The United Kingdom faces two defence challenges. The first is financial. After decades of underinvestment, rebuilding military capability is essential. But the second challenge is intellectual. Britain has long underestimated Eastern Europe as a source of strategic knowledge, treating it primarily as a region that requires reassurance. This is based on outdated thinking, which has made the UK slow to adopt defence measures used widely in Eastern Europe. Until it changes, the UK risks spending more on defence while failing to effectively protect itself.
The understanding many Brits have of European security rests on a mental map of Europe that no longer reflects reality. Schools often teach European history through a Western European lens or with a focus on Russia rather than on Eastern Europe, where much of that history took place. Few university courses cover the region, apart from in the context of communism or democratic transition. And despite large Eastern European immigrant populations in the UK, perspectives from Eastern Europe are often missing from British culture.
As a result, the countries beyond the old Iron Curtain are still widely viewed as the continent’s vulnerable frontier—poorer, less developed and perpetually catching up after decades of Soviet domination. Their admission into Nato and the European Union has often been understood as a story of western institutions implementing modernisation eastwards. And British strategic thinking about Europe has also looked from west to east.
Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine exposed this thinking as a failure. Over decades, Poland and the Baltic states consistently argued that Russia remained an imperial power willing to use military force against its neighbours. Following Russia’s invasion of Georgia in 2008 and the annexation of Crimea in 2014, Eastern European governments urged Nato to strengthen its eastern flank, and warned that Moscow was testing the alliance’s resolve. But prior to 2022, these concerns were often partly regarded in Western Europe as products of historical trauma. Germany and France instead prioritised engagement with Russia and the creation of economic ties, and failed to see the pattern in Moscow’s behaviour that would ultimately have devastating effects for Ukraine. Britain, meanwhile, announced in 2021—a year before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine—that its defence strategy would tilt towards the Indo-Pacific, claiming that that region was essential for its own security.
Understanding has developed since—including among people responsible for this country’s defence. Britain’s Defence Investment Plan (DIP), released earlier this year, explained that the UK will be learning from Ukraine on everything from uncrewed warfare systems and counter-drone capabilities to electronic warfare and AI on the battlefield.
Lessons are being learned from other eastern states too. The UK has recently partnered with Estonia to swap the old-fashioned tanks stationed there for a Mobile Anti-Armour Force “better suited to the challenges of modern warfare”—a sign of a changed understanding of the threat the Baltic state faces, and of deepening cooperation on defence, industry and innovation cooperation. The UK and Latvia lead the Drone Coalition to support drone manufacture in Ukraine and the west. And the UK also has defence ties to the High North, North Atlantic and Baltic Sea region through the Joint Expeditionary Forces (Jef) and Nato.
That being said, perspectives from Eastern Europe have only been taken up in piecemeal fashion since 2022. The DIP prioritises support from Nato and the United States, and the Jef has been criticised for its potential inability to meet defence needs in a crisis.
Today, Britain remains far behind in both spending and thinking. The DIP specified that technology was changing the face of modern warfare and admitted that British spending had long been underfunded. It also committed the UK to investing just 2.7 per cent of GDP on defence by the end of the decade. In contrast, Poland is estimated to spend 4.3 per cent of GDP, Lithuania 4 per cent, Latvia 3.7 per cent and Estonia 3.4 per cent. A greater sum may be required. But Britain may only make the wisest choices on how to use it if it learns more from these states on how to spend, too.
Poland, Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia concluded years ago that 21st-century security required far more than larger armies. They invested in civil resilience, cyber defence, energy security, infrastructure protection, counter-disinformation strategies and public preparedness. Poland is aiming to have the largest army in Europe by 2030, but has also recently agreed to create an ambitious anti-drone system, the first of its kind in Europe. The Baltic states, meanwhile, have long invested in a total defence approach, from promoting defence education among civilians, including schoolchildren, to protecting hospitals and other essential infrastructure.
In Estonia, schoolchildren learn how to respond to drone alerts and teenagers take part in mandatory defence training. From next year, a universal 12-month military service will be introduced, standardising the conscription system in place since 1991. The country is also working to improve energy security—through sustainability and decentralisation to avoid reliance on Russia or risks of attack—and, perhaps most radically, has invested heavily in cyber protection after a devastating cyberattack in 2007.
In Lithuania, schoolchildren are also given drone training: the youngest learn to construct drones and older children are educated in programming. Nationwide mobilisation exercises have tested evacuation and public alert systems, and a record number of civilians—8,100, from a population of 2.8m—have signed up for voluntary military service.
Latvia has announced plans to build a drone production factory with Ukraine near its border with Russia. It will also be launching additional air defence systems to protect the country from drone incursions, which have been increasing in recent months. Together, the Baltic states are building a “defence line” to protect against Russia, including ditches, anti-tank measures and bunkers.
This expertise could benefit the UK’s defence against a more aggressive Russia. Deeper strategic and intellectual partnerships with Eastern European allies are needed—including discussions on how the UK supports other states, and how it is able to incorporate their expertise in combating Russian challenges into its own defence planning. This is especially the case in civil defence—emergency communications, resilience against disinformation, protection of infrastructure, volunteer defence organisations, and public preparedness campaigns—which is currently lacking in the UK.
If the UK is to capitalise on this expertise, however, it will have to rethink how it understands Eastern Europe itself. Stereotypes embedded in UK institutions will not disappear overnight, but Britain must now start to change the way it sees a region that is central to Europe’s future. Better investment in schools and universities, to ensure knowledge about Eastern Europe is improved and moves beyond stereotypes, may help, as would the inclusion by broadcasters of Eastern European insights into Russian policy and their own national cultures.
As long as Eastern Europe is seen as Europe’s other, rather than an equal player, the UK will continue to overlook some of the most valuable lessons available for securing the continent in an increasingly dangerous world.
