The modern great power system was born out of the collapse of two colossal and chronologically distinct ordering systems. In the west, the Roman Empire and its successor states, which had spanned most of present-day Europe, North Africa and the Middle East. In the east, the Chinggisid empire of Genghis Khan and his heirs, which embraced European Russia, Iran, Central Asia and much of what is now the People’s Republic of China. The difference in what followed matters enormously. The eastern successors remained huge empires dominating entire regions. The western polities, unable to produce a single hegemon, evolved instead into a system based on a balance among local great powers.

On the eve of the modern age, in the late fifteenth century, the world contained perhaps a dozen serious actors. In the Americas there were the Aztecs and the Incas, who were sophisticated, wealthy, well-armed and tribute-gathering polities. In Europe there was England, France and a newly united Spain, with the Holy Roman Empire at the centre of the continent, too divided to count for much. Across Eurasia there was the Ottoman Empire, the Turco-Mongol empire of the Timurids, and Ming China. Muscovy, meanwhile, had only just cast off the overlordship of the Golden Horde.

We are often told these worlds were bound together by the Silk Road. There was indeed trade, and a degree of connection, but as I argue in the book, the relationship should not be exaggerated: ‘the geopolitical relationship between the two continents was tenuous … moreover, large swathes of the world were simply unaware of each other’. To be sure, goods, technologies and ideas sometimes travelled remarkable distances. That said, this did not amount to a single, integrated international system. The Europeans had yet to discover the Americas. The Aztecs and Incas had no idea Eurasia existed. Ming China, having reached out across the Indian Ocean as far as East Africa, was turning inwards.

What came next was the age of the Great Houses. The Habsburgs held Spain, the Low Countries, Austria, Hungary, much of Italy and large parts of the Americas. The Romanovs took the Russian throne. The Safavids burst onto the scene in Persia; the Mughals swept down from Central Asia; and in China the Ming gave way to the Manchu Qing in the mid-seventeenth century. Imperial Russia reached the Caspian by 1556 and the Pacific by 1639. The Safavid empire swelled into eastern Turkey, Iraq and western Afghanistan. The Mughals built an empire running from Afghanistan to the Bay of Bengal. The Qing expanded into Taiwan and Outer Mongolia. And at Vienna in 1683, the Habsburgs, with Polish help, turned the Ottomans back for good.

Read across these cases and the same four variables keep surfacing, that of resources, reach, reputation and resilience. They are the analytical spine of the book, and they remain the right way to audit power today.

Resources came first. ‘In an age when power was often determined by headcount, demography mattered’. The Habsburgs drew on a large population plus American silver and the wealth of the Low Countries and northern Italy. Populous Ottoman Turkey was organised for war. Russia could mobilise a vast and biddable peasantry. The Mughals commanded an extractive system superior to any neighbour. Note the word extractive. Then as now, the raw figure was never the point. India is today the world’s most populous state; Germany and Japan are enormously rich. Neither headcount nor GDP converts automatically into power.

Reach was the great discriminator. Most of these empires were land powers. Only Holland, Portugal and England were stronger at sea than on land. Russia could not field a serious fleet for generations. Neither the Safavids nor the Mughals had much of a navy, which is why their penetration of the Indian Ocean was cultural and commercial rather than military. The Ottomans and the Chinese, who had once boasted formidable fleets, had largely lost their sea legs by 1700. Only the Habsburgs were serious on both elements, and were thus the closest thing to a global power. As I highlight in the book, the great Walter Raleigh saw where this was going: ‘Whoever commands the ocean … commands the trade of the world, and whoever commands the trade of the world … commands the world itself’. Beijing has read Raleigh. Its shipbuilding capacity now dwarfs that of the United States, and the contest over the Taiwan Strait, the Malacca chokepoint and the Red Sea is a contest over reach in exactly Raleigh’s sense, as of course are the dollar clearing system, export controls and the sanctions architecture. To be sure, reach is no longer measured by fleets alone. But the underlying question, whether a state can project and sustain power far beyond its own territory, has scarcely changed.

Reputation mattered because no empire stood for brute force alone. The Habsburgs styled themselves defenders of Christendom; Romanov Russia claimed to be the Third Rome; the Ottomans were militant promoters of Sunni Islam; Ming and Qing China embodied Confucianism as governing method, civilising mission and world view in one. And yet the record is clear enough: ‘Ideology … played an important role, but the principal driver of geopolitics was state interest’. That is worth holding on to when contemporary rivalries are described as purely a clash of values.

Resilience may be the most underrated of the four. The Ottomans came back from the catastrophe at Lepanto in 1571, the Spanish Habsburgs from the Armada in 1588, the French from the Wars of Religion in the mid-16th century, England from the Civil War about eighty years later, Russia from the Polish and Swedish invasion and the Time of Troubles in the 16th to 18th centuries. Again, in each case, it was not the capacity to secure victory which was distinctive, but the ability to recover from defeat. Any assessment of Russia’s war in Ukraine, or of the durability of sanctioned economies, is at bottom an argument about resilience. That said, resilience should not be confused with invulnerability: states can absorb extraordinary punishment while still suffering a cumulative erosion of their long-term power.

Two further points deserve emphasis. First, the preponderance of power in this period initially lay in Asia. The Mughal empire held 150 million people, twice the population of Europe. At its height the Manchu empire contained about 35 per cent of humanity and an economy far larger than any European one. It was by no means clear in 1700 that the west would come to dominate. Second, Europe developed something Asia did not: a system. In 1648 Westphalia established power-sharing in Germany under great power guarantee; in 1713 Utrecht explicitly sought to avoid the hegemony of a single power, committing the parties to a ‘just equilibrium of power’. In East Asia, by contrast, China saw the world through tianxia, ‘all under heaven’, in which there could be no great power other than China. Something of that instinct survives.

The later story is well known, including Britain’s long primacy, the Concert of Europe, the have-nots (Germany, Italy and Japan) of the 1930s whose aim was to secure the resources and living space necessary to balance the Anglo-Americans, and a United Nations that was both a new beginning and a traditional mechanism of great power management. But the lesson is the older one. As I stress throughout the book, assessing great power potential has never been about simply adding up peacetime GDP. Reviewing five hundred years, one is struck by the continuity as much as the change, and by how well the four Rs still travel.

Attempts to define Great Power status read like a history of intellectual fashions. Leopold von Ranke, writing in his famous 1833 ‘The Great Powers’ essay, defined a Great Power as one that could survive an attack by all the other powers in the system combined. Ranke also believed that a Great Power had to represent some larger principle, be that religious, cultural, or political.

Later theorists chased more concrete attributes. The late-nineteenth century admiral and theorist Alfred Thayer Mahan looked at the map and saw the sea: whoever controlled it – at that time the British Empire and later the rising United States – controlled the future. Yet when the eminent British geographer Halford Mackinder looked at the same map a few years later, he saw something else entirely. His eye was drawn not to the oceans, but to the Eurasian “Heartland”: the immense continental interior commanded by the great land powers, especially Russia and Germany. Mackinder’s famous formula still holds sway today: ‘‘Whoever rules Eastern Europe will rule the Heartland … whoever rules the Heartland will rule the World Island and whoever rules the World Island will rule the world’’. For Mackinder, greatness was to be found in land mass. Carl Schmitt pushed this further with his idea of the Grossraum, or “Great Space”: a world properly divided among territorially defined, ideologically distinct hegemons, each radiating authority outward into its own neighbourhood.

