Indeed, even as he promised to do more, Johnson “refused to increase defense spending this year, as ministers and the head of the army plead for more money to deal with the Russian threat.” This rejection came after the government was warned by defense secretary Ben Wallace “that the armed forces were surviving on a ‘diet of smoke and mirrors’.” Although Johnson’s successor is likely to continue London’s hardline against Moscow, he or she will have to focus on domestic concerns to stabilize Conservative Party rule. Yet, reported BBC, “ the government is going to break the promise on defense spending that it made in its manifesto in 2019,” to raise annual outlays. His efforts ultimately failed, and he resigned last week, but before he did, at the recent NATO summit he promised that the UK would raise military outlays to 2.5 percent of GDP. Prime Minister Boris Johnson responded to the Ukraine crisis by playing Winston Churchill reincarnated in an attempt to bluster his way through multiple scandals. at the hawkish edge of NATO’s response to Moscow’s invasion, is failing to live up to its promises. Perhaps even more striking is how the United Kingdom, which joined the U.S. Whether to Follow Through With Aid and Support Reported the Financial Times : “ Germany has proposed basing most of the 3,500 extra troops it plans to contribute to NATO forces on its own soil rather than in Lithuania, significantly softening its initial backing for more foreign forces to be stationed in the Baltics to deter any potential Russian aggression.” Even more significant, plans to station German troops in Lithuania, which would demonstrate a willingness to defend the latter, have gone by the wayside. The Scholz government also has resisted provisioning Kyiv with heavy weapons. ” Yet the latter will run out naturally, could be cut if the political winds change, and might leave the Bundeswehr short on manpower and maintenance funding. Scholz’s government has submitted a budget accounting for only €50 billion, roughly the same amount as before the ‘turning point.’ The plan seems to be to top up annual spending by including one-quarter of the special procurement budget. The Wall Street Journal worried: “ Hitting the 2% goal would mean annual defense spending of some €75 billion in the next fiscal year, but Mr.
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However, since then Berlin has shown less than full enthusiasm in fulfilling its commitment. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s dramatic announcement – called a Zeitenwende, or “watershed moment” – that his government would up military outlays was supposed to represent a continental shift toward defense maturity and seriousness.
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