A Radical Defence Idea

 

 “…the thought is that we would take over not all, but a very large number of, future British orders; and when they came off the line, whether they were planes or guns or something else, we would enter into some kind of arrangement for their use by the British on the ground that it was the best thing for American defense, with the understanding that when the show was over, we would get repaid sometime in kind, thereby leaving out the dollar mark in the form of a dollar debt and substituting for it a gentleman's obligation to repay in kind”.

President Roosevelt outlining what became Lend Lease, December 17, 1940

Bend-Cease

Europeans need a radical defence investment solution. This past weekend, General Sir Richard Barrons pointed out that the British Army is now so small with no more than 20,000 deployable troops that the most it could reasonably hope to conquer in a major shooting war would be a small market town not very well defended and not very far away.  It is beyond a joke.

There are many reasons Europeans cannot modernise and strengthen their armed forces to meet the minimum requirements of deterring Russia and keeping the US engaged.  Weak woke governments, economists who see power as accountancy and lawyers who see law as an alternative to power and who run weak woke governments.  There are also ever greater public demands for welfare, the public debt incurred from saving the global financial system from bad bankers at the time of the US sub-prime loans scandal back in 2008 (for which amazingly no-one has gone to prison), the further public debt generated by COVID-19, greedy defence industrial primes and their too close relationships with governments, short production runs of new weapons systems that inflate the unit cost, the conflation/confusion of industrial with defence policy, and good-old-fashioned government incompetence.  The situation is now so dire that the cost of minimum defence modernisation is now so great that European governments simply keep putting it off whilst their armed forces become ever less capable.

Europeans now get so little bang for their buck they are fast approaching a tipping point beyond which their respective armed forces are of so little utility they might as well scrap the lot, put even more into welfare, and pay Donald J. Trump his asking price to defend them.  That certainly seems to be the offer Trump is preparing for a post-Iran NATO - a kind of US defence Fanny Mae.  That ended well.

Lend-Lease

Why did the US enter World War Two so relatively poor and exit it so overwhelmingly rich and powerful? There is a simple answer – Britain.  Between 1939 and 1941 under the so-called Cash and Carry scheme the British embarked on the greatest transfer of wealth from one state to another simply to stay in a fight with Nazi Germany to pay for US materiel, even though Roosevelt publicly admitted keeping Britain in the war was also a critical US interest.  It was only when the US had effectively bankrupted Britain that Roosevelt come up with Lend Lease. If one reads Roosevelt’s whole December 1940 interview it is clear he had no intention of doing the British any real favours.  One could even say that one of America’s hidden war aims was the destruction of the British Empire.  They were right. It was time.

When the Lend-Lease Act was enacted on March 11,1941 it was also called, “An Act to Promote the Defense of the United States”. Still, the British did pay.  So-called Reverse Lend-Lease from Britain and the Commonwealth to the US repaid a very significant part of the debt. By the time of ‘victory’ in May 1945 Britain was broken and in 1946 the US had to make a further loan simply to stop the British people starving. Debt relief?  Whilst the debt was discounted it still had to be repaid.  The final payment was $83.25 million on December 29^th, 2006, by which time Britain had paid twice the principal in debt interest.  

Lend-Lease 2?

In 1939-1940 Britain faced a choice – defeat or bankruptcy. Cash and Carry and Lend Lease were force majeure.  Today, all Western states except for Norway are deeply in debt.  The US is the most indebted of all which may explain why Trump has embarked on armed mercantilism.  In November 2025, British Public Sector Debt stood at £2927 billion or 96% of GDP, other Europeans are even more indebted. Servicing the debt annually costs almost 5% of Britain’s GDP, or over twice the annual amount Britain spends on defence. 

So, here is a radical defence investment idea.  Much of the debt is held by institutions and states who benefit from peace as a public good.  Create a new version of Lend-Lease whereby creditors afford Britain and other Europeans an extended debt holiday and/or debt relief. In Britain’s case if 50% of the annual cost of servicing the national debt was transferred to defence investment Britain could immediately spend the NATO target of 5% GDP on defence and overcome the cost barrier to market entry that is preventing defence modernisation at scale.  