Later on, in the twentieth century, the frame shifted to economics. Paul Kennedy’s 1987 The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers argued that power ultimately rests on economic weight, that decline follows imperial overstretch, and that rise follows endogenous economic growth. The book landed in an America nervous about Japan’s economic ascent and continues to influence academic and political thinking today. John Mearsheimer countered in 2001 with The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, insisting military capability – especially land power – was the real currency. Other realists like Edward Luttwak pushed back the other way, arguing geoeconomics still trumps tanks. The scholar-practitioner Joseph Nye added a different axis entirely with “soft power”: the insight that getting people to want to be like you was more effective than forcing them to be so. John Ikenberry pointed out that Great Powers which build legitimate international institutions can outlast their own military dominance, turning temporary strength into durable order. And more recently, Graham Allison revived Thucydides for the age of US-China rivalry: the “Thucydides Trap,” the idea that a rising power colliding with a ruling one produces near-inevitable conflict, not because anyone wants war but because fear makes it structurally likely.

So, What Actually Makes One?

Given all that disagreement, maybe the honest answer is that determining Great Power status is an art, not a science. It is, of course, profoundly subjective. There’s a kind of circular but useful logic to it: if a state acts like a Great Power and is treated like one, it is one. Great Powers are the axes the world turns on, their presence is felt everywhere, and their absence leaves a vacuum that someone else rushes to fill.

With that caveat, the framework I followed in The Return of the Great Powers breaks capability down into ‘‘the four Rs’’.

The first criterion is resources. Resources are the foundation of power and usually the most important (though not the only) determinant of Great Powerness. A Great Power must possess the economic, technological and military capacity to sustain competition over decades. It requires advanced armed forces, a sophisticated defence-industrial base, innovative scientific capabilities and an economy capable of supporting prolonged strategic rivalry. Population matters too, though size alone isn’t sufficient – otherwise Bangladesh would outrank Britain and France (and even Russia). GDP matters, though purchasing-power parity often tells a truer story than raw GDP; Russia’s self-sufficiency in energy and raw materials, for instance, lets it absorb sanctions in a way its headline GDP wouldn’t suggest. Crucially, resources mean nothing without the ability to mobilize them under pressure. As I say in the book, cut a state off from markets, credit, and raw materials, and see what’s left standing after that.

The second criterion is reach. Great Powers project influence beyond their immediate neighbourhoods. They possess global diplomatic networks, intelligence capabilities, overseas military facilities, logistical infrastructure and the ability to shape events far from home. This is what separates Great Powers from Middle Powers like Turkey or Nigeria, which can dominate their neighbourhood but not project much further. Reach is also what secures the vital “command of the commons” – the ability to protect your own supply chains while disrupting everyone else’s.

The third element is reputation. Great Powers are recognised as such not only by themselves but by others. Perception matters because international politics is ultimately conducted through belief as much as capability. Nineteenth-century America didn’t think of itself that way but arguably already was one, while mid-twentieth-century Italy and France thought they still qualified and arguably no longer did. Reputation is of course bound up with history. Historical memory also plays an enormous role in sustaining these identities. Indeed, Great Powers rarely view history as something finished. Instead, they continually reinterpret the past to justify present ambitions. Chinese claims over Taiwan, Russian narratives of historical unity, and American exceptionalism, most recently expressed through President Trump's revival of the Monroe Doctrine, all demonstrate that history is never simply about the past. For Great Powers, it remains an active political resource, used to legitimise present ambitions and shape future strategy. It’s also increasingly a story-telling contest, waged as much through TikTok and the Premier League as through embassies.

The fourth criterion is resilience. History repeatedly demonstrates that victory often belongs not to those capable of inflicting the greatest damage but to those capable of enduring it. Great Powers inevitably suffer defeats, crises and setbacks. But what distinguishes them is their ability to recover. The Habsburg Empire survived repeated catastrophes before finally collapsing. Britain endured two world wars and imperial decline before reinventing its global role. The United States recovered from Vietnam, Watergate and financial crises while remaining the world’s leading power. By contrast, the Soviet Union possessed enormous military resources but ultimately lost the domestic legitimacy necessary to sustain prolonged competition.

The Uncomfortable Part

None of this adds up to a clean scorecard, because no two Great Powers are configured alike, and the mix of resources, reach, reputation, and resilience varies enormously between them. What’s consistent is the behaviour that comes with the status: Great Powers claim rights they deny to others. They reserve the ability to change other regimes while rejecting the idea that anyone could change theirs. They insist they’re bound by international law while also positioning themselves as the ones who get to write and enforce it. As the saying goes, they’re never just rule-takers. To the contrary, they’re the orderers, not the ordered.

They also don’t decline gracefully. As I say in the book Great Powers tend to look too big to fail — until, quite suddenly, they do. 1914 offers the starkest example: three empires that had played a central role in shaping the European order for centuries – Russian, Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman – were gone within four years. The same could happen now, especially to a fundamentally brittle state like Russia.

As in the past, so today, the Great Powers of today differ considerably from each other both in terms of individual strengths and overall strength. There is no doubt that the United States and China are, by some margin, greater powers than Russia and the United Kingdom. One could even classify the United States and China as the system's two superpowers. Russia, meanwhile, presents a more difficult case. Although the war in Ukraine has revealed important military and economic limitations, it can still be argued that Russia surpasses Britain as a Great Power owing to its nuclear deterrent, strategic depth, military scale, and exceptional capacity to generate geopolitical effects through hybrid warfare, coercion, and strategic disruption across multiple theatres.

This shift has accelerated in recent years. Britain’s relative decline gathered pace through successive recent governments and has continued under Starmer, as defence spending and military capability have failed to keep pace with mounting geopolitical challenges. Were the United Kingdom to commit 3.5 per cent of GDP to defence, it would likely regain its position ahead of Russia, where it stood for most of the modern era.

Which brings us to the least comfortable conclusion in all of this: history’s power transitions have rarely been peaceful. Some scholars, Lawrence Freedman among them, once argued nuclear weapons had made Great Power war simply too costly to contemplate. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has complicated that theory considerably. War, or at least the credible threat of it, remains stubbornly central to how Great Powers relate to one another – which means it remains central to the rest of us too.

Ultimately, the Great Powers are not simply the strongest states, nor are they necessarily the states with the highest GDP figure. They are the states most capable of shaping the world around them. They make the rules, occasionally break them, and rarely accept rules imposed by others. Their choices determine not only their own futures but, to a remarkable extent, everyone else’s.

In Wales, Plaid Cymru’s victory ended more than a century of Labour dominance, with Rhun ap Iorwerth becoming the country’s first nationalist First Minister. In Scotland, John Swinney and the SNP retained power after another strong performance. A separatist party now occupies the top position in every devolved government outside England, although power-sharing with the unionist DUP means that Sinn Féin’s dominance in Northern Ireland is constitutionally constrained.

