A Question of Security: The British Defence Review in an Age of Austerity 9780755622818, 9781848856066

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LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES

Table 1: UK Defence Spending in Historic Context, 1983/84 to 2008/09. 37 Table 2: Force Levels and Spending 1988–2008.

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Table 3: Defence DEL and Operations Reserves Cuts (2010/11–14/15).

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Table 4: Spending Priorities Compared (Major Departments).

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Table 5: Regular Front-line Ground Formations 2010.

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Table 6: Aircraft Fleets 2009–10.

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Table 7: Major Maritime Vessels 2010–20.

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Table 8: Full Costs of Force Elements, 2008/09.

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Figure 1: Analysis of Military Inducement.

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Figure 2: Spectrum of Military Inducement.

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ACRONYMS AND ABBREVIATIONS

AASM ASTOR AU BBC BMD CASD CDS CIA CIO CJO COIN CNI CS CSDP DCS DE&S DESO DfID DIME DIS DIS DLO DLoD DoD DPA DPKO DSTL

Armement Air-Sol Modulaire Airborne Stand-Off Radar African Union British Broadcasting Corporation Ballistic missile defence Continuous-at-sea deterrent Chief of the Defence Staff Central Intelligence Agency Chief Information Officer Chief of Joint Operations Counter-insurgency Critical National Infrastructure Capability Sponsor Common Security and Defence Policy (EU) Defence Costs Study Defence Equipment and Support Organisation Defence Exports Services Organisation Department for International Development Diplomatic, Information, Military and Economic concept Defence Intelligence Staff Defence Industrial Strategy Defence Logistics Organisation Defence Lines of Development Department of Defense Defence Procurement Agency Department of Peacekeeping Operations (UN) Defence Science and Technology Laboratory

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DTS ECC EDA EP ESDP EU FAA FCO FCS FRES G20 G8 GCHQ GDP GNI ICBM IED IMF IPPR IS ISAF ISC ISTAR JCDC JDAM JIC JTAC KSA MACA MACC MACP MAGD MIS MoD NAO NATO NCA

A Question of Security

Defence Technology Strategy Equipment Capability Customer European Defence Agency Equipment Programme European Security and Defence Policy European Union Fleet Air Arm Foreign and Commonwealth Office Future Combat System Future Rapid Effects System Group of Twenty Group of Eight Government Communications Headquarters Gross domestic product Gross national income Intercontinental ballistic missile Improvised explosive devices International Monetary Fund Institute for Public Policy Research Information superiority International Security Assistance Force Intelligence and Security Committee Intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition and reconnaissance Joint Concepts and Doctrine Centre Joint Direct Attack Munition Joint Intelligence Committee Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre Key Systems Advisor Military Aid to the Civil Authority Military Assistance to the Civil Community Military Aid to the Civil Power Military Assistance to Government Departments Military Information Services Ministry of Defence National Audit Office North Atlantic Treaty Organisation Network Capable Authority

Acronyms and Abbreviations

NGO NHS OECD OEM Op ISB OSCE P5 PJHQ PLA PLAAF QDR R&D R&P RAF RFC RMA RN RNAS SDR SDSR SIA SME SOCA SOSA SPCP SSBN SSN TAS TLB UCAV UN UOR USSR VCDS WMD

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Non-governmental organisation National Health Service Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development Original equipment manufacturer Operational Information Superiority Board Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe Permanent five, UN Security Council Permanent Joint Headquarters People’s Liberation Army PLA Air Force Quadrennial Defense Review Research and development Requirements and Priorities Royal Air Force Royal Flying Corps Revolution in Military Affairs Royal Navy Royal Naval Air Service Strategic Defence Review (1998) Strategic Security and Defence Review (2010) Single Intelligence Account Small or medium-sized enterprise Serious Organised Crime Agency System of Systems Approach Service Personnel Command Paper Nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine Nuclear-powered attack submarine Transformational Army Structures Top-Level Budget Unmanned combat air vehicle United Nations Urgent Operational Requirement Union of Soviet Socialist Republics Vice Chief of the Defence Staff Weapons of mass destruction

FOREWORD Lord Hutton of Furness

The 2010 Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR) was completed in record time against a highly challenging background of tight fiscal constraints, the continuing conflict in Afghanistan and growing threats to our national security. These all present formidable obstacles to successful forward planning. In conducting reviews of this nature and scope, its authors will also have been acutely aware that predicting the future nature and characteristics of warfare is not an exact science. Risks have to be sensibly hedged by maintaining the broadest possible spectrum of capabilities. But there is always a fine line to tread: defence planning assumptions can very quickly be called into question if events do not unfold in the way we might reasonably have expected. At its heart, the SDSR is a series of judgements about where we should invest our scarce defence resources in order to provide the most effective protection for our country and its international allies. It is good, therefore, that the publication of the SDSR should have stimulated such a widespread and lively public debate. Britain’s armed forces have always enjoyed a unique role in our national life. Changes to the structure and composition of the armed forces inevitably provoke fierce controversy. In addition, the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan have also provided a powerful and timely reminder of the service and sacrifice of those who are prepared to risk their own lives so that others can enjoy peace and freedom. These are just some of the parameters of the debate opened up by the SDSR.

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The Royal United Services Institute has, throughout its long and distinguished history, always sought to contribute constructively to the debate about our country’s defence and security policies. This book is very much in line with our long academic tradition of soundly based scholarship. I hope it will be useful both to scholars and the wider public as they seek to understand some of the complexities and choices reflected in the SDSR. Rt Hon Lord Hutton of Furness PC Chairman, RUSI November 2010

INTRODUCTION Michael Codner

The UK government’s Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR) White Paper, Securing Britain in an Age of Uncertainty, was published on 19 October 2010. It followed the launch of a revised national security strategy the previous day. It was avowedly a shortterm review concluded within very tight timelines. These were defined by the May 2010 general election date and the coalition government’s commitment to a comprehensive spending review in October that same year. There was also a pressing need to draw an end to the uncertainties of a review process while the nation was engaged in a war in Afghanistan. The reduction in defence budget of 7.5 per cent over four years was rather less than expected and allowed the UK to meet the 2 per cent NATO target. And short-term cuts to British Army personnel numbers were modest at 7,000, compared with those to the Royal Navy and Royal Air Force. However, the army withdraws from Germany, and suffers 40 per cent cuts to heavy armour and artillery numbers. The Royal Navy’s surface fleet will be reduced significantly. The new large aircraft carriers will be built, although one will be mothballed with an uncertain future. And there will be no aircraft to fly from the carriers until the Joint Strike Fighter comes into service in 2020, because the RAF loses the Harrier attack aircraft and Sentinel fixed-wing surveillance and reconnaissance capability. The Nimrod MR4 maritime surveillance aircraft programme has also been cancelled.

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In its section on defence, the White Paper identifies seven military tasks: • Defending the UK and Overseas Territories • Providing strategic intelligence • Providing nuclear deterrence • Supporting civil emergency organisations • Defending the UK’s interests by projecting power strategically and through expeditionary operations • Providing a defence contribution to UK influence • Providing security for stabilisation. It presented defence planning assumptions that will be used for structuring and equipping the armed forces. The first option is to be able to conduct an enduring stabilisation operation at brigade level (up to 6,500 personnel), while also conducting a non-enduring complex operation using 2,000 personnel and a non-enduring simple intervention using 1,000 personnel. Alternatively, there would be the forces for three non-enduring operations. At the high end, the assumptions provide for a ‘one-off’ intervention of a maximum of three brigades, assuming that none of these other operations are underway at the same time. This division-level force, with maritime and air support, would number approximately 30,000. It would be available ‘with sufficient warning’ and ‘for a limited time’. ‘Non-enduring’ is defined as less than six months – out and then back. ‘Enduring’ means over six months, for which a roulement of forces is required. And ‘intervention’ means ‘short-term highimpact’ – the operation in Sierra Leone in 2000 is given as an example. ‘Stabilisation’ requires longer-term predominantly landbased operations in support of reconstruction and development – Afghanistan in 2010 is the example. There are also the permanent operations known as ‘standing commitments’. This brief and highly selective summary of the government’s decisions in late 2010 introduces a collection of papers that explore

Introduction

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many of the unresolved issues affecting British defence policy and military strategy. Several of the chapters are based on papers that have been published in the Royal United Service Institute’s Future Defence Review Working Paper series, which began in the summer of 2009. However, all of the papers reflect the state of the debate at the time of publication. The Institute began systematic work to inform the defence review process in November 2008 with a conference on ‘Defence in the Round’. Most of the twenty questions for British defence policy raised in a preliminary discussion paper1 on hard choices are not yet convincingly answered. RUSI held a further six conferences and a number of papers by distinguished scholars, analysts and military officers were published in the RUSI Journal. There were a number of workshops on smart power, armed forces welfare, deterrence, and land and maritime issues. Reports were published from some of these workshops.2 Because the SDSR was, in the event, short term in its purview and modest in attempting to address the hard choices, this work is more relevant than ever. This book has three purposes. First, it informs the large number of studies and reform activities that now follow the review through to the latter part of 2011. Secondly, it continues and stimulates debate over Britain’s unresolved hard strategic choices in preparation for the next security and defence review in 2015, to which the government and opposition are both committed. Thirdly, the papers will be useful to other governments and defence ministries, who may be embarking on defence reviews in the next few years. The UK is in no sense a model in this respect. However, the difficulties faced by a medium power with global expeditionary aspirations and presumptions of world influence, that is nonetheless short of money, and with an electorate bemused by the purpose of a war they are funding and fighting, is unquestionably a useful case study for others. I would like to thank the authors of the chapters for their effort and dedication in preparing their work in time for the White Paper,

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and in updating the papers as necessary in the days afterwards to allow for timely publication. I would also like to thank the Director of RUSI, Michael Clarke, for his assistance in the inception and initial start up of this project. I am also most grateful to Lindsay O’Sullivan and Anna Rader of RUSI for their time and skill in editing the text for the book and working paper series respectively, and particularly to Adrian Johnson, RUSI’s Director of Publications, for his large contribution as production editor, without whom this book would not have been available to achieve its purposes.

THE UNITED KINGDOM’S STRATEGIC MOMENT Michael Clarke There are many good reasons why the United Kingdom has undergone a strategic defence and security review. The need for one was long regarded as overdue, and officials in Whitehall, no less than politicians in Westminster, had prepared themselves for the inevitable for the last two years, if not longer. It was overdue partly because the world has gone on changing since the 1990s, and the assumptions built into the previous Strategic Defence Review (SDR) of 1998 had long been exceeded; UK forces have been deployed more often, more concurrently and for longer than was envisaged at that time. The 9/11 terrorist attacks created an appetite for more assertive expeditionary operations than those that had been assumed in the SDR. Certainly, fighting two serious, long and overlapping counter-insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan had not been anticipated in the decade between the final end of the Cold War in 1991 and the terrorist attacks of 2001. The Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR) was also regarded as long overdue because the current defence programme had become simply unaffordable. The National Audit Office was not alone in calculating that if the whole defence programme was delivered as planned up to 2018/19, on top of the dislocation caused by continuing operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, it would leave a completely unfunded ‘black hole’ of up to £36–38 billion. An independent report by Bernard Gray came to the same conclusion in 2008 and the Ministry of Defence (MoD) accepted that the problem

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had reached this order of magnitude.1 Too many ‘big-ticket’ defence items (amounting to some £20 billion of the £38 billion potential overspend) were in the pipeline and the MoD’s procurement procedures were under severe criticism. Unless defence spending were to be increased significantly in real terms, something significant would have to give.2 British electoral dynamics also made an SDSR inevitable. Opposition parties have to be careful how they criticise the government of the day on defence questions. So by 2008, the stated defence policies of the opposition parties for the upcoming general election of 2010 were little more than a fierce commitment to ‘have a review’. Responding to this as an opposition electoral tactic, the Labour government agreed that there would have to be a strategic review after the election and began the consultation process itself with a Green Paper published in February 2010.3 No sensible review could – or should – be concluded before a general election, but there was allparty agreement that one would have to be concluded immediately afterwards. The government’s delay in calling an election, from a possible date in spring 2009 eventually to an election in May 2010, simply built up a sense of hiatus around the big defence decisions that would have to be taken. Not least, the financial crisis that began in the second half of 2008 created an expectation that all government expenditure would have to be cut significantly. Fending off the worst consequences of the banking crisis in 2009 created uniquely high levels of public debt.4 It is a matter of political debate how severely and how quickly that indebtedness must now be reduced. But coming on top of the other pressures defence was already under, it was immediately apparent by the beginning of 2010 that the strategic review would be nothing if not painful. The 1998 defence review, it seemed in retrospect, had been conducted in an atmosphere of relative luxury. All these factors have driven the process forward. They are all relevant and loom large for politicians and officials alike. But though they are immediately important, none of these motives are

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genuinely strategic. Behind these short-term drivers lies a strategic landscape that has changed fundamentally in the last twenty years. It is a landscape that is frequently acknowledged by policy-makers, but seldom analysed and genuinely factored into the decisions that have to be taken. The fact is that even if the assumptions underlying the 1998 SDR had not been exceeded; even if the Iraq and Afghanistan wars had been unambiguous triumphs; even if the current defence programme was not unaffordable; even if the savage economic crisis had not materialised; even then, the United Kingdom would still face some strategic choices unprecedented in modern times. More than most other Western countries, the UK finds itself at what might be termed a ‘strategic moment’, driven by developments over which it has very little real influence. Not since the early 1930s has the country faced so wide a range of global developments generating as much political uncertainty. It is more than seventy-five years since British politicians have had to confront a world that offered so little indication of what was strategically best for the country, and with far less relative power to wield than was habitually available to their predecessors. The Strategic Moment A strategic moment may be thought of as a confluence of different trends that are at once full of possibilities, but also difficult to interpret and liable rapidly to evolve; a time when major choices with long-term consequences cannot be avoided. In this case, the coincident trends all touch the UK more sensitively than most of its partners. They bear on what have traditionally been implicit sources of strength for UK defence and security policy. The first is that the ‘post-Cold War’ era is manifestly over. We have embarked on a ‘post-post-Cold War era’; that is to say, something quite new. This should not be surprising. It is over twenty years since the fall of the Berlin Wall, and 2011 marks two decades since the collapse of the Soviet Union. The East-West competition, the military dynamic, the NATO alliance structure – all of which made

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the UK an intrinsically significant player in the most central aspect of world politics – have declined in importance to the point where the Cold War is no longer the logical point of departure in thinking about British security. It barely provides even a background. It is not that there are no echoes from the long Cold War confrontation. All Western militaries admit to owning too many legacy weapon systems, and some are still too orientated towards standing forces prepared to fight a general war in the heart of continental Europe. The new Central and East European members of the Western Alliance still tend to look, for their essential security, towards Western guarantees against Russian pressure – just as they would have liked to swap sides during the Cold War in order to obtain guarantees against Soviet pressure. Indeed, after a decade of weakness and disillusionment in the 1990s, Russia has flexed its muscles within the ‘post-Soviet space’, fought a small war against Georgia, and become far more assertive in relation to the Western powers, seeking to counter Western diplomacy in some key sectors such as non-proliferation, international economic management and regionally in the Gulf and the Near East. These tensions and anachronisms, however, are no return to even a partial Cold War. They do not have the potential to destabilise continental Europe as a whole (which virtually all Cold War crises threatened to do), and still less to dominate the international politics of other regions. Europe, to be sure, has plenty of security challenges to worry about, but they do not spread the risks and costs to everyone in the way grand alliances in competition once did. It is difficult to see any of Europe’s future security challenges becoming truly structural, no matter how unpleasant they may be for some countries, or parts, of the continent. The imperative for the UK to embrace a continental commitment – axiomatic since 1939 – no longer exists. The UK may choose to maintain significant elements of the old commitment to the heartland of Europe for diplomatic reasons and to contribute to proactive crisis management throughout the continent, but it is no longer a direct strategic necessity. Before 1939, a continental commitment had

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always been deeply controversial in the country’s strategic thinking, almost an aversion.5 The imperatives of the Second World War and then the Cold War made this aversion simply irrelevant until the mid1990s. But for fifteen years now, the UK’s commitments to NATO and its European allies have been a matter of foreign policy choice and continuity, rather than direct strategic necessity for the defence of the realm. Now, UK troops are due to be withdrawn from Germany in two tranches; half by 2015, the remainder by 2020. This would have been politically unthinkable even in the 1990s, in detaching the UK so tangibly from the defence of mainland Europe. In the SDSR, however, it has passed with no more than minor comment.6 The second great change in the UK’s strategic environment is the declining willingness and ability of the major allies in Europe to commit fully to defence and security in the new post-post-Cold War environment. As Robert Cooper characterises it, Europe exerts its power ‘by being’ rather than ‘by doing’; it is the power of magnetism rather than the power of projection, and it emphasises a steadily increasing scepticism among European societies about the utility of military force to deal with current challenges.7 Rightly or wrongly, this sets the UK significantly apart from its most important continental allies. In keeping its level of defence expenditure just above the NATO target of 2 per cent of GDP, as the Strategic Defence and Security Review has confirmed, the UK is maintaining a symbolic level of commitment from which most other Allies have been steadily slipping for two decades. The NATO average is around 1.6 per cent and almost certain to go on declining. Levels of overall spending are a crude measure of commitment, but they also indicate a broader difference in perspective among the allies over their security concerns and the degree of collective action they are prepared to assume in dealing with them. The hard fact is that NATO is no longer an efficient diplomatic (let alone military) instrument, notwithstanding the New Strategic Concept unveiled at the Lisbon Summit in November 2010. Nor is the European Union’s fledgling defence arm. Both NATO and the

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EU’s defence pillar can provide useful collective cover for national policies. They create some legitimacy in their own right and act as an important focal point for the smaller nations. They undoubtedly perform useful functions in pressing national militaries to accept common standards of behaviour and transparency. But defence and security in Europe has for some time now been essentially ad hoc, and nothing in NATO’s New Strategic Concept can change that reality. The Alliance is driven by shifting coalitions of the willing and able, rather than by a reasonably efficient European consensus under strong US leadership. Similarly, in the twelve years since the Saint-Malo summit in 1999, EU defence policy has remained limited in both its practical capacity and in its ambitions. The UK used to derive great diplomatic leverage from NATO and from being a military lynchpin of the Western military alliance in general, but that lever will only bear a small load these days. New crises in Europe, let alone those further afield, are unlikely to be handled by a reversion to any of the old routines. In the past, these weaknesses have led the UK, time and again, to try galvanising European security co-operation by creating a step change in the bilateral defence relationship with France. This was embraced cautiously in the mid-1980s, enthusiastically in the late1990s, and has been restated in the SDSR in 2010. In November 2010 a new treaty was signed to give effect to a range of military co-operation between London and Paris that attempted to go further than any other arrangement between them of modern times. Previous experience indicates that it normally works – more or less – among the politicians and leads to some useful arrangements that make for greater efficiency. But down at the industry and military levels the grand designs always run out of steam; certainly there has never been anything resembling a military step change. Even if things are different this time, it is not clear that the rest of Europe is even in a mood to be prodded by a truly dynamic London-Paris defence axis. This interacts with a third big shift in the UK’s strategic environment: the evolution of the UK’s relationship with the United

