Nick Houghton:

We risk isolation in Nato if we fail to recognise that our defence budget doesn’t justify our pretensions

The 2018 Nato summit will be held in Brussels on July 11 and 12. It will be a very different summit to those we have seen in recent years and I wonder if we are prepared for it.

This will be the third Nato summit in just four years. As the then chief of defence, I bore close witness to the two preceding ones: in Cardiff in 2014 and in Warsaw in 2016. In truth they were unremarkable events. The harsh critic might call them pantomime productions of pre-agreed outcomes. A fairer view is that they were well choreographed exercises in minimalist agreement, crafted to look like Alliance solidarity.

In 2014, the most significant achievement was the Defence Spending Pledge; a remarkably modest target, to be achieved at the most leisurely of paces. In 2016, the slightly more impressive trick was to respond to Russian aggression in a way sufficient to reassure our most easterly Alliance members, while not risking further provocation of Russia. The UK’S position on both these issues was commendably towards the front of the pack. The vital issue of Alliance cohesion was never truly tested at either of these summits.

Why will 2018 be different? The simple answer is Brexit and Trump. In many ways, the Brexit issue is the easy one to unpack. The UK is engaged in a form of political and economic conflict with many of our European allies. The summit is our first real opportunity to show that Britain remains at the heart of Nato, deeply interested, engaged and committed to European security.

The Trump dimension needs closer analysis. The president is angry with Europe. More widely, he is angry with the world. And many of his advisers and supporters share that anger. It is based on the reality that the US spends 3.6 per cent of the biggest GDP on earth continuing to be the external security guarantor for three of the world’s richest regions (Europe, the Middle East and South East Asia) and gets no thanks for it. He has a point.

The more important fact from a UK perspective is that he is not remotely impressed by our national pretension to be America’s greatest ally. In fact, he almost certainly thinks that, if there is any European country that needs to do more, it is Britain.

Why is this? Simply put, the US holds the UK to a higher standard. We are their number one ally, the country that shares their values and gives them the greatest moral voice. We are their Alliance partner of choice, a permanent member of the UN Security Council, a nuclear-capable country, the leading European military power, a country that aspires to Tier 1 status, to global power projection, to inter-operability with US forces in all domains of warfare. But US observers have come to recognise that we are living a lie. A defence budget that is 2 per cent of a stalling GDP, measured in a weakened pound, does not justify our global pretension.

So, the UK approaches the summit without many friends in Europe and with a US president justifiably sceptical of the UK’S true value. What should we do?

I have no insight as to the current agenda of our National Security Council (NSC) but, if past practice is a guide, preparations for the Nato summit will be up for discussion. Again, if previous practice is followed, there is a danger that busy ministers will attend the NSC with briefing notes based on the somewhat anodyne summit agenda. Ministers will be able to convince themselves that we are in a good place on all the topics: defence and deterrence, institutional adaption, Russia, challenges from the South, and the 2 per cent spending target.

But this agenda is designed merely to achieve consensus and to move the bureaucracy of Nato incrementally forward. It is not an agenda that permits a full recognition of the strategic tensions that abound, nor the potential vulnerability of the Alliance to an angry president.

So, I hope the NSC debate is a more strategic one, starting, crucially, with a recognition of the vulnerability and potential isolation of our own position. If ever there was a moment when the UK needed to re-establish some international credibility, it is now. There is a risk that, otherwise, the UK could simply become irrelevant by neglecting a strategic approach.

The country has a National Security Strategy. This appropriately links prosperity to security. It recognises that, as a trading nation, we depend on stability and order in the world. Five million British nationals live overseas. Global engagement is fundamental to the success of our nation, not an optional extra.

So we need to start to give real strategic meaning to the post-brexit concept of a global Britain. We are a wealthy country, as our contribution to domestic health and foreign aid shows. How we spend our wealth is a matter of political choice not economic necessity. We could decide at this Nato summit to announce a serious investment in our Armed Forces: a phased uplift to 3 per cent of GDP. That would win us friends and influence: we are currently short of both.

Lord Houghton of Richmond was Chief of the Defence Staff between 2013 and 2016