This has been overshadowed, understandably if not wisely in the long-term, by Labour’s drubbing at the local elections and the subsequent questions over the party’s leadership. But the constitutional signal is harder to ignore than Westminster’s current preoccupations suggest.

To be sure, the break-up of the United Kingdom is not imminent. Neither Scotland nor Wales voted for immediate separation, and both governments face the difficult constraints of governing. Support for Welsh separation, while growing, remains well below Scottish levels. A second Scottish referendum remains dependent on Westminster’s consent. These are real barriers. But treating these elections as routine political churn, or assuming the current constitutional settlement is stable simply because it has not yet broken, would be a serious mistake.

The original assumption behind devolution, articulated most memorably by former Defence Secretary George Robertson, who predicted it would “kill nationalism stone dead,” was that a degree of self-government would satisfy nationalist sentiment while traditional parties, Labour above all, maintained their dominance in Scotland and Wales. That assumption has now comprehensively failed. These once peripheral nationalist parties are now the established governing forces. Meanwhile, the unionist parties – Conservative, Labour, and the Liberal Democrats – increasingly struggle to articulate a compelling, affirmative vision of what the Union is actually for.

That challenge is about to become considerably harder. The rise of Reform on the right and the Greens on the left reflects a broader dissatisfaction with the political mainstream that cuts across the constitution as much as conventional policy. A Reform government at Westminster, operating well to the right of the political centre of gravity in both Scotland and Wales, would only intensify the centrifugal forces already threatening the Union's coherence. A Green or more radically left-leaning Labour government would likely be far more open to independence referendums, and considerably less motivated to resist them. The Union is facing pressure from multiple directions simultaneously, and the current architecture is not built for this storm.

What is required now is a serious, confident unionist argument, rooted in what the United Kingdom actually represents and what its break-up would cost. The economic arguments are familiar enough. An integrated internal market, a common currency, sophisticated financial systems, and the Barnett Formula’s fiscal transfers, which ensure that Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland receive substantially more per head from the public purse than England, provide real and measurable benefits. These transfers cushion smaller, slower-growing economies against shocks and provide a platform for development that independent states would struggle to replicate, particularly given Scotland’s substantial deficit and the costs of building state institutions from scratch.

The stronger argument, though curiously undermade, is geopolitical. The United Kingdom was, in no small part, a geopolitical creation. It was, to a significant extent, a state built to secure the British Isles against the ambitions of rival European powers. In a world where Great Power competition has returned in force, where Russia, China and Iran actively seek to subvert and divide Western democracies, and where hybrid warfare, disinformation, infrastructure attacks and economic coercion have become a permanent features of international life, the collective weight of the United Kingdom matters enormously. That weight cannot be replicated by its component parts acting separately. Britain, acting collectively, remains Europe’s foremost military power, retains advanced intelligence capabilities through MI5, MI6 and GCHQ, and holds a permanent seat on the UN Security Council.

Geography only strengthens the case. Scotland’s location is central to Western security. The United Kingdom's nuclear deterrent is based at Faslane, making Scottish territory an integral component of Britain's strategic posture and its role within NATO. The Greenland-Iceland-UK Gap, known as the GIUK Gap, remains one of NATO’s most critical maritime chokepoints, the passage through which Russian submarine activity in the North Atlantic must be monitored and contested. Britain’s western approaches anchor transatlantic shipping lanes, undersea communications cables, and naval operations that matter to the entire alliance. The Arctic, too, will become increasingly strategically vital, as the melting ice creates a new geopolitical battleground. A separate Scotland, navigating a severe fiscal crisis while attempting to build state institutions from nothing, would be deeply vulnerable, precisely the kind of target that hostile powers have learned to exploit. Chinese or Russian investment in critical Scottish infrastructure is a playbook already being run in smaller European states with far less strategic significance.

A fragmented United Kingdom would not simply be a smaller United Kingdom. Stripped of Scotland’s geography, its naval facilities and its contribution to intelligence sharing, Britain’s claim to be a serious military partner becomes harder to sustain. Its standing with the United States would diminish, its influence within NATO would shrink and its relationship with Europe and the rest of the world would become more uneven. Welsh independence and a United Ireland may lie further over the horizon than Scottish independence, but they would bring many of the same economic, geopolitical and constitutional consequences.

Ultimately, the case for the union is to a profound extent historical. The Union transformed a collection of nations on the edge of Europe into one of the most consequential states in modern history. Could Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland survive as independent states? Certainly, but with immense difficulty and at considerable cost. The real question is whether collective weight concentrated in one serious state serves these islands better than the same weight dispersed across several smaller, more exposed ones. The answer is plainly yes. But Unionists have been slow to make this case with the clarity and confidence it demands. The window for complacency has – as the May elections demonstrated – clearly closed. What happens next depends on whether unionism can find its voice before the question is settled without it.

The Joint Expeditionary Force (JEF) is a coalition of ten nations, all of which are now NATO member states, from the UK to Nordic and Baltic regions. It was set up as a rapid-response framework for crises in the High North and Northern Europe. It is useful because it allows participating states to coordinate and, where they choose, act together without requiring NATO-wide consensus; in practice, this can enable action outside NATO’s full alliance decision-making process. The JEF can also integrate into larger international operations, including those led by NATO, the UN, or other coalitions, and it is able to operate across domains and across a broad spectrum of military activities. That said, the JEF is not sufficiently well known across the region, and our paper argues that there needs to be a substantial effort made to make the public aware of its political and military importance, which is only increased by the uncertainty surrounding American policy.

NATO’s defence plans are designed to deter conventional threats. In the Latvian case, operational command involves the Multinational NATO Division, with contributing nations deployed on the ground, while strategic and political decisions are taken in Brussels by all 32 Allies. The challenge in that context is a hybrid activity scenario where, for example, a massive cyber attack, critical infrastructure disruption, sabotage, disinformation and other actions would create a grey zone situation where a response by NATO would be difficult to achieve. The JEF, being a smaller force of 10 like-minded nations, is an ideal rapid reaction force that, for preventive purposes, could deploy to a theatre where these simultaneous hybrid scenarios are unfolding. In the Oslo joint press statement, for example, Norway frames JEF crisis utility as useful “especially [in] situations of security concern short of Article 5” and commits to reviewing “JEF’s Joint Response Options”.

The members of the Joint Expeditionary Force are Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. Significantly, though all of these powers are now members of the NATO alliance, the JEF is not a NATO organisation. Perhaps regrettably, Germany and Poland, though both important Baltic Sea powers, are not participants in this venture. The United States is neither a member nor does it have any formal jurisdiction over its activities. Instead, the convening and leading power of the Joint Expeditionary Force lies with the United Kingdom. The key strength of the JEF is its voluntary, optin approach, which permits willing nations to coordinate or act rapidly without requiring unanimity. Previously, this design accommodated different constitutional national traditions such as Finnish and Swedish neutrality: both joined the JEF in 2018, maintaining non-alignment years before they applied for NATO membership in 2022.

