Andy Burnham did well to make Ukraine his first overseas destination as British Prime Minister. The war zone is relatively safe territory for the leader of a country still trying to carve a foreign policy role for itself in the new world order of Donald Trump.
Pledging yet more support for Kyiv – indeed announcing Britain was “100 per cent” behind Ukraine, as Burnham did – works well with a public that continues to support the pushback against Russia.
The Prime Minister’s first overseas visit was meant to be a July 22 bilateral summit with the EU, but the meeting was cancelled because it was so close to the change of leaders in Britain. Which was lucky because the British-EU relationship remains fraught a decade after Brexit and as concern rises over the number of asylum-seekers and illegal migrants pushing through Europe to get to the UK.
Images of a prime minister in Brussels so soon after his ascension to the top job would have provided an easy mark for far-right Reform UK leader and chief Brexiteer Nigel Farage. A month on, however, the British government is keen to be seen as laying the groundwork for a closer relationship with the EU.
En route by train to Kyiv, Burnham met European Council president Antonio Costa and told him Britain must be “bolder” in seeking to rebuild relations with the European bloc, including on defence and security. One slight hurdle, sadly, is the failure last November to reach agreement on the UK’s entry into the Security Action for Europe (SAFE) fund, which provides up to €150bn ($243bn) for defence capability investments.
Reaching out to a Europe that’s not letting you into the investment club is tricky; prioritising Ukraine is arguably an easier sell to a domestic audience, as is Burnham’s robust rebuttal of direct threats made to Britain by Moscow this week.
“Who started the fire? That’s the question, isn’t it?” Burnham said after the Kremlin accused him of “adding fuel to the fire” by sharing the blueprints of British missiles with Ukraine. It’s not quite Churchillian but it’s not a bad line from the 59th prime minister of a Britain that no longer has a global leadership role.
And Moscow’s next suggestion, that “unknown sources” might attack UK factories making drones for Ukraine, was surely something of a gift to a leader with nothing to lose in attacking the Kremlin.
(It’s certainly safer ground than Israel, which is a divisive issue in Britain and within the government. Reports this week that Burnham might announce sanctions against illegal Israeli settlements on the West Bank presaged a serious foreign policy argument leading up to the Labour Party’s annual conference next month.)
Despite his en route remarks on the “bloc”, Burnham’s visit to Kyiv underlined the increasing importance of NATO compared with the EU given that the only real game in town is defence and security.
The organisation written off by politicians and pundits after Trump’s threats to withdraw the US from the alliance formed after World War II has not only survived but is growing in confidence as member countries reverse decades of complacency over defence spending.
The Ankara summit in July was significant, with NATO committing to more than $US50bn ($69.6bn) in new defence equipment and outlining plans for more manufacturing in Europe – recognition of the need to develop a local military-industrial capacity.
A re-energised NATO still faces challenges as the US presses Europe to take defence responsibility. On Thursday (European time), US Under Secretary of Defence for Policy Elbridge Colby was set to brief NATO ambassadors in Brussels as part of a review of American forces in Europe.
The force posture review was launched in June and focuses on the 80,000 American troops in Europe. The US announced months ago that about 5000 troops would be moved out of Germany, and European leaders are concerned about the timeline for future reductions and where troops will be located.
In the past couple of years, Trump’s campaign against NATO encouraged a revival of a 1990s push for the EU to set up its own defence force based on article 42 of the Maastricht Treaty. That states that if an EU member state is the victim of armed aggression on its territory, the other member states have an obligation to aid and assist it by all the means in their power.
Earlier this year EU defence commissioner Andrius Kubilius argued the bloc should consider establishing a standing military force of 100,000 troops and overhaul the political processes governing defence. But the idea did not run. The focus in Brussels remains the co-ordination of investments, such as in SAFE, joint procurement and integration of members’ industrial defence capacities. The mood is to build a stronger “European pillar” within NATO rather than creating a parallel structure. Along with the increased defence spending there has been a shift to recognising that Europe needs to strengthen its role in NATO rather than building a defence pillar in the EU.
Ben Schreer, a European expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, says building European military capability is a long-term process: “It’s not something that you do in one or two years, it takes time.
“But I think on both sides there’s a more honest, candid conversation about the American expectation for the Europeans to assume a bigger role and the Europeans accepting that but wanting to have a conversation with the United States about planned withdrawals and timelines. How do we organise this, in a way that the Americans are still involved?”
In an article for Der Spiegel in April, Christian Molling and Torben Schutz of the think tank EDINA (European Defence in a New Age) argued “the good news is that Europe can defend itself without the United States – it will simply be less comfortable and initially riskier”.
And they wrote: “Instead of dreaming of vast fleets and a unified European army, the immediate priority should be to make the interfaces among European armed forces interoperable at speed, especially digital systems. That includes intelligence, command, logistics, targeting processes, maintenance and industrial staying power.”
Schreer says although NATO is much more united and central to European security than before the Ukraine war, the EU remains important in the defence and security space.
“Defence and deterrence in Europe against Russia rests predominantly with NATO,” he says. “But the EU is also promoting European defence capability with initiatives such as joint procurement.
“We should see these two institutions as complementary in the defence field. We need to see NATO and the EU as reinforcing European security where each has some significant strengths that it can bring to bear.”
While the “default position” for the UK for defence has always been NATO, he says, he notes the “conversation” within the Labour government about potentially re-entering the EU under a similar model as Norway, which is a member of the European Economic Area rather than a full EU member.
Schreer says the big challenge for NATO now will be for members to be able to sustain spending in the long term.
There are other challenges for the alliance as hybrid warfare is growing, according to Katia Glod, of the New Eurasian Strategies Centre.
In an article this week in Prospect magazine she notes the real threat to Britain from Russia is “sabotage, cyber operations, espionage, electronic interference, pressure on British interests overseas and increasingly aggressive military activity around British and NATO territory”.
While there are regular reports of potential attacks by Russia designed to test NATO’s resolve to respond militarily, Glod writes that a deliberate mass attack on Poland, for example, would be an “extraordinary escalation”.
“More plausible is a smaller incursion or provocation that leaves NATO allies debating whether it was accidental, deliberate or serious enough to warrant a collective response,” she writes.
“(NATO) has formidable mechanisms for deterring an unmistakeable armed attack, but Russia has incentives to operate precisely where those mechanisms become less automatic. The attraction of such grey-zone operations for Moscow is that they allow Russia to act at a level of aggression below which a major NATO response becomes politically straightforward.”
While NATO and the EU have become more geopolitically important since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, writer and historian Simon Sebag Montefiore is one who argues Europe is punching below its weight.
He told a London forum this week: “When you have two legacy powers (France and the UK) with nuclear power, you have Germany rearming, and then you have, in Eastern Europe, these war democracies of Ukraine and Poland, this should be an impressive bloc.
“It should be much more important than it is, and needs to get its act together.”
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