Cameron calls on NATO allies to increase defense spending amid growing threats

(Patria) - British Foreign Secretary David Cameron will on Thursday call on NATO partners to soon spend 2.5 percent of GDP on defense, during a major speech in which he will call for a more muscular approach to Western foreign policy, AFP reported.

Cameron, a former British prime minister, will say that countries must take more decisive action to protect their interests from new threats, including Russia and Iran.

“We are in a battle of wills. We must all prove our adversaries wrong. Britain, and our allies and partners around the world,” Cameron will say, according to excerpts released by the Foreign Office.

Cameron will use a keynote address at the National Cyber Security Centre in London to call on NATO countries to increase defense spending above the two percent target agreed a decade ago. He will call on countries in the alliance to outperform adversaries, cooperate more, and be more inventive.

“At the upcoming NATO summit, all allies must be on track to meet their promise made in Wales in 2014 to spend two percent on defense. And then we must move quickly to establish 2.5 percent as the new benchmark for all NATO allies,” Cameron is expected to say.

Last month, British leader Rishi Sunak announced during a visit to Poland that London would gradually increase defense spending to 2.5 percent of GDP by 2030.

He singled out an “axis of authoritarian states,” including Russia, Iran, North Korea, and China.

Cameron will argue that the United Kingdom needs to invest in old alliances, including the G7 group of the world's richest nations and the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing network with the United States, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. Then the UK also needs to create new partnerships, such as the AUKUS alliance with the US and Australia, after Brexit.

“We need to adopt a harder edge for a harder world. If Putin's illegal invasion has taught us anything, it must be that too little, too late only emboldens the aggressor,” he will say.

“We must be tougher and more assertive.”

Cameron, who resigned as prime minister in 2016 after Britons voted to leave the European Union, was appointed Foreign Secretary by Sunak last November.