Steve Barwick |Chair, Nuclear Education Trust, 25 November 2025
The Nuclear Education Trust has also released a report on this topic you can access here: Stepping Back from the Brink
The world today stands closer to nuclear catastrophe than at any point since the end of the Cold War. Conflicts involving nuclear-armed states (the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, China, India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel) in Europe, the Middle East and South Asia, alongside rising tensions in East Asia, could all too easily escalate to a nuclear confrontation. Meanwhile, key arms control treaties have collapsed, and most nuclear powers, including the UK, are modernising their nuclear arsenals. Against this perilous backdrop, what could the UK do to help lead the world back from the brink?
The myths of tactical nuclear weapons and limited nuclear war
So-called “tactical” nuclear weapons (TNWs) are ones deployed to arenas of conflict or tension, such as those Russia has deployed to Belarus, and those the US has sited across five European NATO member states, with the UK, as of July 2025, reportedly now the sixth. Whilst these weapons can have relatively low explosive yields, the impact of their use would be anything but small. For example, the US B61-12 bombs can deliver explosive yields of up to 50 kilotons. This is several times more powerful than the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Any use of nuclear weapons, at whatever scale or size, would likely have very severe military as well as humanitarian and environmental consequences. Even a single detonation involving a relatively low-yield nuclear bomb could trigger uncontrollable escalation. National leaders faced with the ensuing chaos and fear of a completely new type of crisis would have no reliable way to contain events.
The fraying of the nuclear taboo
For decades, restraint regarding the use of nuclear weapons was maintained by the “nuclear taboo” — a shared global understanding that nuclear weapons are not legitimate tools of warfare. That taboo is eroding. For example, President Vladimir Putin’s threats to use nuclear weapons during the Russia-Ukraine war reintroduced nuclear brinkmanship into mainstream political discourse.
Russia’s actions are widely condemned, but only China has made a commitment never to use nuclear weapons first. The nuclear doctrines of the US, UK, France, Russia, Israel, North Korea, India and Pakistan all allow for first use under certain conditions. This collective ambiguity increases the risk of miscalculation and normalises threatening nuclear rhetoric.
A dangerous drift: Eroding treaties, escalating tensions
The collapse of key nuclear arms control agreements between the US and Russia — notably the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty in 2019 — has removed a vital guardrail that had at least banned ground-based “tactical” missiles with ranges between 500 and 5,500 km, such as the Cruise and SS20 Missiles. However, it is important to note that “battlefield” nuclear weapons – with a shorter range and often deployed from sea or air were never banned
History offers important lessons on how these dangerous trends can be reversed. The Cuban Missile Crisis, the moment where the world came closest to nuclear war, demonstrated that diplomacy and mutual understanding — not military brinkmanship — are the only reliable paths to peace.
During the Cold War, the deployment of thousands of nuclear weapons in Europe brought humanity perilously close to disaster and also ignited a powerful civil society movement that demanded a different course: nuclear disarmament. The subsequent agreement of the INF Treaty in 1987, which eliminated a whole class of nuclear weapons and set the stage for several multilateral arms control and confidence and security-building measures, was a landmark achievement.
Rebuilding cooperation on nuclear arms control and disarmament
Now is the time for Russia to agree to a ceasefire and take part in good-faith negotiations to end the war in Ukraine, alongside all key participants in the conflict. In addition, Russia and the US should refrain from deploying TNWs and instead negotiate a legally binding treaty to eliminate them, complete with robust verification measures.
The nuclear powers — particularly the US, Russia and China — should also:
Reaffirm the nuclear taboo through joint declarations rejecting nuclear warfighting;
Commit to follow international law regarding the threat or use of force;
Renew and strengthen arms control and disarmament agreements, such as the New START Treaty, or at least maintain its limits after expiration;
Address the root causes of conflict, such as territorial disputes and economic inequality, including through sustained diplomacy.
These are challenging steps, but there is no other path to rebuilding stability. Even in the Cold War’s darkest moments, dialogue, arms-control mechanisms and crisis communication channels helped avert catastrophe. This way forward must not be lost in the fog of war preparations.
The UK’s critical role: From nuclear proliferator to peace broker
As Chair of the group of five ‘official’ nuclear weapon states in the run-up to the 2026 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference, the UK occupies a unique position, both as a nuclear possessor and a potential bridge between the superpowers and non-nuclear weapon states. Yet current British policy jeopardises that potentially positive role. There are four practical measures the UK should take to support strategic stability and demonstrate global leadership:
Reject nuclear sharing and prioritise transparency
The UK should not join NATO’s nuclear sharing arrangement, and thus not acquire F-35A aircraft or host US B61-12 bombs. Parliamentary and civil society scrutiny of nuclear deployments and procurement must increase through Select Committee inquiries and more mainstream media interest.
Reinvigorate global diplomacy
The UK should support high-level diplomacy among the nuclear powers to revive dialogue on arms control, disarmament and conflict prevention. As chair of the P5 process, the UK should urge that crisis stability between the major powers and the avoidance of arms races are prioritised.