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States – averred to in the Defence Review, but not publicly developed to any extent. The UK’s relationship with the United States, with all its peaks and troughs, was remarkably stable in the years after 1941. Despite a good legacy of friendship and co-operation, however, this is obviously now not the case. The United States is a continental power with Atlantic and Pacific fronts. It was an extraordinary act of strategic vision on Washington’s part, having been attacked in the Pacific in 1941, to respond by sending most of its forces to the Atlantic theatre. Policy-makers in London took for granted that the US was a ‘Europe first’ superpower. With the demise of the Soviet Union that assumption is effectively reversed. The collapse of Yugoslavia in the 1990s probably marked the last time the US would be prepared to get involved in any European crisis unless its own global interests are genuinely threatened. And these days, its global interests do not generally involve Russia. For all its recent gestures and pressures, Moscow is in no position to threaten Western Europe, and though it might be an edgy neighbour for the UK, and a brooding power for those countries that used to be part of the Soviet Union, it is hard to imagine the United States putting much of itself on the line even for a European crisis that involved present-day Russia. Western responses to the crisis between Russia and Georgia in 2008 were very indicative. The US criticised the Europeans for being so relaxed about it; the Europeans went for a more mature diplomatic solution, but in the event failed to stop Russia achieving most of its objectives. At no time was there any likelihood, amid the transatlantic recriminations, that the US would do more than the little the Europeans were prepared to do. Georgian security was the loser because it did not represent anything significant in Europe’s regional designs, and still less to Washington’s global agenda. The diplomatic victory for Moscow – trumpeted by Prime Minister Putin and President Medvedev – was little more than an embarrassing irritation to the Western powers. None of this is to argue that the United States does not retain major interests in Europe, both economic and security-related, but

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it is difficult to see which combination of them the US would feel compelled to defend with the hard power of actual military force. If that is true, then it cuts at the deepest roots of NATO as a military alliance. And it suggests that the hard edges of the traditional US/UK relationship – intelligence sharing, nuclear co-operation and military interdependence – are less relevant, at least in a transatlantic context.8 The Obama administration reportedly takes a cooler and more instrumental view of Washington-London relations. The president is probably reflecting reality; in future we should be less sentimental and more hard-headed about what is to be done between the two countries. This may feel uncomfortable in London, but is nevertheless useful if it forces more reassessment among UK policy-makers. Having the UK continue to cast itself chiefly as the ‘transatlantic bridge’ between America and Europe runs the risk of offering the US an elegant structure that it does not actually want to send much heavy traffic over. The fourth major change in the UK’s foreign environment follows directly from this. The potential strategic game-changer in the world is not Russia, but China – and by extension, China’s relationship with India and other major countries in Asia. Western diplomats constantly urge Chinese leaders, presiding over the second-biggest economy in the world, to take on more international responsibility; in peacekeeping, in rebalancing the global economy and avoiding a currency war, in reforming international institutions, in global environmental policy. ‘Join the system as a key player’, they urge. In response, Chinese leaders make it clear that their priorities are overwhelmingly domestic; that they will seek resources anywhere in the world; they will not be environmentally constrained in their need to maintain economic growth, and the best way to rebalance the global economy is for the US and Europe to become more efficient producers instead of wealthy consumers.9 ‘We will join the system’ they are in effect saying, ‘as the key player and at a time of our own choosing, not yours’. These different perspectives on the world have so far only been strategically manifested in China’s growing

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assertiveness towards its fourteen different neighbours in the regions it borders. Nevertheless, important new strategic relationships will soon evolve for China with India, Japan and Indonesia, while the strategic relationship with the United States takes on new salience with every passing year towards 2025, after which (it is generally assumed) China will become the world’s largest economy. The Strategic Instinct These changes in the UK’s strategic environment coincide with a very clear statement on the part of the present government – echoing the aspirations of the Blair and Brown administrations – that their overarching strategic aim is to maintain the country’s status as a significant player in the contemporary world of globalised politics. Globalisation has been one of the biggest, fastest, but quietest revolutions in history. Facebook has only existed for six years, but with 500 million subscribers would be, if it were a country, the third biggest in the world. The global economy is a phenomenon that would have been unrecognisable in 1989 when the Berlin Wall came down. In this accelerating revolution the United Kingdom is quite a good player. It accepts the costs and benefits of openness, generally embraces multicultural society; it exploits the financial revolution, the high-tech niches and benefits from advertising, entertainment and fashion, being socially robust, being ‘cool’. The UK benefits more than most when the world economy booms; it suffers more than most when it slumps. The government assumes that with so much at stake in the globalised world, the UK has little choice but to play a full part in it: to be an active participant. With less than 1 per cent of the world’s population, the country is still the sixth-largest economy in the world and equal with the United States among the OECD countries as a destination for inward investment.10 The UK invests over $50 billion of its own wealth overseas. It accounts for fully 7 per cent of global trade and is a point of attraction for foreign direct investment and financial services. It is not automatically obvious that this also implies

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the UK must play a militarily and diplomatically proactive role in the world, but the government and the public elite generally assume that it does. The government therefore asserts as a matter of national interest that there will be ‘no strategic shrinkage’ as a result of the SDSR and all that surrounds it. The foreign secretary laid out the UK’s global strategic interests in a series of speeches in summer 2010.11 This stance was echoed explicitly in the National Security Strategy and the SDSR itself, though critics say that it constitutes a long shopping list of ambitions more than an audit of realistic means to an end. But if the UK is to position itself to be a proactive player in the new world system that is now emerging, it assumes also that it must stay close to the United States in some context other than exclusively the transatlantic relationship. If the UK’s strategic instinct tells it that the relationship with the United States will remain fundamental, that instinct nowadays directs the British gaze once again east of Suez. If the UK is to make a really strategic common cause with the United States – something that echoes the special relationship of the last century – it must somehow bring influence to bear on US concerns in Asia, or at least help hold down Washington’s global security interests in the Gulf, while it worries about new developments in Asia.12 The trick will be to make common cause effectively with the United States in some key strategic areas that genuinely matter to both countries – for instance in regional stability in the Gulf and South Asia, in nuclear non-proliferation, in a new strategic partnership with India, in pressing to keep global trade free and liberal. The UK will have to play its high-value military cards when and where it can, but constantly back them up with even higher-value diplomacy, private enterprise and commercial ventures, cultural entrepreneurship and some good old-fashioned brass neck. It would represent the most judicious, and audacious, use of the hard/soft power combination yet seen in contemporary politics, and it will be a neat trick if the UK can do it; an empty post-imperial boast if it cannot.13 The immediate problem is that the east of Suez gaze far outstrips

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the military capacity of the country to back it up in the way it once did; and it is not clear that the SDSR has put more real resources, or shifted significant resources from elsewhere, into the soft power diplomatic elements that are intrinsically part of the package. If the government is serious about keeping the UK in the premier league of global players, there must be some tangible new partnerships with countries that it has normally relegated to ‘rest of the world’ in previous defence reviews. India and Japan are obvious candidates for a new security relationship, as are Turkey and the UK’s network of friends in the Gulf. A security relationship with Australia that goes beyond friends and kinship may come to seem important, as will relations with Brazil, with whom trade flows are at an unfathomably low level. The previous government’s Green Paper on the defence review spoke traditionally, and somewhat ponderously, of ‘NATO, the EU and the UN’ as the UK’s key partnership frameworks. There is more than a little theology in this formulation. The reality is less tidy and will require the mobilisation of military, non-military, and ‘defence diplomacy’ resources to build the strategic partnerships that will probably make the biggest difference for the coming decades. Ironically, the Commonwealth may come to seem more relevant, if it can somehow be resurrected as a strategic framework. Above all, the UK’s relationship with India has the potential for the country to have some diplomatic and security influence on what will be a key dynamic in Asia’s future, the Indo-Chinese relationship. And this is probably the most genuine strategic common cause the UK will have with the United States over the coming decade. The diplomatic route to that is through acceptable entry into high-tech industry and investment; the security route to it is through acceptable exit from the Afghan operation in a manner that helps stabilise the South Asian region. Both of those routes will be extremely challenging, but not impossible. Not least, the UK and its close partners have to accept that the globalisation revolution, however dramatic its effects have been, is not uncontested. The anti-globalisation demonstrators may be

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an irrelevance, but China and Russia maintain that they can play the globalisation game without being liberal, democratic, or even particularly open. They proclaim a model that is attractive to dictatorships in many parts of the world and which may yet bring the major powers into confrontation. How much of a military stake the UK has in the long-term defence of globalisation, as it currently works, is a difficult political judgement. The present National Security Strategy aims to defend the British ‘way of life’ in this globalised environment. But that is a political piece of string which provides little strategic direction one way or the other. The Strategic Choices The UK is confronted with a ‘strategic moment’ the like of which it has not faced in three political generations. As in the 1930s, but now for the globalised 2020s, British policy-makers have to second guess how the United States will interpret its role in global order. Britain has to define its own relationship to that role, and pay the price to play it. The UK is not sure how unsafe an enlarged Europe can become. And if it does become a dangerous neighbourhood once again – or a safe neighbourhood with dangerous suburbs – the UK will have to decide how much it really matters to it; and whether to put its faith in collective security, or take the consequences of trying to deal with it ad hoc, with whoever will join a coalition. Unlike the 1930s, however, home territory is not under any credible threat, but the complex and open society is vulnerable to terrorism and could certainly be brought down by massive cyber-attack. Britain’s prosperous and free way of life deserves – and requires – defending. That can only be done with adaptation, new partnerships alongside traditional alliances, a great deal of guile and some strong political nerves. The problem is not that national policy-makers have failed to see any of this. They have grappled with the strategic environment and can see a world of 2020 and beyond with a consistent vision for the UK. The problem is rather that the immediate political and financial imperatives have meant that it is not clear that UK

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defence and security policy will reach 2015 in any sort of shape. The long term may be difficult, but the short term has proved well-nigh impossible. Unfortunately, the strategic moment is already upon us.

MULTILATERAL APPROACHES TO BRITISH SECURITY Andrew Rathmell

Successive British governments have stressed the importance of strong multilateral institutions to preserve international peace and security. The Labour government’s emphasis on bolstering a ‘rulesbased international system’ has endured at the heart of the present coalition government’s approach, albeit perhaps with differences of emphasis when it comes to the role to be played by European Union institutions, or the transatlantic link. Since the end of the Cold War, the global security architecture has played an increasingly important role in preventing conflicts and filling the security gap in fragile and conflict-affected states. The past two decades have seen an explosive growth in UN peacekeeping and peace-building missions, EU civil and military monitoring and peace-building activities, and the advent of major NATO or coalition stabilisation missions, from the Balkans to Afghanistan. The United Kingdom has been a keen advocate of these developments. It has pushed forward the normative boundaries of international action, for instance in relation to humanitarian intervention and the Responsibility to Protect, and the interlacing of the security and development agendas. London has been an enthusiastic supporter of efforts to build international capacity, ranging from Anglo-French work on European military capabilities, through strengthening of United Nations bodies such as the Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) and the Peacebuilding Support

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Office, to promotion of a comprehensive approach at NATO and the provision of military and other capacity-building support to the African Union and African and Asian troop-contributing countries. However, in recent years, the UK’s credibility has been eroded by its own overstretch. Iraq and Afghanistan have tested the UK defence establishment and sapped political will, making the UK a marginal player in the delivery of, for example, UN peacekeeping operations. The spring 2009 funding crisis that forced the UK to slash its support to civilian deployments has further undermined the UK’s clout. As the UK starts to face up seriously to its fiscal crunch over the coming decade whilst heavily committed to delivering military and civilian effect in Afghanistan, the pressures will mount to reduce even further the UK’s contributions to the multilateral conflict architecture. If there are more cuts to such commitments, the UK will be left in the untenable position of sitting at the top tables in New York and Brussels, preaching but not practising. Furthermore, without a strong UK lead in certain areas, many of the normative, institutional and capability weaknesses that the system faces are unlikely to be resolved. Increasing Demand for Security Conflict statisticians stress the difficulty of drawing out any useful trends from surveys of violent conflict. While the figures do seem to point to a rise and then fall in the incidence of armed conflict since the early 1990s, it remains one of the most pressing challenges facing the global peace and security architecture across a broad swath of the developing world when combined with state fragility and human insecurity. Traditional inter-state conflict has certainly not gone away, but hybrid forms of internationalised intra-state conflicts are prevalent, often overlapping with organised crime and elements of international terrorism at times. Across many parts of Africa, on some of Russia’s southern borders, in parts of the Middle East, South Asia and some pockets of Latin America and the Pacific, states and regional structures are failing to provide security and order, let alone legitimate governance and

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23

justice, for their peoples. This security deficit is being filled by a variety of international actors providing various combinations of political oversight, military and police capabilities, and social and economic development functions. The international provision ranges in scale from small EU or OSCE (Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe) monitoring missions in former Soviet republics, through UN peace-building missions in Africa, to largescale UN or hybrid civil-military missions, such as in the Congo or Darfur, up to the sprawling international security and state-building apparatus in Afghanistan. While the broad numbers of battle deaths and conflicts may be showing some positive trends, there is little sign that the demand for external provision of conflict prevention, stabilisation and peacebuilding will decline anytime soon. Supply under Strain While many of the developing world’s conflicts may not be new, the international community’s desire to ‘do something’ about them, whether for reasons of altruism or enlightened self-interest, has led to a surge in activism. In 2008, the numbers of military personnel deployed on UN missions reached record levels. Peacekeeping and peace-building agendas have become more ambitious as practitioners have recognised the need to build peace, and state structures themselves, to address the underlying causes of conflict. Hence the demand for police, judges, and other civilian experts has grown vastly. The accompanying paraphernalia of headquarters, coordination mechanisms, research, analysis and training have also grown. Leading Western powers, having become bogged down in enormously ambitious stabilisation missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, have struggled to reconfigure their government systems and deploy the required military and civilian assets. The sum of this increased activism has been extreme strain on the supply side. The bulk of UN peacekeeping troops come from a small number of South Asian and African countries. The UN and

24

A Question of Security

EU alike face serious challenges in deploying high-quality police and civilian personnel in the required numbers. The US and the UK have failed as of yet to find lasting solutions to the effective mobilisation of the whole of government to support these missions. The apparatus of command and control is also under severe strain. NATO and the various components of the EU duplicate functions, but at the same time have been unable to build truly professional management capabilities. The various UN stovepipes struggle to coordinate effectively and often operate on a shoestring. The result is an increasing feeling that many of the missions launched, whether under a UN, EU or other flag, are intended as political tokens – not mandated, resourced or prepared to deliver the peace and stability that is their stated intent. Geopolitical Challenges The current model for filling the security deficit is one in which the global north (represented by the UN Security Council’s permanent five members and the wider G8 and OECD states) sets the agenda, provides some of the funding and, in some cases, personnel and equipment. Key ‘southern’ states such as India, Bangladesh, Nigeria and Brazil play vital roles in supplying personnel. The conceptual model on which much of this work now takes place is wellexpressed in recent Department for International Development (DfID) and Ministry of Defence (MoD) papers on state-building, peace-building and stabilisation. Although different terms are used, most such missions have an ambitious agenda that ultimately seeks to transform conflicts, rather than to just freeze them. However, both the conceptual and the delivery models are under challenge. At the conceptual level, critiques of the ‘liberal peace’ model abound. Furthermore there is, rightly, scepticism regarding the ability of international intervention to do more than ‘nudge’ evolutionary processes in conflict-affected countries. And even this nudging can involve a massive expenditure of resources and time.

Multilateral Approaches to British Security

25

At the level of geopolitics it is not yet clear how the shifting global balance of power will impact on the existing architecture. The optimistic scenario, for which the UK has been working, is that emerging economies and rising powers come to embrace the largely Western-constructed set of existing norms, procedures and structures, and so become ‘responsible’ partners in global security governance. This approach underpins efforts such as persuading the Chinese to be more involved in peacekeeping and giving the Indians a greater say in the design of UN peacekeeping missions. It is just as likely, however, that as they gain a greater say in the global system these powers will try to reshape it in ways that oppose the interventionist ‘liberal peace’ agenda. We see the rumbles of this important shift in the bitter debates at the UN over Responsibility to Protect and in the Chinese preference in Africa for authoritarian approaches to stability. Fixing the System: Roles for Defence In 2008, then-Prime Minister Gordon Brown launched a grandiose drive for systemic reform of the international institutions, including in respect to conflict and security. Although the financial crisis quickly came to dominate the international reform agenda, progress has been made on issues such as the UN approach to peacekeeping. Looking to the future, we need to think about reform on three levels, on all of which defence can play a major role: promotion of international norms and standards, improved collaboration between institutions, and capability-building. Normative Contribution First, we need to address international norms surrounding conflict and security. The UK and its partners have made progress in elaborating on a number of important norms concerning how the international community deals with insecurity and state fragility. These norms include high-level concepts such as ‘responsible sovereignty’ and the Responsibility to Protect; and principles and practices, laid out for instance in OECD guidelines, on the most

26

A Question of Security

appropriate ways to support peace-building in conflict–affected and fragile states. Norms also work at the operational level to guide the behaviour of international missions, for instance in respect of the use of force, approaches to comprehensive civil-military integration, and the protection of women’s rights. At the broadest level, the logical approach for the UK is to combine promotion of these norms through all available channels, with an active effort to give a real voice to non-Western states; not just at the UN Security Council top table, but also through lower-level operational activities. This process will involve some ‘compromising’ of the norms and principles that the UK has tried so hard to promulgate, but the norms that emerge will have far greater traction if they are negotiated rather than imposed. Defence has an important role to play in supporting this normative agenda. The military establishment has a very long history of transmitting its norms and values to other militaries and hence other societies. Indeed, historically it has often been military establishments that have been the vectors for the introduction of Western practices and approaches into other cultures. The UK military retains considerable soft power influence with its allies, the Commonwealth and other regional partners. The apparatus of military education and training enables the transmission of values. The more the UK military can play an active role in the enabling functions of multilateral organisations – for instance, providing staff officers and planners or providing doctrinal, training and exercise facilities – the greater the impact it will have in fostering the norms that the UK wishes to promote in the international system. Streamlining Institutional Responses If promoting norms seems rather a woolly task for the UK’s armed forces, addressing institutional overlaps and dysfunction may appeal more to the military’s sense of order. The UK and its partners have built a mosaic of sometimes overlapping and often dysfunctional institutions and systems. There seems no rational reason, for example,

Multilateral Approaches to British Security

27

why there should be both an EU and a NATO maritime force operating off Somalia, or why the European Commission, European Council and various UN agencies should be running parallel security sector reform missions in certain countries. Diplomats will argue, rightly, that there is value in having an overlapping set of institutional architectures since the politics of any individual crisis will determine which nations wish to play a part and under which flag. In a time of relative plenty, the West was able to afford this redundancy and inefficiency within the international peace and security architecture. No longer. With the system under severe strain and the fiscal tsunami hitting the UK and other developed nations’ budgets, they need to concentrate on squeezing inefficiencies out of the system. This will be a difficult task. It is far easier to focus on building up one element of the system, such as training an African army, than it is to address the frictions in the architecture. There is a laundry list of steps that need to be taken. These range from harmonising concepts, such as the European Security Strategy and the NATO Strategic Concept, through enactment of collaborative frameworks, such as between the UN and NATO, to operational collaboration, improved funding arrangements, and more routine sharing of assets. While some of this work can be left to the diplomats and the aid agencies, defence plays a vital role in lubricating the system and providing a practical, operational network that can bridge many of these gaps and make the system work. Opportunities on which defence can build include the promotion of interoperable standards between, for example the UN, EU and NATO; joint capacitybuilding initiatives, for instance to produce a global cadre of trained civil-military planners and staff officers; and the provision of enabling assets, both people and equipment, notably to AU and UN missions. Increasing Capability Finally, we come to the most obvious role for the military – capabilitybuilding. This goes beyond what the MoD currently labels Security Co-operation. The US term of Building Partner Capacity is possibly

