David Vance SubstackRead More
Can we all acknowledge that Russia has ALREADY won the war with Ukraine? Any deal done with Trump will simply underline this in the three crucial areas that matter to Putin.
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Russia will hold most if not all of the Ukraine territory is now occupies.
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Ukraine will NOT join NATO
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The US will keep out of having any boots on the ground in what is left of Ukraine.
So when uber low IQ UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy suggests that UK defence spending could treble IF Putin “wins” that is really a circuitous way to say it WILL have to increase. And that has significance.
At the moment, the UK spends just over 2% of GDP on defence. The plan is to increase this to 2.5% but the time period for this has not been specified and it is all very vague from Starmer. If more GDP does go towards Defence, which parts of Government sending will be CUT to make this possible? No answers.
Speaking in the House of Lords, crossbench peer and former chief of the defence staff Lord Stirrup also contended that he had seen analysis that suggested NATO members would need to spend over 3% to combat the threats the alliance now faces. He argued that increasing expenditure to 3% would represent a return to earlier spending levels in real terms:
Investment in defence needs to be above 3% of GDP, not the 2.5% that the government say that they aspire to but for which they have not so far set out a firm plan. It is worth saying that 3% of GDP for the UK, allowing for all the accounting changes that have taken place in recent years, would not be much more than we were spending in 2010, when Europe was not facing a severe threat from Russia.[16]
Throw in the reluctance of Trump to carry the costs of defending Europe and all of a sudden 4-5% GDP spend on Defence is not that implausible.
The UK will be forced with some very serious economic choices and these can no longer be avoided!
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