5 March 2025, 17:58 | Updated: 5 March 2025, 19:40
Starmer and Trump in the White House last week.
Picture:
Alamy
By suspending military aid to Ukraine, President Trump has announced what many in the defence community have been warning about for months: that the United States is not interested in European security—at least not enough for us to rely on them.
Sir Keir Starmer now faces a choice: get serious about European and British security or continue clinging to the precious era where the UK could still act as a ‘bridge’ between Europe and the US.
I wish this choice didn’t have to be made, but there is an immovable difference in how the US and the Europeans view the defence of Ukraine, upon which no amount of bridging can fix.
The difference is this: the Europeans and the UK see Ukrainian security as European security. They are intrinsically linked. Trump sees Ukraine as a transaction to be made in which he favours the Russians.
This difference couldn’t have been starker than in how Starmer was received versus how Zelenskyy was received at the White House last week. Nor could the US predilection for Russia have been clearer than when it voted against condemning Russia’s illegal invasion or supporting Ukraine’s sovereignty at the United Nations.
Starmer isn’t wrong for trying to secure a close US-UK relationship, but he is suffering from a lack of imagination if he believes he can leverage that relationship for the benefit of European security and Ukraine.
The Prime Minister’s lines about bridging between Europe and America are the same lines that have been used by British leaders for decades. But the fact that Starmer continues to repeat those lines, while at the same time talking about a generational turning point in the world order, shows that it is Starmer who is being fundamentally “unserious” – to quote him in his speech in Parliament yesterday.
If Starmer wishes to get serious then he must understand what getting serious looks like fast:
Getting serious means increasing our defence spending to 3% GDP as a minimum; it means increasing the size of our army to 100,000 troops; and it means European collective defence, which must now be done without the Americans. It also means moving towards seizing $300 billion of frozen Russian assets and giving them to Ukraine for their defence.
Getting serious means Britain leading the way for Europe to become a military power.
The next three decades of a multi-polar world will be incredibly painful if Europe does not step up its military power, but instead allows itself to become the subject of military coercion – the sort of coercion the US has tried to inflict on Europe today by withdrawing military aid from Ukraine.
Starmer and his government must not only accept that the world has changed, but actively imagine what they want this new world to look like”.
Mike Martin is a Liberal Democrat MP and member of the Defence Select Committee.
LBC Opinion provides a platform for diverse opinions on current affairs and matters of public interest.
The views expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official LBC position.
To contact us email views@lbc.co.uk
Images are for reference only.Images and contents gathered automatic from google or 3rd party sources.All rights on the images and contents are with their legal original owners.