28

A Question of Security

a more precise description of what is needed. Using a combination of Foreign and Commonwealth Office expertise, DfID funding and MoD assets, the UK has been quite successful in recent years in this area. Its work has ranged from strengthening the DPKO’s staff functions, exercising NATO’s civil-military capabilities, bolstering African and South Asian peacekeepers, and supporting the AU’s peace-making capabilities. In the future, this work will be even more important, but will need to be carefully targeted. As the UK becomes ever less able to deliver security effect unilaterally, the case for aggregating effect via multilateral institutions grows stronger. But the trick in the future will be to adopt two principles – focus on quality, and use leverage. Quality means that Britain should focus upon professionalising key assets and multipliers, for example concentrating on strengthening headquarters and educational establishments, rather than training junior ranks. Leverage means that Britain should look to use its assets to leverage others. For instance, by bolstering EU or NATO military educational establishments with a modest input of UK resources, these establishments can then be used to boost the capability of UN, AU or individual partner nations. By helping to professionalise how the EU or UN design and deliver integrated stabilisation missions, the UK will need to invest less in deploying military assets on such missions. What Does This Mean? What could greater MoD investment in supporting multilateralism mean in practice? First, and most importantly, it requires a clear view from Whitehall of the effect that the UK is seeking to achieve, and how defence can form part of the underpinning influence strategy. For instance, one objective is to promote the norms of protection of civilians and gender awareness within international peacekeeping missions. Operational-level defence work with partners needs to reinforce these messages in training and doctrine. Another objective may be to encourage greater NATO support for the AU and its

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29

members; UK defence can help to enable this through further investment in training, exchanges and provision of enablers. Some of the particular implications for defence may include the following: The European Union Use MoD facilities and experts to support a Europe-wide, crossinstitutional initiative to generate a cadre of civil-military mission planners and conflict experts. Focus EU military capability development on enablers that could be used by the EU to support UN and/or AU missions. NATO Support the creation of an expeditionary military advisory capability within NATO able to manage professional military reform programmes. Encourage further role specialisation among NATO and EU members. This area would be a particular priority in relation to Afghanistan. The United Nations Provide, directly and via EU and NATO, expertise and resources to professionalise DPKO HQ and field operations and provide enablers into selected missions to boost performance. Transition troop contributing country capacity-building programmes to an EU or NATO lead and focus bilateral UK efforts higher up the value chain, for instance in defence reform. The African Union Move from current military capacity-building initiatives to focus on a higher level (defence reform) and ‘multilateralise’ support where feasible, for instance through the EU, NATO or with the US. The Commonwealth While not an operational peace and security organisation in the same manner, it does provide considerable scope for the exercise

30

A Question of Security

of the UK military’s soft power. Defence can make greater use of Commonwealth channels to promote norms and standards. The United States One of the UK’s objectives has to be to build on the Obama administration’s increased respect for multilateralism. UK defence has a crucial role to play in encouraging the US defence establishment to see the benefits of expanding its efforts to bolster the multilateral mechanisms. The US Department of Defense already does a great deal in terms of military capacity-building worldwide and in support of missions such as UNAMID (the African Union/United Nations Hybrid Operation in Darfur). Continued nudging by the UK defence establishment will help advocates within the US system to allocate additional effort towards strengthening the multilateral security mechanisms. Choices for Defence Some variant of this strategy will inevitably be followed by the UK, given its position in the world and its interest in bolstering multilateral security mechanisms. The previous government pursued many of these tracks over the last decade. Conservative Party thinking on foreign affairs, defence and development has developed broadly along similar lines, stressing the importance of smart power and security co-operation. However, the logic of such a strategy leads to conclusions that some may find disturbing when it comes to improving delivery mechanisms and balance of priorities. On delivery mechanisms, while the UK government has gone some way towards implementing a joined-up approach to policymaking and delivery, for example through pooled funds, it can only ensure true efficiency through a much tighter degree of integration. For instance, if it is important to build the capability of a developing country as part of a British contribution to UN or AU peacekeeping missions, it is a waste of time to deploy a military training team unless DfID and the Foreign Office are also supporting wider

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programmes of defence and security sector reform. Training soldiers can be a waste of effort if the broader institutional context is not addressed. Integrated planning and delivery is therefore crucial to ensure that objectives are met efficiently. This does not just involve re-engineering Whitehall management and budgeting systems, but also serious consideration of the respective roles of the departments in delivering the required effects. The discussion of balance of priorities becomes even more difficult. Following the logic of this argument, a case could be made for the UK military to transform itself into a ‘multilateral spine’. Barring some residual capabilities for national territorial defence, the UK could focus on building enablers and framework capabilities to bolster the multilateral institutions rather than deploying major formed units of its own. This ‘contributory option’ sounds like a radical proposal, as it would put at risk the UK’s ability to deploy significant combat power unilaterally or as part of a coalition. Conceptually, however, it would not be dissimilar to the model adopted by the UK throughout its imperial history. UK forces were able to police large parts of the world quite cheaply through providing military frameworks, an officer corps, and enabling technologies. Some variant of this approach may serve the UK well in the future. Before rejecting this approach out of hand, the policy-makers need to decide whether to make hard choices or to muddle through. In theory, the UK seems to be committed to ‘muddling through’ – adopting a mixed model, in which it retains the capability to project significant quantities of combat capability in coalition operations, while providing enough enabling activities to push forward the process of reform and development in the multilateral organisations. In practice, however, the pressures of Iraq and Afghanistan, combined with financial crises, have forced the slashing of security co-operation activities such as secondments, training and defence attachés. As the fiscal pressures on the MoD grow and as the multilateral system comes under ever-greater strain, there is a real risk that UK defence will in fact fail on all counts. It will be unable to retain its own

32

A Question of Security

capabilities at significant enough levels and it will fail to bolster the multilateral institutions to the extent required for them to take the strain. Refocusing UK defence around serious, integrated and long-term attempts to reform and revitalise the multilateral security architecture would require some radical shifts in priorities and slaughter many service sacred cows, but may in fact do more for the UK’s national security interests in the longer term.

THE LEAN YEARS: DEFENCE CONSEQUENCES OF THE FISCAL CRISIS Malcolm Chalmers The 2010 Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR) took place in very different circumstances from the Strategic Defence Review (SDR) conducted by the incoming Labour government in 1997– 98. The decade after the SDR coincided with a period of sustained economic growth, in which ambitious government domestic objectives (notably in relation to health, education and poverty reduction) were funded by buoyant tax revenues. It also saw a marked shift towards a more ambitious and globalist defence policy, in which the UK armed forces were deployed on major operations to an extent not seen since the 1950s. These interventions were supported by the largest real increase in defence spending since the early 1980s. The SDSR, by contrast, has been overshadowed by the aftershock of the 2008 financial crisis. The government’s budget deficit for 2009/10 amounted to a breathtaking 11% of GDP, the largest of any of the advanced economies.1 Even if the economy quickly recovers its pre-crisis growth rate, the new Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government has made clear that a prolonged period of austerity in public expenditure (including defence) is inevitable. The necessity for a period of retrenchment has an additional resonance in relation to military operations. The political consensus on defence policy has been severely strained by the controversies surrounding the interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan. While strong support remains for fulfilling existing commitments in Afghanistan, there is now a significant shift in attitudes amongst political elites

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A Question of Security

away from the liberal interventionism of the last decade, and towards a more cautious approach to ‘wars of choice’, especially when the costs of the latter are likely to be high. Yet the Afghanistan commitment remains. Prime Minister David Cameron has stated that he intends to remove UK combat forces from the country by 2015. If British armed forces do remain in Afghanistan until then, however, that means that the UK is still (as of late 2010) only half way through its current operational commitment. And it means that the current focus on Afghanistan as the Ministry of Defence’s (MoD) ‘main effort’ will continue to shape defence planning for much of the next five years, as it has done since 2006. THE SDR AND THE PEACE DIVIDEND The 1998 SDR was widely seen, at the time, as being one of the UK’s more successful defence reviews. After being in the political wilderness for eighteen years, the New Labour government that came to office in 1997 was committed to showing that it could be taken seriously on defence matters, and that it had learnt the lessons of its flirtation with unilateralist and anti-European policies during the 1980s. Prime Minister Tony Blair appointed one of Labour’s most experienced foreign policy experts, George Robertson, to the post of defence secretary. From this position, Robertson presided over a major review of defence commitments, the results of which were published in July 1998.2 While the SDR did involve significant economies in some areas, it also announced significant enhancements, including the creation of new joint structures and the purchase of two large aircraft carriers. In the decade that followed, the numerical strength of the armed forces continued to fall, as did the numbers of deployed ships, aircraft and armoured vehicles. But this was combined with a programme of substantial qualitative improvement, in which the fruits of previous investments were realised and further capital spending was undertaken. As a result, the 2010 military force structure is still recognisably the one mapped out in the SDR, albeit smaller than was then planned.

The Lean Years

35

This achievement was all the more impressive because the MoD had to manage its activities within a modest rate of budgetary growth. The new Labour government accepted the tight spending settlement for 1997/98 and 1998/99 that it inherited from the previous government. Thereafter, it continued to give defence a relatively low budgetary priority, as Table 1 makes clear. Over the ten years to 2008/09, defence spending in real terms rose by 19%. But most of this increase was a result of the additional costs of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, totalling £4.5 billion in 2008/09; ‘core’ defence spending (excluding operational costs) rose by only 13% in real terms over the decade: an annual rate of increase amounting to a modest 1.2%.3 Spending on other major government services increased much more rapidly. Spending on social protection rose by 39% in real terms over the decade, public order and safety took an additional 50%, education spending increased by 63%, and the health service enjoyed a massive 85% increment in its real resources. The Labour government therefore presided over a major shift of spending priorities away from defence. If one compares this record with that of the Conservatives in the past, a considerable degree of continuity is apparent. While the percentage increase in total government spending rose sharply – from only 2% over Mrs Thatcher’s last seven years, to 14% during 1990– 98, to 48% over 1998–2008 – the relative priority given to the major departments within this total remained relatively stable (see Table 1). The NHS has remained consistently the top priority for both parties, rising from 123% of the defence budget in 1990/91 to 298% in 2008/09. Public order (police, prisons, courts and fire services) was given a relatively higher priority under the Conservatives, while Labour has given greater priority to education. During the last decade, both public order and education enjoyed real increases of 50–60% in their budgets, compared to the relatively modest 19% increase for defence. Social protection spending (pensions, support for families, the disabled and unemployed) has remained the single largest element in the total budget, though its relative priority has declined somewhat in recent years.

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A Question of Security

The low level of growth in defence spending since the end of the Cold War has allowed a significant ‘peace dividend’ to be realised, as a result of which spending in other areas has been higher (and/or taxation levels have been lower) than would otherwise have been possible. One way of calculating the size of this ‘dividend’ is to estimate what the defence budget would have been had it grown at the same rate as the rest of public spending. On this basis, defence spending in 2008/09 would have reached £61 billion, a full £25 billion higher than its actual level. Yet the low priority given to defence spending is not only a postCold War phenomenon. During the seven years prior to the end of the Cold War, under Mrs Thatcher’s premiership, defence spending fell by 7% in real terms. Over the same period, by contrast, spending on law and order rose by 36%, health by 20%, education by 13%, and social security spending rose by 9%.4 Indeed, in the entire period since the death of Stalin in 1953, the only sustained period in which the defence budget has grown at a rate comparable with that of total government spending has been in the six years after 1978/79, a consequence of the UK’s commitment (under Prime Ministers Callaghan and Thatcher) to the NATO 3% target for annual real spending increases. Growing Stresses Over the twelve years since the SDR, defence planners sought to meet the demands generated by new interventions despite being provided with only limited increases in their core budget. They managed to do this, in part, through continuing economies in ‘legacy’ capabilities, seen as less relevant to the post-Cold War world. They also drew increasingly from the Treasury Reserve to fund the additional costs of operations. In 2004/05, the MoD received £1.1 billion to fund the costs of operations in Afghanistan, Kosovo and Iraq. By 2008/09, this total had risen to £4.5 billion. These measures ameliorated, but did not fully compensate for, two important sources of strain on the budget.

The Lean Years

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Table 1:  UK Defence Spending in Historic Context, 1983/84– 2008/09. Sector/Item

1983–90

1990–98

1998–2008

(Thatcher)

(Major)

(Blair)

Health

+20%

+36%

+85%

Education

+13%

+12%

+63%

Public order & safety

+36%

+21%

+50%

Social protection

+9%

+33%

+39%

Defence

-7%

-12%

+19%

Debt interest

-9%

+12%

-15%

Total Managed

+2%

+14%

+48%

Expenditure Sources: Treasury, Public Expenditure Statistical Analyses 1999–2000, Cm 4201, March 1999, Table 4.3; HM Treasury, Public Expenditure Statistical Analyses 2009, Cm 7630, June 2009, Table 4.3. All in constant prices.

First, the costs of the equipment programme have risen, and defence decision-makers have found it increasingly difficult to meet existing commitments. This problem has been deepened because, rather than removing projects from the programme altogether, the MoD has used project delays as a means of balancing its accounts in the short term. The consequence of this ‘save now, pay later’ approach, as the National Audit Office has described it, has been to increase the overall costs of individual projects, as well as delaying the introduction of new and more capable equipment.5 When, as in the case of the MoD’s largest current programme (the Typhoon aircraft) the attempt to reduce the UK order ran aground, there was considerable pressure on the MoD to sell equipment soon after it was acquired. Secondly, the experience of continuing operations since 2003 has led to a debate on whether the priorities set in 1998 need to be updated to account for subsequent international and technological changes. Even as the government continued to invest a large part of the resources devoted to air power to purchasing Typhoon, for

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A Question of Security

example, UK forces in Afghanistan remained less well-equipped with helicopters than their US allies. The rapidly evolving character of warfare also generated demands for a wide range of new capabilities, some of which did not even exist in 1998. The ‘New Chapter’, published four years after the SDR in July 2002, was an attempt to update the findings of the SDR, taking into account the new priorities of the post-9/11 world. Yet it still reflected the assumption, confirmed by Kosovo and Sierra Leone, that an initial period of intense fighting can be expected to give way rapidly to a peacekeeping phase. It could not take into account the subsequent, and much more difficult, experiences of Iraq and Afghanistan. As a result of these operations, pressures to maintain legacy programmes and capabilities have come increasingly into conflict with demands to respond to the lessons of operational experience. The July 2004 Future Capabilities White Paper did take some significant steps towards a more flexible force structure, and was seen by some as being a ‘de facto second QDR’.6 Over the subsequent five years, however, there was no further major review of defence priorities. The completion of withdrawal from Iraq in summer 2009, together with the worsening fiscal situation, increased the pressure for a new and comprehensive reflection. As a result, the government announced plans for a Green Paper on defence, which was subsequently published as Adaptability and Partnership in February 2010.7 In parallel, the MoD launched a series of internal studies designed to prepare the way for the new strategic defence review, that, all political parties agreed, would have to follow the general election. CAPABILITY COST TRENDS Over the last two decades, the unit costs of providing UK defence capabilities – major vessels, aircraft and ground formations – have grown at an average rate of 1.7% per annum (see Table 2). As a result, while core defence spending only fell by 9% in real terms

The Lean Years

39

in the two decades after 1988, the reduction in front-line strength has been dramatic. Between 1988 and 2008, the number of ground formations fell by 28%, the number of aircraft by 33%, and the number of major vessels by 47%. Growth in the costs of providing these capabilities is a result of parallel trends across the range of defence inputs, most notably the development, production and maintenance of equipment, and the people (service and civilian) who operate and maintain defence capabilities. Continuing unit cost growth for new equipment (which constitutes around 20% of the total budget) is driven primarily by qualitative improvement. Each new generation of aircraft, ship or armoured vehicle has typically been much more effective – in accuracy, range, payload and connectivity – than its replacement. But it has also, as a result, been significantly more expensive. Over the last two decades, the evidence suggests that unit costs of new equipment have been growing at a rate of between 2% and 3% in real terms. For example, three of the largest procurement projects of the last decade (Typhoon, Type-45 destroyer and the Astute-class submarine) have seen average annual rates of inter-generational unit cost growth of 3.4%, 2.8% and 2.2% respectively.8 Even if one assumes that inter-generational cost growth is higher in these ambitious hightechnology projects than in the programme as a whole, real unit cost growth for equipment over the last two decades was probably at least 2% per annum.9 The direct costs of employing service and civilian personnel amount to a further 36% of total defence spending. These costs have also been rising over time. The last two decades have seen the pay levels of UK service personnel growing at around 1.7% per annum in real terms, roughly equivalent to the 1.5% growth rate for average earnings in the economy as a whole.10 Increasing pay levels have been necessary in order to be able to attract high-quality candidates into a military career at a time of relative prosperity. The intensity of military operations in the last decade has also seen continuing

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A Question of Security

pressure for more to be spent on personnel-related costs, including housing, welfare support and post-conflict care. Because of new technologies and improved training, today’s servicemen and servicewomen are performing with a higher level of professionalism and capability than ever before. But it takes roughly the same number of service personnel to support the average aircraft, ship or ground formation as it did two decades ago. While numerical capabilities have been reduced by 36% over the last two decades, total personnel numbers have fallen by 41%. This includes a 41% reduction in service personnel numbers, together with a 41% reduction in civilian personnel numbers (adjusted for jobs transferred to the private sector, and excluding unpaid staff).11 The total costs associated with the average UK MoD employee have thus been increasing by an average of 2.2% per annum over the last two decades. This long-term cost trend is similar to that in the US. A recent Congressional Research Service study shows that total US spending per active duty troop has been growing at an average rate of 2.1% per annum in real terms since the end of the Korean War.12 A range of indicators therefore suggest that the average real costs of supporting front-line capabilities, and/or service personnel, have been rising by around 2% per annum over the last two decades. If this trend continues, it will add further downward pressure on the level of front-line capabilities that can be afforded for any given budget. Explanations Before 1990, growing unit costs for military capability were driven by the particular nature of the Cold War. This decades-long militarised peace did not experience the exceptionally high, but relatively brief, levels of resource mobilisation that characterise full-scale war. But it did see sustained levels of defence investment that (as a proportion of GDP) were much higher than in most periods between major wars. In particular, the Cold War resulted in unusually high levels of resources being ploughed into competitive military research and development

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Table 2:  Force Levels and Spending 1988–2009. 1988/89 Core defence spending (2008/09 prices)

13

2008/09

£35,761m

£32,405m (-9%)

Major vessels14 Aircraft

15

Ground formations16

108

57

1,250

840

134

97

Average change in numerical capabilities

-36%

Capability unit cost growth

1.7% pa

Civilian personnel numbers17

142,000

83,500

Service personnel numbers18

326,300

193,100

(-41%) (-41%) Cost growth per employee19

2.2% pa

programmes over several decades. The pace of military-technical innovation was further accelerated by, and in some cases contributed to, rapid technological change in the wider civilian economy. Although costly in economic terms, the progressive modernisation of NATO forces (especially those of the US) paid strategic dividends. The Soviet Union, and those states reliant in Soviet technology, found themselves increasingly unable to match the pace of improvement in NATO-equipped forces. Successive wars in the Middle East – both between Israel and its neighbours, and between the US-led coalition and Iraq – provided dramatic testimony to the superiority of US capabilities. The numerical balance of forces became increasingly less meaningful as a measure of the relative strength of NATO and Warsaw Pact forces.20 If post-1990 force planning had continued the previous focus on defence of NATO territory, the end of Cold War competitive pressures would have substantially lessened pressures for qualitative

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A Question of Security

improvements. And the detailed examination of UK trends does indeed suggest some slowing of cost growth in the first post-Cold War decade, with the cost-saving impact of lower readiness levels balancing some continuing growth in procurement unit costs. Even as the Cold War driver for cost escalation diminished, however, the growth in UK involvement in long-range, and extended, military operations during the second post-Cold War decade added new cost pressures. In the decade after the Strategic Defence Review (1998­–2008), despite core defence spending rising by around 13% in real terms, numerical capabilities fell by 18%, almost as sharp a reduction as in the previous decade of spending cuts. As a result, there was a sharp acceleration in the rate of growth in the unit cost of numerical capabilities: from only 0.2% per annum during 1988–98 to 3.3% during 1998–2008.21 The explanation for this acceleration appears to have been that forces previously intended primarily for deterrent purposes were now being put to the test in challenging conflicts against evolving enemies. Operating at long distances in some of the most remote and underdeveloped parts of world has sharply increased logistic costs. Keeping even a relatively small and lightly armed UK force in Afghanistan, for example, now requires a proportionally much bigger support effort – including surveillance, strike, transport and medical support – than would have been made available to a comparable force in past operations (whether in European wars or on imperial deployments). The counter-insurgency campaigns that have dominated UK military operations since 2003 have added demands for capabilities quite different from those which have driven technological change in recent decades. During the Cold War, innovation focused on the requirement to achieve superiority in force-on-force encounters, tank-on-tank (or anti-tank missile), aircraft-on-aircraft, ship-onsubmarine. While these still play a role in driving procurement priorities, however, current operations are generating new demands. The need for discrimination and proportionality in ‘wars amongst the people’ increases requirements for ever-better tactical

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43

intelligence-gathering capabilities and for increasingly accurate, and low-yield, munitions. Because current operations are contributory and discretionary, moreover, there is constant pressure for more resources (including expensive new equipment) to be devoted to force protection. Public opinion will settle for nothing less. Nor do these cost pressures end once operations are concluded. Political pressure is also, rightly, leading to increased resources being devoted to compensating and caring for those who are wounded, or bereaved, as a result of operations. The demands of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan have been most clearly reflected in the rapid growth of spending on Urgent Operational Requirements (UORs). But they have also had a profound effect on long-term equipment plans, with each of the services seeking to incorporate lessons learned in plans for new capabilities. This pressure has been one of the drivers for the recent sharp increase in the projected costs of new equipment. It is noteworthy, for example, that the second-largest project in the 2009 National Audit Office Major Projects Report was the £12 billion Future Strategic Tanker Aircraft, the main purpose of which is to support extra-European deployments. This contract includes industry-supplied in-service support, and is therefore not directly comparable to other large procurement projects, such as the £5 billion carrier programme and the £18 billion Typhoon aircraft programme. But it is still a remarkable cost for fourteen support aircraft.22 Even as major combat operations in Europe are fading as a cost driver, therefore, long-range power projection operations are playing an increasing role in shaping long-term as well as shortterm needs.

