Gunboat Diplomacy

 

In the middle of the pain of the pandemic last year and having cut humanitarian foreign aid, the UK government chose to announce a nearly 17 billion pound increase in military spending spread over four years.

Challenging the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, in March, the government announced it would raise the cap on the number of warheads the country possessed by a staggering 40 percent, and that it would no longer make public the number of operational nuclear weapons that it controlled.

The U.K. recently sent an aircraft carrier and broader naval strike group into the South China Sea. 

This follows another naval deployment when the U.K. sent a navy strike force into the waters off Crimea — territory illegally annexed by Russia from Ukraine in 2014  to show Britain’s sympathy for Ukrainian claims to sovereignty over Crimea.  A confrontation came horrifyingly close after Russia scrambled fighter jets and navy vessels reportedly fired warning shots at the approaching British ships.

Britain is now the only G7 country cutting rather than increasing its international aid commitments. 

It is, at the same time, spending more on its military than any other G7 member apart from the United States, making it the fifth-highest military spender on the planet. 

In 2020, Germany spent 1.4 percent of its GDP on its military, and France, itself in the middle of a significant military build-up, spent 2.1 percent. Britain, by contrast, spent 2.2 percent.

The UK Is Embarking on Largest Military Spending Hike Since the Cold War (truthout.org)