Indeed, the JEF Response Options (JRO) enable participating nations to pool their resources into integrated crisisresponse packages. This approach reduces the need for every state to field the full suite of highend capabilities, such as P8 maritime patrol aircraft or F35 fighter jets, and instead allows specialist roles to be allocated across the coalition. In doing so, the JEF can mitigate individual capability gaps and promote more efficient, distributed investment in advanced capabilities across the group, strengthening collective readiness while avoiding unnecessary duplication.

The wider political significance of the JEF became evident when the UK used the JEF as a convening mechanism in 2023 to coordinate a level of security assistance to Ukraine which, taken collectively, comfortably exceeded that of the remaining nineteen European NATO members. This illustrates how the JEF can operate not just as a military enabler but also as a power multiplier for the UK, allowing it to align and aggregate the efforts of nine other nations and, in doing so, shape the strategic orientation of a grouping that now represents roughly one-third of NATO.

Despite its obvious importance, there is no public information about the role of JEF in the Latvian, Estonian, or Lithuanian defence plans. So, to gauge how seriously the JEF is taken by the Baltics and the Nordics, it is necessary to look at official quotes made by government representatives. Statements by Baltic leaders suggest the JEF is valued as an additional layer of coordination and signalling alongside NATO (and, politically, alongside the EU). In remarks around the JEF Summit in Oslo in May 2025, Latvian Prime Minister Evika Siliņa framed Latvia’s security posture through “joint efforts as allies in the EU, NATO, and JEF framework”, arguing that acting together makes them “much stronger than Russia”. She also cast the JEF in practical crisis-management terms, emphasising the shared aim of strengthening regional security and improving the collective ability to respond effectively during crises, and stressed the need to “consistently coordinate our actions and communication within the JEF framework”.

For his part, Lithuanian President Gitanas Nausėda described the JEF as “a flexible and effective cooperation platform that enables like-minded nations to act together” and “one of the primary frameworks capable of responding to potential crises”. He also pointed to recent military operations, noting that the largest military exercise, “Tarassis 25, will take place, coinciding with Russia’s Zapad military exercise”. The JEF summit summary likewise highlights priorities at the boundary between deterrence and day-to-day contestation, including action against Russia’s ‘shadow fleet’, joint surveillance and coordination to counter hybrid maritime threats, continued support for Ukraine, and discussion of the Arctic (High North) alongside steps to improve the JEF’s operational capability.

At the moment, though the Baltics and Nordics take the JEF seriously as a practical security organisation, they recognise that it is not a substitute for NATO and is unlikely to be the primary response to an armed attack. Its strength is as a supplement to NATO: a smaller, like-minded grouping that can coordinate quickly and respond to grey-zone scenarios short of Article 5, where alliance-wide action may be harder to trigger or slower to organise. For example, the JEF would be able to act in situations where, say, Hungary had blocked common measures by NATO to contain or repel Russia. Of course, in that event, the views of key non-JEF members such as Germany, Poland, Canada, France and – above all – theUnited States will be very important.

Given its significance, it is perhaps surprising that there is little to no understanding of what the JEF is among ordinarycitizens in the region, particularly compared to the public knowledge of NATO in the Baltics and High North. Informal discussions with younger people in Latvia (final-year students and recent graduates across multiple disciplines) showed very low recognition: none could clearly explain what the JEF was and, after an explanation, most assumed it was simply a NATO operation. While this is not a scientifically conducted sample, it aligns with the broader pattern of how the JEF appears in public-facing information environments.

Mainstream visibility appears episodic rather than continuous. On Latvian Public Media, the English-language topic page for the “Joint Expeditionary Force” contains a relatively small set of tagged stories clustered around exercises and summits, whereas NATO is covered as a standing topic with frequent updates and multiple dedicated Latvian-language topic pages.Second, official public opinion polling and public communication in Latvia tends to foreground NATO as the primary reference point for public security perceptions. For example, a Ministry of Defence-commissioned residents’ poll explicitly reports attitudes on whether NATO contributes to Latvia’s security, indicating that NATO is the “known” security frame in public discourse.

A similar pattern appears in the other two Baltic states. Direct polling on public awareness of the JEF in Lithuania and Estonia is not readily available, but public broadcasters in both states frequently introduce the JEF with short explanatory glosses about what it is and who participates, rather than treating it as a self-evident term. Lithuanian defence institutions also maintain public-facing pages that explain the JEF as a UK-led framework for regional security cooperation, again suggesting a perceived need for basic orientation rather than reliance on widespread public knowledge. Comparable explanations also appear in Nordic official communications, including Sweden’s Armed Forcesand the Norwegian government, which is consistent with the JEF being more familiar to defence and policy audiences than to the general public.

Finally, terminology may also impede recognition. Latvian media often refers to the JEF using Latvian translations such as “Apvienotie reaģēšanas spēki (JEF)” or “Apvienotie ekspedīcijas spēki (JEF)”, and the acronym is not always prominent, which can make it harder for citizens to identify the JEF as a distinct framework rather than a generic NATO-related formation. If the UK seeks to be perceived as a more prominent security guarantor (or hedge) in Northern Europe amid uncertainty surrounding US commitment, the relatively low public visibility of the JEF in everyday media and public debate limits its reputational and signalling effects beyond elite and defence communities. Something needs to be done about this.

Greater public awareness of the JEF would serve three purposes. First, it would strengthen reassurance and resilience in grey-zone crises. Hybrid pressure works partly by creating confusion about whether an incident “counts” for NATO, so citizens who only recognise NATO may feel abandoned or panic when Article 5 is not in play. If the JEF were better understood as a framework designed for action short of Article 5, it would reduce uncertainty and help the public understand what is going on. Second, publicising the JEF would improve deterrence and strategic signalling. Exercises, summits, and coordinated statements have more impact when domestic audiences and potential adversaries can clearly identify them as JEF activity, rather than assuming they are generic NATO actions.  Third, higher recognition would enhance understanding of the UK’s security role in Northern Europe. If the JEF remains largely an unknown operation, its reputational value will be limited. Clearer public knowledge would translate participation into a more tangible expression of commitment and would also make disinformation campaigns harder because it is easier to distort what people do not understand. The key thing is to communicate the JEF as complementary to NATO, not as an alternative collective-defence guarantee.

Of course, were the United States – as some fear – to substantially reduce its military presence in Europe in general and the Baltic/High North in particular, then the United Kingdom would become much more important to the defence of the continent. Though it possesses nothing like the capabilities of the US, the British armed forces and nuclear deterrence are respected by Moscow, even if they frequently protest otherwise. In the nightmare scenario of an abandonment by Washington, the JEF would be critical to the deterrence mission in the region.                      

One of the UK’s most distinctive strategic assets for Baltic and Nordic security is its independent nuclear deterrent, but its relevance is best understood through NATO rather than as a standalone UK guarantee. NATO’s Vilnius communiqué states that the Alliance’s strategic nuclear forces, “particularly those of the United States”, are the “supreme guarantee” of allied security, while also noting that the “independent strategic nuclear forces of the United Kingdom and France” “contribute significantly to the overall security of the Alliance” by adding separate centres of decision-making that complicate adversary calculations. This helps explain why uncertainty about US commitment is so destabilising for deterrence credibility: as Dolan argues, “NATO’s extended deterrence hinges on an unambiguous US commitment and unwavering transatlantic unity”, and “any sign of wavering US commitment or fractures within NATO invites adversarial exploitation”. The implication is that UK nuclear capability strengthens NATO deterrence at the margin, but it does not remove the centrality of US extended deterrence in Baltic and Nordic threat perceptions. At the moment, though, there is still a lack of clarity around whether the UK nuclear deterrent – within or outside the NATO context - does actually or might underpin its activities within the JEF.