Future Cost Growth There may be some easing in unit cost growth during 2011/12 and 2012/13. The freeze on public sector pay for the next two years, including spending on armed forces pay, provides some muchneeded relief. As a result, it is projected that the average cost of service

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A Question of Security

personnel will rise by only 0.8% per annum over the next two years, well below economy-wide inflation of 2.1% per annum.23 Once the pay freeze ends in 2012/13, however, it is likely that the Armed Forces Pay Review Body will seek to restore previous private-sector relativities for military personnel, not least because of concerns over recruitment and retention. There are also strong social and political pressures for more to be spent on the welfare of armed forces personnel, both directly (pay and allowances) and indirectly (medical, accommodation, pensions). The budgetary respite achieved from a post-election pay freeze is likely to be rather short-lived. For the purposes of this analysis, it is therefore reasonable to assume that service pay levels return to their historical relationship with economy-wide pay levels by 2014/15. No such adjustment is made in relation to civilian personnel, whom it is assumed will not be able to restore the sharp reduction in their relative pay that is due to take place over the next two years. With pay driven by recruitment requirements, and with plans to continue to drive down numbers, MoD employees will be unable to quickly reverse the decline in their relative pay. DEFENCE AND THE SPENDING REVIEW The Spending Review, published on 20 October 2010, announced that the core defence budget will be cut by 7.5% in real terms over the four years to 2014/15. This is not the first cut in defence spending in recent history. Between 1989/90 and 1999/2000, the end of Cold War confrontation created conditions in which the government felt able to cut the defence budget by 21% in real terms. This new round of cuts, by contrast, is primarily a response to a worsening fiscal environment, not to an improved strategic situation. The MoD has gained agreement to ‘back-load’ its required savings into the last two years of the Spending Review period. As Table 1 shows, the real defence budget will not fall below current levels until 2013/14, and most of the total 7.5% cut will take place in 2014/15.

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The lack of real budget cuts during the first two years reflects high levels of anticipated spending on redundancy and decommissioning, together with the difficulties involved in making rapid cost savings. The Treasury has also made explicit provision for continuing Table 3:  Defence DEL and Operations Reserves Cuts (2010/11– 2014/15, £ billions). 2010/11 2011/12 2012/13 2013/14 2014/15 baseline Defence DEL (cash)

32.9

33.8

34.4

34.1

33.5

Defence DEL (real)

32.9

33.2

33.0

31.9

30.5

Operations Reserve (cash)

4.1

4.0

3.8

3.8

3.5

Operations Reserve (real)

4.1

3.9

3.7

3.6

3.2

Table 4:  Spending Priorities Compared (Major Departments). Department International Development NHS (Health)

2010/11 Baseline

% change over four

(£ billions)

years (real terms) 7.8

+34%

103.8

+0.4%

Defence

32.9

-7.5%

Education

58.4

-11%

Scotland, Wales & N Ireland

53.7

-11%

Transport

12.8

-15%

Home Office

10.1

-25%

Justice

8.9

-25%

CLG Local Government

28.5

-27%

Business, Innovation and Skills

18.6

-28%

9.0

-68%

CLG Communities

Sources: Spending Review 2010, October 2010, Table A.9; Alex Barker, ‘The full spending league table Osborne left out’, Financial Times, 21 October 2010; Office of Budget Responsibility Budget Forecast, June 2010, Table C5 (for GDP deflator).

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A Question of Security

operational expenditure in Afghanistan (and/or elsewhere), while assuming that this will decline from £4.1 billion this year to £3.2 billion by 2014/15. The size of this allocation is, however, highly dependent on operational demands. Sharing the Pain The need to give continuing priority to the Afghanistan operation appears to have had an effect on budget allocations that extends well beyond the level of funding from the Special Reserve. In particular, the Spending Review has resulted in a marked shift in government priorities in favour of defence (see Table 4). Defence has, since the mid 1950s, been given budgetary allocations that have been markedly less generous than those provided to social protection, health, law and order, and education. As a result, the share of defence in total government spending has fallen sharply over time. As a result of this Spending Review, by contrast, the MoD’s share in total departmental expenditure is due to rise from 8.7% to 9.1% over the next four years. The defence budget has been cut by significantly less than those for police, prisons, universities, local government and housing. It has also enjoyed a rather better settlement than education, largely because of the latter’s acceptance of steep cuts in capital spending on schools. Health has obtained the best settlement of the major departments. Even here, however, the gap with defence has narrowed sharply. Since 1983, under both Conservative and Labour governments, health spending has consistently grown at an annual rate that has been around 5% higher than that for defence. Over the next four years, by contrast, this gap is due to narrow to just 2% per annum. This shift in spending priorities towards defence may partly reflect the greater practical difficulty involved in making rapid and deep cuts where a large share of the future defence budget is already subject to contractual commitment. But steeper reductions have been made in the past, notably in the years after the end of the Cold War. A more

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convincing explanation is that operations in Afghanistan have made it much more difficult to make economies in related capabilities, as well as increasing political commitment to defence more generally. Furthermore, in contrast to departments that enjoyed more generous settlements over the last decade, there may be less scope for cutting back on one-off capital spending (for example, compared with schools and hospitals) without undermining long-term capabilities. Whatever the reason, the coalition government has clearly decided that defence deserves a higher place in the pecking order of spending priorities. No Strategic Shrinkage? The improvement in the MoD’s relative budgetary position has been paralleled by similar settlements for other departments that contribute to foreign and security policy objectives. Intelligence and Security Agencies As a result of the growth in concern over Al-Qa’ida-related terrorist threats since the September 2001 attacks on the US, and especially since the July 2005 attacks on London, the intelligence and security agencies (Security Service, Secret Intelligence Service, and GCHQ) have been awarded significant real increases in their budgets. The 2010 Spending Review has allowed most of this increase to be maintained, requiring the agencies to make only a modest 6.6% reduction in spending from the £2.0 billion currently spent from the Single Intelligence Account (SIA). The Strategic Defence and Security Review, published the day before the Spending Review, announced that a further £650 million will be spent on a new National Cyber Security Programme during the next four years. It is not clear, however, how this will be allocated between the SIA and other departmental accounts. Foreign and Commonwealth Office The headline figures for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office budget suggest that it has been cut by 28% in real terms from a

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A Question of Security

baseline of £1.6 billion in 2010/11. Immediately before the Spending Review was announced, however, it was confirmed that the BBC World Service’s £273 million grant-in-aid would be transferred from the Foreign Office to the BBC itself. As a result of this transfer, the estimated fall in core Foreign Office spending (excluding the World Service) will be around 11% in real terms. This is rather greater than the reductions for defence and intelligence, but significantly less harsh than for most of the other departments that were left ‘unprotected’ in the June 2010 budget. It will require significant economies to be made. But it should enable the Foreign Office to avoid the radical shrinkage of the diplomatic network that some had feared. Department for International Development Not least, the Spending Review has reaffirmed the government’s commitment to the target of spending 0.7% of national income (GNI) on international development by 2013. As a consequence, the budget for the Department for International Development (DfID) will increase from £7.8 billion in 2010/11 to £11.5 billion in 2014/15, a 34% increase in real terms. The SDSR also announced that a growing proportion of UK overseas development assistance will be devoted to tackling conflict and instability, with the aim of doubling the amount spent on such activities over the next four years. Prime Minister David Cameron has emphasised that ‘the money that we spend through our aid budget plays a key role in ensuring that there is no strategic shrinkage.’24 Together, these commitments suggest that, while the reduction in the budget deficit remains the government’s overriding priority, it has not been tempted to focus on domestic economic and political demands at the expense of international commitments. Compared with the rapidly growing emerging economies of Asia, some shrinkage in the UK’s relative weight in international affairs is very likely over coming decades. The relative protection given to international and security capabilities in this Review suggests,

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however, that the government does not intend to accelerate this process unduly. An Ambitious Plan While the Spending Review settlement for defence appears relatively generous compared with other government departments, the transition from a budget that has been rising at around 1% per annum in real terms for more than a decade to one that is due to fall at an average annual rate of 2% will be very tough to manage. In preparing for the SDSR, the MoD calculated that the inherited forward defence programme (which was based on no significant reduction in numerical capabilities or personnel strength) exceeded the resources available from a continuation of the current real budget by £38 billion over the next ten years. This greatly exceeds the £6 billion ‘funding gap’ estimated by the National Audit Office as recently as June 2010.25 But it is broadly consistent with the analysis of this chapter that continuing growth in the unit costs of personnel, and of capabilities more generally, is likely to take place. The SDSR is careful not to claim that it has been successful in closing this inherited funding gap.26 The SDSR announced that the total number of trained service personnel would be reduced to around 158,000 by 2015. The Review estimates that this will require a total reduction of around 20,000 personnel from previously planned levels, or 11% over five years.27 The SDSR also announced that the number of civil servants in the MoD will decrease by 25,000 to 60,000 by 2015.28 The total number of MoD employees is thus due to fall by 45,000 over the next five years, equivalent to a reduction of 17%. Once pay projections are taken into account, this should lead to an estimated reduction in total personnel spending of around 12% in real terms. This should allow the share of personnel in total defence spending to decline somewhat over the next four years. Without more detailed information on forward plans, it is harder to estimate whether non-personnel spending will be able to meet the

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A Question of Security

4.5% saving that will be required to meet the overall cut of 7.5% in the defence budget. With the removal of four frigates and three other ships from active service, the number of major vessels in the Royal Navy will fall from thirty-nine to thirty-two.29 The RAF will make savings from the reduction in the size of its fleet of fast jets.30 The army has also had to make some reductions, albeit proportionally less severe than in the other two services.31 In order for these reductions to generate sufficient savings, however, the MoD will have to meet challenging targets for reducing support costs. The plan to reduce civilian personnel numbers by 30% over five years is more ambitious than anything ever before attempted by the MoD. Civilian numbers were reduced by 27% between 1988 and 1998, and again by 20% between 1998 and 2008.32 Yet not only is the current 2010–15 plan designed to be achieved in less than half the time of these two previous reductions; importantly, it also assumes a rapid, and radical, shift in the ratio of civilian to service personnel in favour of the latter.33 The SDSR has provided few details on how such a shift can be achieved without having to transfer significant non-military tasks to (less cost-effective) service personnel. The MoD prides itself on its achievements in meeting and exceeding its targets for efficiency savings. Over the last decade, significant economies have been claimed as a result of contractingout, as well as civilianisation of work previously done by service personnel. More can be done in this direction, for example by increasing centralisation of provision of functions such as training and human resources. Significant numbers of service personnel are still in posts that do not require military training, and could be filled by civilians at lower cost.34 A review of the potential for civilianisation could include an examination of the growing proportion of senior military posts (one-star and above) in the grade structure. Yet the scope for ‘pure’ efficiency savings should not be overstated. The current budget for civilian personnel, for example, accounts for only 9% of total defence spending. Moreover, out of a total of 86,600 civilian personnel in post in April 2009, only 28,300 worked for

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51

central services in areas such as procurement, personnel, and finance. 38,200 worked for front-line service commands, including 10,500 locally-employed personnel in Germany, Cyprus and operational theatres such as Afghanistan. A further 7,700 are employed by the MoD Police and Guarding Agency, 2,300 provide the crew for Royal Fleet Auxiliary vessels, and 9,600 work for Trading Funds, including the Meteorological Office, Defence Support Group and Defence Science and Technology Laboratory.35 While the scope for economies in all these areas should be examined, large reductions may only be possible if reductions are also being made in the capabilities which they support. ‘Identified’ new non-front-line savings, as a result of which reductions in both civilian and personnel numbers should be possible, are said to total at least £4.3 billion over the Spending Review period (amounting to around 5% of the total budget by 2014/15). These include cutting over £300 million per year from service and civilian personnel allowances, ‘saving significant amounts from contract renegotiations’, and increased use of simulators in training. A reduction in annual running costs of the defence estate by £350 million is also planned, but few details are given as to how this will be achieved. While three RAF bases will be closed, some might have to be reconfigured (at additional expense) to house army personnel returning from Germany. While the size of the Royal Navy is being reduced further, the government is committed to maintaining all three main bases – Faslane, Portsmouth and Plymouth – in service. Observers of past defence budgets, including the 1998 SDR, are well aware of the problems that can be stored up if planners make unrealistic assumptions about future efficiency savings. The SDSR has made significant progress in identifying what these savings will be. But more hard decisions will have to be made. And, if planned efficiency savings prove impossible to achieve, the government may have to look again at some of the force structure decisions made in 2010.

52

A Question of Security

DEFENCE BEYOND 2015 The main focus for defence planners in relation to the next four years will be how to match agreed reductions in front-line capability with commensurate reductions in support costs. Despite the initial expectation that the SDSR would set the MoD on a path towards a sustainable force structure for 2020, however, relatively little is said about what that structure might be. The SDSR states that ‘for now’ it will assume that military personnel numbers will be reduced by only 3,500 (or 2%) between 2015 and 2020. At the same time, the second half of the decade will also see intensifying pressure on the equipment budget. Some major procurement programmes (notably Astute and Typhoon) are due to be completed by the middle of the decade. But orders will need to be placed for around forty Joint Strike Fighters, together with the new catapult gear necessary to launch them, if the single new carrier is to enter service (as now scheduled) in 2020. Room will also have to be found for the running costs of the new carrier and its aircraft. The Main Gate decision for the Vanguard replacement submarine is due around 2016, after which spending is likely to increase sharply. And new investments will be needed to support land forces, notably in medium-weight armoured vehicles, and new ISTAR and cyber capabilities, as well as in a new generation of frigates for the Royal Navy. As the SDSR implicitly concedes, work has only begun on identifying how to narrow the funding gap that these multiple commitments imply. This is partly because there is no agreement between the MoD and the Treasury on what planning assumption should be made on post-2014 defence budgets. The prime minister has made clear his ‘own strong view’ that the planned force structure will require ‘year-on-year real-terms growth in the defence budget in the years beyond 2015’.36 But decisions on this will be a matter for future spending reviews, the outcome of which will depend on both the economic and political conditions prevailing at the time. If the MoD were to be allowed to return to the 1% annual real growth of the last decade, for example, this would reduce the

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projected ‘budgetary overhang’ for 2020 by around £2.5 billion. Provided that unit cost growth can be contained at around 2% per annum, the remainder of the funding gap could then be plugged through a reduction in military personnel of around 10,000 from planned 2014 levels, together with a 5–10% further reduction in front-line capability numbers. By contrast, if it became clear that the MoD could not expect any real increases after 2014, much steeper reductions – in both personnel and front-line capabilities – would be required. In announcing the results of the SDSR, the government pointed out that, even with a budget that was level in real terms, it would have had to tackle an unfunded ten-year over-commitment in the forward programme amounting to around £38 billion. Provided that projected efficiency savings can be made, the measures announced in the SDSR have probably removed most of the inherited funding gap for the next four years. But further difficult decisions will need to be made if the remaining funding gap, most of which is concentrated in the years after 2014, is to be eliminated. Afghanistan and the Army In periods of strategic uncertainty, recent operational experience often trumps other considerations in force planning. The 1998 SDR was shaped by the experience of the 1991 Gulf War and by subsequent peace-support operations in the Balkans. And the main determinant of the outcome of the SDSR, beyond the need to make substantial financial savings, was the decision to ring fence capabilities that were required for support of ongoing operations in Afghanistan. Direct additional Treasury funding for the Afghanistan commitment will amount to £4.1 billion in 2010/11. But this pays only for those elements of Afghanistan-related costs that the Treasury and MoD can agree would not otherwise be incurred. A fuller accounting of Afghanistan-related costs also needs to take into account the resources devoted to training, supporting and deploying forces there, as a result of which they are not available for other purposes. At any one time,

54

A Question of Security

around 10,000 service personnel are deployed in theatre, with up to another 40,000 tied up in the associated rotation of forces (training, leave, and so on). UK-based support for the Afghanistan operation – procurement, repair and transport, administration and planning, rehabilitation and welfare – probably accounts for roughly as many personnel (service and civilian) again. The procurement budget is less weighted towards the Afghanistan operation. Even so, total MoD resources now devoted to Afghanistan probably amount to around 30% of the total budget. A commitment to protect Afghanistanrelated capabilities from cuts, therefore, requires that economies have to be focused entirely on the remaining 70% of the defence structure. Some have suggested that it is now time to go further in shifting the balance of the armed forces towards the army. Given the demonstrated centrality of armed state-building in UK military operations, they argue, army personnel levels should be increased, financed by reductions in large procurement projects. The 2009 Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) National Security Commission, for example, proposed that the army increase to 115–120,000 trained personnel, up from its then current level of 98,000.37 It also questioned the need to continue with the aircraft carrier and Trident replacement programmes. The SDSR reflects, albeit in moderated form, this land-centric approach. It has reduced total 2015 army personnel numbers by only 7% from 2010 levels, compared with cuts of 15% and 18% in the Royal Navy and RAF respectively. As a consequence of this differential, which continues and intensifies the trend of the last decade, the UK will have one of the most land-centric force structures of any modern volunteer military. By the time SDSR reduction plans are fully implemented, land forces will account for around 65% of total service personnel, compared with around 55% in the US and France. Even Germany, once it moves to an all-volunteer force, would be likely to have a less army-focused structure. This is a radical shift in priorities, with potentially far-reaching long term implications for the UK’s naval and air forces. The 62% of UK personnel who are in ground forces (British Army, Marines and