Adopt a no-first-use policy
A commitment never to use nuclear weapons first would reduce escalation risks. Coupled with assurances not to threaten or use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear-weapon states, this stance would align the UK with NPT agreements to reduce the salience of nuclear weapons and encourage reciprocal restraint from others.
Engage with the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW)
It is time that the eyes of the world are reopened to the devastating effects of nuclear weapons. The UK should support the United Nations panel examining “the physical effects and societal consequences of a nuclear war on a local, regional and planetary scale”; and attend TPNW meetings as an observer, demonstrating concern and an openness to dialogue.
2026: A pivotal year
The year 2026 will be critical. It marks both the scheduled expiry of New START — the last remaining cap on US and Russian strategic arsenals — and the next NPT Review Conference. The message is unambiguous: continuing along the path of rearmament and confrontation invites catastrophe. The UK, as one of NATO’s more influential members, has a rare opportunity to steer policy toward restraint and away from the futile pursuit of “nuclear advantage.” To seize it, Britain must make bold choices — reject nuclear sharing, embrace transparency, champion diplomacy, and reaffirm the principle that nuclear weapons must never be used.
The European Leadership Network itself as an institution holds no formal policy positions. The opinions articulated above represent the views of the authors rather than the European Leadership Network or its members. The ELN aims to encourage debates that will help develop Europe’s capacity to address the pressing foreign, defence, and security policy challenges of our time, to further its charitable purposes.
BRITAIN would need permission from the United States in order to use its nuclear deterrent, experts say, as the government goes forward with a £71 billion purchase of nuke-carrying US jets.
And increasing Britain’s nuclear arms stock will tie the country to President Donald Trump’s foreign policy goals, which disarmament campaigners say could bring us closer to the brink of disaster.
Speaking at an event organised by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in London on Saturday, experts, campaigners, and politicians condemned Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer’s pledge to buy at least 12 F15-A jets.
The planes, capable of carrying so-called tactical nuclear bombs, were not “properly costed” when the government first laid out the deal, only later revealing that their price was some £71 billion, CND general secretary Sophie Bolt said.
Describing Sir Keir’s “mad scramble” to increase spending after Mr Trump requested Nato members increase arms expenditure to 5 per cent of their GDP, Ms Bolt said: “There is a blank-cheque approach to nuclear weapons.
“There was no real proper costing for how much this would be. The health sector is constantly having to save here, save there. Whereas the [Ministry of Defence] will later just say: ‘Oh sorry, we’ve overspent.’
“This will not make us safer. They are US fighter jets. All the money is going to the US. And the planes launch US nuclear bombs, so that means they are basically under Nato command, meaning they are under the US nuclear umbrella of Nato.
“It’s the US that decides when and where these bombs will be dropped. And we are concerned that Trump is going to be gung-ho for these bombs.”
Discussing the planes’ so-called tactical nuclear bombs, she said: “They make the threat of nuclear war being made much more likely and the British government is totally at the heart of this.”
Okopi Ajonye, a researcher at Nuclear Information Service (NIS), agreed that there were many issues with the F35-A deal, saying the government “rushed into the decision” to buy the jets.
He said: “Acquiring these aircrafts was to show that the UK is contributing to NATO. That’s actually what drove this decision.”
Outlining the link between the genocide in Gaza and the campaign against nukes, Palestine Solidarity Campaign director Ben Jamal said the British public should “resist the process to renormalise Israel” after the October ceasefire.
And Your Party co-leader Jeremy Corbyn said: “The new nuclear weapons being promoted and proposed by the UK are intrinsically dangerous: the more weapons there are, the more danger there is that they will be used.
“Instead we should invest the funds into housing, health and education — and increasing, not cutting overseas spending.”
n the wake of the United Nations Security Council rubber-stamping Donald Trump’s plans for Gaza — including the creation of a so-called “board of peace” and a militarized “international stabilization force” — the very notion of rebuilding is slipping through the cracks, overshadowed by what is framed as the more urgent need to keep the peace in place. But peace manufactured this way is nothing but an expansion and deepening of the humanitarian crisis already unfolding.
Gaza City was already in a perpetual state of destruction and rebuilding long before the current genocide erupted. It has endured relentless aggression that reduced residential homes to rubble, wiped out entire neighborhoods, and massacred civilians. Five wars — 2008, 2012, 2014, 2021, and May 2023 — brutally dismantled Gaza’s infrastructure, economy, agriculture, education, and culture, leaving behind a consumed cycle of devastation.
Yet each time, once the bombardment stopped, reconstruction began, even if it was in a slow rhythm. Gaza would rise again — recovering, thriving even, in forms more vibrantly echoing and picturesque than before. But this genocide has unleashed an unprecedented scale of destruction, so vast and unrelenting that stumbling upon an intact home today feels like witnessing one of life’s seven miracles………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. https://truthout.org/articles/over-92-percent-of-homes-in-gaza-are-rubble-how-do-we-even-start-rebuilding/
In 1948 the US launched an airlift of food and supplies to keep Berliners fed and healthy during the Soviet blockade of allies from Berlin. During the airlift’s 15 months, US planes delivered over 1,800,000 tons of life sustaining material…a humanitarian gesture for the ages.
