- The United Kingdom (UK) and Germany are pivotal to the defence of Europe. The two countries find themselves in a transformational moment for the international order. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 – if not since 2014, when the Kremlin annexed Crimea and fomented war in the Donbas – the geopolitical environment in Europe has drastically changed. What was once thought of as the world’s first ‘postmodern zone’ has been plunged into geopolitical intrigue.
- At the same time, the Euro-Atlantic has been ‘decentralised’: Britain and Germany’s home theatre is no longer as axial as it was in the Cold War. Rapid economic growth in the Indo-Pacific, connected to the geopolitical rise of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), has propelled the region to the apex of international affairs. As well as this, the emergence of the ‘CRINK’ – the growing alignment between the PRC, Russia, Iran and North Korea – has shifted the global balance of power further in the autocracies’ favour.
- The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) – the foundation of British and German strategic policy – now faces the dual challenge of Russian aggression to its east and a more transactional and Indo-Pacific focused United States (US) to its west. In this new environment, the US expects the UK, Germany and other European nations to step up and assume more of the burden. In the event of a major crisis in the Indo-Pacific, they must be ready for a renewed Russian push to destabilise the continent.
- While European countries have finally acknowledged the turning tide of international politics, they have been late in taking action to mitigate the impact, although they are now making efforts to prepare. The European Union (EU) White Paper on Defence of March 2025 and the UK’s Strategic Defence Review (SDR) of June 2025 recognise the need for increased defence spending in the face of increasing threats and challenges to security in Europe and beyond.