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55

RAF Regiment combined) is already significantly higher than in the US (55%), France (55%), Canada (53%) and Australia (50%), and is close to the levels in continental powers such as Italy (60%), the Netherlands (61%), Germany (65%) and Spain (66%).38 It is possible to argue that, driven by its commitments to Iraq and Afghanistan, the UK has been ahead of the game in understanding the need for a shift in priorities towards ground forces. Yet, given that the UK is already an outlier amongst its peers, and given also its geography and strong maritime capabilities, those who argue for a further shift in this direction have much to prove. Yet it is hard to see how such an increase could be sustained within any plausible budget scenario. While the army remains the most personnel-intensive of the services, ground operations are becoming increasingly equipment-intensive, reflecting both the challenging nature of the task and the premium being placed on force protection. Without commensurate increases in these support capabilities, increases in army personnel in isolation would not achieve the desired impact on capability. In considering future force requirements, MoD planners will also want to reflect on the origins of current Afghanistan commitments. The growth in the UK’s commitment to Afghanistan since 2006 has been driven in part by operational demands, and the lessons learnt from this experience will rightly play a key role in shaping the defence review. But the size and nature of the UK’s commitment has also been supply-led, with the UK taking on commitments because (especially after the withdrawal from Iraq) it believed that it had the military capabilities necessary to fulfil them. The larger the forces that the army had committed to operations at the time of the next defence review, some also believed, the more protected that the army would be from cutbacks. Given the opportunity costs for other capabilities that would be involved, however, the government will need to be wary before accepting that the SDSR should protect capabilities simply because they have been deployed in Afghanistan. The UK armed forces are only

56

A Question of Security

in Afghanistan as part of a wider NATO operation. While the UK’s contribution is second to that of the US, and is much greater than that of any other ISAF ally, it constitutes only 9% of the total numbers of personnel provided by NATO members. This proportion is declining as the US continues to increase its own forces. The question arises whether sustaining all the capabilities for repeating an operation of the scale and duration of the recent Afghanistan commitment is compatible with preserving capabilities needed for serving other defence needs. Some might argue that a shift in priorities towards counter-insurgency is justified, on the principle that the capabilities now being used in Afghanistan are likely to be much more relevant to future challenges than those capabilities whose main role is in other types of encounters. Given the overwhelming superiority of the US military in capabilities that counter the conventional forces of hostile states, for example, the UK arguably adds relatively little military value to US conventional deterrence at an inter-state level. So, it is argued, the UK should specialise its limited resources on capabilities for which there is more likely to be a sustained demand, and which the US (it is argued) may be more likely to value. While the probability of direct state-led threats may be lower than that of complex encounters with non-state actors, however, the potential damage done to UK interests by hostile states could be much greater. If nuclear proliferation occurs in the Middle East, or if an intensified great power rivalry accompanies the rise of Asia, then current preoccupations with terrorism and organised crime will quickly pale in comparison. Given the likely resource constraints, a policy of over-specialisation in capabilities for sustained statebuilding and counter-insurgency operations could also risk underinsuring against the exploitation of new technologies (for example chemical/biological/radiological/nuclear weapons, cyber-terrorism and nanotechnology) by a wide range of potentially hostile state and non-state actors.

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Beyond Afghanistan By focusing on shorter-term Afghanistan imperatives, the SDSR has postponed a decision as to what the desirable long-term balance of capabilities should be. Once the bulk of UK forces have withdrawn from Afghanistan, there will be powerful pressures for revisiting this issue. The urgency of such a re-examination will be further increased if promised efficiency savings fail to fully materialise. Even if the government decides that it cannot afford significant real growth in the defence budget after 2014/15, it might be persuaded that the nature of modern conflict dictates a significantly more land-centric force structure. Were it to do so, it would have to revisit some of the more radical options considered during the SDSR as part of the modelling of the consequences of a real terms reduction above 10%. In the event of a further privileging of land force capabilities, such options would probably have to include most of the following: the abandonment of the commitment to introduce a new carrier into service in 2020; a further reduction in surface escort numbers, perhaps to around twelve; the decommissioning of most remaining amphibious ships; further reductions in fast jet numbers, together with F-35 Joint Strike Fighter postponement and a consolidation of the fleet around Typhoon (the model adopted by Germany); and a more radical look at the requirement for a new fleet of ballistic missile submarines, including a re-examination of the case for continuous-at-sea deterrence. Alternatively, the government could use withdrawal from Afghanistan as an opportunity for some re-balancing of the force structure towards sea and air capabilities. Thus, if the post-2014 defence budget remains flat in real terms, this is likely to require total service personnel numbers to be reduced by 11,000 compared to the planned 2015 level of 158,000. Even if all of this reduction were to fall on the army, it would still leave it with a higher proportion of total personnel than it enjoyed in 2010. Most importantly, such a reduction – to an army of 84,000 by 2020, rather than the current plan for 94,000 – would make it possible to preserve other key

58

A Question of Security

capabilities that might otherwise come under threat. One possible option for achieving such a reduction, some argue, would be to maintain the SDSR’s five brigade structure, but reduce some of the lower priority elements (such as heavy armour) currently included. There may also be opportunities for rationalisation as a result of the new review of force generation assumptions. A reduction in the planned size of the army would have an additional advantage. The SDSR has committed the government to return half of the 20,000 personnel in Germany to the UK by 2015, and the remainder by 2020. Some of these returning personnel might be accommodated in housing made vacant as a result of the closure of RAF bases (for example in Kinloss). But these bases do not have the capacity to house all 20,000 returning troops. If withdrawal from Germany continues on schedule without a commensurate reduction in army numbers, therefore, the MoD could find itself facing demands for large new housing investments (possibly totalling several billion pounds over the next decade) which currently have no place in the budget. By contrast, were significant reductions in army personnel numbers to be made, the demands for such investment would be much less. 1964 Revisited? Parallels for the current financial crisis are sometimes drawn with the 1976 crisis, in which the UK was obliged to seek a $4 billion loan from the IMF, as well as accepting a freeze on public spending at 1976/77 levels. In practice, after a temporary slowdown, government spending continued to rise, with defence recording a 17% real increase between 1975/76 and 1985/86, and health increasing by 32%.39 A more plausible parallel, at least for the defence budget, may be with the experience of the 1964–70 Labour government. Coming to power in 1964 after thirteen years in opposition, the new government soon discovered that inherited plans for defence would require annual real growth in spending of 4%. It quickly decided that this was unaffordable given its other priorities, and decided to limit the level

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59

of defence spending for 1970/71 to the level of 1964/65. At first, it was unprepared to take all the decisions necessary to meet this target, given the continuing military operations in Aden and Malaysia. Instead, the next three years saw a sequence of separate decisions – making sharp cuts in the aircraft research and development budget, evacuating Aden, cancelling the carrier programme, and then, during the devaluation crisis of late 1967, agreeing the final withdrawal from Singapore and Malaysia – that cumulatively allowed the 1970 spending target to be met. Even then, as a result of the offsetting cost increases for the UK’s conventional contribution to NATO (notably the British Army on the Rhine and RAF [Germany]), total defence spending fell by only 4% over the period.40 Half a century later, the constraints on overall spending growth are greater than they were in 1964, but defence is a less important part of the total picture. Yet many aspects of the 2010 problem would be recognisable to Britain’s then-new ministers, as they gathered in Chequers to review defence policy options. Then, as now, they faced a need to impose financial discipline on an overcommitted defence programme. At the same time, the requirement to reduce military commitments could not easily be fitted within the timetable of Treasury deadlines. While agreeing the overall budget path for defence at the very beginning of Labour’s period in office, therefore, the process of establishing a clear sense of priorities – and, in particular, the eventual decision to prioritise NATO and nuclear commitments at the expense of those in the Middle East and Asia – only emerged incrementally, as opportunities arose for disentanglement from existing commitments and programmes. Such a procedure may yet prove to be the least suboptimal way for the current government to implement the defence reductions that now seem probable over the next six years. Towards the Next Review The government has made clear that it does not intend to decide now on a detailed force structure for the period 2015–20. But it will

60

A Question of Security

not be able to wait until the next SDSR, scheduled to conclude in autumn 2015, in order to do so. By that time, the government will be half way through 2015/16, the budgets for which will have been set in a mid-term spending review, presumably taking place in 2013 or 2014. Indeed, depending on the timing of this mid-term review, provisional budgets may also have been set for 2016/17. Some within the defence community have complained about the haste with which the SDSR has been conducted, and about the necessity of subordinating strategic decisions to fiscal imperatives. Yet the experience of the SDSR suggests that there can be considerable advantages in ensuring that a defence review is conducted simultaneously with a spending review. If the SDSR had been delayed, it would have been conducted on the basis of budgetary allocations already fixed by the Spending Review. By conducting both reviews at the same time, however, the full implications of different scenarios for defence cuts could be grasped by ministers before final allocations were made. Thus, while the MoD was initially asked to examine options for savings of 10% and 20% in real terms, it ended up with a significantly better settlement. Most other ministries were not so fortunate. If there is an interim spending review, therefore, the government will have to consider carefully whether this should be accompanied by a parallel review of defence and security capabilities. The case for such a review would be especially strong if, by that date, substantial progress has been made in withdrawal from Afghanistan. RADICAL CHOICES IN AN AGE OF UNCERTAINTY In April 2010, RUSI conducted a poll of more than 2,000 of the country’s defence and security specialists. The results were striking, with 88% of respondents agreeing that ‘the UK needs a radical reassessment of the position it wants, and is able, to play in the world.’41 Yet there is far less consensus about what the results of such a ‘radical reassessment’ should be. Many of the members of the UK’s

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security policy elite still harbour hopes that someone else will have to take the brunt of any necessary adjustments. Many still focus their energies on protection of their own particular turf, rather than taking a defence-wide (far less a government-wide) view. In particular, and entirely understandably, many of the most vocal voices in the pre-SDSR debate came from those closely linked with one or other of the armed services. Each tended to argue that a particular service, or service arm, was at a minimum ‘critical mass’ level, below which its value would diminish to the point where it was scarcely worth maintaining at all. Rejecting so-called ‘salami slicing’, representatives of particular service interests often argued that politicians must have the courage to make fundamental choices in favour of particular capabilities and roles, and at the expense of others. This tendency to see the debate on defence resourcing in bipolar terms is not a new one, sustained as it is by the politics of interservice rivalry. In the 1960s, the UK faced a choice between its Army on the Rhine and its global role, eventually deciding (after much equivocation) that the former was more important than the latter to its national security. If the UK faced a single dominant security risk, there would be a case for a similarly stark prioritisation today. Even in post-Falklands War retrospective, the UK was almost certainly right to focus its defence efforts on its contribution to conventional deterrence in Europe at the expense of taking more risks elsewhere. For, in the last analysis, West Germany and the North Atlantic were immeasurably more important to the security of the UK homeland in the 1970s and 1980s than commitments in East Asia or the Gulf. Today, by contrast, the case for such a radical reorientation of role is much less compelling. The current strategic environment is one characterised by uncertainty and complexity, not by a single existential threat. The UK has an important role to play in contributing to international counter-terrorism, counter-proliferation and statebuilding efforts. It has a particular national stake in the security of states, such as Pakistan and Bangladesh, with which it has close historic

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A Question of Security

and interpersonal links. Yet the risks that arise as a result of state weakness and international terrorism do not pose existential threats to the UK comparable in magnitude to those posed by rival European powers during the twentieth century, when the UK faced a real threat of invasion (as indeed it had done through previous centuries). At the same time, new forms of inter-state rivalry could re-emerge which might begin to pose new and serious threats to the UK’s vital interests. There are legitimate concerns, in particular, that rapid shifts in global economic power from Europe and the US to China, India, Brazil and other rapidly growing developing countries might over time lead to the emergence of new risks of inter-state conflict. The instabilities created as a result of state failure and underdevelopment will remain a source of continuing security risks for the UK. But the peaceful management of relations between the world’s centres of economic power is likely to continue to be more central to the UK’s long-term security, just as it is clearly more central to the management of the world’s economy and environment. Afghanistan, Yemen, Sudan and Somalia matter to Britain’s long-term security. But China, India and Russia matter more, as for that matter do Brazil, Pakistan, Iran and Turkey. In these circumstances, a security policy involving a complete abandonment of particular broad categories of advanced military capability is not the best way to manage the wide range of strategic uncertainties that the UK faces. This is not to advocate a policy of ‘balanced reductions’, especially if this were seen simply as a politically attractive way of sharing misery between different constituencies. Some of the hardest decisions to take will be those that involve curtailing legacy capabilities with powerful institutional backing in order to create space for new technologies and new tasks that lack such sponsors. If the UK is to have the ability to respond to a range of plausible risks, however, the retention of capabilities to do a range of tasks, together with the ability to develop new capabilities over time, has much to commend it.

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The Home Defence Option On a more strategic level, a downgrading of the priority given to power projection could, in principle, have yielded large savings. If the government were to have decided, for example, on a reorientation of the UK’s defence posture towards national homeland defence, some of the most expensive systems currently in service (for example, those designed to support long-range deployments) would not be needed. Others could be maintained at a much lower state of readiness. If new direct military threats to the UK do emerge in future, such an option might become a real possibility, especially if the UK’s alliance relationships begin to fray. In the absence of such threats, however, it is hard to see the government wishing to adopt such an explicitly isolationist approach. Britain’s security relies, more than ever, on the strength of its relationships (political, economic and military) with other states. Its defence policy is now largely shaped around the requirement to make a sizeable contribution to collective military efforts. Most of its major post-Cold War military deployments have been as part of international coalitions. And the importance of multilateralism and alliances is growing, not diminishing, as a result of European (and British) decline relative to the emerging economies of Asia. If the centrality of alliances to the nation’s security is accepted, the driving force for UK defence planning is likely to remain the requirement to provide capabilities that can be used in operations with others. The size of the contribution which the UK is able to make to collective capabilities will sometimes have to be adjusted to fit with the resources available. But the requirements of coalition operations – interoperability, the need to respond rapidly at long range, the need to limit casualties in wars of discretion – will severely limit the options for achieving savings through technological downgrading. If it comes to a choice, the UK’s contributory model of defence places a premium on quality over quantity. In some cases this model may require the UK to give up some specific capabilities in order to remain a serious contributor in other areas. But uncertainty as to the future nature of the conflicts in which

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the UK may be asked to take part is likely to maintain pressure for breadth, if necessary at the expense of size, in national capabilities. As a result, while the SDSR has decided to reduce some force elements more than others, it has not foregone any major capabilities altogether. Adaptability and Reconstitution Some argue that it might be possible to reduce the extent of the numerical decline in capabilities through greater emphasis on ‘80% solutions’. This refers to capability solutions that allow the service customer to achieve most, but not all, of the state-of-the-art military requirement, in return for which there are significant cost savings (including in personnel). It often involves reducing the extent to which the UK is able to match the US in terms of technological sophistication or readiness. But it has the advantage, in an uncertain world, of allowing the UK to retain a more diversified set of capabilities than would otherwise be possible. Such an approach could mean that it takes less time to build stronger capabilities in response to new strategic developments than would be the case if the armed forces had exited entirely from particular capability areas. Such a solution has been proposed, for example, in the case of the Future Surface Combatant (the planned replacement for existing frigates and other surface ships).42 Yet recent experience suggests a healthy dose of scepticism is necessary when project promoters claim that they can buck the trend of unit cost inflation. In practice, significant cost savings may only be plausible when the MoD is prepared to accept a substantial reduction in capability. Even then, once a programme has been approved, demands for flexibility and adaptability often drive costs back onto an upwards trajectory. Another possibility might be to examine what would be the implications of moving a significant proportion of key capabilities to a state in which it would take an extended period of time to reconstitute them, perhaps even as long as five to ten years. Such a move could identify forces that currently provide useful contributions to coalition

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capabilities, but are of more marginal value in short-notice national contingencies. For example, such an exercise might seek to examine how large a fleet of available fixed-wing combat aircraft the UK needs at short notice for national tasks. If excess capabilities were then to be put on extended readiness, what risks would have to be run in doing so? In the event of a new threat emerging, how long would it take to procure the capabilities (personnel, equipment and infrastructure) that would then be required? And are there ‘seed corn’ investments that need to be made to protect these reconstitution possibilities? An Indirect Approach As a result of the experiences of Iraq and Afghanistan, a growing body of opinion – in both the US and the UK – is also arguing for a more ‘indirect’ military contribution to capabilities for responding to the problems created by state failure and instability. The UK and its allies will continue to have an interest in preventing state failure and supporting state reconstruction in fragile states, together with deterring inter-state aggression between militarily weak states. But, many now argue, other means of doing so may often be able to achieve most of the same objectives at lower costs, while avoiding many of the pitfalls of comprehensive state-building efforts. In addition to a smarter use of civilian capabilities, these could include a greater role for building the capacity of local security forces and regional allies, together with greater use of special forces and selective use of air power in containing sub-state and weak state threats.43 THE GREATEST EFFICIENCY SAVING It will clearly be important for the MoD to do more to investigate every opportunity for efficiency savings, and thereby reduce the need for cuts in front-line capabilities. But the greatest efficiency saving of all would be to put the defence budget back onto a sustainable path, in which plans are realistic, and commitments (once made) can be honoured. One of the central problems that has bedevilled past defence planning has been that it has always seemed to be either

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too early or too late to make tough decisions on procurement and future capabilities. Ministers have been happy to postpone politically difficult decisions where they can, while suffering the consequences of the non-decisions (or under-costed decisions) made by their predecessors. In 2010, with five years before the next election, and a defence secretary who owes no brief for past decisions, there is now a real opportunity to buck the trend and make the hard decisions necessary to balance the books for the next decade, and not just for the next three years. One of the key tests of whether the 2010 SDSR provides a basis for coherent long-term defence planning will be whether it is based on credible assumptions. One of the reasons for current levels of over-commitment is that past defence planners have made unrealistic assumptions (most notably on efficiency and pay). This needs to change. But the MoD also needs to make it clear that it cannot be expected to produce credible long-term defence plans if it is not given clear guidance, agreed by the National Security Council, on the assumptions it should make on the level of resources that are likely to be available for defence in the long term. Once the immediate fiscal adjustment has been completed, around 2015 or 2016, it should be reasonable to plan on the basic assumption that real spending growth will resume. Agreement on similarly long-term budget guidelines would be a key indicator of whether the government is prepared to put defence planning on a truly long-term basis. The previous Labour government recognised the strength of this case, in principle, in relation to the equipment budget. In his response to the Gray Report, Secretary of State for Defence Bob Ainsworth announced the government’s intention to introduce ‘a ten year indicative planning horizon for equipment spending agreed with the Treasury’, along with ‘an annual assessment of the affordability of our programme.’44 The Treasury was not persuaded to extend this same reasoning to the defence budget as a whole. Yet there is a strong case for arguing that long-term equipment plans need to be closely linked to planning

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for capabilities more generally. It makes little sense to agree the procurement of new pieces of kit, only to find that an inadequate budget exists for supporting them in service. Some in the Treasury argue that such a framework would reduce its ability to alter budgets in response to economic circumstances or changing ministerial priorities. While the development of professional armed forces requires decades of human investment, they argue, so too does the development of professional cadres of teachers and doctors. The more that some parts of the government budget are deemed offlimits, the more volatility will have to be imposed on the budgets of unprotected spending departments. Yet there are specific features of the defence budget that support the case for a longer planning framework. The MoD’s capital programme is not only a much larger part of its total budget than it is in the main domestic spending departments. The average timescales involved in the procurement of major items of defence equipment are also significantly longer, and more technologically complex, than they are for hospitals or schools. Perhaps the nearest equivalent is the Department for Transport, which benefits from a ten-year Long Term Funding Guideline. The 2007 Spending Review confirmed a 2.25% annual real increase in transport spending for the decade up to 2018/19.45 The experience of Australia and Canada might provide some lessons. Both countries have similar constitutional arrangements, and both spend comparable proportions of their budgets on equipment. Both have recently been persuaded of the case for long-term defence spending targets. In its recent defence review, Australia announced funding parameters of 3% real growth in defence spending to 2017/18, followed by 2.2% real growth from 2017/18 to 2030.46 Canada’s new long-term funding framework is less generous, reflecting its different strategic position. Yet it still includes provision for 0.6% real growth from 2008/09 to 2027/28.47 Both plans are exclusive of the incremental costs of operations. An additional advantage from, and perhaps a condition for, an agreement on a long-term defence spending plan would be that it

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would give the MoD an incentive to incorporate a realistic margin for unforeseen contingencies into its forward planning. Perhaps the most defining characteristic of today’s strategic and technological environment is uncertainty. Yet the current approach, in which the forward budget is overloaded with commitments, means that there is a continuing tendency to raid temporarily under-spending items (for example, service posts unfilled) in order to pay for unavoidable (even if less important) commitments. With greater certainty over the total budget envelope, and a proper balancing of commitments with resources within it, such concerns can be reduced. Greater success in balancing the forward budget would also help to protect important long-term investments, for example in defence research, from shortterm economy drives. On the assumption that the government deficit can be reduced to manageable proportions, real growth of around 1% per annum between 2014/15 and 2019/20 might be a plausible planning assumption for the core defence budget. This would allow the MoD to maintain non-Trident core spending in real terms, while also allowing the government to state that nuclear deterrent capital spending is not at the expense of conventional forces.48 It would be roughly comparable to growth in core defence spending during 1998–2008; more generous than Canada, but less generous than Australia. It would be broadly consistent, albeit rather more generous, than historic patterns of UK defence spending, if one excludes the post-Cold War adjustment period. Leaving the Top Table? For some, any further reduction in the nation’s defence capability spells the end of the UK as a major power. Defence capabilities, they argue, are now at a bare minimum, measured either in terms of force size or proportion of GDP. Below this level, it is suggested, the UK will drop to the level of lesser powers. Pejorative remarks are often made in this context in relation to the lack of capability of countries as varied as Belgium, Switzerland and Italy.

