Hours before the Nato Summit began in The Hague on 24 June 2025, the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) accepted it will need to spend 5% of the nation’s gross domestic product (GDP) on national security.
Of course, the devil is in the detail. The British government decision is conditional on implementing this target from 2035 at the earliest, or as the MoD confusingly phrased it: “by the parliament after next.”
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British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said “we must navigate this era of radical uncertainty with agility, speed and a clear-eyed sense of the national interest.”
But with an eye on the figures, it is clear that the MoD will open up this expenditure to broader ‘national security’ concerns as opposed to increasing military readiness directly, meaning the funds will cover any manner of things that can conceivably be accounted under the ambiguous label of security.
This is not the first time these evasive accounting methods have inflated defence figures with no real increase.
The government has already redefined ‘defence’ spending to amalgamate the funds allocated to the intelligence agencies. It appears the government will continue to extend this definition more broadly, perhaps including investment in energy infrastructure, a major target in Russia’s efforts to undermine the Nato alliance.
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Moreover, the 5% Nato spending commitment is projected to split between 3.5% (on core defence) and 1.5% (resilience and security). However, when grouped with core defence beforehand, this only adds greater room for manoeuvre to project a false defence spending projection in real terms.
“The UK has long argued that investment in things like energy security and tackling smuggling gangs is vital to national security,” the MoD said in a statement yesterday (23 June). These broader aspects will be considered in the National Security Strategy (NSS), which was said to have been published the same day.
Under Nato’s new estimate, the UK expects to reach at least 4.1% of GDP in 2027. All allies will review the trajectory and the balance of spend between defence and wider national resilience in 2029, when Nato next reviews its capability plans.
“The [NSS] is also a call to action that our entire society needs to become more resilient, recognising that national security means more than it used to – from the security of our borders to the health of our economy, from supply chains to food prices and from safety on our streets to the online world,” the MoD statement reads.
For that reason, the NSS will weave together various aspects of national security from the trilateral AUKUS pact, the recently published Strategic Defence Review, Resilience Strategy, China Audit, anf the Industrial and Trade Strategies.
