The British government wants to increase its defence spending this year and next year by a total of around 5.5 billion euros and readjust its security and foreign policy positioning. British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said on the occasion of the publication of the updated integrated security policy survey that in addition to assessing Russia, which is classified as a "threat" to the security situation, the foreign policy policy policy paper is dedicated to a very "thoughtful and detailed approach" to China. The People's Republic represents an "epoch-defining challenge" for Great Britain and the rules-based international order. China has shown that it relies on values "that are very different from ours".
Johannes Leithäuser
Political correspondent in Berlin.
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Nevertheless, the security policy paper does not repeat Sunak's assessment from the candidate competition for the office of prime minister last summer. At the time, he had called China "the greatest long-term threat to Britain". The government announced that the British domestic intelligence service MI5 would be given a new department to directly inform and advise British companies and other organisations on security measures and counter-espionage measures.
According to the British Government, the additional expenditure on defence should, firstly, ensure the replacement of ammunition and equipment that has been transferred to Ukraine from the stock of its own armed forces; secondly, they are to flow into the further development of nuclear submarines. Sunak traveled to San Diego, California, on Monday for a tripartite meeting with U.S. President Joe Biden and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to finalize the preliminary agreement on a submarine supply agreement to Australia and strategic cooperation between the three nations (AUKUS).
Sunak asserted that the increase in the defense budget would bring closer to the British goal of raising defense spending to 2.5 percent of gross domestic product. At a summit in Wales almost a decade ago, the Allies agreed to raise each partner's defence spending to two percent of GDP. Sunak announced that he would work at the next NATO summit in Lithuania this summer to ensure that two percent would be understood as the lower limit of the defense budgets in the future. In the past budget year, British defense spending had amounted to almost 80 billion euros (71.4 billion pounds) and had thus already exceeded the quota of two percent of domestic product.