Twenty-six months ago the US embarked on another airlift. Alas, this one was not humanitarian. It was to further Israeli genocide that has largely obliterated Gaza’s 139 square miles. Even with the not so peaceful ceasefire, America keeps airlifting in supplies to keep killing and degrading hapless Palestinians trapped in the ruins. Over 300 slaughtered and 900 wounded since ceasefire began 45 days ago. Israel just received planeload number 1,000. Along with 150 cargo ships, the US air/sea lift has poured into Israel over 120,000 tons of advanced munitions, weapons, armored vehicles, medical equipment, communications systems, and personal protective equipment.
Besides destroying Gaza, US war material supports Israel’s destruction of Lebanon, Syria, Iran, Yemen, West Bank; even bombing imagined bad guys in US ally Qatar.
Whew! That takes a lot of US treasure that could be used to provide health care for all, end food insufficiency for 50 million sufferers, rebuild our crumbling infrastructure, convert to green energy, among other critically needed uplifting of the commons. How much treasure squandered on all that death and destruction? Over $21 Billion for Gaza alone with another $12 billion for Israel’s other bombing and terror campaigns.
Back in 1948 the beleaguered Berliners proclaimed the US Berlin airlift heaven sent. Seventy-seven years on, desperately starving and sick Palestinians not yet killed under American bombs dropped from US plans view the US genocidal airlift as arising from the lowest level of hell.
I go through Trump’s 28 point plan line by line and talk about the need for negotiations between Russia and Ukraine to start
Ukrainian media has now published what it says is the draft Trump 28-point peace plan for Ukraine. I decided to go through it line by line and offer my thoughts on the prospects for negotitions going forward.
What is clear, first, is that the draft is merely a starting point for negotiations. Ukraine absolutely needs to be engaged bilaterally with Russia in the hard work of the negotiation process, and that depends on Zelensky finally committing to it.
I feel he is in a weaker position to resist US efforts now he is mired in a corruption scandal at home. But I still feel European leaders wants to keep him stuck in the permanent loop, in which Ukraine needs peace but doesn’t want it, whereas for Russia, there is a desire for peace but no urgent need to settle.
I consider the draft document to be a helpful first start but will need a lot of work from both sides. Some of the clauses are specific to Russia and Ukraine, whereas some reach more widely into the international community, which makes for a confusion mish mash. Some conditions, military neutrality for Ukraine in political, will see off Zelensky’s hopes of reelection as President, after the war, in my view, which he will know and understand all too well.
A Washington Post story headlined the “White House Blew Past Legal Concerns in Deadly Strikes on Drug Boats,” reported that “There is no actual threat justifying self defense — there are not organized armed groups seeking to kill Americans.” The Post quoted a former senior official saying, “The question is, is it legal just to kill the guy if he’s not threatening to kill you … There are people who are simply uncomfortable with the president just declaring we’re at war with drug traffickers.”
For a more critical perspective on Venezuela, we turn to Venezuelanalysis.com and their conversation with Atilio Borón (Borón is an Argentine sociologist, political scientist, professor, and essayist, he holds a doctorate in Political Science from Harvard University), Their conversation examines the administration’s military expansion in the country. Some key takeaways include:
“Venezuela remains a strategic target … global oil markets are more strategic than ever, and geological surveys confirm that Venezuela holds the largest proven oil reserves in the world … greater even than those of Saudi Arabia!”
“Latin America has long been described as a continent in dispute, and today that dispute is sharper than ever. … What we are witnessing now, however, is an open display of brute military force.”
“This is the largest imperialist air–naval military buildup in our region since the October 1962 Missile Crisis.”
“New actors have emerged with decisive weight, fundamentally reshaping geopolitics … China is here to stay.”
I also recommend checking out this graphic also from Venezuelanalysis.com — it details the scale of weaponry in the region:
Here’s the reporting from CNN on the situation, including Trump’s discussion about attacking Mexico, with a chilling interview at the end between Jake Tapper and GOP House member Carlos Gimenez.
From yesterday, former ambassador James Story discussed the situation. I’ll add that it still doesn’t pass the smell test. It feels like we’re being pushed toward a conflict — framed through what the former ambassador called Venezuela’s relationship with our “strategic competitors.” At this point in world history, can’t we find a way to get along? Naive or not, I don’t want the world to melt down.
Of course I’m posting this video from a mainstream source, but where are the questions for our leaders and former leaders that push back — even slightly — against the status quo narrative? Honestly, it brings me back to an old classroom discussion about nuclear war: If a nation is treated as an enemy, or labeled a “strategic competitor,” and you make it clear you want them weakened or destroyed, why wouldn’t they stockpile weapons? Or, more simply put: if your neighbor hates you and has an axe, maybe you go get an axe too.
