April 12, 2025:
The United Kingdom is divided on how to deal with its Ukraine obligations. Since Russia invaded Ukraine, Britain has sent about $16 billion in economic and military aid. Britain is the third largest aid donor to Ukraine, after the United States and Germany. Britain would rather concentrate on rebuilding Ukraine’s economy.
The reality is that Ukraine is still at war and Britain, like other European nations, must deal with the possibility of Russia eventually attacking other European states, including Britain. Britain may be an island state, but the Russian Northern Fleet has a formidable submarine force and British warships could start disappearing while on the high seas.
The solution to this potential threat is upgrading British defense capabilities. This means increasing defense spending from 2.3 percent of GDP to 2.5 percent. Britain also lacks munitions for its forces to fight more than a few days, Then there is the problem with how few troops Britain has to defend against anything. Currently the British army has 108,000 personnel, 74,000 of them active duty, including 4,000 Gurkhas and several hundred special operations personnel.
Britain already has some troops in eastern Europe, where British troops are part of a multinational battle group in the Baltic States and Poland. Previously British troops were in Ukraine to train Ukrainian forces. At home Britain continues to have problems recruiting. In 2000 the army had 110,000 troops. By 2020 that was down to 78,000, Now it’s 74,000 and continuing to decline.
The three year Ukraine War has changed attitudes in Britain and made more Britons aware of the deplorable state of their defense forces. Current proposals for peace in Ukraine include NATO countries contributing troops to Ukraine to guarantee the peace. In the past you could depend on the Americans to provide the troops. But the United States has told Europe that the Americans are no longer going to deal with such missions. It’s up to the Europeans. Before the Ukraine War, no European country had a viable military force. Since the Cold War ended in 1991, European nations had cut military spending and troop levels and spent the money saved on more peaceful projects. Now that has changed and European nations are scrambling to rebuild their armed forces. Russia has announced that it is on the move militarily and has the largest fighting force in Europe.
British military planners quickly realized that the UK would have a hard time mustering 10,000 troops to send to Eastern Europe or Ukraine. Improving that situation has, so far, proved difficult. Other European nations are having similar problems, but none as severe as the British situation.