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This is an understandable reaction, especially when members of the armed forces face the prospect of years of austerity as a result of both the country’s fiscal crisis and past governments’ unwillingness to get to grips with an over-committed procurement programme. Yet military power and status should be measured primarily in terms of relative, and not absolute, capability. The UK has not been falling behind in relation to either France or Germany, generally seen as its most important European foreign policy partners. In specific capability areas, a radically cost-cutting 2010 Defence Review could have resulted in the UK’s relative position being eroded, for example compared with France. Given the continued pressure on national budgets throughout NATO, however, cuts on the scale outlined in the SDSR will not fundamentally alter the UK’s position as one of Europe’s two leading military powers, or the broad parity in its capability compared with France. Had much deeper reductions been made, it would have been a different picture. Two Per Cent for Number Three US concern about the impact of the SDSR on the UK’s military capability recently crystallised around a prediction that the UK defence budget might fall below the target of 2% of GDP, which it believes is the minimum that NATO member states have agreed to spend on defence. Most members already fail to meet this guideline, including Canada (1.5%), Germany (1.4%), Italy (1.4%), the Netherlands (1.5%), Poland (1.7%), Romania (1.4%), Spain (1.2%) and Turkey (1.8%). Indeed the only European countries spending more in 2009 were Greece (3.1%), the UK (2.7%), France (2.1%) and Albania (2.0%). In contrast, the US now spends 4.0% of its GDP on defence, a sharp increase from the 2000 level and more than twice the NATOEuropean average of 1.7%.49 On the basis of the plans announced in the Spending Review, UK defence spending will fall to an estimated 2.2% of GDP in 2014, down from 2.7% in both 2009 and 2010. If all operational spending

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has ended by 2014, the defence/GDP ratio is projected to fall further, to an estimated 2.0%.50 Given likely fiscal retrenchment in France and Greece, the UK could be the only European state that is still spending more than 2% by that date. In an increasingly demilitarised Europe, the UK should remain relatively less demilitarised than most of its allies. In the same vein, the government’s expectation that it will ‘continue with the fourth largest military budget in the world’ seems well-founded, and perhaps even a little cautious. UK defence spending in 2009 was only 10.3% of that of the US ($59 billion compared with $574 billion). It is also likely to fall further behind the level of China, which spent an estimated $83 billion on defence in 2008, and continues to increase its defence budget at least as rapidly as its booming economy. But the UK will probably continue to spend roughly as much on defence as other medium-ranking powers, such as Russia ($53 billion), Japan ($51 billion), Germany ($47 billion), and India ($36 billion).51 The UK’s nearest comparator on defence spending and capability (as in so many other areas of foreign policy) remains France, which spent an estimated $54 billion (or €39 billion) on defence in 2009, around 8% less than the UK. Depending on exchange rate trends, the UK and France are likely to share the third and fourth places in the global defence spending league table for some years to come. Whether they can translate this into commensurate international influence will depend, as it always has, on factors beyond the simple arithmetic of defence budgets. Not least amongst these will be the extent to which European countries are able to work more effectively (and efficiently) together, while maintaining core national capabilities. The defence treaty between the UK and France, agreed in November 2010, provides some hope for progress in the area. In the longer term, however, a shift in the balance of military power in relation to China, as well as potentially other rising Asian powers, is quite likely. At the time of the 1998 SDR, China ranked only seventh in the ranking of world GDP at market prices, with a

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national income roughly equivalent to that of Italy (and less than that of the UK). Yet it is now in the process of overtaking Japan to gain the position as the world’s second largest economy; and some estimates suggest that it could overtake the US in the number one GDP slot before 2030. Even if China’s military capability grows at a rate slower than that of the economy as a whole, therefore, its relative military strength is likely to undergo a marked transformation over the next two decades. The prospect of such a trend is already a major concern to neighbouring states, and is increasingly becoming a central force driver for defence planners in Japan, Australia, India and indeed in the US itself. It is entirely possible, even likely, that China’s rise can be managed through a strengthening and broadening of multilateral structures. In the defence and security field, however, progress in this direction remains limited. And, in the absence of much greater confidencebuilding, a spiral of distrust and arms racing between major powers (notably the US, China, Japan and India) remains a real possibility. Nor will the strategic consequences of China’s rise be confined to East Asia, where the UK has not aspired to play a major role for some time. Its growing economic and political influence in Central Asia (including Afghanistan and Pakistan), the Middle East, Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa also has the potential to create tensions with the US, Europe and other major powers. It remains possible, even likely, that this dramatic shift in relative power can be managed successfully. But less benign scenarios are also plausible, and need to be taken into account by those charged with long-term defence planning in the UK. The UK cannot confront these challenges alone. The rise of China and other developing countries further strengthens the importance that the UK will need to give to its alliances, both with other European states and with the US. For the next two decades at least, the UK’s possession of a range of important assets – including one of NATO’s most capable militaries – will continue to give it more ability to influence international events than most other powers of

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comparable economic weight. While the narrative of inexorable UK decline compared with other Western states is misleading, however, the relative decline of the US and (especially) Europe compared with the rising Asian powers is not. The UK’s strategic interests, therefore, will continue to lie in active multilateralism, not least in the defence and security field. Michael Codner, Michael Clarke, Neil Davies and other experts all provided incisive comments on earlier iterations of this chapter. The staff of the Defence Analytical Services Agency provided invaluable assistance in the construction of consistent time series for civilian personnel and defence spending.

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Table 5:  Regular Front-line Ground Formations 2010. Total regular forces formations

98

Of which Armoured regiments

10

Infantry battalions

36

Artillery regiments

14

Engineer regiments

12

Signals regiments

12

Royal Marine commandos (including fleet protection)

4

RAF Regiment (battalion equivalents)

3

Special forces

7

Source: UK Defence Statistics 2010, Tables 4.2 and 4.4.

Table 6:  Aircraft Fleets 2009–10. 2009

2010

760

732

214

199

28

24

Air support (VC-10, Tristar, Hawk 100)

37

32

Logistics (BAe 125/146, C-17, Hercules,

51

39

Training (Tucano, Dominie, Hawk)

126

122

RN Helicopters (Sea King, Merlin, Lynx)

117

112

Army Helicopters (Lynx, Gazelle, Apache,

108

108

79

79

Total aircraft Of which Air Combat (Tornado, Typhoon, Harrier, future JCA) C4 and ISTAR (Nimrod R1 & MR, Sentinel, Sentry)

future A400-M)

Islander, Defender) RAF Helicopters (Chinook, Puma, Merlin) Source: UK Defence Statistics 2010, Tables 4.8–4.10. Figures as of 1 April 2010, Forward Available Fleet.

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Table 7:  Major Maritime Vessels 2010–20. 2010

2015

2020

SDSR Plan

SDSR Plan

39

32

32

Trident submarine (SSBN)

4

4

4

Attack Submarine (SSN)

7

7

7

Aircraft carriers

2

0

1

Landing Platform Docks/Helicopter

3

2

2

Destroyers

6

6

6

17

13

13

Total Of which

Frigates Source: UK Defence Statistics 2010, Table 4.1.

Source for Table 8, opposite page: MoD, Annual Report and Accounts 2008–2009 (London: The Stationery Office, 2009), p. 240. 94% of gross expenditure was allocated to tasks, force elements or activities. The remaining costs, including overheads, are shared among force elements in proportion to their levels of expenditure.

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Table 8: Full Costs of Force Elements, 2008/09. Objective 1: Achieving Success in the Tasks We Undertake, at Home and Abroad Operations £2,855 m Other military tasks £883 m Contributing to the community £449 m Objective 1 total £4,521 m Objective 2: Being Ready to Respond to the Tasks that Might Arise Aircraft carriers Frigates and destroyers Smaller warships Amphibious ships Strategic sealift Fleet support ships Survey and other vessels Naval aircraft Submarines Royal Marines Royal Navy subtotal Field units Other units Army subtotal

£438 m £1,744 m £316 m £491 m £64 m £299 m £179 m £1,152 m £2,036 m £600 m £7,319 m £8,197 m £1,599 m

Combat aircraft ISTAR aircraft Tankers, transport and communications aircraft Future capability Other aircraft and RAF units RAF subtotal

£9,796 m £3,546 m £899 m £866 m £200 m £1,808 m £7,319 m

Joint and multinational operations Centrally managed military support Maintenance of war reserve stocks Centre Grouping total

£404 m £656 m £848 m £1,908 m

Objective 2 Total Objective 3: Building For The Future Research Equipment programme Non-equipment investment programme Objective 3 total

Grand Total Defence Spending

£26,342 m £1,112 m £1,883 m £1,858 m £4,854 m

£35,717 m

STRATEGIC CONSIDERATIONS FOR THE ANGLO-AMERICAN ALLIANCE Lisa Aronsson Few issues in British foreign and security policy are more important than the strategic partnership with the United States. Yet the relationship was hardly discussed at all during the general election campaign and during the first few weeks of the coalition government. When it did come up, debates focused on whether or not the UK should continue to be (or whether it ever was) excessively deferential or ‘slavish’ towards the United States. The real substance of the partnership, however, was glossed over or rarely mentioned. The Ministry of Defence’s Green Paper, Adaptability and Partnership, and post-election speeches by Defence Secretary Liam Fox1 and Foreign Secretary William Hague2 suggested that the substance of the UK’s partnership with the US would remain strong and that it will remain central to UK defence planning. It became clear that foreign and security policy under the new government would be pragmatic and ambitious, with a strong relationship with the United States as an important part of a strategy to achieve these goals. The implementation of the Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR) will demonstrate how much substance is behind this rhetoric. It will shed light on the new government’s attitude and its priorities vis-à-vis the UK’s most important strategic ally. Understandably, debates surrounding the SDSR have been dominated by the concept of affordability, economies and tradeoffs. As Trevor Taylor points out, however, the real ‘hard choices’ are

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not ‘in the first instance about which projects should be cancelled and what personnel reductions should occur.’3 They stem from the UK’s broader foreign policy agenda, its vision for global politics and its aspirations to wield influence as a global power.4 As the UK explores new avenues for defence diplomacy and new means of wielding influence, some have begun to question how much global influence the UK actually achieved by positioning itself as America’s deputy sheriff. It has become clear that a major re-assessment of the relationship with the US is under way and it was a core concern for the SDSR. It is wrong, however, to consider the Washington-London link as a single issue in UK policy debates. Almost any decision that the UK government takes, from reducing its budget deficit and redirecting resources to rekindling its relationship with India, refashioning relations with Russia and Japan, forging partnerships with emerging powers or overhauling policy towards the European Union, is in fact a building block for the British relationship with the US. Even domestic issues such as criminal law, the apprehension of terrorists and engagement with Islam in the UK are transatlantic matters. There is no transatlantic debate that can be conducted by the British government as a separate stream from other concerns of the administration. Influence in Washington: 1998 to 2010 and Beyond Nevertheless, because of the UK’s defence posture in 1998, the changing nature of US power and debates about the future of American dominance, relations with America were at the forefront of SDSR debates in autumn 2010. In 1998, the US-UK partnership was a central pillar of British foreign and security policy, but many are now calling for a hard-headed analysis of how much influence the UK’s stance in 1998 actually brought. Former Bush administration staffers speak of frequent consultations with the British on highpriority and sensitive issues, but the UK systematically failed to influence Washington on issues that mattered to Whitehall. The New Labour government made multilateralism, international institutions

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and strengthening international law priorities as part of its ‘ethical’ foreign policy, but it failed to steer the US in that direction or secure its support. The government could not keep the US in international climate negotiations after Kyoto, and it failed to keep the US in negotiations on the International Criminal Court once the UK itself came round to supporting that institution. On defence matters, policy planners in Washington have never let UK debates steer policy – indeed, they have never had an interest in letting smaller states influence policy or decisions as to how a military operation should be run. Moreover, the Blair government’s idea that the UK could serve as a bridge between Europe and America proved an illusion. Anglo-American relations served both sides’ security interests, but neither side needed a bridge and the UK was unfit for the role anyway. Whitehall seemed prepared to tone down policy differences with Washington when necessary, but it was never shy about voicing differences in Europe. Indeed, the 2003 transatlantic crisis over the American-led war in Iraq revealed the emptiness of UK rhetoric about a transatlantic bridge. The UK’s stance after the 1998 review did not deliver the anticipated influence in Washington, of course, but this was unlikely to happen anyway. Still, the UK had an interest in nurturing a close transatlantic partnership at the time. In 1998, it still looked as if the post-Cold War international order would be characterised by American hegemony and by the continued spread of liberal democracy and open markets. The UK had high stakes in this American, post-Cold War project and it made sense for the UK to project itself internationally as America’s key partner. It made sense to develop its image as a ‘deputy sheriff’ and to organise national defence in such a way as to maximise influence in Washington. A close relationship with the UK also made sense in Washington as the post-Cold War period unfolded. The UK had emerged from the Cold War as the only European power with a global vision, a long-standing military tradition, and shared political and economic values. France and Germany were potential American partners as

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well but neither was prepared to take on a global role and invest in military capabilities. The UK was not only positioned for the role, but it seized the opportunity. It proved a steadfast partner for the US in military operations in the former Yugoslavia and a supporter for Washington in the conflicts that erupted in the Gulf, Somalia, Haiti, Sierra Leone and the Ivory Coast. Ultimately, close partnership served both sides’ interests in Europe as institutions expanded into the post-Soviet vacuum in Central and Eastern Europe. The world has since changed but close relations with Washington are still important, even if they do not deliver influence in Washington. It is increasingly clear that American power is waning with respect to other nations as the global economic centre of gravity shifts eastwards. New powers are emerging, but it is not yet clear how they will affect the international system or whether they will offer alternative visions for global international order. Even as they emerge, however, the US is likely to remain the dominant power for at least for another ten to fifteen years. Moreover, even as the character of American power changes and goes into relative decline, the manner in which it does so will be a key strategic issue for Britain. The US and the UK are now joined at the hip in Afghanistan and in Pakistan and both have core, overlapping interests in fighting economic protectionism and securing long-term growth at home and overseas.5 Both countries are also status-quo powers with shared interests in promoting stability in the world’s most troubled regions, and in failed and failing states. Both need secure access to the global commons and both have an interest in closing the global inequality gap, managing resource pressures and strengthening institutions and the rule of law. As the House of Commons Report on the US-UK relationship argued in March 2010, there is a ‘significant degree of alignment in US and UK interests and policies on these issues.’6 The Crisis of Public Diplomacy and Next Steps Popular perceptions of the UK’s deference towards Washington have been damaging to the UK’s interests. This was especially true after

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2003 when several European governments found it useful politically to emphasise differences between themselves and the Americans on key security questions. This was true in Spain for example, where the government in Madrid made a clear break with the United States in response to domestic political pressure over Iraq. Similar trends had surfaced in France and Germany, and even within the UK, where the British people held one of Europe’s largest rallies against the Iraq War. Some of these pressures have persisted within Britain, as there are still political communities that see the United States as inimical to some of their aspirations. Indeed, some of the UK’s most prominent minority groups, including many British Muslims, still have a negative view of the US, and therefore the UK’s partnership with America. They see the US-UK alliance as anti-Islamic or in opposition to core British interests. The problem is mutual: neoconservatives and some rightwing commentators in Washington see Britain’s Muslim population as an increasingly troubling divide between the two countries. Considering the UK’s interests in continued partnership with America, Whitehall’s public diplomacy efforts have been a failure. A House of Commons report suggested dropping the rhetoric of the special relationship, and government officials have followed suit. This is unlikely to recast the relationship in public opinion, however, and the government would be wise to address public misconceptions about the special relationship head on. What is needed is nothing short of a complete overhaul of public diplomacy and strategic communications regarding the merits of a close partnership with the United States. This does not mean picking fights with Washington for the sake of demonstrating independence, but convincing the public that the UK still has a core interest in maintaining close relations with the United States, even if it does not deliver increased influence in Washington. Moreover, the UK should stress that the articulation of divisions with colleagues in Washington is part of a solid alliance. Within the UK, transatlantic exchanges should be supported and links should be encouraged between British and American Muslim communities, and between British Muslims and

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the American government. Whitehall may not be the best vehicle for such engagement, but it can and it should be useful in supporting the process. To date, UK public diplomacy efforts have focused on engaging with a new generation of Britons. Now they must reach a wider audience of British people of all faiths and ethnicities and they must engage with political communities with overtly different concerns. Most importantly, public diplomacy efforts must dispel the myth that the US-UK alliance undermines British interests or that it is by definition an alliance against Islam. Almost immediately after taking power, David Cameron began efforts to explain the importance of the relationship, and to reassure America that the UK will remain a staunch ally. He published a piece in the Wall Street Journal, making it clear that even if rhetoric about the special relationship is dropped, he has no intention of dropping the substance of the partnership. He argued that the US-UK alliance is ‘entirely natural’: it is ‘resilient because it is rooted in strong foundations’ and durable because ‘every aspect of our daily lives on either side of the Atlantic owes something to each other’.7 The prime minister’s article laid out the substance of the US-UK alliance for the daily’s American readership, but it will not be enough, however, to convince sceptics in the UK or to tackle misconceptions about the utility of the alliance. In addition to coming up with a new domestic strategy, the government should make better use of its partnerships with other and global institutional structures to recast the alliance with the US and to help shape the way it is perceived in the UK and abroad. Global institutions and multilateral frameworks are under increasing pressure. They face complex problems of global representation, finance, legitimacy and efficacy. It is widely accepted that they require radical reform, sound funding structures and the strengthening of international law. The UK could make better use of informal, ad hoc arrangements such as the G20 to address problems of representation and reform. At the same time, a new public diplomacy strategy targeting a wider British audience could help re-cast the US-UK alliance in a new light and explain the importance of partnership with America, even as American relative influence declines.