I guess I’m still wishful enough to hope that the United States could be the bigger person and put the axe down — especially when, in our case, we have the Fifth Fleet. Here is former Ambassador Story:
Since Russia began its SMO in 2022, Western media have repeatedly accused Russia of an “unprovoked invasion” and of “war crimes”.
Honest observers, however, state that Russia has acted with considerable restraint in Ukraine—targeting military and logistics sites, not civilians—and remind of Ukraine’s eight years of warring on the civilians in the Donbass prior to the commencement of the SMO in 2022. Further, they emphasize that once again, in December 2021, Russia made clear its concerns in hopes of a diplomatic solution. These were, again, steadily ignored by Western governments and media.
Likewise ignored is Ukraine’s deliberate, shelling and drone striking of medical and rescue personnel. Under international law, medical and rescue personnel and their vehicles are protected and must not be targeted. Ukraine and its ally Israel are guilty of routinely, deliberately, targeting medics and other rescuers, maiming and killing them. These are war crimes, but the West remains mute, instead concocting stories of “Russian war crimes” in the face of Ukraine’s very real ones.
In September 2019, when I first visited the Donbass, in a village in the Gorlovka region I met an elderly resident of living alone in a home falling apart from previous Ukrainian shelling. During our conversation she said that ambulances wouldn’t be able to reach her if she was injured by the shelling, it would be too dangerous for them to try.
I was likewise told by Zaitsevo administration that ambulances could not reach the villagers.
“The paramedics don’t go farther than this building; it’s too dangerous. If somebody needs medical care near the front lines, someone has to go in their own car and take them to a point where medics can then take them to Gorlovka. The soldiers also help civilians who are injured. A woman died due to huge blood loss because no one could reach her house to take her away in time. She was injured in the shelling and bled to death.”
This is one sordid reality for civilians living in villages heavily bombarded by Ukraine.
But the medics heroically do go to potentially dangerous areas to rescue civilians, and they have for years been deliberated targeted by Ukrainian forces when doing so.
In 2022, I interviewed numerous medics and Emergency Services workers in Donetsk regions, and subsequently made a short video about Ukraine’s deliberate targeting of rescue personnel.
The windows of the building had already been blown out and were sand-bagged to attempt to protect the workers. The Chief of the centre, Andrey Levchenko, told me how five days prior his office had been impacted with shrapnel from the shelling. He thankfully had just stepped of his office before the blast and was not injured or killed.
The day prior to my visit, when out on a call to rescue civilians trapped in a building set ablaze by Ukrainian shelling, rescuers were shelled, resulting in one of them being hospitalized in critical condition.
The survivors told me that, prior to the shelling, they saw a drone overhead, which makes it credible to believe that Ukraine deliberately targeted the rescuers.
Levchenko told me that Ukraine routinely double and triple strikes rescuers.
“As soon as we go out to help people the shelling resumes.” The double or triple strike tactic often means that rescuers who have come to help those injured in the first strike are then themselves targeted, depriving civilians in need of urgent medical assistance as a result.
I also spoke with Sergei Neka, Director of the Department of Fire and Rescue Forces of the Ministry of Emergency Situations. He reiterated what I’d been told.
“Our units arrive at the scene of the accident and Ukraine begins to shell it. A lot of equipment has been damaged and destroyed.”
Two female medics I interviewed told me coming under repeated Ukrainian shelling is normal. They spoke of their fear, bu said, “How about the patients? They’re hurt and even more scared, they’re waiting for our help. If I don’t help, who will help if everyone runs away?”
By September 2022, Ukrainian forces targeted and killed 19 Donbass rescuers, injuring over 50 more.
Ukraine continues killing medics
Fast forward to the present. Following are just some of Ukraine’s more recent attacks on medics and other rescue workers.
On August 11, a Ukrainian drone targeted an ambulance in Gorlovka, killing two medics and seriously injuring the driver.
In May, a Ukrainian drone strike killed two Emergency workers who had come to the site of a first drone strike in Lugansk. In an Israeli-style second strike, Ukraine targeted the rescuers deliberately after the arrived at the scene.
In March, Russian Emergencies Ministry employees came to extinguish a car on fire following a Ukrainian drone strike in Gorlovka. A Ukrainian drone targeted them, injuring the deputy head of the firefighting service and damaging a fire truck.
There are tragically many more such instances which I could list. However, the point is that it is beyond clear that Ukraine’s shelling and drone targeting of Russian medics, firefighters and other rescuers has been a deliberate policy since before 2022.
It is also clear that Western concern for medics allegedly targeted elsewhere (think the fake rescuers of the al-Qaeda aligned White Helmets in Syria during the global war on Syria) will never extend to any concern for Russian rescuers actually targeted by Ukraine.
JERUSALEM — Israel will accelerate production of Iron Dome components with “billions of dollars” of U.S. aid money, the Israeli Defense Ministry said Nov. 20.
