Ben Wallace stays on as Britain welcomes a new prime minister

Rishi Sunak’s return to Downing Street, this time to No. 10 as prime minister — next door to his previous residence on that street as Chancellor of the Exchequer at No. 11, where Jeremy Hunt will now reside — marks a return to fiscal responsibility on the part of His Majesty’s Government. Sunak has already signaled that the government’s November revised budget plan, which has been delayed from early in the month to Nov. 17, will involve significant spending reductions. These cuts could include defense spending.

When he served as chancellor, Sunak resisted a major increase in defense expenditures. He did appear to reverse himself when campaigning to succeed Boris Johnson, however. At the time he said that he viewed the commitment of NATO states to increase spending to the level of 2 percent of gross domestic product as “a floor, not a ceiling.” Nevertheless, now that he is firmly ensconced as Britain’s prime minister, Sunak appears to be reverting to his previous position as chancellor.

It is true that in retaining Ben Wallace as defense secretary, Sunak has included in his new cabinet a strong voice for maintaining — if not increasing — Britain’s defense expenditures. It is particularly noteworthy that Hunt, given his reputation for sound management, supported such increases in the aftermath of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Recent years have seen significant cutbacks in Britain’s defense posture, most notably in its land and naval forces. Yet Johnson, who first appointed Wallace as defense secretary shortly after Johnson succeeded Teresa May as prime minister, committed to increase defense spending to 2.5 percent of gross domestic product by 2030. Upon Johnson’s announced resignation, Liz Truss, whom Wallace supported for the Conservative party leadership and thus the prime ministership, also committed herself to increased defense spending.

Wallace remained in his post during Truss’s brief stay at No. 10 and, though he did not support Sunak’s attempt to replace Johnson, Sunak elected to keep Wallace in the position.

There is a strong case for the United Kingdom to continue its upward swing in defense expenditures. Having exited the European Union, it is Britain’s defense posture that ties it most closely to the continent. According to the authoritative annual IISS publication, The Military Balance, the UK continues to spend more on defense than any other European state. It is second only to the United States in its materiel support for Ukraine. Moreover, Britain’s defense posture is closely linked to those of its NATO partners in Northern Europe, to include prospective NATO entrants Sweden and Finland. Finally, Britain is one of Europe’s only two strategic nuclear powers — the other being France — and has long been viewed as supplementing the American deterrent.

 Britain remains a key American partner in other respects as well. Having withdrawn its forces “East of Suez” in 1971, Britain now maintains a Royal Air Force operational headquarters alongside American units at Al Udeid air base in Qatar and opened a naval support facility in Bahrain in April 2018. The RAF also has access to Al Minhad air base in the United Arab Emirates and Al Musannah air base in Oman. With the drawdown of American forces in the region, in light of the priority that the Biden administration has assigned to deterring both China in East Asia and Russia in Europe, the British presence in the Middle East has taken on even greater importance as a symbol of ongoing Western influence in the region.

Britain also shares American concerns about an increasingly aggressive China, deploying its naval forces to East Asia. Of special significance was the summer 2021 deployment to the South China Sea of the aircraft carrier Queen Elizabeth with U.S. Marine F-35 aircraft aboard. Indeed, Britain announced in October 2021, as the Queen Elizabeth returned home, that it would increase its East Asian deployments, thereby supplementing America’s own freedom of navigation deployments. Those deployments took place under Wallace’s leadership of the defense ministry, as did the negotiation and signing of the AUKUS agreement that will both provide Australia with nuclear powered submarines as well as enhance high-technology cooperation among the American, British and Australian signatories.

It had been reported earlier this week that Wallace contemplated resigning from the Sunak cabinet after the prime minister refused to commit to increasing Britain’s defense spending as his two predecessors had done. Fortunately, Wallace elected to stay on. He has again called for increases in defense spending and can be expected to continue to do so. In that regard he will surely help Britain to maintain her longstanding role as one of America’s most important and valuable partners.

Dov S. Zakheim is a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and vice chairman of the board for the Foreign Policy Research Institute. He was under secretary of Defense (comptroller) and chief financial officer for the Department of Defense from 2001 to 2004 and a deputy under secretary of Defense from 1985 to 1987.