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Military Capabilities and Strategic Partnership If the partnership with the United States is still important to UK foreign and security policies, the UK must also consider the fact that defence capabilities help deliver that impact, and it must at least consider the consequences of budget cuts on its global status and how that effects relations with the United States. Before the SDSR was published, Malcolm Chalmers predicted that the Ministry of Defence would be ‘required to make a real terms budget reduction over the period of 2010–16 of around 10–15 per cent’.8 He argued that even if cuts were that high, such a reduction in capabilities would not necessarily signal the end of the UK’s great power status. Such status, he argues, should be measured in relative and not absolute capability.9 To be sure, the UK can indeed afford to make significant cuts to its defence budget without altering the relative balance of military power. Given financial pressures on all of the NATO allies, the UK is very likely to remain one of Europe’s two leading military powers, and both the US and the UK are likely to lose ground in relative terms to China and India. Hardware and sheer military power matters, of course, but there are actually two elements in this debate: what capabilities exist, and how they are perceived in Washington and internationally. American military planners have been watching the UK SDSR debates very carefully. They were reassured early on about the UK’s commitment to Afghanistan and to keeping the nuclear deterrent, but they worried that if the UK cut too much power from the front lines, it would affect the UK’s ability to link in to US systems in joint military operations. They also worried that the UK’s cuts could cut across its full spectrum of military power, thus undermining its ability to act independently and sustain its own forces in military interventions abroad. The US had already experienced difficulties in integrating UK forces into its military plans in the Kosovo air campaign and now in Afghanistan. If forces dropped significantly and if the UK loses its technological edge, Americans worried the UK would then lose its status as a key partner in military terms, even if it

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remains an important ally in more general terms. The reality is that the UK is on the verge of a step change in its military relationship with the US and it is a possibility that the UK is approaching the threshold after which it will no longer by useful to the United States in military terms at least. American officials have also expressed serious concerns that the UK will rely too much on efficiency savings, and they worry about a ‘race to the bottom’ in Europe. The US sees the UK as the leader in European thinking on defence and they worry that cuts will send a signal as to how the UK will relate not only to the US, but how it will relate to its European partners as well. Significant reductions in UK military capabilities will not only affect the UK, but they could have broader implications for the alliance. All of the UK’s European allies are struggling to meet the agreed target of 2 per cent of GDP spending on defence. This is an unrealistic target, of course, but it is a problem that most of the European defence spending is on personnel. As a result, the Americans already see NATO as short on funding for operations, military exercises, force modernisation, equipment and R&D. They fear that sharp cuts in UK defence spending could set a precedent in Europe. This would stifle operations and training even further and it could undermine NATO if it struggled to deliver on operations or risked failing to live up to treaty obligations. European allies are unlikely to base national decisions about defence on precedent in the UK, but there is a concern – particularly on the American right – about a growing ‘pacification’ of Europe. Secretary Gates has articulated this concern, and explained American worries that budget cuts in Europe relate to a larger ‘cultural and political trend ... the demilitarisation of Europe.’ Large swaths of the European public are considered averse to military force. Gates considered this a blessing in the twentieth century, but an ‘impediment to achieving real security and lasting peace in the twenty-first.’ Washington considers real or perceived weakness to be a temptation for aggression, and it worries that funding shortfalls will make it increasingly difficult to confront shared threats.10

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There is no coherent view in the Pentagon regarding the SDSR, and officials are reluctant to voice their preferences openly for obvious reasons. There is, however, a bottom line and significant cuts to the defence budget will have an impact on relations with the United States. Americans have a clear expectation that the UK will retain capabilities necessary for independent military action. They have an expectation that the UK will maintain strategic independence and full interoperability with the US. Also, whether UK officials like it or not, American hopes for global partnership and expeditionary capabilities in Europe and NATO rely primarily on the UK’s military capabilities and its political choices. Germany is considering huge cuts to what is already a much smaller defence budget, and France is just beginning to re-establish its military relationship with Washington. There are no real alternatives, and economies that undermine crossspectrum capabilities will transform Britain’s role in the world. The change may not be visible immediately but it will have significant strategic consequences when it becomes clear that the only reason the UK cannot contribute necessary capabilities to a future operation is because of a lack of resources. This does not mean that the UK must make an equal contribution to US-UK operations nor does it mean that the UK has to fight alongside the US in all of its expeditionary missions or necessarily from day one. It does mean, however, that pending political consensus the UK has to be able to deploy troops to crisis areas and sustain them in difficult conditions over time. Even if the UK decides not to respond to American expectations, it would be wise to consider American views and the broader strategic implications of cuts that affect full spectrum capabilities. Leadership in Europe and American Expectations European allies are unlikely to base decisions about national defence on UK precedent, but many American officials see the UK as uniquely placed to transform European debates about defence expenditure. Many people in Washington already consider individual nations and even the whole of the European continent to be in decline, and they

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see increased bilateral or multilateral cooperation as the only means by which Europe can retain global influence or impact. Unfortunately, European wide integration in the defence sector is unlikely to deliver influence in the short to medium term. The only way for Europe to pools its forces currently is at the lowest common denominator and such a force would therefore be short on global vision and remit and it would be unlikely to have any real expeditionary capabilities. It is much more likely that European forces would be limited to peacekeeping operations and other limited missions to combat lower-level threats, and they would be unlikely to support US objectives anyway. The UK tried to take the lead in contributing to European defence co-operation after St Malo, but progress slipped. Joint procurement projects are unlikely and there is no chance whatsoever for growth in defence expenditure. The fate of the European transport aircraft demonstrates the extent of the challenges facing Europe, and that programme was the one area where co-operation seemed to make sense. The European Defence Agency (EDA) produced some important results, to be sure, but it cannot mask the fact that key capabilities in Europe are thin and they are likely to continue waning. The reality, Americans believe, is that European governments are risk averse and unwilling to engage in military operations without restrictive rules of engagement and protective measures. Operations and defence postures, therefore, are unlikely to be integrated or standardised over the short or medium term. They will probably remain limited to coalitions of the willing or bilateral arrangements. The UK must exert leadership in Europe, but turning to European allies as a way of cutting defence posture costs would be extremely dangerous. It is not inconceivable that a British veto on certain projects could be the most constructive contribution the UK can make to the European project over the longer term. At the same time, UK military power is most effectively wielded through partnerships and alliances, and the EU is one of the UK’s most important arenas for co-operation. Foreign Secretary William Hague promised that partnerships can be managed in such a way as

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to complement and reinforce one another, and there are several things that the UK can do. First, it should refuse to accept that the current deadlock between NATO and the EU is a given. Too much time has been wasted in turf battles and in various disputes between the two institutions in Brussels, and this has discouraged smaller nations from making real contributions. Institutional deadlock can be eased, even if this risks disputes with Turkey and Greece. The Experts’ Report cited the Balkans as a prime example of the synergies between NATO and the EU.11 The Lisbon Treaty strengthens European defence capabilities and command structures and offers opportunities for streamlining co-operation. Ultimately, NATO-EU co-operation is essential for comprehensive, cost-effective approaches to security, and it can also be helpful in addressing threats associated with arms, drugs and human trafficking. Full transparency will be required on both sides. The Experts recommend that NATO blur the distinction between military and non-military threats in its dialogue with the EU. They also suggested that they co-operate more extensively in crisis management operations, threat assessments and in sharing assets.12 The UK is uniquely placed to contribute to this process by helping to align interests and perceptions, by leading discussions on requirements and by helping NATO to help the nations decide how to spend and save money on defence. Conclusion To be sure, the US has shifted its strategic focus away from Europe and many people in the UK are convinced that the rhetoric of a ‘special relationship’ should be dropped. This does not mean that Europe is unimportant to the US or that NATO or the US-UK alliance has experienced a rupture, however. The transatlantic relationship still forms part of the global security architecture, and it continues to be essential to the security of both the US and the UK. It has also functioned as a backbone for NATO since the early days of the Cold War and it sits at the heart of coalition efforts to stabilise Afghanistan. Indeed, there is an expectation in the US, the UK, in

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Europe and around the world that the special relationship and the military aspects of that relationship will endure. It is expected that the US and the UK will act in concert, and if too much daylight opens up between them, ‘serious doubts will emerge about the wisdom and legitimacy of US actions,’13 and this would be costly for both nations. The UK, therefore, needs to strengthen strategic thinking across the whole of government. It must continue to consider relations with the US as a core element of UK foreign and security policy, and it must maintain military capabilities sufficient for independent action and to fight alongside the United States when it must. The strategic consequences of failing to at least consider American expectations or the implications of SDSR debates for the UK’s relationship with the US would be extremely damaging for both countries, and it is likely that it would undermine American credibility overseas. With less money to go around, the UK will have to rely increasingly on the skills of its people and learn to operate with a smaller portfolio of expensive equipment. The new National Security Council framework should unite government departments in an effort to re-assess UK priorities, understand the threats facing the country, and identify the capabilities required for strategic and deterrence purposes. At the same time, Whitehall will need to improve public perceptions about the US-UK security partnership with a new approach to public diplomacy that reaches disparate groups with different assessments of UK interests. Unfortunately, public perceptions of the special relationship have become crisis driven; they are excessively focused on rhetoric and on immediate or short-term considerations. There is a need for improved diplomacy as well as more openness and honesty in the debate about the alliance on both sides of the Atlantic. President Obama must begin to take the UK and its other European allies more seriously. The UK public, on the other hand, must begin to understand that its partnership with the US is still essential, and that its global reach, interests and responsibilities are not a post-colonial dream but a necessity for its own security.

ENTENTE OR OBLIVION: FRANCO-BRITISH DEFENCE CO-OPERATION Etienne de Durand Since the days of the Entente Cordiale, the centuries-long enmity between France and the UK has been largely forgotten, replaced after 1945 by an almost constant alliance. Yet Franco-British relations to this day have nevertheless been marred by bitter disputes and frequent misunderstandings, which in no small part are responsible for the lack of progress on European defence capabilities writ large. The main explanation generally advanced is that there is a fundamental political divergence on several substantive issues: Britain’s ‘special relationship’ with the US, which arouses French suspicions, and France’s insistence on European integration, perceived as a threat to national sovereignty by most Britons. However true these reasons may be, there is another one, every bit as important yet often neglected: the two countries vie for political-diplomatic supremacy as each aspires to claim for itself the leading strategic role at the European level. This has perhaps ended, with the November 2010 treaty on defence co-operation. But for years previously Britain and France – each in its own unique fashion – have had the political and financial wherewithal to stand alone in those areas of defence that they valued most: nuclear deterrence for the French; top-notch conventional capabilities, interoperable with US forces, for the British. Even when resources have begun to dry up, they have found creative ways to stretch existing capabilities, save face and wait for more auspicious times. But as the 2008 French White Paper has suggested, and as Britain’s Strategic

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Defence Review will doubtlessly show, these already overplayed games are no longer possible. Combined, the requirements generated by tough and enduring missions like Afghanistan and the consequences of the financial crisis on national budgets render it impossible to maintain even a slowly slipping status quo. If nothing is done, British and French military capabilities will rapidly diminish beyond repair, both in terms of overall volume and critical capabilities. Given extant capability gaps, traditional solutions that revolve around the sacrifice of personnel numbers to pay for equipment will no longer suffice, and have actually already become counter-productive. ‘Necessity is the mother of invention’, it is said in both languages. There is therefore hope that the hard budgetary and military times that have befallen the two nations at about the same time will prove to be the opportunity to launch, in common, a serious initiative on defence. To succeed, this initiative must pass two critical tests: first, avoiding the temptation of grand political schemes; and second, defining a progressive and pragmatic roadmap that ensures either financial savings or capability gains for the two partners all along. Too Much Alike Not to Differ Co-operation is always difficult, but it is especially so in the case of France and Britain. Not only must bad memories and long-standing prejudices be gradually mitigated, but the traditional rivalry over leadership in European security affairs must also be set aside. Because the strategies carefully crafted and evolved by each nation since the 1956 Suez crisis have become irrelevant, it is from now on possible politically to explore options for significant bilateral co-operation on defence. Central to this development are the shortcomings of the European construct, as well as the evolution of US grand strategy itself (which has progressively moved away from its Cold War focus on Europe). The better these objective trends are realised, internalised and accepted, the sooner co-operation on defence between Britain and France will be able to move forward.

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The Estranged Couple Over more than a century, Britain and France have accumulated a chequered history of co-operation, replete with spectacular failures and harsh disagreements as well as lesser-known, but more frequent successes. As well as this are negative stereotypes inherited from the distant past that die hard. Though it will be an uphill battle, dissipating these negative images, or at least promoting a more balanced view, should ease the way for future co-operation. The Entente Cordiale was not always popular. Only six years after the Fashoda crisis, the carnage of the First World War and the bitter and mutual recriminations of the interwar period left bad memories in Britain. Yet the Entente fulfilled its goal and halted Imperial Germany in its bid for European hegemony, as the joint intervention in Crimea had stopped the Russians half a century earlier. Though no small achievement, victory in the Great War was of course quickly overshadowed by the events of the Second World War: the fall of France; Dunkirk; Mers-el Kébir; the decisive importance of American intervention up to the joint landings in Normandy; and the eventual invasion of Germany. Later on, during the early Cold War, the same sequence seemed to reoccur, with Anglo-French initiatives generally failing, sometimes miserably as with the 1956 Suez intervention. Meanwhile, partnership with the US proved beneficial and allowed British power to degrade gracefully, with in general few or no adverse consequences. The sheer disparity in power ensured that influencing the United States was bound to be more beneficial to British security than arriving at some improbable European arrangement. Yet it was the Treaty of Dunkirk in 1947 between France and Britain that laid the ground for the 1949 Treaty of Washington and the creation of NATO; joint Anglo-French action had been instrumental in anchoring the US in Western European security. In other words, France could obviously not be a substitute to the American alliance for the British – and viceversa – but it was nonetheless important in its own right. The same pattern has been in evidence in recent times. It was US political clout and military power that won the 1991 Gulf War and

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allowed British prowess to shine in its wake, and again in Kosovo in 1999, when US air power won the day. However – as was proved by the Saint-Malo agreement twelve years ago, or more concretely in Bosnia on the ground in 1995 – when the two leading military powers of Europe agree on something that is within their means, it gets done. Conversely, when they disagree, they typically end up paralysed, entirely dependent on the Americans, or forced to rely on their insufficient national means. Even influence in Washington is generally made much easier by joining forces first. Yet the oftenfruitful nature of Anglo-French security relations tends to be concealed by the ‘Franco-German couple’, or the ‘special relationship’ – not to mention the frequent quarrels across the Channel over ideology, economic policy or EU evolution. It is no wonder therefore that public opinion on both sides should be so ignorant of the longstanding bilateral security relationship and of its achievements. The very discreet celebration of the hundredth anniversary of the Entente Cordiale, just one year after the major rift over Iraq, is perhaps a telling symbol of this degradation in perceptions within the general public and elites alike. Overcoming or lessening mutual misrepresentations would be useful but will take time and effort. In the meantime, it is against the backdrop of this long list of failures, disappointments, unreported successes, and distorted perceptions that a renewed partnership must now be founded. A quick overview of the two countries makes it obvious how strikingly similar they are, whether in terms of capabilities, ambitions, or limits. Britain and France enjoy roughly the same size, population and GDP. Besides being prominent members of NATO and the EU, both of them have far-flung overseas territories, areas of influence inherited from their colonial past, and non-NATO allies such as Kuwait or the Emirates, all of which might require defending in some circumstances. Whilst they have suffered tremendous diminution of power in the course of the last century, and are still declining vis-àvis emerging powers, they have constantly struggled over the past

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decades to maintain international influence and at least some of the elements and trappings that make up great powers. Indeed, in addition to being nuclear powers, France and Britain are part of the very select club of countries that can project power worldwide. They have bases and basing rights on other continents and have retained some force projection capabilities. In contrast to most other European countries, they are interested in developing diplomatic and strategic influence on a global scale, and rely partly on their military prowess to do so. These shared ambitions go hand in hand with a keen sense of their national interests, a clear reluctance to abandon national sovereignty except when necessary, and sensitive national pride (albeit in different ways). As if the previous points were not enough, France and Britain also share the exact same set of strategic problems: preserving their international influence within the Western family in general, and vis-à-vis the US in particular; assuming occasional leadership for European missions as framework nations; and doing all that at an affordable cost. The Quest for Influence Despite this convergence, the two nations part ways on the method each has followed for the last fifty years. Britain has generally striven to remain as close as possible to the US whereas France has traditionally sought to propose an alternative. These incompatible strategies stem in parallel from the same original trauma: the bilateral Suez intervention of 1956 and the ensuing diplomatic condemnation and financial destabilisation from the US. The two nations reacted in profoundly different ways. The UK decided to never again end up on the wrong side of the US, whilst France chose to build the means of strategic autonomy – specifically in the nuclear field. In many respects most of the disagreements that took place over the years can be traced back to this original divergence. For half a century Britain and France have followed parallel tracks in their respective strategies, and have up to now set their military choices accordingly. Beyond

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the common willingness to rely on military prowess as a means to leverage international influence, the two countries have historically diverged in precisely how to pursue this quest for strategic importance at the political and military levels. Britain has traditionally gone for high-intensity forces and interoperability with the US, whilst France has focused first on strategic assets such as nuclear deterrence and strategic intelligence. With the demise of the USSR and the end of the Cold War, the value attached to nuclear deterrence has declined, whilst the ability to participate in US-led coalitions at a significant level has seemed to emerge as the new coin of international influence, thus validating in part Britain’s approach and leading to a reappraisal of the Gaullist roots of French strategy. In the wake of the First Gulf War, France grasped that evolution and acted upon it, professionalising its armed forces in 1996 and gearing them up towards expeditionary missions. Yet, despite this convergence in the ‘tactics’ of international influence, both nations have found it increasingly difficult to maintain forces that could amount to a significant military contribution. This explains why the UK and France have become especially keen to develop and retain lead- or framework-nation capacity for international coalitions. Until recently, however, their respective national strategies remained parallel and therefore incompatible at the core. France was trying to erect a European defence largely separated from the US, relying on NATO only when expedient (as in the Balkans), whereas Britain was keen on preserving and strengthening NATO, agreeing to European defence only in an auxiliary capacity. As the rift over Iraq was to prove in 2003, this strategic parallelism, or ‘Suez Paradigm’, endured beyond Saint-Malo and the creation of the European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP – now the Common Security and Defence Policy – CSDP). The limits to these parallel ambitions are also alike, acting as a potent factor of convergence that has been at work underneath the strategic parallelism identified above. Indeed, both countries have found it more and more difficult to maintain great power