The announcement comes amid a tense ceasefire in Gaza and Lebanon, as Hezbollah continues to arm and strengthen itself in Lebanon and Hamas declares that it has no intention of giving up weapons. Israel used Iron Dome interceptors to intercept thousands of rockets fired from these two fronts during the two-year “Iron Swords” war.
Government officials here did not specify the exact amount of the purchase, but its Defense Ministry noted that the it will be made from the special U.S. aid package approved by Congress in April 2024 under the Biden administration, totaling at $8.7 billion.
This is the second purchase of interceptors from Rafael by the Israeli Defense Ministry in the past year that from that pot of money.
Israeli officials have said Iron Dome interceptors caught thousands of rockets fired from Gaza and Lebanon.
Iron Dome is an air defense system that intercepts short- and medium-range rockets and missiles, mortars, drones, helicopters and more. The Israeli Air Force claims that since the defense system began its operational service in 2011 it has shown a 95% interception success rate.
Rafael Advanced Defense Systems is the prime contractor for the Iron Dome defense system, collaborating with ELTA Systems – a division in Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI), and mPrest Systems.
The government shutdown ended with a failure to solve the problem of steeply rising health insurance premiums.
The GOP’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” which slashed programs like Medicaid and SNAP to fund tax cuts for the wealthy and a $1 trillion Pentagon, allows tax credits that reduce these health costs for ordinary people to expire at the end of this year.
As a result, millions of Americans who receive health insurance through the Affordable Care Act marketplace will see their health insurance premiums double (or worse). Democrats demanded a fix for the problem, but ultimately ended the shutdown without one.
But even in the midst of the shutdown, Senators were still busy. They approved a $32 billion increase for the Pentagon on a bipartisan basis, approving the increase by a vote of 77-20 as part of a larger bill, the National Defense Authorization Act……………………….
The Senate’s $32 billion increase comes on top of the previously passed $156 billion increase from the president’s Big Bad Bill. That already promised to push military spending over the $1 trillion mark — by a significant margin, the most we’ve ever spent on the Pentagon during peacetime.
The Senate’s additional $32 billion adds insult to injury. Much of that sum would go to shipbuilding and buying more F-35s, fighter jets which are considered outrageously expensive and often criticized as ineffective………………………….
But it’s not over — the House and Senate still need to reconcile their Pentagon funding levels. While that will likely happen behind closed doors, members of Congress will still be receptive to calls from their constituents. It’s not too late to defeat that $32 billion.
The Israeli military launched strikes across Gaza on Wednesday, killing at least 28 Palestinians, including 17 women and children, as it continues to violate the US-backed ceasefire deal.
The Israeli military claimed that its forces came under fire in Khan Younis, southern Gaza, but provided no evidence, and according to Israeli media, there were no casualties among IDF troops, and the attack occurred on the Israeli-occupied side of the yellow line. Hamas later denied that its fighters fired on Israeli troops, and called the claim “a weak and exposed attempt to justify their ongoing crimes and violations.” Following the alleged incident, the IDF unleashed strikes on Gaza City.
The Palestinian news agency WAFA reported that one Israeli strike targeted the Ministry of Awqaf and Religious Affairs in southeastern Gaza City, killing at least 10 people, including two women and three children. Al Jazeerareported that a family of five in Gaza City’s Zeitoun neighborhood was wiped out by Israeli strikes.
In southern Gaza, WAFA reported that at least four Palestinians were killed by Israeli strikes on the al-Mawasi tent camp on the coast. The news agency also said that an Israeli attack on a neighborhood of Khan Younis killed two children.
The Israeli escalation came two days after the UN Security Council passed a resolution affirming President Trump’s so-called “ceasefire deal” that places the Gaza Strip under the control of the US-led board. Since the ceasefire was supposed to go into effect on October 10, the Trump administration has backed Israel’s continued attacks on Palestinians.
Gaza’s Health Ministry said earlier in the day that since October 10, Israeli forces have killed 280 Palestinians and injured 670. The strikes on Wednesday bring the total death toll during the “ceasefire” to more than 300.
Drop Site News reports that the IDF quietly moved part of the “yellow line” which divides Gaza 300 meters forward, and then started shelling Palestinians for being on the “wrong side” of the line.
They just keep finding new ways to carve off more pieces of Gaza and murder more Palestinians.
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Haaretz has a disturbing story out about a 14 year-old Palestinian boy who was waiting for his school bus in the West Bank on a quiet street eating a cookie, when suddenly a bunch of IDF vehicles pulled up and a soldier shot him directly in the face with a teargas canister. Then they sped off.
Plans already announced to ‘reconnect society with the military’ include the expansion of youth cadet forces, education work in schools to develop understanding among young people of the armed forces, and broader public outreach events to outline the threats and the need for greater military spending despite increased social challenges.
Following the government’s commitment to increase military spending and the publication of the Strategic Defence Review (SDR) in early June, the military industry has been keenly awaiting the release of the government’s Defence Investment Plan (DIP) which will layout military spending plans and other details for the rest of this parliament. Numerous reports have indicated that many planned projects are ‘on hold’ until the plan is finalised and published.