Like Lend Lease the debt would have to be repaid but it could effectively be put into a box and paid off over an extended period when peace prevails.  Britain and other Europeans would get the defences they need without breaking the world financial system and the creditors would still get their money but only when the peace which they need to make money has been assured.

As for the banks – after 2008 they really owe the people.

Julian Lindley-French     

The National Interest?

“I have been attacked by some for my decision not to join the offensive against Iran. But at every stage, I have stood by my principles – Principles which I held just as strongly when it came to the debate on the Iraq war in 2003. Principles which I believe are shared by the British people – That our decisions should be based on a calm, level-headed assessment of the British national interest… And that if we are to send our servicemen and women into harm’s way – The very least they deserve is to know that they do so on a legal basis… And with a proper, thought through plan”.

Sir Keir Starmer, March 16th, 2026

March 17^th. Sir Keir Starmer is right. There is nothing wrong with restraint in international affairs.  He is also right that the primary mission of the British or any other government is to serve the national interest.  He is again right that Trump has no thought through plan as friends of mine close to the White House have confirmed. Given the circumstances, what is the British national interest? 

Starmer is also right to resist Donald Trump’s efforts to bully Britain and other Europeans into joining the US-Israeli coalition against Iran.  Trump is utterly wrong to link US membership of or US support for NATO to the support of Europeans for his current war on Iran.  The US leadership of the Alliance is an essential, probably vital US interest.  If the Americans abandoned NATO it would be an act of immense self-harm.  Still, in their current hyper-nationalist mood driven by The American Idiots Guide to Made Up History in which the Americans won everything and saved everyone and gained nothing for it, they may just fall into that trap.  When Europeans also fell into the trap of supporting American military adventures out of fear they would lose NATO, poor American leadership led to fiascos in Afghanistan and Iraq and the subjugation of the national interest of Europeans to mercurial US domestic politics.

If Starmer (and Merz and others) is right to suggest that offensive British military action against Iran is not in the British national interest, confronting the aggressions of the appalling regime in Tehran clearly is.  What is the plan? Thus far, British policy towards Iran, such as it exists, has been covenants without the sword of no use to any man or woman.  It is a clear and present danger to Europeans to prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons and the missiles to deliver them. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or JCPOA which was meant to prevent Iran enriching weapons grade uranium was in fact a not very joint, not at all comprehensive, no plan of inaction.

Furthermore, whilst it may not be an obligation for Britain to join the Trump-Netanyahu war on Iran, it is a vital British and wider European interest to get oil flowing again through the Straits of Hormuz. And yet, the most Starmer is offering (possibly) are a few anti-mine drones that will do nothing to counter the 2500 unmanned attack boats the Iranians possess and which threaten any ship in transit.  Air, surface and subsurface defence is needed along with protected convoys through the Straits.  

What Trump has again revealed is the utterly broken relationship between the ends, ways, and means of the British national interest.  Trump will also exact a price on NATO allies for their lack of support for his war on Iran.  He is likely to exact a particular price on the UK for what he regards as betrayal by America’s closest ally (not the oldest – that is France). If Trump is in a particularly vengeful mood he might even close one or all of the US bases in Britain, even if that causes self-harm to the US national interest and freezing the British out of the intelligence partnership.

Starmer?  He now faces a choice. He can either force the British people to live with even more insecurity and risk to their interests, which is the real meaning of the national interests. Or, he can bolster the national interest by investing in the instruments of power vital to it.  The appalling state of the British armed forces is not Starmer’s fault.  That accolade belongs to Brown, Cameron, May, and Johnson. However, if Starmer was really committed to realising the national interest he would move immediately to lessen dependence on the US by increasing defence investment. 

Starmer is doing the opposite. He pretends his government is making the greatest increase in UK defence spending since the Cold War whilst cutting the defence budget to pay for ever more social welfare.  There is still no sign of the long-promised Defence Investment Plan. He would also increase investment in the other instruments of power available to London, such as diplomacy and intelligence. He does not.  

