Sir Keir Starmer embarks tomorrow on the most challenging meeting with a US president since the 1962 Nassau Summit.
At the height of the Cold War, President Kennedy had cancelled the US nuclear weapons programme, Skybolt.
This left the UK with no future nuclear deterrent.
The Americans had refused to share Polaris, the submarine-based continuous-at-sea-deterrent. Against all expectations, Harold Macmillan got Kennedy to reverse that decision.
The UK continues to deploy the successor deterrent, Trident, to this day.
This week, Sir Keir must persuade President Trump to reverse his stance on Ukraine and NATO. Without an unequivocal US commitment to Article 5 of the NATO treaty – “an attack on one is attack on all” – the NATO security shield for Europe is gone.
We should commit more to our own defence, but not instantly.
There can be no stable peace for a free Ukraine, or for Europe as a whole, without significant US military commitment for the foreseeable future.
Russia’s economy may be small compared to the US or the EU.
It is shattered by sanctions and the cost of the Ukraine war. But Putin is building up 1.5million men under arms, a new navy with deadly submarines and a massive nuclear arsenal.
His ruthless menacing will stop at nothing unless the democracies match him with superior military force.
We are rich countries, so we should be able to afford this.
At least Sir Keir goes to Washington with the full backing of the House of Commons for significant increases in defence spending, which Trump has been demanding.
He has announced the UK will increase defence to 2.5% of GDP by 2027 and to 3% by 2034. But will this be enough?
The benchmark for the success of the defence review is not whether we spend some arbitrary percentage of GDP on defence, but whether we restore the war-fighting capability of our armed forces.
We must be prepared to spend whatever it takes.
There can be no more tax rises, but we have the highest government spending on public services in our history. Cutting overseas aid is painful but relatively easy.
Further sacrifices will have to be made to keep our freedoms and our country safe.
But as Sir Keir told the Commons, the defence and security of the British people must always come first.
Sir Bernard Jenkin is the Conservative MP for Harwich and North Essex, and a former shadow defence secretary
