I think it is a wise thing for UK to do to cut down its defense expenditure. The population of disenfranchised people in UK is growing and they should be the top priority of UK government.
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Those assets have instead been depleted and squandered. Britain has run down its armed forces: its defence budget has slipped from being the world’s fourth- biggest to its sixth (see chart). The ending of NATO’s combat mission in Afghanistan at the end of last year supposedly drew a line under difficult counter-insurgency campaigns in distant places. Any remaining appetite for adventures abroad was sated by the 2011 intervention in Libya, which drew attention to dwindling military resources and the perils of plunging in without having a follow-up plan.
Since then Britain has become ever more unwilling to deploy the diplomatic and military resources it does possess. For a country that has long been respected for the skills of its diplomats, the professionalism and dash of its armed forces, the global outlook of its political leaders and its ability to punch above its weight, the decline has been unmistakable.
Hosting NATO’s summit in Wales last September, Mr Cameron cajoled other countries into pledging to follow Britain’s example and spend 2% of their GDP on defence—as all are supposed to do. Yet in December his chancellor of the exchequer, George Osborne, was announcing spending plans for the next parliament that implied not only that Britain would fall just short of the NATO target in the coming fiscal year (to 1.95%, despite including war pensions in the defence budget for the first time) but that it would go on falling.
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http://www.economist.com/news/brita...d-forces-and-its-diplomatic-resources-despair
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Those assets have instead been depleted and squandered. Britain has run down its armed forces: its defence budget has slipped from being the world’s fourth- biggest to its sixth (see chart). The ending of NATO’s combat mission in Afghanistan at the end of last year supposedly drew a line under difficult counter-insurgency campaigns in distant places. Any remaining appetite for adventures abroad was sated by the 2011 intervention in Libya, which drew attention to dwindling military resources and the perils of plunging in without having a follow-up plan.
Since then Britain has become ever more unwilling to deploy the diplomatic and military resources it does possess. For a country that has long been respected for the skills of its diplomats, the professionalism and dash of its armed forces, the global outlook of its political leaders and its ability to punch above its weight, the decline has been unmistakable.
Hosting NATO’s summit in Wales last September, Mr Cameron cajoled other countries into pledging to follow Britain’s example and spend 2% of their GDP on defence—as all are supposed to do. Yet in December his chancellor of the exchequer, George Osborne, was announcing spending plans for the next parliament that implied not only that Britain would fall just short of the NATO target in the coming fiscal year (to 1.95%, despite including war pensions in the defence budget for the first time) but that it would go on falling.
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http://www.economist.com/news/brita...d-forces-and-its-diplomatic-resources-despair