In a last ditch attempt to save the Empire, the 1902 Imperial Conference saw the British Empire try to get its dominions to pay their fair share of defence spending. As is shown by the lack of a “British Empire” delegation at yesterday’s conference, this didn’t work. With an ammunition crisis in Ukraine, today’s NATO Conference is likely to focus on getting NATO members to step up defence spending by reaching the 2% target. Here’s what America should learn from history.
What Do Countries Want From The NATO Conference?
In the context of public and private calls to step down, Biden’s speech yesterday portrayed strength and unity, calling NATO “more powerful than ever” emphasising the need for NATO to rally together for this “pivotal moment” in Russia’s war against Ukraine. Behind the scenes, however, the summit is expected to be more sober. Going into the NATO Conference, American politicians have raised concern with Canada’s failure to meet the mandatory target of spending 2% of GDP on the military Biden’s ambassador to Canada calling the country “the outlier in the entire alliance”.
Unfortunately, Canada is less of an outlier than might be hoped, being in the majority of Nato’s thirty-two members, twenty of whom do not meet the 2% spending target. With Ukraine running out of ammunition and the prospect of a second Trump presidency becoming more likely, Biden, along with other world leaders such as Keir Starmer are expected to use the NATO Conference to push hard for other members to pay their share and expand European contribution to Ukraine.
America is not the only one with significant objections with NATO’s structure. The broadly anti-NATO Popular front won the largest share of seats on France’s election on Sunday, with even the Atlanticist-minded Macron calling for the EU’s ‘Strategic Autonomy’ from the United States. Even with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, polling and public statements show that non-American NATO members have some frustration with their perceived lack of sovereignty in foreign policy.
The NATO Conference is not the first time a hegemonic power had to guide hesitant states to contribute their fair share to a military alliance, 122 years ago, the UK found itself in the same situation.
NATO and the 1902 Imperial Conference
The 1902 Imperial Conference was a meeting between the so-called self-governing ‘White Commonwealth’ nations to discuss collective foreign policy. Just as in yesterday’s NATO conference, the issues of the 1902 Imperial Conference were mainly on the imbalance of defence spending, in this case shouldered primarily by the UK. In 1895, of the Empire’s £18,2000,000 defence budget, only around £200,000 was paid by the dominions. Whilst British criticisms of this system was more passive aggressive than America’s to NATO, opposition to this set-up was still significant.
To protest this arrangement, the Imperial Federation Defence Committee, a pressure group with connections to several high members of government, was set up, calling the UK’s shouldering of defence spending as “a manifest inequality on the British taxpayer”. Going into the 1902 conference, with perceived Colonial inaction in the Second Boer War in the background, Colonial Minister Joseph Chamberlain was keen to push for Dominions to pay their fair share. Cautious of not upsetting dominions, similar to Biden his first speech emphasised “unity” with little in the way of specifics, before calling for a more equitable share of defence spending.
As the conference deteriorated, British delegates got as angry as Victorian parlance would permit, with Lord of the Admiralty telling his Canadian counterpart “the British taxpayer by no means gets the benefit himself of all the expenditure for which he pays,”. Despite the increasing frustration of British delegates, the Canadian PM Wilfred Laurier wouldn’t budge.
Canada’s position in 1902 was summed up by the President of its Board of Trade as “pay and say”; Canada was willing to pay a proportional share for defence in exchange for an equal say in the Empire’s foreign policy. The UK, however, didn’t see a genuine desire for unity, but a dominion trying to flake out of its commitments. With Mike Johnson referring to the country as “riding America’s coattails,”, it seems America has once again failed to see this nuance. With a stronger NATO more crucial than ever, America needs to listen to NATO’s constituent members rather than engage in the imperial chauvinism that destroyed the British Empire
Final Thought
In the case of Britain, its push for Unity the failure to reach a compelling deal with dominions on defence spending gradually caused the country to see its dominions as a liability, eventually leading to the breakup of the Empire altogether. With Europeans sceptical of American dominance, America should emphasise its opposition to unilateral action, renewing its commitment to consensus-based decision-making through the Atlantic Council.
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This article was written by Chamber’s features writer, Alex Connor