Britain’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer delivers a statement on Defence spending at Downing Street in London, Tuesday, Feb, 25, 2025. (Leon Neal/AP)
LONDON — U.K Prime Minister Keir Starmer flies to Washington on Wednesday after announcing a big increase in the British defense budget, an investment that he hopes will help persuade U.S. President Donald Trump to maintain support for Ukraine as Washington pushes to end the war.
Though Starmer is likely to tout the trans-Atlantic “special relationship” that has endured since World War II, he faces an uncertain reception. Trump has upended decades of U.S. foreign policy during his first weeks in office.
Ukraine and its European allies are scrambling to respond after the Trump administration engaged directly with Moscow on ending the war in Ukraine. Starmer’s visit to the White House on Thursday is part of European efforts — following a trip to Washington by French President Emmanuel Macron earlier this week — to ensure Kyiv gets a voice in negotiations, and that the U.S. still backs Europe in dealing with an aggressive Russia on its doorstep.
European countries are striving to bolster their collective defense as Trump transforms American foreign policy. Trump has long questioned the value of NATO and complained that the U.S. provides security to European countries that don’t pull their weight.
Starmer announced Tuesday that the U.K. government will hike military spending to 2.5% of gross domestic product by 2027, years earlier than expected, and will aim to hit 3% by 2035. He called it the “biggest sustained increase in defense spending since the end of the Cold War.”
U.K. Defense Secretary John Healey said that “President Trump, over the last two weeks, has been very direct in his challenge” to European allies.
“He’s reinforced the imperative and the importance of Britain making this commitment and helping other European countries to step up in a similar way,” Healey told the BBC.
The trip comes after Washington and Kyiv struck an economic deal giving the U.S. a share of Ukraine’s lucrative rare earth mineral deposits. Kyiv hopes that signing the agreement will ensure the continued flow of U.S. military support that Ukraine urgently needs.
Starmer has offered to send British troops to Ukraine as part of a force to safeguard a ceasefire under a plan being championed by the U.K. and France, but says an American “backstop” will be needed to ensure a lasting peace. Trump hasn’t committed to providing security guarantees for Ukraine, saying Monday after meeting Macron at the White House that “Europe is going to make sure nothing happens.”
Michael Clarke, visiting professor of war studies at King’s College London, said that Starmer would “try and be a Trump whisperer,” while persuading the president to “see some realities of European security.”
Starmer, a stolid, center-left lawyer who is Trump’s polar opposite in outlook and temperament, has worked hard to charm the president. He flew to New York in September for dinner at Trump Tower. He has appointed Peter Mandelson as U.K. ambassador in Washington. Mandelson is a former Labour Party Cabinet minister nicknamed the “Prince of Darkness,” because of his mastery of political intrigue.
Mandelson and Starmer also are hoping to spare the U.K. the sweeping tariffs Trump has vowed to impose on the European Union and other trading partners. The U.S. is Britain’s largest single trading partner, with a roughly equal balance of imports and exports — something that may help it avoid Trump-imposed taxes on goods.
