Will Donald Trump come to UK's defence if we're drawn into war with Russia?

When researchers from the Baltic states sent a private satellite over Russia’s Pskov airbase this June, the burn marks were still visible in the asphalt from a Ukrainian drone attack the previous August that destroyed two massive Russian cargo planes.

The imagery – and others of 23 nearby bases in Russia and its ally Belarus – suggested Nato’s most exposed Baltic members Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania had seen at least a temporary drop in immediate military threat following Vladimir Putin’s full-scale Ukraine invasion in February 2022.

But while much of the military equipment seen at those locations prior to the invasion appears to have been sent south to support Russia, the satellite footage also showed new facilities at several of those places – including ammunition storage that could one day support a new Russian attack, this time into Nato.

When journalists showed the images to Estonia’s former top military commander Martin Herem, his response was simple: “This isn’t good at all,” he muttered to himself. Amongst the bases that have restocked their equipment include one of Russia’s largest military centres in the town of Luga, just 75 miles from the Estonian border.

According to researchers, units permanently based there include Iskander missile systems which can hit anywhere in Estonia.

Should war come to Eastern Europe, British troops in arguably the most exposed elements of Nato’s Enhanced Forward Presence forces there might well find themselves under fire from those rockets or similar from the start. It is a danger many in Europe worry may have become more acute this week with Donald Trump’s US election win, throwing into question America’s commitment to the defence of Europe and its other allies.

How to tackle that will now be top of the agenda for the UK’s current Strategic Defence Review, chaired by former Labour defence secretary at NATO secretary general Lord George Robertson, former general Richard Barrons and Fiona Hill, a UK-born US citizen who served as a senior Russia specialist in the Bush and Trump administrations.

After criticism of PM Sir Keir Starmer and Chancellor Rachel Reeves for tax rises in this month’s budget, they will be nervous of any new spending commitments to boost military spending immediately to 2.5 percent of gross domestic product, something their manifesto pledged to do but did not provide a timescale for.

With Trump and those around him claiming allies who do not step up in their own defence may lose US protection, they may not have a choice. But even if spending does increase, Britain faces a string of tough choices and considerable military gaps that it now needs to fill, funding not just planned projects including new Dreadnought ballistic missile submarines but also new requirements including drone and counter-trend systems and much better air defences.

When Starmer flies to Estonia to meet the Baltic, Nordic and Dutch leaders next week – all part of the UK-led Joint Expeditionary Force designed to deploy quickly in a crisis should NATO not be able to – he will likely come under pressure from the others to improve Britain’s game.

Yesterday [Thursday], German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius announced he was flying to Paris to meet his French counterpart to discuss how Europe might respond. Britain will need to play its part in those discussions – but at the moment, its influence looks set to be outgunned by others such as Poland, which has ramped up defence spending to 4.5 percent of GDP.

What worries European nations is that Trump will impose a peace deal on Ukraine that leaves it unable to defend itself. If that happens, it may be up to European states to give Ukraine the protection, weaponry and long-term support to endure as a nation – and either way, Russia may come looking for another target to re-establish its damaged reputation militarily.

Putin has rarely expressed a desire to control the Baltic states or Poland in the way he has repeatedly over Ukraine, but analysts and officials say he might grab the chance to seize terrain if he believed by doing so he could break up the Nato alliance and secure an easy victory. In Eastern Europe, some believe he might be particularly prone to do so if the US was divided by a simultaneous war with China, most likely sparked by a Taiwan invasion.

US officials worry that might come as soon as 2027, with Chinese leader Xi Jinping reported to have ordered his military to be ready to do so by that date. That has helped spark a wider bout of military preparations in both Asia and Europe, a very different threat to any faced by the UK in recent history.

Should a wider war erupt, the selfish good news for Britain is that Russia’s priority targets would likely be much closer to the front.

But Russia might simultaneously strike the UK directly with cruise missiles, hoping to cripple key bases such as RAF Marham or Lossiemouth – or even military headquarters such as the Ministry of Defence in Whitehall or Northwood in North London. While any such attack might be limited in scope, its likely aim would be to push Britain to walk out on its allies.

British credibility is already slightly tarnished. As things stand, the UK leads several hundred troops, the majority of Nato’s battle group in Estonia, as well as a small detachment of troops attached to US forces in Poland. But both Starmer and his Conservative predecessor Rishi Sunak declined to follow the example of Germany in Lithuania and Canada in Latvia, both of which committed two years ago to almost treble the size of forces there to build full-strength brigades.

Unlike Britain, neither Canada nor Germany yet reaches the Nato defence spending target of two percent of GDP – but by prioritising putting more personnel and equipment in Russia’s potential target area, they are arguably delivering rather more protection than the UK.