Defence minister Luke Pollard told MPs in June that the DIP will “cover the full scope of the defence programme, from people and operations to equipment and infrastructure”. Time and again ministers have promised that the plan will be unveiled in the autumn and so this now seems likely to be soon after the Budget of 26 November (although such promises are of course routinely broken).
How much?!
UK military spending was £60.2bn in 24/25 (around 2.4% of GDP), up from £42.4bn in 2020/21. In February 2025, the Starmer government committed to further increase military spending raising the budget to 2.5% of GDP by 2027 (estimated at around an extra £6bn per year – roughly the amount cut from the UK’s Aid budget) with ‘an ambition’ to reach 3% by the next parliament. At the NATO summit in June 2025, however, Starmer upped the ante, with a pledge to reach a ‘goal’ of 5% (3.5% on ‘core defence’ (estimated to be an extra £30bn per year) with 1.5% (around £40bn per year) on ‘defence-related areas such as resilience and security’) by 2029. Subsequently the government said it “expected to reach at least 4.1% of GDP in 2027”.
‘Whole of Society’
Importantly, alongside the increase in military spending, the Strategic Defence Review argued that ‘defence’ is now to be seen as a ‘whole of society’ effort and this may well be re-emphasised when DIP is published.
Plans already announced to ‘reconnect society with the military’ include the expansion of youth cadet forces, education work in schools to develop understanding among young people of the armed forces, and broader public outreach events to outline the threats and the need for greater military spending despite increased social challenges.
And to top this off, the government is deploying the hoary old chestnut that military spending is good for the economy (despite such claims being persistently and thoroughly debunked).
Trailed Plans
While specific spending details remain under wraps, government announcements since the publication of the SDR have indicated some of the broad areas which will receive more funding:
Drones, Drones, Drones. In the Spring Statement, Chancellor Rachel Reeves stated that “a minimum of 10% of the MoD’s equipment budget is to be spent on novel technologies including drones and AI enabled technology.” Defence Minister Alistair Cairns indicated in July that there would be around £4bn spending on uncrewed systems – ‘Drones, drones and drones‘ as he put it on twitter.
To the ever-expanding list of UK drone development programmes, many of which are seeking funding decisions as part of the DIP, we can add Project Nyx which seeks to pair a new drone with the British Army’s Apache Helicopter.
Perhaps most significantly in this area, publication of the Defence Investment Plan may illuminate UK plans for a ‘loyal wingman’ type drone – now described by the MoD as an Autonomous Collaborative Platform (ACP) – to accompany the UK’s planned new fighter aircraft, Tempest. While some funding has already been allocated to develop smaller Tier 1 and 2 ACP’s, plans for the more strategic and no doubt costlier level Tier 3 drone have been placed on the back burner pending funding decisions. Will the UK go it alone and build a new armed drone (as no doubt BAE Systems hopes) or will it buy Australia’s Ghost Bat or one of the two drones currently competing for the US contract?
Integrated targeting web. Alongside new drones, the UK is developing a ‘digital targeting web’ to link, as MoD-speak puts it, ‘sensors’, ‘deciders’ and ‘effectors’. In other words commanders supported by AI will be networked with ‘next generation’ drones, satellites and other systems to identify targets to be destroyed by a variety of novel and traditional military systems. The aim is to rapidly speed up the time between target identification and attack. As Drone Wars has reported, several tests of various elements of this system (such as ASGARD) have been tested and it is likely that further funding for this programme will be part of the DIP.
Alongside this, there is also a desire to persuade some of the newer drone companies to open factories here in the UK. While Tekever has announced it will open a new site in Swindon, Anduril and Helsing seem to be keeping their power dry while awaiting news that they have secured government contracts before committing to setting up premises. Both companies have, however, set up UK subsidiaries and have launched PR campaigns to persuade ministers and officials of the efficacy of their products.
While drones are key for these companies, a huge increase in UK spending on military AI systems is also in their sights.
An AI ‘Manhattan Project’ endeavour. Despite continued and significant concerns about the military use of AI, particularly in ‘the kill chain’, ministers, officials and commanders seem convinced that a rapid integration of AI into all areas of the armed forces is urgent and vital. Just before stepping down as Chief of the Defence Staff in September, Admiral Sir Tony Radakin put his weight behind calls from Helsing co-founder Gundbert Scherf for a “Manhattan-Project for AI defence”. Arguing such a plan “would not cost the earth” (but putting it at around $90bn!) Scherf suggested four areas to concentrate on: a) masses of AI-enabled defensive drones deployed on NATO’s eastern flank; b) deploying AI-enabled combat drones to dominate airspace; c) large scale deployment of ai-enabled underwater drones/sensors; and finally, d) replacing Europe’s ageing satellites with (you guessed it) ai-enabled surveillance and targeting satellites.
