LONDON (Dispatches) –
British defense secretary Ben Wallace has warned of the threat of wider global conflict by the end of the decade as he called for a firm timetable for increasing UK military spending to 2.5 percent of gross domestic product.
“By the end of the decade, the world will be a more dangerous, unstable place and defense will be more critical to our lives,” he said, highlighting the risk of a wider conflict with Russia, the threat posed by a “rising China” and the rise of extremism in Africa.
The world is seeing “the end of the abnormal period [of peace] post-cold war”, he told the Financial Times. “I think a conflict is coming, whether it’s hot or cold is to be seen . . . I think a conflict is coming with a range of adversaries around the world . . . We need to all be prepared for it.”
The warning by the UK defense secretary, who has been central in rallying wider European support for Ukraine, was accompanied by a plea to chancellor Jeremy Hunt to put a timeframe on the commitment to lift the defense budget from 2.1 percent to 2.5 percent of GDP.
In the Budget in March, Hunt promised the defense ministry an extra £11 billion over the next five years. The chancellor also reiterated the government’s “aspiration” to increase defense spending to 2.5 percent of GDP in the longer term but did not specify a timeframe.
Wallace said he welcomed the extra funding but added: “There’s one plank left to go, which is a date.”
The UK’s defense spending has fallen fairly steadily from a historic high of about 7 percent of GDP in the mid-1950s. Wallace has secured a series of one-off cash injections since taking over as defense secretary in 2019, but a significant proportion of this has gone towards big projects such as the new submarines to carry the country’s nuclear deterrent, leaving the ministry’s day-to-day budget squeezed.
Wallace highlighted that of all the services, the army was most in need of urgent investment, declaring it was “15 years behind and needs to modernize”.
He is preparing to unveil a refresh of the 2021 defense command paper, which set out plans to modernize the armed forces, and is preparing for another battle with Hunt over funding.
But he appeared to reject calls by critics to reverse his decision to cut 9,500 troops from the army, reducing it to 72,500 — its smallest size since the Napoleonic era — arguing

new technology will allow fewer personnel to deliver greater effect.
Speaking to the FT earlier this week in Berlin following a meeting with his counterpart Boris Pistorius, Wallace applauded Germany’s plans to set up a €100 billion fund to modernize its armed forces. It was “an important message for [people] across Britain that we’re going back to the days where you need to invest in defense,” he said.
Wallace said Britain and other allies were “on guard” for Russian forces resorting to deploying non-conventional weapons in Ukraine if the counter-offensive went well. He said any use of chemical weapons would be “unacceptable and there would be a response”.