A new nuclear age for Britain
The Cable | No. 12.2025
Welcome to the 35th Cable, our weekly roundup of British foreign and defence policy.
On Wednesday 26th March, Rachel Reeves, Chancellor of the Exchequer, will present the Spring Statement 2025 to Parliament, in which she will signal the economic health of the nation and outline the fiscal policies of His Majesty’s (HM) Government. However, it is unlikely to be an enjoyable experience for Reeves, as the United Kingdom (UK) continues to struggle with stagnant growth, falling living standards and growing demands for significant capital investment.
At the same time, Britain is facing its worst geopolitical environment since the Cold War, with an expansionist Russia to the east and a transactional United States (US) to the west; a situation which requires the UK to increase investment in defence. Therefore, the upcoming Spring Statement – alongside the soon-to-be published Strategic Defence Review (SDR) – will be critical to gauging HM Government’s priorities on defence and foreign policy.
Welcome back to the Cable!
Deterrence returns to the forefront of British strategic thinking
On 20th March, Sir Keir Starmer, Prime Minister, and John Healey, Secretary of State for Defence, visited Barrow-in-Furness to join submariners on HMS Vanguard – one of the UK’s four nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs) – returning from over 200 days at sea, one of the longest ever deployments for the Royal Navy’s nuclear armed submarines. The Prime Minister was also in Barrow-in-Furness to lay the keel of the first Dreadnought class submarine, the replacement for the ageing Vanguard class, which is expected to enter service in the early 2030s. In a speech following the keel laying ceremony, Sir Keir stated that the work being done in Barrow:
...marks nothing less than the renewal of a historic national endeavour…After 55 years of our continuous-at-sea deterrent…This vessel will take that effort beyond a hundred years.
With the US commitment to Europe and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) coming into question, coupled with nuclear sabre rattling from Moscow, Britain’s nuclear deterrent is now more important than ever. With Germany and Poland calling for a European deterrent, the UK finds itself – alongside France – in demand. Nuclear powers can provide non-nuclear allies with extended deterrence. However, there are multiple challenges that HM Government faces, from the costs of the Trident renewal programme to the fact that the UK’s deterrence capability currently relies heavily on US support. There is also the issue that even if Britain replaces the US as the provider of NATO’s nuclear umbrella, the alliance will still lose considerable capabilities due to the loss of America’s tactical nuclear weapons – currently shared with Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands and Turkey. For this reason, Britain may need to augment its nuclear forces by regenerating a sub-strategic system (which was shelved in 1998).
In this new and threatening era, it would make sense for Britain and France to work together to develop a new deterrent architecture for Europe.
Key diplomacy
Sir Keir held calls with a number of other world leaders over the last week, including:
On 21st March, the Prime Minister spoke with António Costa, President of the European Council, Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, and the leaders of Turkey, Norway and Iceland. This discussion focused on continuing support for Ukraine and enhancing European security. Sir Keir highlighted the importance of ensuring military strength ‘outpaces’ the threats which Europe faces, and welcomed the White Paper for European Defence, which focuses on critical capability gaps.
On 22nd March, the Prime Minister spoke with King Abdullah II of Jordan. Sir Keir expressed his concern over the renewed Israeli military action in Gaza, and thanked King Abdullah II for his country’s leadership and work towards a political solution.
On 23rd March, Sir Keir held a call with Dick Schoof, Prime Minister of the Netherlands. The two discussed their respective actions to support Ukraine and wider European security. They agreed that using the current political momentum will be vital to put Ukraine in the strongest possible position for a secure and lasting peace.
On 20th March, David Lammy, Foreign Secretary, gave a speech at the British Chambers of Commerce’s Driving International Trade Conference, in which he outlined his aims to develop the commercial role of the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO). Lammy also noted the transformation of the geopolitical and geoeconomic order, stating ‘There is no going back to the post-1989 order…The liberal assumptions of my youth have collapsed.’ In particular, the Foreign Secretary highlighted three key geoeconomic challenges which Britain faces: the breakdown of multilateral rules and institutions; the return of state intervention on industrial policy; and the growth of emerging critical technology, specifically Artificial Intelligence (AI).
Last week, Douglas Alexander, Minister for Trade Policy and Economic Security, hosted Allan B. Gepty, Department of Trade and Industry Undersecretary for the Philippines, to sign the Memorandum of Understanding on the Joint Economic and Trade Committee (JETCO). The JETCO aims to upgrade bilateral trade relations, currently worth £2.8 billion, with the two ministers agreeing to pursue closer cooperation and increased trade across numerous sectors, including infrastructure, renewable energy, agriculture and economic development.