Anduril is also not shy of lobbying in its own interests. Anduril UK CEO Richard Drake toldThe House, Parliament’s in-house magazine, that Anduril US was “very much happy with the direction [the SDR is] taking” but went on to publicly push to reduce regulation on the use of drones in UK airspace:
“For UK PLC to get better and better and better in drones and autonomous systems, they have to always look at their regulatory rules as well. Companies like ours and other UK companies can design and build these really cool things, but if we can’t test them well enough in the UK, that’s going to be a problem.”
Winners and Losers
While wholesale adoption of Helsing’s plan seems unlikely, there seems little doubt that the new AI-focused military companies will be among the various military companies who will be the lucky beneficiaries of the UK’s DIP. Meanwhile, the rest of us seem assured of spending cuts and tax rises.
Despite a November 2024 truce between Israel and Hezbollah, Israeli forces have killed at least 121 civilians, including 21 women and 16 children, in Lebanon.
A series of Israeli airstrikes on targets in southern Lebanon have killed at least 17 people and wounded more than 100 others in recent days, including 13 people—mostly children, according to local officials—massacred Tuesday at a camp for Palestinian refugees.
Officials and residents said that the Israeli strike on Ain al-Hilweh near Sidon struck an area where children were playing soccer. Ain al-Hilweh is the largest camp in Lebanon housing refugees from the Nakba—the ethnic cleansing and terror campaign through which the modern Israeli state was founded—and their descendants.
The Israel Defense Forces said it targeted members of the Palestinian resistance group Hamas “operating in a training compound” in the camp.
Hamas rejected the IDF claim as “fabrication and lies.”
The strike was the deadliest IDF attack in Lebanon since Israeli troops shot and killed at least 24 people including 6 women and injured 134 others in January.
The IDF carried out subsequent attacks, including a Wednesday morning drone strike on a vehicle in Al-Tayri that reportedly killed two civilians including the town’s treasurer and wounded at least 10 university students. Israeli forces also bombed a residential area of the town of Tair Filsay in Tyre district. It is unknown if anyone was harmed in the strike.
Often overshadowed by its genocidal war on Gaza—which has left at least 249,600 people dead, maimed, or missing; millions more forcibly displaced, starved, or sickened; and the coastal strip in ruins—Israel’s bombardment and invasion of Lebanon has killed more than 4,000 people since October 2023, according to the Lebanese Ministry of Public Health. This figure includes at least 790 women and 316 children. More than 16,600 others have been wounded. Upward of 1.2 million Lebanese were also forcibly displaced by Israel’s attacks and invasion.
This, despite a November 2024 truce between Israel and Lebanon-based Hezbollah. Since then, Israeli forces have killed at least 121 civilians, including 21 women and 16 children, in its northern neighbor—which Israel has invaded or bombed numerous times since 1948, killing and wounding tens of thousands of Lebanese and Palestinians.
Israeli forces also bombed the Qizan an-Najjar area, south of Khan Younis in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, killing at least one Palestinian and wounding a mother and her child, according to local officials, who said at least 280 Palestinians have been killed and 650 others wounded in nearly 400 Israeli violations of the October ceasefire with Hamas.
Walt Zlotow, West Suburban Peace Coalition, Glen Ellyn IL , 20 Nov 25
Israel’s genocidal ethnic cleansing of Gaza is obvious to all with a moral conscious. Killing upwards of 100,000 Palestinians under 50,000 tons of US bombs obliterating Gaza’s 139 square miles is easy to process. Denying food, water, medicine causing degradation and death to the remaining 2,200,000 Palestinians reinforces that genocidal reality.
But many remain unaware of Israel’s relentless policy of ethnically cleansing the 3.3 million Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem annexed by Israel in 1967. Israel is positively gleeful about bringing the West Bank entirely into Greater Israel for Israelis only. In July the Israeli Knesset passed a symbolic motion that the West Bank is “an inseparable part of the Land of Israel, the historical, cultural and spiritual homeland of the Jewish people” and that “Israel has the natural, historical and legal right to all of the territories of the Land of Israel.”
Folding the West Bank and East Jerusalem into Greater Israel, with or without (preferably without) those pesky Palestinians, has been the Israeli dream since that illegal 1967 annexation. A decade later Prime Minister Began initiated an inexorable settlement policy to implement that dream. Jewish settlement rose from just a few thousand in the late 70’s, to over half a million by the October, 2023 Hamas attack in Gaza.
The now two year Gaza genocide coincided with accelerated settlements, attacks on Palestinians, their homes, villages, harvests making life horrendous for the West Bank and East Jerusalem’s 3,300,000 Palestinians. Israeli settlement now approaches 750,000. With the world fixated on the horror perpetrated in Gaza, West Bank ethnic cleaning proceeds under the radar.
Israel pretends to oppose Israeli settler violence when in fact they both ignore an encourage it. Case in point is Zvi Sukkot, former head of settler terrorist organization The Revolt who had been marginalized by the Israeli government. Sukkot was arrested in 2010 for possible involvement in a mosque arson in the West Bank but released. By early 2023 he joined the Israeli Knesset. After the Hamas attack Prime Minister Netanyahu appointed him chair of the Knesset Subcommittee for Judea and Samara (Israel’s name for the West Bank). The leap from heading up a terrorist group to heading up a governmental agency tasked with Palestinian removal tells you everything about Israel’s agenda for the West Bank.
