027, up from 2.3%.
Overseas development aid will be slashed from 0.5% to 0.3% of the UK’s GDP to fund the greater investments in defense, an announcement Starmer said he was “not happy” to make.
Starmer is due to meet with US President Donald Trump in Washington, DC on Thursday, where he is expected to discuss a joint Anglo-French proposal to deploy troops to Ukraine as part of a post-war reassurance force.
Starmer said ahead of the Washington trip that Trump had “changed the global conversation” around Ukraine for the better, but struck a contrasting tone by calling Russia’s invasion “barbaric” and reiterating that Britain was willing to deploy troops.
Meanwhile, French President Emmanuel Macron spent a joint press conference Monday “praising, flattering and gently cajoling” Trump, the BBC reported, but insisted that peace must not mean “surrender.”
Behind the scenes, a French official told The Daily Telegraph that Paris may move nuclear-armed aircraft into Germany to maintain a deterrent against Russia if the US withdraws.