The F-35 “carve-out”
While the UK government suspended some military export licences to Israel in September 2024, on the grounds of a risk that UK arms might be used in violations of international humanitarian law in Gaza, they made a specific exemption, known as the “F-35 carve-out”, for components for the F-35 supplied to Israel via the global supply pool including the United States, claiming that the F-35 programme was critical to global ‘peace and stability’.
Although there is a long history of democratic, western governments using this type of framing as a justification for furthering warfare, the F-35 carve-out is unprecedented in the history of the UK government. There has never been a situation previously where the government has admitted there is a clear risk of serious International Humanitarian Law violations and war crimes, yet chosen to create a loop-hole to facilitate the export of parts contributing to that very risk.
British and American arms and foreign policy
Our government’s role in the F-35 fighter jet programme is a key way in which the British state has remained complicit in the genocide in Gaza. Furthermore, Britain’s powerful position in the F-35 jet programme is fundamental to how closely ingrained the British arms industry is with the American one. This contributes to the alignment of British and American foreign policy.
There is a long history of US intervention and attacks on sovereign nations around the world, which the UK has historically supported. The United States has bombed seven countries over the past twelve months, and has recently launched military aggression in Ecuador as well. The US has over 800 military bases around the world, more than six times that of any other country.
Warfare has historically been motivated by resource accumulation and the wealth this generates for the rich and powerful. Over the past seventy years, oil has been one of the primary drivers of military intervention around the world. It was the Mossadegh government nationalising Iranian oil reserves, challenging Britain’s colonial control over the country’s oil, which led to the US-British coup in 1953.
Now in 2026, the US has spoken about the importance of both Venezuelan and Iranian oil as contributing to the motivation behind its recent military aggression in both countries. This will only serve to move the planet closer to climate collapse, and people across the globe will continue to suffer economically as oil prices soar.
Where is the accountability?
The Gaza genocide has exposed the limits of international legal systems, which have thus far failed to end the atrocities Israel and the global arms trade are perpetuating in the region. International law is evidently enforced selectively, if at all.
The same democratic, western countries, such as the UK, which have allowed Israel to evade accountability, spoke out in January about the importance of international law in regards to the US’s stated aims to annex Greenland. There has not been the same outpouring of condemnation for the US’s attacks on Venezuela, nor for the US-Israeli war on Iran.
It would appear that western Europe is only willing to challenge the United States when its aggression creeps to territories western Europe has its own colonial stake in, such as Greenland, which Denmark still holds as an “autonomous territory”. Greenland’s majority Inuit population know all too well that there is “no such thing as a better coloniser” as they oppose American intervention while still fighting for their full independence from Denmark. Denmark is also part of the F-35 programme.
The F-35 programme evidently brings together western nations with colonial pasts and presents to collaborate in a global supply chain used for genocide, for resource seizure and for attacks on sovereign nations. The F-35 programme entrenches an international system where western, democratic countries continue to amass wealth through warfare, while the majority of the world suffocates under the lethal weight of the global arms trade.
