Pete Hegseth came to Europe to deliver a lecture. The Fox News weekend host turned Secretary of War has just supervised the most spectacular US military embarrassment in decades, and it seems he had some frustration to vent at a meeting of Nato defence ministers.
Speaking at a Nato summit in Brussels, Hegseth lambasted US allies for their “shameful” refusal to allow the US to launch offensive strikes against Iran from military bases in their territories, arguing “they put America’s sons and daughters – our sons and daughters – at risk” by doing so.
He complained allies had “tried to drown us in arcane legal debates or criticised us publicly for doing what they aren’t prepared or able to do themselves” – ignoring the deep questions about the purpose of the war he spearheaded – and what it has actually achieved.
There was more to come. Hegseth declared that the “era of free-riding” – in which Europe could rely on the US for defence while spending little itself – was over, and announced a six-month review of the presence of US forces in Europe. “It’s a review that some countries will fail, and others will pass with flying colours,” he added.
It has long been a priority of the Trump administration to get European countries to increase their defence spending. One goal of this summit was to get member states to set out how they would reach a target of 3.5 per cent of GDP spent on defence by 2035. Hegseth even involved himself in how this should be paid for – a breach of the longstanding custom that allies don’t involve themselves in each other’s internal affairs – by criticising welfare spending.
Hegseth, displaying an uncharacteristic flash of diplomatic mettle, did not name individual countries during his remarks, but the implication that much of his criticism was levelled towards the UK is impossible to avoid.
John Healey resigned as Britain’s defence secretary last week amid a row over the Defence Investment Plan, arguing it didn’t spend nearly enough to meet the UK’s commitments. Sir Keir Starmer limited the US military’s use of British bases for Iranian operations. The argument over welfare versus defence is a live one in UK politics.
It has long been a priority of the Trump administration to push European countries into defence spending increases (Photo: Ludovic Marin / AFP via Getty Images)Hegseth was clearly putting the UK on the naughty step. But perhaps he should pause first. The story in recent decades is not one of the US constantly riding to the rescue of the UK. If anything, it is the opposite.
Britain committed more troops than any nation except the US to the post-9/11 conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. The Five Eyes intelligence alliance, of which the UK is a key member, is vital to US spying efforts worldwide. The UK buys billions of dollars’ worth of US defence technology every year.
Starmer’s government has spent endless time and political capital trying to solve legal issues around Diego Garcia to keep a US military base in operation on that territory. Even in the recent US-Iran conflict, UK forces and equipment were deployed to help defend US assets and troops across the region.
With Hegseth, it’s not quite clear whether he doesn’t care about any of these contributions, has forgotten about them, or never bothered to learn about them in the first place. Whichever it is, his attitude towards the UK seems confused: the UK is a small island off the extreme western shore of Europe, far away from any major ongoing conflicts. Given that, it has been far more proactive in global affairs than any “free-rider” might be.
Europe as a whole has some right to be aggrieved by Hegseth’s remarks: the EU and its allies have had to work to find the funds to support Ukraine’s ongoing resistance against Russia’s invasion of its territory when the US abruptly abandoned its longstanding ally after Trump’s re-election. The transatlantic alliance increasingly resembles a disintegrating marriage rather than a special relationship.
There are, of course, valid criticisms to level against the UK on defence. Newly minted Secretary of Defence Dan Jarvis arrived at this week’s Nato summit empty-handed – with no defence investment plan, no extra defence funding, and little sense of how either might be accomplished.
The UK government seems endlessly keen to talk about the need for deep cooperation on defence, and for Europe to collectively rearm, but gets very quiet indeed when the subject of paying for any of it comes up. It has been guilty of trying to boost defence spending more through accounting tricks – moving the costs of military housing or pensions into defence budgets, and similar – than actually finding new cash.
But few will find themselves wanting to hear those criticisms from Hegseth, a man who seems to care more about the favourable Maga media coverage he’ll get for being seen to criticise Europe than the strategic consequences of damaging relations with America’s longstanding allies. Hegseth is not a serious man, so few European leaders take him seriously.
Even so, Hegseth’s words carry some weight. A few years ago, it seemed like Europe and the UK would have to boost their defence spending to hold Nato together and keep Trump onside. With every month that passes, it looks more like they might have to invest in defence for a much simpler reason: if Europe really needed America’s help tomorrow, how confident are we that it would actually arrive?
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