Is Israel determined to drive out West Bank Palestinians to fold that Palestinian land into Greater Israel? With America’s unrelenting support you can bank on it.
Nuclear “tests” are best conceptualized as environmental disasters with long-lasting consequences that are still felt nowadays, particularly in Oceania, as well as Central Asia.
nation states began to “export” nuclear testing to colonial areas, where vulnerable local populations faced the burden of contamination.
With weapons testing comes a history of global contamination and forgotten victims
Japan Times,By Maxime Polleri. The Diplomat, Nov 17, 2025
Recently, U.S. President Donald Trump made headlines when he told the Pentagon to resume testing of U.S. nuclear weapons, citing his concerns that countries like China or Russia had supposedly conducted secret underground nuclear weapons tests and that the United States was falling behind.
While the American president’s post created much controversy around the nature of such tests, the U.S. energy secretary later explained that Trump’s planned tests would not include any actual nuclear explosions, but would encompass “system tests” to verify the state of American nuclear arsenals.
While the fact that the United States does not plan to detonate nuclear weapons is reassuring, the country, as well as China and Russia, have a long history of experimenting with real nuclear weapons to measure the performance of their devastating arsenals.
Throughout the 20th century, nuclear testing has taken different forms, such as above-ground nuclear weapon tests, underwater tests and underground tests. The 1963 Partial Test Ban Treaty prohibited atmospheric, outer space and underwater tests, while some nation states later declared moratoria on underground tests.
Nowadays, nuclear “tests” are done via computers or laboratory scale experiments and do not include actual explosions. However, understanding former nuclear experiments as “tests” is highly misleading, since each atomic and thermonuclear explosion throughout the 20th century released a tremendous quantity of long-lasting radioactive pollutants. Nuclear “tests” are best conceptualized as environmental disasters with long-lasting consequences that are still felt nowadays, particularly in Oceania, as well as Central Asia.
In the early 1950s, the United States began to test numerous nuclear weapons at the Nevada Test Site, releasing large quantities of radioactive fallout that afflicted its own population. People exposed to such fallout became known as “downwinders” and faced a plethora of health problems.
Aware of the danger of bombing themselves, many nation states began to “export” nuclear testing to colonial areas, where vulnerable local populations faced the burden of contamination. Testing nuclear weapons in such locations was often a strategic choice, since many of the indigenous local population were already invisible from the public scrutiny or did not have the means to speak back to the dominant power that controlled their territories.
For instance, in March 1954, the U.S. tested a thermonuclear weapon, Castle Bravo, in the Bikini Atoll of the Marshall Islands, an archipelago in Micronesia that was turned into U.S. military bases after World War II. The nuclear fallout heavily impacted residents of the atolls, who were later forced to evacuate their beloved home.
In fact, the scope of the fallout was so powerful that a Japanese fishing boat, the Daigo Fukuryu Maru, was contaminated by the test, resulting in cases of acute radiation syndrome for the fishing crew and the death of its radioman.
Much like the United States, France also conducted atmospheric and underwater tests in French Polynesia, resulting in the contamination of many atolls, like Moruroa. Nuclear tests in the Asia-Pacific region created a tremendous legacy of harms, which included the destruction of coral reefs and the death of marine ecosystems, but also forced displacements, contamination of the food chain, destruction of the social fabric and health issues.
A similar pattern of exporting nuclear tests to vulnerable populations was also apparent in Central and East Asia. For instance, the Soviets repeatedly tested their nuclear weapons in the Semipalatinsk Test Site, a region that was historically dominated by ethnic Kazakhs. Nowadays, as anthropologist Magdalena Stawkowski highlights, Kazakhstan has inherited the remnants of one of the world’s most contaminated landscapes, dealing with contested health issues, precarious economy and marginalization.
Moreover, the People’s Republic of China has historically tested its nuclear weapons in the region of Lop Nur, leading Uyghurs, a Muslim minority ethnic group of northwestern China, to voice concerns about the long-term impact of residual radiation. In many of these instances, issues of national security — such as the health and well-being of local populations — were sacrificed for issues of international security.
Ironically, in each of these cases, humans tested nuclear weapons to prepare for a war that never came — globally contaminating ourselves in the process.
Far from being mere experiments, the detonations of nuclear weapons during such tests are best understood as a global catastrophe. And while a moratorium on nuclear testing ought to be applauded, many people are still grappling with the legacy of past nuclear tests.
The recent movie “A House of Dynamite” has brought up fresh fears of a nuclear war, as well as numerous discussions surrounding nuclear deterrence theories and mutually assured destruction. Instead of focusing our time, energy and resources on hypothetical strikes that happen in science fiction or game theory, we should delve deeper into the poisoned heritages of the real explosions that occurred in the 20th century and prompt efforts to revitalize communities that are still suffering from its harm.
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