The reason I dislike Starmer is not because I disagree with the ‘principles’ he outlined yesterday in his speech in Downing Street. It is because he is a strategic fraud.  He hides behind international law simply because he lacks strategic judgement. He talks about the national interest but does not have a plan to realise it and destroys the very instruments of power vital to it.  He rejects Trump’s bullying but makes Britain ever more vulnerable to it.  He talks about leadership and yet promotes sectarian politics for narrow political gain which is the very antithesis of leading a complex society in the twenty-first century world.  He routinely confuses values with interest, and his even greater confusion between the strategic and the political.  His biggest failing? He talks too much!

Julian Lindley-French  

Power Trumps Words (Again)

 

“War does not justify who is right…only who is left”.

Bertrand Russell

March .3 Power always Trumps words. The US-Israeli attack on Iran is illegal, pure and simple, which merely highlights the complete pointlessness of the debate over whether it is or not illegal.  The attack is what it is – Realpolitik, the final act of Israeli revenge for Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attacks on Israel.  After killing Iran’s proxies Tel Aviv and Washington are now killing the Tehran regime who backed them.  Hamas has been effectively destroyed as a fighting force and Gaza reduced to ruins. Hezbollah is now broken and divided with Israel dominating southern Lebanon.  The Assad regime in Damascus is now history with Syria no longer a state threat to Israel.

The attack is also power red in tooth and claw that leaves Israel as the dominant power across the northern Middle East and Saudi Arabia, dominant in the southern Middle East. Iran is being systematically reduced in power and status with its hopes of becoming a nuclear power in tatters.  The Tehran regime is even struggling to survive in the wake of the assassinations of Ayatollah Khamenei and President Ahmedinejad.  Under the interim Council of Senior Officials, a shadow government of some 4000 Islamists and their fellow travellers, plus the 125,000 strong (or however many are left) Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) are struggling to exercise the crumbling reins of power over a population of over 90 million people.  Their chances are slim given that the US, Israelis and others would not have launched such an attack if they had not already created the internal conditions for regime change. If the Tehran regime survives it will do so in name only as Iran becomes another broken state.   

The attack leaves the Americans as the real powerbrokers between the states of the Middle East with China and Russia the big losers.  Russia has been losing influence in the Middle East since its February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, something Turkey, the other big power broker in the region, has been watching with interest.  China’s policy in the region has always been at best opportunistic and designed to force the Americans to look many ways at once.  Europe? Irrelevant.

One of the other big losers in this conflict is Britain.  By refusing to let the US use its air bases in Britain for offensive operations London has put at risk the one thing that makes the Special Relationship in anyway special – the intelligence relationship.  The Americans cut London out of the intelligence loop prior to the attack.  Not that British appeasement of Tehran has benefitted Britain. Despite 20 attempted terrorist attacks on Britain and Starmer’s refusal to proscribe the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist organisation one of the official regime slogans is “Death to England”.

Starmer is the Lord Halifax of his age – a well-meaning man who is simply incapable of understanding that such is the threat it cannot be appeased. He stands on a principle that not only does not exist, but which is a dangerous illusion in such an age. Britain is fast becoming a pathetic state, hiding behind a Potemkin façade of ‘international law’ that has never and never will prevent direct conflict between major powers, especially when they are locked in an existential struggle.  He claims he is playing Realpolitik by different rules when in fact he is a merely a lawyer who brings a legal writ to a gunfight, trying to play legal chess whilst those with real weight in the world play power poker.

The hard and simple truth is that there is no fence upon which to sit in a war between the Americans, Israelis and Iran. And yet, Starmer has reduced British foreign policy to precisely that, the search for non-existent fences upon which to sit. And for what?  To maintain the peace in a Britain that the political elite have done all they can to destabilise by importing the Middle East to Britain?  To appease the increasingly influential Hard Left of the Labour Party?  Starmer leans on international law as a crutch because he lacks any political or strategic judgement.  Not only is he incapable of leading Britain at such moments, but he is also rendering Britain incapable to!

International law may offer some minor protection for some individuals sometimes in the face of hostile states, but it offers no protection whatsoever for weaker states that use asymmetric weapons to attack stronger states.  This is exactly what Iran did as it sought and failed to buy sufficient time to acquire the one thing it believed would protect it – nuclear weapons.  That is why the regime is now paying a terrible price. 

Power always Trumps words. And when push comes to shove the strong really do what they can and the weak really do suffer what they must.

Julian Lindley-French