Across Baltic and Nordic official messaging, the UK’s military relevance is framed less as a substitute for US power and more as a high-capability European ally able to generate forces quickly and organise regional action within NATO and adjacent formats. This is most visible in public commitments and concrete platforms, especially around Estonia’s reinforcement planning, NATO air missions in the Baltics, maritime surveillance and anti-submarine priorities, and High North security signalling.

In the Baltic context, Estonia provides one of the clearest public articulations of UK land capability as directly relevant to national defence planning. Estonia’s Minister of Defence, Hanno Pevkur, described a bilateral defence roadmap with the UK as stemming from NATO regional plans and emphasised “the long-term commitment that the United Kingdom will assign the 4th Brigade as a reinforcement for Estonia”, maintained “at high readiness” to reinforce Estonia “in times of crisis and conflict”. In this framing, UK capability is treated as a key force integrated into NATO forward defence, its participation being reinforced through regular exercises.

Lithuanian defence messaging similarly frames the UK as a strategically relevant contributor to the northern flank, but more as a multi-domain partner than in Estonia’s specific reinforcement-brigade framing. Lithuania’s Ministry of National Defence describes the UK as “one of Lithuania’s main strategic partner[s]” for security and defence on NATO’s northern flank and in the Baltic Sea region, and highlights the UK’s repeated participation in NATO Air Policing as well as its leadership role in NATO’s enhanced Forward Presence battlegroup in Estonia. These forms of visible presence and repeat participation are among the channels through which UK capability is most likely to be recognised outside specialist defence communities.

In the Nordic and High North context, cooperation is most often focused on maritime and undersea security, including protection of critical infrastructure, surveillance, and countering hybrid threats. The Norway-UK joint statement on enhanced defence cooperation states that the two countries will work to strengthen their ability to protect critical undersea infrastructure and counter hybrid threats, and it anchors this cooperation in named surveillance vessels (RFA Proteus and KV Bison) described as possessing “cutting-edge capabilities”. This places UK capability as a useful tool in the High North threat picture, where undersea infrastructure and maritime hybrid activity are treated as practical security problems requiring day-to-day operational coordination.

Public perceptions of UK military capability are difficult to assess directly, as opinion polling in the region generally measures attitudes toward NATO or “allied forces” rather than toward the United Kingdom as a distinct security provider. As a result, UK military power is most likely to be interpreted through NATO-branded activities and highly visible deployments and exercises, rather than through less observable strategic capabilities such as the UK’s nuclear deterrent.

Interestingly, Brexit does not seem to have affected the UK’s strategic standing in the Baltic and High North much, though it obviously transformed the UK’s institutional relationship with the European Union, a shift that carries greater salience in Nordic contexts where European cooperation has strong political and societal resonance. In the Baltic states, by contrast, perceptions of the UK are shaped more decisively by considerations of deterrence and military credibility, particularly in light of geographic proximity to Russia. After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, this security lens became even more pronounced, because public attention shifted towards which states were contributing materially to European security.

Brexit altered perceptions of the United Kingdom in Northern Europe, although its effects were uneven across the Baltic Sea region and the High North. Public opinion data from the immediate post-referendum period suggest that Nordic publics were particularly likely to interpret Brexit as damaging to the European project. A 2017 Pew Research Center survey found that a median of 70 per cent across ten EU member states believed Brexit would be detrimental to the EU, including 86 per cent of respondents in Sweden. This is relevant for perceptions of the UK because, in Nordic contexts where EU membership is closely associated with political identity and governance norms, Brexit could be interpreted as a withdrawal from European solidarity and collective problem-solving, rather than merely a change in legal status.

However, Swedish security policy since 2022 also reflects a more pragmatic assessment of the UK as a defence partner in the Baltic Sea region. The Swedish government has described cooperation with the UK as being of “particular importance” to regional security, and this has been formalised through the UK-Sweden Political Declaration of Solidarity in 2022 and the Strategic Partnership signed in October 2023.

By contrast, the same Pew material shows that Europeans were “divided on what it means for the UK,” and it provides evidence that attitudes towards the UK in parts of Eastern Europe and the Baltics remained relatively favourable. For instance, in Poland, around three-quarters of respondents expressed a favourable view of the UK in 2017. While Poland is not primarily a Baltic state, it provides a useful nearby comparator for the claim that Brexit did not automatically translate into a sharp decline in “Britain’s standing” in the eastern flank. A plausible interpretation is that, where threat perceptions about Russia dominate and NATO is central, Britain’s image is shaped more by defence posture than by EU membership.

After February 2022, perceptions of the UK across both sub-regions became even more closely tied to security contribution and visible support for Ukraine. A House of Commons Library briefing states that the UK has pledged £21.8 billion in total support to Ukraine since February 2022, including £13.06 billion in military financing, and describes the UK as one of the leading donors alongside the US and Germany. Public opinion data from the region reinforces the view that the UK’s response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was noticed here. In a June 2022 Lord Ashcroft Polls regional survey, the proportion of respondents stating that the UK was “doing enough” to help Ukraine was 53% in Estonia, 31% in Latvia, 57% in Lithuania, 51% in Finland, and 45% in Sweden. This is not a direct “favourability” measure, but it is a defensible proxy for perceived seriousness and contributions in the post-2022 security environment. Similarly, the data also shows us meaningful differences in how the UK is perceived across the region, with variation not only between the Baltics and Nordics but also within the Baltics themselves.

Overall, Brexit seems to have carried greater reputational costs in the Nordics because it made the UK look less closely tied to European institutions and decision-making, which matters more in places like these, where EU cooperation is seen as politically important. In the Baltic security environment, perceptions of the UK appear more resilient, largely because Britain tends to be judged through a security lens – NATO deterrence, deployments, and whether it is a reliable ally against Russia – rather than through EU membership. After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the UK’s military and financial support became an even more important basis upon which this was evaluated. However, the evidence also suggests that views are not uniform, with noticeable differences between countries and even within the Baltics themselves. Moreover, the UK is often viewed as one of the more credible European allies in this part of the world, because it has translated commitment into a persistent presence on NATO’s eastern flank as well as leadership in Northern European security frameworks

The main basis of UK credibility in the Baltic theatre is its leadership of NATO’s enhanced Forward Presence (eFP) in Estonia. Since 2017, the UK has led the multinational battlegroup in Estonia, and roughly 900 British personnel rotate continuously in Estonia and Poland under Operation CABRIT. This matters for escalation perceptions because forward-deployed troops function as a “tripwire”: any attack would directly engage UK forces from the outset, increasing the political and military costs of non-response.