Earlier this month, the UK announced it would put 4 Light Brigade in York on standby to reinforce Estonia in a crisis – but that approach relies on getting advance warning of a Russian attack. Given the close proximity of Russian forces to the border of the Baltic states, that cannot be relied upon.

The Jackal light reconnaissance vehicles operated by 4 Brigade are better than many other army vehicles to vanish into Estonia’s forests. But to be effective, they would need to be there first. Forward deploying much more equipment to Estonia for UK troops to use in time of war would be one fast path to build resilience fast, according to former army officer and Royal United Services Institute European defence specialist Ed Arnold.

“The question is whether we step up,” he said. As well as immediate forces on the ground, he said Britain needed to considerably up its industrial capability to build stocks such as artillery and missiles, as did its European allies – a process that has started but been almost immediately overwhelmed by ongoing demand for weapons for Ukraine.

Britain, Germany, France and others have committed to increasing their defence industrial base, but movement is extremely slow – and while defence chiefs say they hope new artificial intelligence enables drones may plug the gap, that technology remains largely unproven.

In May, Polish intelligence briefed publicly they believed Russia already had the forces available to launch a limited land grab in the Baltic states, specifically mentioning the majority city of Narva on the Estonia-Russian border, the only majority Russian-speaking made a settlement in NATO territory.

The only thing restraining Putin from such action, Polish official said, was his concern that doing so would trigger an overwhelming US-led conventional military response. The new US Trump administration might put that in doubt, at least unless Europe ups its act still further.

Increasing UK forces in Estonia is one fairly obvious choice, as is beefing up the capability of other British army formations allocated to NATO’s strategic reserve. Britain 16 Air Assault Brigade remains another potent capability, capable of being thrown at speed to any troublespot.

But they will face competition from other resources. The UK has put huge effort into building its two aircraft carriers, although in reality the vertical takeoff F-35 Lightning Joint Strike Fighters might be more survivable and effective if removed from the carriers and instead operated from mobile locations in Norway, Finland and Sweden.

Then there is arguably the toughest choice of all: how to balance defence of the UK mainland against Britain’s obligations to its European and wider allies. That brings tough choices on what forces to keep in Europe and what to free up for Asia and the Middle East, as well as where to focus extremely limited UK air defences.

Britain’s ballistic missile submarines are intended to deter Russia from striking Britain with nuclear force – but that does not necessarily preclude Moscow using a smaller number of conventional weapons, still capable of causing significant damage to their targets. Army anti-aircraft missiles and a naval destroyer were sent to London in 2012 to protect the Summer Olympics, but up until recently the need to permanently defend UK locations had barely been considered

Ever since the Cold War ended, Britain’s air defences have been primarily provided by RAF fighter jets – initially the Tornado, now primarily the Eurofighter Typhoon, potentially reinforced with newer F-35s. Until recently, they were considered enough to deal with likely threats such as hijacked airliners attempting 9/11 style attacks or escorting the occasional flights of Russian bombers that approach UK airspace from time to time.

The British Army and Royal Navy also have their own air defence systems, including the Sea Viper long-range air defence missile mounted on Royal Navy warships and the slightly shorter range Land and Sea Ceptor batteries that have entered widespread UK service in the 2020s. But these were designed to protect deployed forces such as an aircraft carrier battle group or armoured division.

“The new systems we have are good,” says John Foreman, a former Royal Navy captain who served as defence attache to Moscow in the early 2020s. “They just aren’t enough of them.”

Already, there are some calls – including from former Conservative ministers such as ex-Defence Secretary Penny Morduant for dramatically stepped up domestic air defences along the lines of Israel’s “Iron Dome”. Given Britain’s limited resources, that would likely horrify Britain’s European allies, likely unachievable without pulling UK military capability from mainland Europe to prioritise itself.

Nor is such a system to protect the UK mainland alone a sensible use of resources.

Britain faces no similar threat to that of tens of thousands of short-range rockets arrayed against its territory from Gaza and southern Lebanon, the primary danger against which Iron Dome was built. The UK is also out of the range of short-range Russian rockets such as Iskander – although they would be a definite threat to UK and allied units moving up through Germany in Poland in any actual war.

The fact any UK government in time of war would have to choose whether to send air defences forward or protect the mainland points to just how challenging the coming era is.

The best way to avoid a war taking place is to be much better to fight it, and neither Starmer and his government nor Conservative leader Kemi Badenock and her frontbench have yet made it clear that they will hold that course.

That is of course a choice. In the post-Brexit era, there will likely be mounting calls that Britain should perhaps follow Trump in standing alone and leaving Europe to manage its own threats, while London turns back to banking the Chinese and the Russians while keeping the UK out of fights. That may sound quite seductive, but it is unlikely to prove safe.

Peter Apps is the author of Deterring Armageddon: A Biography of Nato (Wildfire, £25).