‘Britain Has Abandoned Its Soft Power for the Demands of the Military-Industrial Complex’

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The UK Government has now confirmed what many suspected: Britain’s global priorities are shifting. A new Foreign Office report reveals that foreign aid spending will be slashed by 40%. The cuts will hit hardest in Africa, with children’s education, women’s health and access to clean water all facing steep reductions. Funding for the Occupied Palestinian Territories will fall by 21%, despite earlier assurances it would be protected. Officials have admitted that the decision was driven in part by pressure from Washington to increase defence spending.

This is not a mere budgetary adjustment. It reflects a deeper redefinition of what British power now means.  Britain’s 2025 Strategic Defence Review, launched last month, set out to redefine the UK’s national power. The Ministry of Defence is being strengthened with fresh billions; the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office is being hollowed out. Aid is no longer seen as strategy. It is collateral damage.

The numbers are unambiguous. Defence spending will rise to 2.5% of GDP by 2027, with ambitions for 3% in the next Parliament. That growth is already under way: £5 billion was injected into tech investment immediately after the SDR’s publication. Other pots of money are being found for defence.

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In contrast, aid spending is set to fall from 0.5% to 0.3% of Gross National Income. It is the lowest level since 1999 and comes at a time when aid funding is already under severe strain, increasingly diverted to cover the growing costs of supporting refugees and asylum seekers. In 2020, the UK spent £628m on such support within its borders; by 2024, that figure had surged to £2.8bn. In 2023, such support accounted for 43% of the UK’s bilateral aid, which is intended to fund specific projects in developing countries. As the Government itself says, it is “putting the defence industry “at the heart” of its… industrial strategy”. 

A new Defence Industrial Joint Council – co-chaired by the Defence Secretary and BAE Systems’ CEO – has replaced the older Defence Suppliers Forum. Private investors are now welcomed into procurement discussions. Trade unions are at the table, but so are firms like Palantir and venture capitalists from the NATO Innovation Fund. The new consensus: what benefits BAE benefits Britain.

It certainly does. In the last six months, BAE’s share price rose 65%, up to 1,936.50p from 763.00p. Rolls-Royce surged more than 50% in the first half of 2025, its market cap surpassing £75 billion. The arms company Babcock International shares have more than doubled in value since January. 

These are not speculative rallies. They reflect the surety of guaranteed public contracts. The MoD has committed to new submarines every 18 months. Six domestic munitions factories are being built. The UK’s production of shells is, reportedly, to be up sixteen-fold within two years.  Fat cat war capitalism hasn’t seen it this good since before chunks of the Berlin wall were sold off as souvenirs.

Innovation is now less about societal good than it is about battlefield advantage. In January 2025, the UK launched the Janus Accelerator at Imperial College. Pitched as a crucible for dual-use technologies, its purpose is clear: selected as a NATO development site for 2026, Janus offers start-ups fast-track access to both military buyers with heavy cheque books and to light-touch investors. Its brief is not just to encourage invention, but to militarise it. In this way, civilian tech firms are encouraged to reshape into defence contractors. The dividing line between app developer and arms manufacturer seems increasingly blurred.

Cybersecurity, too, is being folded into this new industrial strategy. On 18 June 2025, the UK Government unveiled a Cyber Growth Action Plan aimed at “supercharging” Britain’s £13.2 billion cyber sector. Again rooting itself in Universities, Bristol and Imperial College are set to handle up to £16 million in promised funding, targeted at transforming academic research into commercial weapons of code. And, predictably, cyber researchers from DeepMind, Microsoft and BAE Systems have been enlisted to advise the government. 

The structures underpinning these innovations are opaque. Janus Allies, the Accelerator’s official website, is threadbare. Their head, Dr Tanya Suarez, did not respond to a request for an interview. And yet, in a closed-door meeting last month, she introduced defence officials and investors to groups of startups developing AI for autonomous warfare, sensors for missile guidance and surveillance, and imaging systems for enhanced target acquisition. These are not tools of peacebuilding, but instruments of control and lethality, designed not for societal benefit but for battlefield dominance.

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This is not surprising. But what has been sacrificed to fund this transformation is precisely what these innovations lack: a sense of humanitarianism. This at a time when the FCDO’s aid budget is set to fall dramatically. According to the February 2025’s GNI projections, the new aid spend at 0.3% of Gross National Income (GNI) would result in a 2027 aid budget of approximately £9.2 billion. In contrast, the former 0.5% GNI target would have reached around £15.4 billion. 

It’s a reduction of aid to the tune of some £6.1 billion. According to Bond, the UK’s umbrella group for development NGOs, this will lead to “devastating consequences for millions of marginalised people.” 

Aid agencies are already shrinking. Oxfam International tells Byline Times that its Global Humanitarian Team is to undergo a 24% cut and that they are ‘facing a 20% reduction of our unrestricted budget”. Others not so reliant on government aid are also cutting back. Christian Aid has announced it is trimming swathes of its UK  workforce for a “leaner programme structure” in part to gain “lower fixed costs”.  They say it will make them more secure “in an increasingly volatile funding environment.”

The UK’s landmine clearance sector is also feeling the pinch. Once cheerleaders for a disarmament vision of British global policy, in part created by Princess Diana’s passion for ridding the world of landmines, two of the world’s biggest landmine clearance charities have seen their UK income slashed. MAG International says they have seen their combined UK funding drop from £12.9m in 2019 (today £16.5m, factoring in inflation) to £4m in 2023 (today worth £4.2m) – a real term drop of some 75%. Whilst HALO, the biggest landmine clearance charity, saw a drop from £23.8m in 2020 (today worth £30.1m)  to £11.6m in 2024 (today some £11.9m) – a cut of 60%. It’s perhaps not surprising they have got Prince Harry to follow in his mother’s footsteps in a landmine field in Angola.

The International Rescue Committee warned in February that such cuts “are a blow to Britain’s proud reputation as a global humanitarian and development leader.”

Even Labour ministers have expressed alarm. The resignation of the UK’s International Development Minister Anneliese Dodds in February 2025 was a rare political rupture. She told the Prime Minister in her letter that the cuts will “likely lead to a UK pull-out from numerous African, Caribbean and Western Balkan nations – at a time when Russia has been aggressively increasing its global presence. It will likely lead to withdrawal from regional banks and a reduced commitment to the World Bank; the UK being shut out of numerous multilateral bodies; and a reduced voice for the UK in the G7, G20 and in climate negotiations.”

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Defence is not merely empowered. It is unchallenged. The rationale is self-sustaining: increased defence spending fuels industrial expansion, and that expansion is then used to justify further spending. Yet the threats most likely to define the coming decades—pandemics, climate collapse, the erosion of the welfare state, and the corrosion of truth through disinformation—are not ones that hypersonic missiles or AI-guided drones are equipped to deter. Still, the budget tells its own story. This is where Britain is placing its bets.

What is unfolding is not only a military renaissance. It is a quiet redefinition of Britain’s global identity. The country that once led the world in international development now hopes to be a leader of weapons procurement. Universities are incentivised to become experts in warfighting tools. NGOs are feeling the pinch. Humanitarian budgets are hollowed out.

This is not an argument against defence. But it is a warning. When one arm of the state is celebrated and enriched and the other left to shrink and apologise, a nation’s moral equilibrium is in danger of being lost. 

Britain’s defence companies are winning. Its humanitarian institutions are in a parlous state. 

Soft power is dead. Long live the military-industrial complex.