In an article for The Telegraph, he touched upon the issue in light of the ongoing Russian special military operation in Ukraine, described by Hunt as "an invasion", which the 55-year-old claimed was "the biggest failure of Western foreign and security policy in our lifetimes".
The UK and the US "announcing they would not intervene in the event of a Russian invasion of Ukraine" had a negative impact on London's and Washington's attempted deterrence, Hunt argued, claiming that "instead of peace through strength we caused war through weakness".
"[…] He was only saying more robustly what numerous presidents had said before. If we want America to remain the leader of the free world, other democratic powers, especially in Europe, must commit to matching US defence spending as a proportion of GDP. The UK should lead the way by saying that defence, aid, and soft power spend will rise to at least 4 percent of [its] GDP over the next decade", the former top British diplomat stated.