Defence
Last week, senior military officials from more than 20 countries which could become part of the so-called ‘coalition of the willing’ met in the UK for a behind closed doors operational planning session. While the content of this meeting has yet to be divulged, Sir Keir shared details of new ‘sub-planning groups’ which will develop plans for land, sea and air operations to support Ukraine. Additionally, planning groups will also be set up to focus on regenerating and reconstructing Ukraine following an end to the conflict. According to Politico, these new sub-planning groups are due to meet later this week.
On 20th March, the Ministry of Defence (MOD) and the Armed Forces of Malta signed a Bilateral Cooperation Plan. The plan formalises the longstanding defence relationship between the UK and Malta, while also cementing cooperation between the two countries in the future.
The Royal Navy announced last week that the first of the ‘inaugural cohort’ of Australian submariners have now qualified to serve on the Royal Navy’s Astute class submarines as nuclear engineers. The Australian submariners were trained as part of the AUKUS agreement to develop Royal Australian Naval personnel for the future procurement of nuclear powered attack submarines (SSNs) in the 2030s.
Environment and climate
Carbon Brief released an article showing that British carbon emissions fell 3.6% in 2024. Just over half of this decline was the result of falling coal usage – with coal use falling to its lowest since 1666 – as HM Government shut down the UK’s last coal power plant and the final blast furnace at Port Talbot in September and October respectively. Another significant factor for falling emissions came from the rise in electric vehicles on UK roads.
How Britain is seen overseas
RAND released a commentary piece analysing the future of European nuclear deterrence, prompted by concerns that the US is becoming a less reliable partner. The article highlights that although Britain and France have sufficient strategic nuclear weapons to deter Russia, London and Paris lack Washington’s large and flexible arsenal, including tactical nuclear and long-range strike weapons, which currently provide NATO with near rungs on the escalation ladder.
The author proposes that Europe should develop advanced conventional weapons while simultaneously establishing ‘an institutional forum to coordinate deterrence.’
How competitors frame Britain
TASS reported on an interview by Channel 4 with Andrey Kelin, Russian Ambassador to the UK, in which he stated that HM Government’s Ukraine strategy ‘may lead Ukraine to total destruction’. Kelin went on to state that Britain has chosen ‘to go into confrontation [with Russia], to belligerently continue to supply arms, supply money to Ukrainians’. The only belligerent actor in Ukraine is Russia for its ongoing military offensive against its neighbour.
Sputnik International released propaganda stating that the presence of peacekeepers from Britain or other nations would ‘snatch war from the jaws of peace’. The article goes on to note that a promise for ‘Western’ powers to ‘stop meddling in Ukraine’s internal affairs’ is the only realistic means for a lasting peace. More Orwellian doublespeak from Russian state media. In reality, the only way to reach a lasting peace is to guarantee Ukraine’s sovereign integrity.
Assessing national power
A percentage of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), alongside other top-level figures such as the number of warships, warplanes or serving personnel, is perhaps the most widely used comparator of how ‘strong’ Britain’s armed forces are. A wide array of articles compare how the UK spends far less, in relative terms, on defence now than it did during the Cold War (2.3% of GDP today compared to 6.3% of GDP averaged from 1949-1989), or how the British Army today is the smallest it has been since the Napoleonic Wars. But is this a good way of measuring military strength, both against allies and adversaries today, and with the UK of the past?
The short answer is no, it is not. Different countries include different costs in their calculations of military expenditures, and what Britain has counted has changed over time, making comparisons more complicated. Percentage of GDP also does not capture how well this money is being spent; for example, corruption, mismanagement or inflation – both general inflation or specific inflation for high-demand equipment (as seen with 155mm artillery shells) – can all eat into a budget.
Far more useful for measuring military strength is outputs rather than inputs. This means how many meaningful combat units and their enablers could a state deploy – whether brigades, fighter squadrons or warships and their support elements (such as supply ships or airborne refuelling aircraft). Alongside this, the speed at which a state could reconstitute forces in a fight with trained reserves and military industrial capacity often get overlooked in these calculations; both are areas which have been allowed to atrophy in Britain over the last three decades.
Even here, it is incredibly difficult to separate on-paper defence outputs with ‘real-world’ outputs. On paper, the British Army has two divisions at its disposal, but deploying even a single brigade at full strength with short notice would currently be a challenge, whereas during the Cold War much of the UK’s (larger) on-paper strength was held at, or close to, high readiness.
Despite this complexity, the likelihood is still that the more a country spends on defence, the stronger its military will be. Percentage of GDP is also a useful tool for measuring the political will of a nation to invest in its defences. This means it is not time to ditch percentage of GDP as a measure entirely, but it is time to have a more nuanced conversation about how Britain’s military capabilities stack up to its adversaries, how they compare to its allies, and whether or not these capabilities are adequate for – and/or aligned to – the interests its armed forces need to defend.
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