Britain risks global irrelevance unless it rebuilds its military and meets Nato defence spending commitments, Poland\u2019s foreign minister has warned.<\/p>\n
In a pointed intervention, Radosław Sikorski urged the Government to present a credible defence plan<\/a> at next month\u2019s Nato summit in Ankara, warning that Britain would struggle to retain its voice on the world stage if it surrendered its military heft.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you want to be a global player, you need to back up your diplomacy with force,\u201d he told The Telegraph in an interview. \u201cEither you pay for it or it will wane.<\/p>\n \u201cBritain has unique convening power, a global outlook, first-class intelligence and all that. But, when push comes to shove, you either have the ships to send to the Gulf or the brigades to deploy to Ukraine, or you don\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n Britain is preparing to face questions over its defence commitments at next month\u2019s Nato summit<\/a>, a task made even more complicated following Sir Keir Starmer\u2019s resignation<\/a> on Monday.<\/p>\n Mr Sikorski\u2019s broadside reflects alarm in Europe at Britain\u2019s perceived reluctance to maintain its role as one of the few regional powers still able to project global influence at a time of mounting fears of a broader military confrontation with Russia<\/a>.<\/p>\n Given Mr Sikorski\u2019s pedigree, the comments underscore the extent of those concerns. The Oxford-educated minister is an ardent Anglophile who lived in Britain for many years and held British citizenship until 2006.<\/p>\n Coming from Poland<\/a> \u2013 Nato\u2019s fastest-growing military power, which has more than doubled defence spending since Russia\u2019s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 \u2013 the criticism carries particular weight.<\/p>\n His remarks come after John Healey<\/a> resigned as defence secretary on June 11, accusing the Prime Minister of leaving Britain in danger, with a defence investment plan<\/a> that raises spending to 2.68 per cent of GDP by 2030, a mere 0.08 percentage points higher than next year\u2019s planned level.<\/p>\n Poland, by contrast, will spend 4.8 per cent of its GDP on defence this year, the highest in the alliance.<\/p>\n Given that Nato members pledged at last year\u2019s summit in the Hague to increase core defence spending to 3.5 per cent of GDP<\/a> by 2035, Britain will face uncomfortable questions in Ankara.<\/p>\n Mr Sikorski said Britain needed to dispel doubts among its allies that it remained committed to meeting those goals.<\/p>\n \u201cWe now all have to do what we pledged ourselves to do at the Hague summit,\u201d he said. \u201cWe don\u2019t need to do anything heroic \u2013 we just have to do what we declared we would do.<\/p>\n \u201cSome countries risk falling foul of the Sikorski principle that ministers and heads of governments at Nato meetings should have one minute of speaking time for every one per cent of GDP their country spends on defence.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2018Fulfil your defence spending pledge\u2019<\/p>\n Despite Britain\u2019s ageing population and sluggish economy, Mr Sikorski insisted the UK could still enjoy true global influence if it fulfilled its defence spending pledge.<\/p>\n Britain remains one of a handful of Western states capable of carrying out global military operations thanks to its nuclear arsenal, aircraft carriers, world-class intelligence and expeditionary forces. But years of shrinking troop numbers, delays to procurement programmes and pressure on the Royal Navy have fuelled concerns that its ambitions are increasingly outstripping its military resources.<\/p>\n A former defence minister himself, Mr Sikorski said he understood the challenges of finding the money for defence.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I was defence minister, we had a saying in our ministry that our first enemy is the finance minister,\u201d he said, before adding after a brief pause: \u201cBut I\u2019m sure it\u2019s completely different in Britain.\u201d<\/p>\n Poland, he said, had managed to overcome resistance to bigger defence budgets because Poles understood the threat posed by Russia. He said he believed that those perils had not been spelt out starkly enough to the British public.<\/p>\n Yet Britain, he said, was very much on the front line of Russia\u2019s hybrid war<\/a>, waged in the grey zone between war and peace.<\/p>\n The Kremlin has fought a shadow war against Britain for years, from the murder of FSB defector Alexander Litvinenko in 2006, through interference in the Scottish independence and Brexit referendums, to the arson attack on a property associated with Sir Keir<\/a> in Kentish Town last year, an incident linked to Russia that Mr Sikorski described as \u201can unbelievable escalation\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cIf they do it to the Prime Minister\u2019s house, they can do it to anybody,\u201d he said. \u201cDefence budgets are determined in the context of threat assessment, in the context of the public understanding the dangers and wanting to be protected.<\/p>\n \u201cIn Poland it was the people who gave the government permission to spend 4.8 per cent of our GDP on defence because we told them and they understood that we are under attack. You are under attack, too.\u201d<\/p>\n