UK military too focused on global reach at expense of home defence, report warns

Britain's military machine is built for a world that no longer exists, according to researchers who have spent months examining where the country's defence money actually goes. A new analysis from the Transition Security Project reveals that the UK spends roughly £14 billion annually—nearly a quarter of its entire defence budget—maintaining military commitments across five continents. This makes Britain the most globally dispersed military among European NATO members, a distinction the thinktank argues reflects not strength but strategic confusion.

The scope of this overseas footprint is substantial. About £2.8 billion of that annual spend supports bases and operations outside Europe, in places like Cyprus, Kenya, and Oman, positioned as what the report calls "strategic hubs" for projecting British military power. The remaining £11 billion or so covers other overseas commitments. For context, France maintains more personnel abroad than Britain does, yet spends a smaller proportion of its defence budget on global operations. The difference matters because it suggests a choice about priorities—one that Britain has made differently than its peers.

This analysis arrives at a politically awkward moment. The government has committed to spending 3.5 percent of GDP on defence by 2035, a plan that would roughly double the defence budget from £70 billion in 2026 to £151 billion in 2035. The previous defence secretary, John Healey, resigned over the government's refusal to commit to reaching 3 percent by 2030, but that target has since been shelved. The Transition Security Project—a research centre spun out of Common Wealth, a thinktank with ties to Andy Burnham—argues that this spending increase, without a fundamental shift in strategy, will simply entrench existing patterns of waste.

The report draws a direct line between overseas military spending and outcomes that remain contested. Since 2001, the UK has spent more than £51 billion in modern terms on military interventions in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and elsewhere. The thinktank poses a blunt question: has this spending made Britain safer? The report suggests the answer is no, and that the government should instead use the planned spending increase to prioritize domestic defence—preparing for a possible conflict in Europe—rather than maintaining a global military posture.

Kevin Cashman, one of the report's authors, frames the issue in terms of alignment and cost. "Britain should not pour more money into a bloated military sector geared towards alignment with the United States while Washington starts wars around the world that drive up our bills," he said. His co-author, Khem Rogaly, the co-director of the Transition Security Project, went further, calling the current approach a "destructive, outdated foreign policy" and urging the government to "end its support for these attempts at global policing."

Defence officials are aware of the waste problem. There is recognition within government circles that an arbitrary focus on reaching a spending target could actually make inefficiency worse rather than better. The stated intention is to concentrate resources on what is genuinely necessary—primarily preparing the UK for a possible war in Europe. But the report raises a structural question: if nearly a quarter of the defence budget is already committed to overseas operations, how much of the new money will actually be available for that domestic priority? The answer depends on whether the government is willing to fundamentally rethink what a British military is supposed to do.