In 1936, one of the leading Nazis, Hermann Goering, coined a phrase that resonates almost a century later. Goering told Germans that taxes needed to pay for weapons, not subsidise cheaper food. As he put it: “Would you rather have butter or guns? Preparedness makes us powerful. Butter merely makes us fat.”
Goering, incidentally, was a rather large man. He was tried as a war criminal, committing suicide with a poison pill before he was executed. Nevertheless, his resonant phrase describes perfectly difficult choices facing governments right now in dangerous times.
In 1976, during the Cold War, Margaret Thatcher said that “the Soviets put guns over butter, but we put almost everything over guns”. She was persuading British voters that it was right to increase defence spending against the communist threat. And now, 50 years later, very similar arguments have reached a critical phase across Western Europe.
In London, Berlin, Paris, Warsaw, Riga and elsewhere, the Ukraine and Iran conflicts along with the perceived unreliability of US President Donald Trump have reopened the old defence spending debate and “guns versus butter” arguments.
One big unanswered question is whether the US will live up to its historic Nato commitments and defend Europe against Russian aggression. Perhaps not even Mr Trump himself knows the answer to that. And so, in almost every European capital, leaders and governments are trying to figure out how to cope with national security in this increasingly insecure world.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz is presiding over the largest defence spending increase in Europe, from €86 billion (almost $100 billion) last year to €108 billion this year. Recruitment for the German military is being stepped up. Other nations are following suit, and the “guns versus butter” debate is everywhere.
In Britain, Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s decision not to guarantee to raise UK defence spending in the Defence Investment Plan to 3 per cent of gross domestic product by 2030 resulted in yet another self-inflicted political crisis within the already accident-prone government. Defence Secretary John Healey – previously considered a loyal minister – resigned. So did armed forces minister Al Carns.
Arguments about increased defence spending appear to go to the very top of Mr Starmer’s administration. Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves is believed to argue more for “butter” – domestic spending commitments – rather than “guns” that the extra spending defence ministers demanded. This debate is difficult all across Europe.
Defence procurement experts have told me that battlefield economics have also changed as a result of the Ukraine and Iran conflicts. In both battlefields, hugely expensive, top-of-the-range weapons systems can be destroyed very cheaply and at times remotely. One said that (in rough terms) a General Dynamics MQ9 Reaper – an unmanned aircraft that can be piloted remotely – costs about $30 million and an F-22 Raptor, an American fifth-generation, twin-engine stealth tactical fighter, is even more expensive at about $300 million. Yet both can be destroyed by relatively cheap drones.
Another defence expert pointed out that an Iranian Shahed drone costs about $50,000 and one took down an American Apache helicopter. The cost of the Apache, depending on how it was configured, is between $50 million and $80 million. These figures emphasise how significantly the cost of weapons systems has changed.
The current “guns or butter” debate going on within the top levels of the British government is therefore not just about money but also about new technology. It has also now also become publicly embarrassing.
US Under Secretary of Defence Elbridge Colby wrote on social media that the UK has an extraordinary proud military history. It “commands our respect”. But he then added: “There is again a great need for more British military strength in this critical time. We urge the UK to meet that need with urgency, scale and determination.”
More guns and not so much butter – and maybe more taxes. All this compounds the problem for a British government that appears to have lost its way most recently with those resignations of the key team at the Ministry of Defence. Ultimately, this is a leadership crisis engulfing Mr Starmer himself. He was elected with an enormous parliamentary majority and yet his government is now divided and demoralised and his leadership has been significantly undermined.
To govern is to choose. A leader can choose to spend money on guns. It could be on butter. It could be on any number of things, including social welfare and health care. But a leader cannot spend the same money twice nor appear to be dithering so much that members of his team are disillusioned enough to quit. That, sadly, is where Britain is now.
Predicting the future is difficult, but the lessons from the past are clear. As a former senior British military official once put it to me, you can either build up your military capability to prepare to fight a war, or you can fail to do so and end up fighting a war you will lose. Without adequate guns to defend yourself, you will not have any butter anyway.