In the Nordic space, perceptions of the UK’s willingness to accept risk have also been shaped by direct political commitments made in spring 2022 when – during the application process to join NATO – Finland and Sweden solicited, and received, a bilateral UK security guarantee to shield them until NATO’s Article 5 became operational. The UK-Finland statement here explicitly asserts that the UK “stands ready” to assist Finland “by all means necessary”, including militarily if requested. As mentioned previously, the UK-Sweden declaration likewise emphasised solidarity and deepened defence cooperation under worsening European security conditions.

Where the UK’s credibility becomes more contested is the question of resourcing and long-run durability. UK defence spending clearly meets NATO’s old 2 per cent guideline, and official UK figures report 2.33 per cent of GDP in 2024. The government has also committed to spending 2.5 per cent of GDP from April 2027. However, the political argument in the region is increasingly driven by comparisons with frontline spenders. The Baltic states and Poland are budgeting and signalling at levels well above the UK’s current share, and Latvia’s own defence ministry describes a move toward around 5 per cent, with a 2026 defence budget at 4.91 per cent of GDP. In that context, British pledges can look credible in intent but less convincing in scale, especially when UK commentary continues to highlight funding gaps and readiness shortfalls relative to those stated by the government. For allies living next to Russia, the worry is not that Britain is unserious here, but rather whether fiscal and political constraints would limit reinforcement capacity over time.

Public opinion data in the Baltics also indicates that confidence in allies is uneven and not always “UK-coded”, even where UK military contributions are substantial. In Lithuania, a February 2025 Ministry of National Defence poll found that 75 per cent of respondents believed NATO allies would defend Lithuania if attacked and 89 per cent supported the allied military presence. When asked about Lithuania’s closest allies, respondents named Germany, the United States and Poland. This suggests a general trust in NATO, but also that the allies most salient in the public mind are those with either a highly visible national commitment (Germany’s brigade) or an obvious geographic and strategic role (Poland and the US, respectively). Latvian public opinion appears more sceptical. A Norstat survey commissioned by Latvian State Media in 2025 found only 10 per cent “firmly believe” NATO allies would send troops to fight for Latvia, that 33 per cent “tend to believe” they would, while 41 per cent doubt this would in fact transpire. That scepticism is not targeted at the UK specifically, but it forms a background in which escalation willingness is questioned in general. 

At the same time, in a Latvian omnibus survey of 1,002 respondents, Banka, Stremming and Bussmann (2023) found that Germany ranked as the most important European security partner, with the UK close behind, explicitly characterising the UK as an “essential security partner” even outside the EU. This helps make sense of how the UK is viewed compared with France, Germany and Poland. Germany’s profile has risen sharply because of its long-term brigade commitment in Lithuania, widely treated as a historically significant deployment intended to reinforce NATO’s eastern flank. Poland is often perceived as uniquely vital because it is both a frontline state and a key reinforcement corridor; it also stands out as NATO’s highest relative spender in recent years, which signals readiness for worst-case scenarios. France, by contrast, is recognised as a major power, but not a major Baltic or High North actor.

In that sense, the UK often benefits from being seen as the most consistently “hands-on” European military actor in the northern theatre alongside Germany and Poland, even if it is not always the most visible in public opinion rankings. Of course, relative to the United States, the UK is not perceived as comparable in terms of capability. NATO expenditure reporting illustrates the scale gap between the US and any European ally. The United States also maintains a highly visible posture in the broader region. The US State Department notes that approximately 10,000 US personnel are on rotation in Poland, underlining the practical centrality of US enablers and mass to overall deterrence. However, the UK’s contribution still matters comparatively because it is reliably embedded in the northern theatre, with UK leadership in Estonia and the JEF reducing the extent to which Baltic and Nordic security is perceived as wholly contingent on US political choices.

Finally, there is a link in Baltic and Nordic thinking between Britain’s defence contribution and its relationship with the EU, but this is best characterised as a preference for reduced friction and smoother coordination rather than a desire to trade EU “fundamentals” for British protection. EU foreignpolicy analysis notes that Brexit complicated EU–UK foreign and security cooperation and made alignment more contingent on political choices rather than institutional default. In the Baltic context specifically, Bukovskis and Kasekamp show that Baltic strategies after Brexit were pragmatic: the UK continued to be valued as a like-minded security actor on Russia and transatlantic policy, but Baltic states adapted to the UK’s changed status rather than seeking to reshape EU principles to accommodate it. This is consistent with Latvian public opinion evidence suggesting the UK is still regarded as an “essential security partner” even outside the EU. The most defensible conclusion is therefore that the Baltics and Nordics tend to favour a cooperative EU-UK relationship because it improves security outcomes through coordination, not because they would exchange concessions on core EU rules for British deterrence.

In summary, the UK is often perceived as willing to accept escalation risks in defence of the wider Baltic and High North because it has embedded itself through a persistent forward posture in Estonia and leadership of Northern European security mechanisms such as the JEF. Its credibility is strongest when assessed in its physical presence, coordination with front-line states, and early-action frameworks, while the main constraint is long-run capacity and resourcing relative to rapidly rising spending and posture commitments by Latvia and Poland. Compared with France, Germany and Poland, the UK is frequently perceived as among the most operationally engaged European actors in the northern theatre, even if Germany and Poland may be more prominent in some Baltic public opinion rankings. Compared with the US, the UK remains secondary in absolute capability but remains reputationally valuable because it is consistently embedded in the region and contributes to deterrence credibility in ways that are visible to both governments and publics.                                

The wild card in all this, of course, is Donald Trump. The perception of increasing US disengagement or conditionality has grown across Northern Europe, driven by mixed signals in US policy towards Ukraine and Russia, and by a strategic narrative that prioritises competition with China. The 2025 US National Security Strategy explicitly states that US policy for Europe should prioritise “enabling Europe to stand on its own feet” and take “primary responsibility for its own defence”. While this does not amount to a formal commitment to withdraw forces from the region, it substantially contributes to uncertainty in the Baltics and Nordics because US extended deterrence and the US military presence in Europe are widely treated in regional policy documents as central to deterrence and security planning. This new agenda will have destabilising effects, not only in public confidence in NATO, but also because it may raise incentives for grey-zone probing and coercive signalling, which will test the strength of the alliance below the threshold of open war. This risk environment is precisely where regional frameworks like the UK-led Joint Expeditionary Force (JEF) are key. 

Swedish strategic planning has explicitly highlighted that the “transatlantic commitments that the US chooses in the coming years” will be of major significance for Swedish and European security, implying that US political choices are treated as a key variable in the region’s threat calculus. Furthermore, Nordic perceptions of US uncertainty have also been sharpened by recent disputes around Greenland, as well as tariffs recently announced on several European nations, including the UK, to retaliate until the US is allowed to buy Greenland. This demonstrates why Nordic policy and opinion may increasingly view US policy as unpredictable even when the US remains a central security partner. 

In the Baltics, this uncertainty has been reinforced by concrete policy debates over US posture and assistance. At the UN General Assembly in September 2025, Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna said, "I do hope that the U.S. troops will remain, at least in our region, because the tension is increasing and U.S. participation is one of the strongest deterrents." At the meeting, it was evident that Baltic officials were “hopeful, but not reassured” about US force posture and that the United States was phasing out some security assistance for countries bordering Russia, creating withdrawal fears. 

