NATO and Europe first: Britain’s new Strategic Defence Review

NATO and Europe first: Britain’s new Strategic Defence Review

This week, Mark Leonard is joined by Malcolm Chalmers, deputy director general at the Royal United Services Institute and former Labour government advisor, for an Emergency Room episode dissecting the UK’s newly unveiled Strategic Defence Review (SDR). Prime minister Keir Starmer has committed to increasing defence spending to 3% GDP by 2030, expanding the UK’s military capabilities with 12 attack submarines, boosting munitions production, and possibly reviving an air-launched nuclear capability.

Together Mark and Malcolm discuss how—amid Russia’s war in Ukraine and America’s talk of reducing its European presence—the SDR focuses on leveraging AI and uncrewed systems, as well as a “NATO first, Europe first” approach. They also consider how to balance transatlantic relations with closer EU defence cooperation. Can Britain drive a technological and geopolitical shift? Or will fiscal and industrial constraints limit its ambitions?


The podcast was recorded on June 2nd, 2025.

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Episoder(632)

How to defend Ukraine after a ceasefire

How to defend Ukraine after a ceasefire

As Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine enters its fifth year, negotiations are finally entering a productive phase. Mark Leonard is joined by Jennifer Kavanagh, senior fellow and director of milit...

27 Feb 32min

Bretton Woods institutions in a new world order

Bretton Woods institutions in a new world order

This week Mark Leonard is joined by Mark Malloch-Brown. Mark is the former president of the Open Society Foundations, former head of the United Nations Development Programme, formerly UN secretary gen...

20 Feb 30min

Live from MSC 2026: Transatlantic turning point

Live from MSC 2026: Transatlantic turning point

In this special episode of the World in 30 Minutes, Mark Leonard welcomes Editorial Director and Senior Policy Fellow Jeremy Cliffe, Senior Policy Fellow, Ulrike Franke, Distinguished Policy Fellow, J...

14 Feb 36min

Munich Security Conference Special with Elbridge Colby

Munich Security Conference Special with Elbridge Colby

This episode features a live recording of a conversation between ECFR director Mark Leonard and US undersecretary of war for policy, Elbridge Colby, which took place during the Munich Security Confere...

13 Feb 44min

Lessons from the Greenland crisis

Lessons from the Greenland crisis

This week, Mark Leonard is joined by Tiago Antunes, Portugal’s former secretary of state for European affairs and senior visiting fellow at ECFR, and Jim O’Brien, former US assistant secretary of stat...

13 Feb 25min

Indignity with Lea Ypi

Indignity with Lea Ypi

Mark Leonard is joined by Lea Ypi, ECFR council member and professor in political theory at the London School of Economics, to discuss her latest book Indignity: A Life Reimagined, which asks how indi...

6 Feb 32min

Europe-Africa relations in 2026

Europe-Africa relations in 2026

Mark Leonard is joined by Africa experts Nathalie Delapalme, CEO of the Mo Ibrahim Foundation and ECFR council member, Carlos Lopes, honourary professor at the University of Cape Town who has occupied...

30 Jan 34min

The EU-India mega-deal

The EU-India mega-deal

In an emergency podcast episode, Mark Leonard welcomes James Crabtree, ECFR distinguished visiting fellow and former Mumbai bureau chief for the Financial Times, to discuss the long-awaited EU-India t...

29 Jan 18min

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