The NATO first defense strategy adopted by the incoming UK government in June 2024 is strategically unsound. This is not an argument against NATO, or that the UK is better off outside it. Rather, it suggests the UK’s NATO contribution should be better aligned with national security priorities and proportionate to competing risks and interests in areas NATO can’t address.
Notwithstanding Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, NATO is less important for Britain’s national security than it was at the start or the end of the Cold War.
At its foundation, NATO and the UK’s contribution were designed not merely to resist Russian invasion, but to confront Soviet aggression animated by an ideology that aimed to transform world politics by force. NATO was a tripwire not just for European security, but for global thermonuclear war. Failure of the alliance represented a truly existential threat to the UK, and Britain’s commitment to NATO reflected that.
Despite rhetoric to the contrary, this is no longer true. Russia doesn’t represent any ideology. It has nuclear weapons but so does the UK. At the Cold War’s end, NATO played a vital role in stabilizing European politics. Countries freed from Soviet control chose to become allies as part of a transition to sovereignty within a liberal democratic community. The military power of a united Germany, Poland and Finland proves NATO enlargement served UK interests by introducing resources and strategic space into the alliance.
Rightsizing the UK contribution has to start by differentiating Russia’s threat to NATO from Russia’s threat to Britain. The latter includes sabotage, assassination, and subversion (as with the recent Russian attacks on targets personally linked to the prime minister), which NATO is not organized to confront.
As depicted in the Sky TV series, War Game, the UK is vulnerable to a sea-launched Russian conventional missile attack. This could strike key targets and cause crippling damage to military and other assets and infrastructure. At the moment, there’s not a great deal the UK can do to defend itself.
No NATO ally can or will respond to this better than the UK, using its own defensive capabilities. Except the UK can’t, because according to the logic of NATO first, its national air defense system is inadequate. RUSI’s Dr Sidharth Kaushal notes that despite the importance of long-range strike capabilities being highlighted in recent conflicts, an integrated air and missile defense system for the UK “received limited interest, given that much British military planning had an expeditionary focus and there were limited threats to the homeland”.
Because Russia’s threat to NATO is different from its threat to the UK, the principle of NATO first is not automatically aligned with national security priorities. Russia is more likely to grab a bit of Estonia or a land bridge to Kaliningrad to discredit NATO than to attack Britain. Such a move would require a joint response, as did Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Although Estonia is in NATO and Ukraine isn’t, the outcome would likely be the same: a collective response would be held at a limited conventional level to prevent escalation to nuclear war. Russia would pay a disproportionate price, and life for people in Britain — as for much of the rest of NATO — would continue largely as usual.
Allies already deploy forces in the Baltic states not to fight Russia but to deter such an attack. While this logic is generally sound, it’s not a compelling argument for the UK to allocate national resources for a ground force protecting continental allies. That cannot be a higher priority than providing the UK population with air defense. (The government’s June 30 spending plan allocates about £790m, or $1bn, to national air defense, a very small sum).
The strategic sin of NATO first is to confuse ends, ways and means. Making an alliance the end of defense policy, rather than one of the ways to achieve national security, produces the situation where national military means end up configured to defend the territory and populations of allies better than the homeland.
Pursued to its illogical conclusion, the NATO first approach has made Narva better defended than Newcastle. That is good for NATO, but is it acceptable for the people of Newcastle and their compatriots? When the Labour government decided “European security will be our foreign and defense priority”, it put UK defense second.
Viewing the UK exclusively as European is another flaw in NATO first thinking. If the armed forces can’t defend the population of the British Isles, imagine the situation elsewhere, e.g. the Falklands.
Before NATO first, there was so-called Global Britain. Now scorned, it reflects a truth about British national security exposure. Beyond the dependence on overseas trade, around 5 million UK nationals live overseas, according to UN estimates. The UK and Japan just signed an agreement on Mutual Assistance to Japanese and British Nationals Abroad, an excellent example of cooperation with non-NATO allies leveraging the UK’s worldwide network of bases and logistical arrangements. Yet such arrangements require the UK to maintain the means to evacuate Japanese where necessary.
How could the UK make its NATO commitment more proportionate and better aligned to national security?
As an island nation, threats reach Britain by sea, air and cyberspace. Beyond a modest land force (for supporting the missions of sea control, raiding maritime infrastructure and re-taking island territories), defence resources should be concentrated in the navy and the air force, including air defence, cyber, and intelligence. As well as restoring the distinction between means and ends, this would support another principle of strategy to reinforce success. Britain is a key partner in projects like AUKUS and GCAP because its maritime and air techno-industrial base is world-class. That’s not so true on land — is there a clamor to collaborate on Ajax fighting vehicles?
Advocates for a major UK land warfare role in NATO argued that so few European NATO allies had experience commanding a combined force, that SACEUR had no choice but to allocate the role to the UK or France. But it is years since the UK commanded such a large force on operations, and decades since this was done with strategic success. Allies like Germany and Poland with big armored forces (but without the burden of nuclear weapons) should align their national and allied roles, too.
Along with the Labour leadership change, when Andy Burnham is expected to take the prime minister’s role on July 17, the current US military posture review presents an unmissable opportunity to align Britain’s NATO and national security roles.
A withdrawal of the US Navy to the Pacific means the main North Atlantic security burden — to which the UK is uniquely suited and which it will help command from the NATO facility in Norfolk, Virginia — is up for grabs. No other NATO ally has the capabilities and experience of the Royal Navy with its aircraft carriers, Royal Marines, and nuclear submarines, provided we allocate resources to maintain them.
Dr Philip Shetler-Jones is a Senior Research Fellow for Indo-Pacific security at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI). Previously, he worked for the European Union on security ties with Asia and led the international security program at the World Economic Forum. Dr Shetler-Jones was an officer in the Royal Marine Commandos, held positions at the United Nations and NATO, and consulted for the Organisation for Security Cooperation in Europe, the UK Ministry of Defence, and Chatham House.
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions expressed on Europe’s Edge are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
