Russell Whiting

GCOMS UK AGM & Budget Briefing

As we approach the third budget statement in as many months on the 17th of November, public spending cuts are again on the agenda. Yet even after the biggest increases in military spending in a generation during this Parliament, the UK Defence Minister is discussing a further £52bn increase in the midst of a desperate …

Read more

New Report: ‘NATO, building global insecurity’

New publication by Centre Delàs of Peace Studies, in collaboration with IPB and GCOMS, providing a critical analysis of NATO’s role in the construction of a global scale warmongering security, and including historical, gender & climate justice perspectives. #NATOsquareOne A few days before the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) summit in Madrid (June 29 and …

Read more

New report reveals UK spent $6.8bn on nuclear weapons in 2021

A new report, ‘Squandered: 2021 Global Nuclear Weapons Spending,’ by the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) shows that in 2021, the year before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, nine nuclear-armed states spent $82.4 billion on their nuclear weapons, a further increase on 2020 spending. The report shows that it is not just governments …

Read more

UK report on GDAMS 2022

While events this year were overshadowed by the horrifying events in Ukraine, the movement came together to highlight the continued failure of military solutions to tackle the existential problems we face. Street demonstrations, Vigils & Stalls The first event of GDAMS in the UK was a demonstration on the evening of April 11th at Menwith …

Read more

SIPRI: Global Spending Hits $2 Trillion / UK £50bn for 1st time

Today’s launch of the annual Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) figures on military spending makes chilling reading. SIPRI estimates global military expenditure last year was at least $2,113 billion (US), the first time it has exceeded $2 trillion (US): an average of more than $5.78 billion (US) every day. This represents a 6.1% nominal …

Read more

Is the invasion of Ukraine really the fault of NATO under-spending?

“Instead of peace through strength we caused war through weakness… other democratic powers, especially in Europe, must commit to matching US defence spending as a proportion of GDP.” Jeremy Hunt MP, writing in The Telegraph 11/03/22 As the world watches in horror the Russian invasion of Ukraine, an extremely dangerous narrative is emerging. One that …

Read more

UK commits further £1.4bn to space warfare

Image of the Titania satellite courtesy of DSTL

On Monday the UK Ministry of Defence released its first ‘Defence Space Strategy‘ ominously sub-titled ‘Operationalising the Space Domain’. The report contained new spending commitments of an additional £1.4bn over 10 years to “to protect UK interests in space”, though it did not define what these interest might be. While we might wonder why a …

Read more