The Baltic countries have extensively engaged with the US here to ensure excellent relations through defence spending of 5% and active work in Congress to balance off the sometimes-erratic approach of the Department of War and have been supportive of the President’s efforts to achieve peace in Ukraine while clearly calling Russia the aggressor. The Baltic states and Poland are perceived in the administration as closest to the US on several security policy and defence issues, including on the Middle East. The Baltic States have argued for more US troops in the region and expressed their willingness to provide the necessary host-nation support. However, situations like the Pentagon’s attempt to cut the Baltic Security Initiative, followed by Congress restoring it in the FY2026 National Defence Authorisation Act, still create doubt about how reliable US support would be if the Baltics faced a real war.

As noted above, the United Kingdom cannot serve as a direct substitute for the United States, given the scale of US military capabilities and its central role in European security. This, however, does not render an expanded UK role insignificant. On the contrary, in a context where US engagement is increasingly perceived as conditional, sustained British involvement through NATO deployments, joint exercises, and the UK-led Joint Expeditionary Force (JEF) may carry enhanced reassurance value for Baltic and Nordic partners.

This, in turn, generates two practical requirements for British credibility. First, credibility rests on sustained operational involvement: maintaining, and where feasible expanding, persistent regional engagement through NATO and the JEF, and clearly signalling these commitments within domestic political debate. Second, credibility depends on fiscal commitment and political will: aligning defence spending trajectories and force readiness with stated strategic ambitions, and articulating the underlying rationale to domestic audiences. Public understanding, both within the United Kingdom and among Baltic and Nordic partners, matters here because deterrence credibility is partly political, and long-term commitments are more difficult to sustain in the absence of domestic legitimacy.

Brendan Simms is Professor of the History of European International Relations and Director of the Centre of Geopolitics (CfG) at the University of Cambridge. Together with former Home Secretary Charles Clarke, he leads the Baltic Geopolitics Programme at the CFG.

Brigita Van den Houta is a second-year undergraduate at the University of Cambridge reading Environment, Economics, Law and Policy (Land Economy). She serves as President of the Cambridge University Latvian Society. Her interests include Baltic security, geopolitics, and defence and security policy, and she aims to pursue a career in this field.

Recent tensions over Greenland, alongside Russia’s continuing war in Ukraine and the broader deterioration of Europe’s security environment, have led to a widely held assumption: that Europe would inevitably re-arm.

The cumulative effect of repeated shocks, such as Russia’s intensifying militarisation, pressure along Europe’s northern and eastern flanks, instability in the Middle East, and growing uncertainty over long-term US political commitment was expected to force a decisive strategic shift away from complacency and toward autonomy and hard power.

That uncertainty has been sharpened by visible transatlantic friction. President Trump’s remarks at Davos, tariff threats linked to Greenland, and a US National Security Strategy that once again emphasized burden-shifting have fuelled renewed debate across European capitals about the durability and future orientation of the US security guarantee.

Europe is re-arming. But not in the way its rhetoric suggests.

It is true that across the continent, defence budgets have risen, procurement plans have multiplied, and long-standing political taboos have weakened. Yet beneath the surface, Europe’s re-armament remains uneven, delayed, and tightly constrained by domestic politics, fiscal rules, and industrial bottlenecks. What is unfolding is not a confident strategic turn, but a reluctant and anxiety-driven adjustment to a more dangerous environment. And it is still far too little, far too late.

More Spending, Limited Power

European defence spending is rising, but the pace of change is often overstated. EU defence expenditure was around €380 billion in 2025 – around 2.1 per cent of GDP – up from approximately 1.9 per cent in 2024. This represents a clear break from pre-2022 patterns, but it still falls well short of what would be required for a rapid or transformative expansion of military capability. Even under NATO’s revised benchmark of moving toward 5 per cent of GDP by 2035, current trajectories point to a long, politically constrained adjustment rather than an imminent surge in hard power.

This gap matters because expectation in Washington, Moscow, and European capitals themselves is beginning to run ahead of reality. Europe is increasingly discussed as if it were on the cusp of a decisive strategic transformation. In practice, European power is being reshaped far more slowly and unevenly. The risk is not that Europe remains weak in absolute terms, but that its capabilities, commitments, and political will evolve out of sync – creating uncertainty for allies and adversaries alike and perhaps leading to unwarranted confidence on the European side.

The Core–Periphery Problem

Germany sits at the centre of this dynamic. Since the Zeitenwende announcement in 2022, Berlin’s strategic intent has shifted, most visibly through the establishment of the €100 billion special defence fund. Yet the translation of intent into sustained capability has been halting. Constitutional debt limits, coalition politics, procurement inefficiencies, and a cautious strategic culture continue to constrain progress. The special fund is expected to be largely drawn down by 2027, raising unresolved questions about what replaces it, and whether Germany’s core defence budget can absorb the burden thereafter.

Germany’s importance lies not just in its own capacities, but also in its gravitational effect on Europe as a whole. When Berlin moves slowly, Europe struggles to move decisively. Incremental German reform therefore has outsized consequences—not because Germany alone can transform European security, but because sustained inertia at the centre limits what the periphery can achieve.

France, by contrast, retains the language and ambition of strategic leadership, including a credible nuclear deterrent and expeditionary tradition. Its Military Programming Law for 2024–2030 sets out a long-term rearmament path. Yet Paris faces its own limits: fiscal pressure, domestic political volatility, and industrial constraints restrict its ability to convert ambition into rapid conventional power. President Macron’s recent warning that France is not yet operating as a true “war economy” underscores the gap between intent and execution.

Eastern European states – particularly those closest to Russia – have moved faster, driven by acute threat perception. Poland and the Baltic states have raised spending rapidly and expanded force structures. Yet while speed has increased, scale and coordination remain limited. These states cannot compensate for the industrial, fiscal, and demographic weight of Europe’s core. Their efforts are essential, but insufficient to carry Europe as a whole.

Structural and Industrial Constraints

All this is aggravated by deeper structural weaknesses. Defence procurement remains overwhelmingly national, customised, and legally complex. European states continue to prioritise domestic specifications and industrial work-share, even in cooperative programmes. The inevitable result is fragmentation, slow delivery, and limited economies of scale.

Industrial capacity also remains a binding constraint. Ammunition and air-defence production have expanded since 2022, but from a low base and under persistent strain. Stockpiles were depleted by transfers to Ukraine, while demand remains volatile and difficult to plan against. EU-level initiatives have improved coordination at the margins, but output still depends more on political alignment than on embedded industrial scale.

The allocation of spending compounds the problem. Roughly one-third of European defence expenditure now goes towards investment – procurement and R&D – while close to two-thirds is absorbed by personnel, maintenance, infrastructure, pensions, and the sustainment of existing platforms. Hence, the majority of the “new money” is actually merely plugging gaps stabilising legacy forces instead of building future capabilities.

Technology, Russia, and the Governance Gap

Beyond hardware, Europe faces persistent gaps in intelligence, surveillance, long-range strike, and integrated air and missile defence – the core enablers of high-intensity warfare. Less visible but equally consequential is the digital deficit, in which European forces remain heavily reliant on US-based cloud infrastructure and data architectures. Efforts to develop indigenous alternatives are underway but remain nascent. There is no European equivalent of a Palantir or a Lockheed Martin.

The contrast with Russia is alarming. Russian defence spending has surged to an estimated $140–150 billion annually, tightly aligned with a single strategic objective and rapidly converted into output. Europe retains advantages in technology, air and naval power, and nuclear deterrence. But Russia’s war-economy model delivers speed and coherence while Europe’s model delivers resilience slowly, under peacetime constraints.

Finally, Europe’s re-armament is limited by governance. The EU can coordinate and co-finance, but it cannot compel. It has neither a defence budget nor a central procurement authority, binding force-planning mechanisms, or the power to impose standardisation or industrial consolidation. Strategy exists but enforcement does not.

Implications

For NATO and the United States, this creates a complex and troubling picture. Europe is doing more, but not enough to remove American centrality or deliver near-term strategic autonomy. For adversaries, Europe appears neither inert nor fully mobilised – a condition that risks miscalculation rather than deterrence. Europe’s re-armament is therefore best understood not as an awakening, but as a process: cautious, constrained, and uneven. It is an adjustment under pressure, not a decisive strategic turn – with clear implications for alliance stability and the wider international order.

If the big picture is familiar, there is much in McTague’s account which is surprising. The reader is not only told, or reminded, of the twists and turns of high-political manoeuvre at Westminster but also of the shifting party-political positions. At first, pro-European sentiment was as much or even more a Conservative than a left-wing cause. It was much stronger, initially, in England, rather than Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland. Modernising the Tories, we learn, started as a rightwing cause under Dougie Smith before it became associated with the ‘left’ of the party. Over time, parties and groupings effectively changed places. And here is another ‘fun fact’: the idea of a second referendum on the ‘divorce terms’ from Brussels was originally a ‘leave idea’ championed by Dominic Cummings. I had completely missed that.

Looking back on this period, I recall being a strong supporter of Devolution in the 1990s, especially in Northern Ireland, where it helped to bring the long-running ‘Troubles’ to a close, but also in Scotland and Wales. In retrospect, I fear that separate parliaments in Edinburgh and Cardiff have merely stoked the desire to leave the Union altogether, just as critics predicted. During the Brexit era I was hopeful that a close relationship with the EU could be maintained even after departure from the bloc, but this vision proved elusive, just as Remainers warned. That said, I agreed with the Leavers that the UK would not be ‘adrift and irrelevant’ after Brexit, and in fact given the Russian threat Britain is more central to the future of the continent than it has been for most of the past three decades.

The author’s day job is running the New Statesman, where he has the hard task of following Jason Cowley. McTague brings to the story an empathy for both sides of the divide, and a fine sense of the ironies of the debate. This comes across particularly strongly in his passages on the predicted consequences of the Brexit vote. ‘Many Eurosceptics’, he writes, ‘argued that Britain had integrated [into the EU] far more deeply than any government liked to admit, but paradoxically claimed that cutting loose from these arrangements would be easy’. Pro-Europeans, for their part, ‘argued that the scale of Britain’s European entanglement was exaggerated but that leaving would be impossibly complex’.

What drives the whole story, in McTague’s telling is not so much politics as history. Both Leavers and Remainers come back again and again to the past and how it is to be interpreted, what the Philosopher Roger Scruton (a prominent figure in this account) calls the ‘two rival conceptions…standing to either side of the central icon, like warring heraldic beasts’. The experience of the Second World War, said the one, demonstrated Britain’s ability to stand alone. On the contrary, said the others, it showed that the UK’s future lay with the rest of the continent. In the end, the narrative of the sceptics won out, at least for the time being. But of course, the last word is not spoken and never will be. As the Labour government takes us much closer to the EU, and talk of returning to the Customs Union echoes around Westminster, we appreciate all the more McTague’s final line that Britain stands ‘between the waves of a past it half remembers and a future it cannot know’.

The hero of the story is the former Iranian political prisoner, Vahid, who by chance comes across his torturer ‘Pegleg’, so called for the characteristic squeaking sound which his artificial limb made as he approached the blindfolded captives. Vahid kidnaps the man and incarcerates him in a wooden box. He abandons his original plan of burying ‘Pegleg’ alive because the man denies everything and Vahid himself begins to have doubts.

Vahid then sets off on an extraordinary journey around his former comrades hoping to make a definitive identification of Pegleg. Some counsel forgiveness or at least mercy. ‘Don’t become like them,’ says one; ’will it ever stop’ asks another. Some seek vengeance. The former dissident Goli, whose wedding photoshoot Vahid interrupts, has to be physically restrained from attacking the suspect, and the mercurial ex-prisoner Hamid warns that unless they finish off Pegleg for good, he will return and kill them all.

In the end, after much deliberation and a certain amount of lacklustre violence against the bound prisoner, the captive is released. Before that, he finally admits to being Pegleg and even apologises. In a neat irony, the viewer is invited to recognize the futility of killing a man with a death wish who is convinced that he will go straight to paradise.

So far so familiar. What is unusual about this film is that it is set and was secretly made in an existing dictatorship. The Islamic Republic of Iran, of course, is still very much with us. Yet in this movie the regime is practically invisible, has even given up. The hated religious police are nowhere to be seen, and there is no sign of the Revolutionary Guards either. Authority is represented only by two car park security men who are bought off with a bribe, paid by card machine. There are few veils and many bare-headed women in western dress. Vahid uses a Satnav. The war in Syria, where Pegleg was crippled, seems long ago and far away.

The odd clunky and preachy dialogue aside, It was just an accident is a remarkable film which riffs on the western canon. Beckett’s Waiting for Godot is explicitly referenced, but there are obvious allusions to Breaking Bad in the desert burial scenes, and to Hitchcock’s Rope in the scene where Pegleg’s wife (for reasons that would take too long to explain) lies on the wooden box in Vahids’ s boot unaware that her husband is unconscious within. But the biggest inspiration is surely the Chilean playwright Ariel Dorfman’s Death and the Maiden, whose heroine goes through a very similar experience after her husband brings home the man who once tortured her while blindfolded.

The message of the film, whose director Jafar Panahi was himself a political prisoner and has once again been convicted by the regime, is ambivalent. On the one hand, the characters do not bear the next generation a grudge. Vahid helps with the birth of Pegleg’s son. Pegleg himself is eventually spared, a decision the audience is apparently invited to endorse. On the other hand, the film’s brilliant, teasing, conclusion leaves open the possibility that clemency might be a mistake, that perhaps the crazy Hamid was right.

It is not clear whether the squeaky steps Vahid hears behind him as he walks back into his house, are approaching or receding, a tantalising ending which persuaded most of the audience to stay until the credits had finished in the hope of a final resolution, which is never offered. We are left uncertain whether Pegleg has killed Vahid, has spared him, or whether the whole scene is simply a figment of Vahid’s imagination. What Panahi may really be saying, therefore, is that the regime will continue to mess with Iranian heads long after it collapses.

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