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status whilst relying on their own means. It is not just a question of relative size. For decades now defence investments have stalled or declined compared to other national expenditures: following the societal evolution of Western populations, health and education have progressively taken the lion’s share of the national budget. There is no prospect whatsoever that these costs will subside in the future, as their underlying causes remain, and the reforms that could supposedly mitigate those societal trends are just under way: Britain still has some catching up to do on national infrastructure, whilst France still needs to reform its labour market and public sector. The rising costs of public order as well as the new demands generated by homeland security against international terrorism have also increased steadily, to the point of sometimes competing with scarce defence resources. The end of the Cold War only accelerated this general trend, as the demise of the Soviet Union left Western governments with various weak or complex justifications for defence spending that, added together, did not amount to a compelling rationale easily communicable to the public. In budgetary realities as well as in public discourse, welfare has displaced warfare as the chief rationale for public action and as the main source of legitimacy for the state. With the current financial and economic crisis on top of these enduring trends, defence spending appears even more as an uphill battle in search of innovative solutions to square the circle. In both defence establishments, the prospects for the coming decade seem bleak indeed. To paint an even darker picture, it should be added that defence capabilities, both the ‘legacy’ systems inherited from the Cold War and the emerging requirements, have proved more and more expensive with each new generation of equipment. This has forced the two countries constantly to punch above their weight militarily and to be content with providing effective contributions to collective efforts for the most demanding scenarios. Far from helping in reducing the bill, ‘Transformation’ has made the situation worse,

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its effects even compounded by the unexpected rise of counterinsurgency operations and their associated costs. Even hard choices will not permit respite from the ongoing defence crunch, as middle powers are unsure of their future needs, but cannot cover them, even if unevenly, on their own. Stuck in Between: Defence Requirements in a Complex Environment Back in the 1990s, Transformation, known then as the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA), was seen by most as the wave of the future. Based on the astute leveraging of precision munitions and modern C4ISR1 systems, it offered the promise of quick, successful, one-sizefits-all military interventions carrying very little political cost. As the offshoot of air power that it really was, Transformation endeavoured to deliver painless victories by reducing casualties to a minimum, thus restoring US and Western freedom of action in strategic and military terms. As RMA proponents circulated the new gospel, it almost became conventional wisdom that technology had become, more than ever, the dominant factor of military effectiveness, so that investing in it made eminent sense – even if it meant accepting sacrifices elsewhere. In retrospect, this belief has proved shortsighted and even dangerous on several counts. Whatever the merits or limitations of Transformation as a way of returning decisiveness to warfare and of reforming defence establishments still mired in Cold War thinking, one thing is for sure: it was not cheap. Contrary to the optimistic predictions of its early proponents, who by and large based their views on a faulty analogy with the civilian electronic and computer industry, military transformation, if anything, accelerated the well-known phenomenon of military cost inflation from one generation of systems to the next. Predictably, the need to modernise forces by integrating these technologies, combined with the urge to preserve a degree of interoperability with US forces (themselves committed to a fast track of modernisation) led the British, and to a lesser extent, the French military, to effect tradeoffs between quantity and quality. In

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other words, to finance modernisation by cutting force levels. Yet the problem with Transformation is not only its added burden on already strained defence budgets, but also its questionable relevance as a general method of warfare. Its exact merits in conventional combat are open to debate as it is: Kosovo in 1999 and Lebanon in 2006 have offered cautionary tales in that respect.2 That Transformation performs much more clumsily when engaged in so-called low-intensity operations is, however, beyond dispute. It has not erased the need for large presence on the ground and lengthy occupations, either as a stabilising follow-up to coercive operations administered by air, or as fully-fledged three-block wars3 or counterinsurgency campaigns. Busy as they were transforming themselves, Western militaries were thus taken aback, at the wrong moment, by the American ‘Long War’ and the requirements of irregular warfare. In the course of just a decade, there was a paradigmatic shift, with counter-insurgency (COIN) displacing transformation as the main strategic ‘narrative’. Instead of resting on interconnected networks, the application of standoff precision firepower, and a small number of highly trained operatives, COIN primarily demands large numbers of boots on the ground and always depends on political and cultural flair much more than on technological wizardry. At first sight, this shift from short, techno-intensive, coercive operations conducted mostly from the air, to long irregular campaigns fought on the ground, would seem to require a commensurate reorientation in terms of force planning and budgeting, with increased ground force numbers, and an emphasis on individual protection, cultural training and the like – which is of course what has happened to some extent, in the United States especially. Yet it would be equally dangerous to assume that Transformation was for nought and that the previous experience is irrelevant: what are current COIN campaigns, if not the continuation of the stabilisation operations of the 1990s, albeit in a hardened context?4 Iraq and Afghanistan have made apparent two trends that, on the

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surface, appear contradictory. Transformation per se cannot provide a satisfying and decisive answer to the conundrum of COIN and stability operations. Campaigns of that nature nonetheless require, if only to offset manpower shortages and reduce casualties, fairly sophisticated equipment; be it protective gear, communications optimised for close air support, or precision-guided munitions. In other words, today’s COIN operations are conducted by partially transformed forces. The current hype of ‘hybrid war’ rests precisely on the increasingly blurred lines between regular and irregular war, hi-tech and low-tech operations.5 All this illustrates why it is impossible to predict the trends that warfare and conflicts will follow, even over a relatively short time span. It would for instance be rather foolish to write off the possibility of major conventional contingencies in the midterm, but it would be equally imprudent to assume that counterinsurgency and stabilisation operations will be a thing of the past after Afghanistan. Accordingly, the various propositions of clearcut strategies that have been put forward of late do not appear entirely realistic. Contrasting, amongst several possible strategic choices, a ‘global guardian option’ and a ‘strategic raiding’ one, which more or less correspond to stabilisation operations on the one hand, and so-called high-intensity interventions on the other, makes for a serious and clarifying debate.6 Indeed, such distinctions constitute indispensable analytical tools and were part and parcel of the French strategic debate that surrounded the 2008 White Paper: then and now, some independent experts have similarly argued in favour of returning to the French fundamentals of deterrence and strategic intelligence.7 When moving from strategic thinking to real decision-making, however, options like ‘strategic raiding’ or ‘strategic fundamentals’ can at best be translated into important general orientations for the military – provided the influence of industrial and military lobbies, along with governments’ natural tendency to dither and defer hard decisions in favour of a compromise can be overcome. Assuming that transitioning from

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Afghanistan to a maritime strategy would not prove too tricky – a difficult proposition to begin with – it should also be pointed out right away that nothing could guarantee that future governments, or indeed the very government that adopted it in the first place, would feel compelled to abide by it or could even enforce it. If past experience is any guide, rather the opposite would happen. Public sentiment or diplomatic pressure could, for instance, make a future commitment to a stabilisation operation on the ground irresistible. Knowing that the latter have their own way of turning into drawnout, open-ended affairs, no matter how well-defined the initial planning is, the anticipated savings expected from the maritime option would thus be cancelled out and the entire strategy put in jeopardy. Nine years into Afghanistan, any suggestion that the ‘first in, first out’ doctrine can somehow be revived should be taken with more than a grain of salt. Briefly stated, the same argument holds for the ‘global guardian option’, which does not fare better, as it would leave Britain or France exposed in case of renewed international tensions between great powers. The two nations have already experienced in the past the consequences of strategic surprise and lack of preparedness brought about by a narrow focus on overseas ‘small wars’, be it in 1870 or in 1940. At the end of the day, no single option, however smart, can make up for the lack of resources. In a strategic environment seemingly characterised first and foremost by uncertainty, Western militaries must, more than ever, be ‘full-spectrum’ and prepare for a wide range of scenarios mixing all kinds of warfare. If taken seriously, the implications of this unpredictability are, to say the least, worrisome for middle powers that are barely able to cope with current needs. To sum up: a real commitment to both irregular operations and so-called high-intensity warfare is unaffordable, yet no clear-cut choice appears feasible, ergo squaring the circle alone will be next to impossible and will inevitably entail another reduction in force levels, despite the severe capabilities gaps that are already in evidence.

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Adaptation by Shrinking and Stalin’s Revenge All across Europe, several reforms and adaptations have been attempted since the Cold War, but none has proven to be really viable and enduring. For reasons good and bad, all have ended up alike, with reductions in force levels. To be sure, this adaptation by shrinking was justified at first, resulting mainly from the disappearance of the Soviet Union and the unlikely prospect of a rapidly emerging threat of the same magnitude. Absent such a clear and direct continental menace, and given the increasing demand for expeditionary forces generated by the flurry of international interventions undertaken in the 1990s, it was only logical that force levels should be scaled down. In the case of France, the Gulf War made it obvious that a large, conscript military was actually a political and military liability for overseas interventions. Though only medium-sized and not entirely mechanised, the Division Daguet sent to Saudi Arabia had to be reinforced by elements of the US 82nd Airborne and had cobbled together professional soldiers from the entire army – not to mention the inadequate equipment of French aircraft that had no IFF (Identify Friend or Foe) system, all-weather capabilities or precision munitions. Quietly drawing the lessons of the war, Defence Minister Pierre Joxe launched a first series of initiatives to increase deployability, acquire precision munitions, and develop intelligence assets, with the launch of spy satellites and the creation of the Special Operations Command. These developments were confirmed and amplified by the 1994 White Paper, which set for the French military an ambitious goal or ‘operational contract’ (contrat opérationnel): to be able to deploy and sustain for one year a 50,000 strong force backed by more than a hundred planes. This process culminated in 1996, with Jacques Chirac’s decision to suspend the draft and create a professionalised force, cutting the military’s size by almost half. Immediately thereafter was launched the ‘2015 model’, aimed at taking into account the professionalisation under way, updating the 1994 White Paper, and modernising equipment without revising downwards the operational requirements. The

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general economic situation was already straining the budgets at the time, so much so that the Jospin government, in power from 1997 to 2002, cut the equipment budget by 20 per cent. Though restored to its previous level under the Raffarin government, previous losses were never recouped. By mid-decade, it had become quite clear that the ‘2015 Model’ was untenable as planned, at least without a massive increase in defence spending. As a result of these accumulated delays and deferments, Nicolas Sarkozy found in 2007 an unpaid bill of around €30 billion and launched a new White Paper. Acting on the recommendations of the White Paper, he decided to slash the overall force by 54,000 and allow the defence budget to erode slowly below 1.7 per cent of GDP in real terms (pensions excluded). However, the financial and economic crisis, and the resulting deficits, has caused the government to tighten public spending: defence is no exception. Its budget for the three years from 2010 will fall by €3.5 billion, and rumours abound that more is to come after 2012 – so much so that a new round of personnel reductions is supposedly under consideration. The case of Britain is no different.8 Like the Base Force project and the Bottom-Up Review in the US, the ‘Options for Change’ review9 in Britain enacted large reductions in personnel and unit numbers following the end of the Cold War. The 1998 SDR then deliberately tried to organise a trade-off between force levels and modernisation, deciding to reduce heavy, ‘legacy’ forces in favour of capabilities more suited for quick, coercive interventions. The sheer duration of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the size of the contingents deployed there, ensured that the operations and maintenance budgets would eat up the equipment budget. With, at the time of writing, a national deficit of more than 11 per cent of GDP,10 and unpaid defence bills amounting to some £40 billion, the UK is now facing a financial wall even worse than France in 2007. As can be seen, force downsizing went much further than was warranted by the mere adaptation to the end of the Cold War. Amid a succession of reviews and reforms, largely driven by overall

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financial constraints, these reductions were also the result of the cost of modernisation, the need to ensure interoperability with US forces, and the all-out drive for deployability, which itself determined military relevance and diplomatic influence. All told, in the course of twenty years, the British military was cut by some 41 per cent and the French by 45 per cent – the latter figure includes the termination of the draft, which sheds a harsh light on the extent of British cuts.11 The end result of this evolution over two decades is that British and French forces have reached alarmingly low levels across the board. The French military can now field two armoured brigades, one aircraft carrier, thirteen destroyers (DDG) and twenty frigates, for instance; per the ‘2008 operational contract’, it must be able to deploy 30,000 troops and an air component ensuring seventy combat sorties a day, which more or less matches the British invading force assembled against Iraq in 2003.12 To provide perspective on these numbers, let us remember that for the Suez operation of 1956, the UK and France each sent two divisions and more than 100 planes, on top of a significant commitment to NATO Central Front for the British and a fully-fledged counter-insurgency in Algeria for the French. Times are of course different, and it would not be fair to relate now and then directly: today’s strategic stakes are generally much lower, as we consciously wage limited wars; conscription and the accompanying pool of manpower is no longer available; technology has made tremendous progress and can be a real force multiplier. All that being said, however, the sophistication of equipment can only compensate for low numbers up to a point. In regular war, there are ‘force-to-space ratios’ that should not be disregarded and can only be eased by modern sensors and precision firepower. According to French doctrine, a brigade can on average defend a 12 km front.13 Taking into account existing British and French formations – five heavy, three mechanised, and four medium brigades – we arrive at a grand total of twelve brigades that could, for instance, hold a front of approximately 150 km.14 If we factor in rotations and the general availability of one-out-of-three for the military, it means at

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most four brigades and 50 km of front, excluding all-out efforts and extraordinary circumstances. With 160,000 troops, the greater part of the deployable US Army was thus employed during the 2007 surge in Iraq, in fact mostly in and around Baghdad. For the record, at the peak of the Algerian War, the French had 420,000 troops on the ground, local auxiliaries excluded. There are certain thresholds under which it is no longer possible to autonomously undertake some operations, or even to be a significant participant. Simply put, half as many units or squadrons more often than not generate less than half as many capabilities or military power. Or, in the words attributed to Stalin, ‘quantity has a quality of its own’. This law of thresholds in terms of overall volume is also valid in terms of capabilities. These reductions in volume notwithstanding, it has indeed proved impossible for the British and the French to preserve a full array of operational functions and capabilities. In fact, quite the opposite is true, as the last two decades have shown: more and more capabilities become obsolete or even disappear altogether, whilst gaps proliferate. In the French case, examples abound. To name just a few: systems specialised in suppression of enemy air defence operations; amphibious capabilities; and heavy tactical lift for ground troops. Less visible but equally important, all the nuts and bolts that are indispensable to sustained, autonomous operations (what is known in French military parlance as the ‘moyens de cohérence opérationnelle’), such as maintenance or engineering units, have also gone largely missing, so much so that the US military must today support, to a varying degree, all European forces engaged in Afghanistan. In other words, in the Afghan theatre at any rate, the difference between British and French on the one hand, and Polish or Dutch forces on the other, is one of degree and no longer of essence, as it used to be. Of course, interoperability rather than autonomy has always been the British goal. That military autonomy was beyond reach has been acknowledged even in France for quite some time: the White Papers of 1994 and 2008 openly admit that significant operations can only

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take place within a coalition, whether NATO- or EU-led. What is new, however, is that even the ‘limited and selected autonomy’ advocated by the French is becoming increasingly difficult to preserve. It is then quite paradoxical that the trend toward modernising forces by downsizing them, so as to improve deployability and influence, has produced militaries too small and incomplete, not only to be truly autonomous but even to weigh in, as Iraq and Afghanistan have shown beyond doubt. Since the end of the Cold War, it has proved challenging for all Western militaries to satisfy equally the three perennial requirements of readiness, modernisation, and operations. Until Iraq, Western nations fell in three categories. The US stood alone as being able to maintain readiness, modernisation and operations simply by effecting some trade-offs between recapitalising the existing force structures and modernising them, facilitated by selected cuts. The UK and France have had to constantly rebalance the three – for instance by decreasing readiness or deferring some elements of modernisation – as they could sustain only two of the three requirements. Other European nations by and large disinvested so much in defence that they could barely maintain their forces and carried out very little modernisation. This is no longer the case: the US will inevitably have to implement some painful choices once defence budgets go down in the near future, whilst Britain and France can no longer properly sustain even two of these requirements. The negative trends of economic austerity, defence inflation and a demanding strategic environment are rapidly converging into a downward spiral that, if nothing truly substantial is done, will prove the end of the defence game for the two middle powers of Europe. Dead Ends, Distant Hypotheses, and the Only Way Out Given the November 2010 bilateral treaty, co-operation across the Channel will hopefully gain acceptance as one of the most promising venues for preserving defence and avoiding the worst. But it is easier proclaimed than achieved, as the method, implementation process

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and schedule are of crucial importance. In order to minimise friction and avoid costly mistakes that could very well derail the whole enterprise, it is first incumbent on the two sides to understand why co-operation is now not just rational but also politically feasible – in other words, on what basis it ought to proceed. Second, and in line with those caveats, it should be understood that enhanced Franco-British cooperation in defence serves no hidden political agenda and in fact no other purpose than itself: it stems from a well-considered pragmatism. Finally, for co-operation to generate real savings or increased capability, it must be equally as pragmatic, to proceed in a bottom-up fashion and to follow deliberate steps of increasing ambition. The End of the Suez Paradigm There are several powerful reasons, both negative and positive, that explain why the way could now be cleared for meaningful defence co-operation between the UK and France. On the negative side, France for a long time tried to use European construction as a political counterweight to US influence. This policy met either with polite indifference or outright rejection from most of Europe. Even when the French sought to advance European defence in its own right, as a force multiplier, they came to realise two things. First: that most allies, and Germany most importantly, were not terribly interested in investing beyond symbolic moves or rhetoric of ‘everdeepening Union’ – as the failure to meet the 2003 Headline Goals made clear. Second: that even at the rhetorical level the most significant development had been crafted together with the UK at Saint-Malo. This lukewarm approach to defence across Europe implies that the advancement of a common defence policy can only mean, for the time being, the diminution of French capabilities or their delegation to Brussels. France cannot possibly pay for both its national capabilities and for increased European ones: it would have to sacrifice its freedom of action and sovereignty on the altar of the European project, in the distant hope that the EU should one day become a true political actor.

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On the plus side, the creeping reintegration into NATO necessitated by fifteen years of common operations, along with the tightening budgetary situation and the diminished saliency of nuclear issues within NATO, led President Sarkozy to end France’s special status within the organisation and reintegrate it formally. Advertised as a way to stop pitting NATO and Europe against each other, and to overcome the traditional deadlock between Atlanticists and Europeanists, this decision indeed went a long way toward removing the suspicions of several European Allies vis-à-vis French motives in promoting CSDP. That the Bush administration also came around and recognised that CSDP was not necessarily a Trojan horse devised to damage NATO helped as well. Putting to rest the twin illusion that European defence could advance quickly and that CSDP would, for the foreseeable future, become more than a crisis management tool, as well as assuaging European fears and American qualms over French ambitions, have been the indispensable steps paving the way for an enhanced Franco-British defence co-operation devoid of ulterior motives and political plots. Britain has had its fair share of disillusion as well. It faithfully followed the US into Iraq and Afghanistan, incurring in the process political divisions at home, huge financial costs and sizeable casualties, yet received in return very little to show for it. British ability to influence US policy and strategic decision-making processes has appeared very limited over the past decade. More generally, the ‘special relationship’ does not seem to deliver as much as it used to for the two countries. Britain cannot deliver a NATO Europe the way the US would like it, because Europe’s ability and willingness to commit military capabilities or defence spending is very limited. When shrinking military means are also factored in, it is no wonder that the strategic relevance of the European allies should be increasingly questioned in the US, as Secretary of Defense Robert Gates’s recent comments have underlined – in all fairness, US interest in NATO and willingness to operate multilaterally is also rather limited. Truth be told, Britain’s loss of influence over America has less to do with

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British power or prowess than it has with an objective evolution: the reduced salience of Europe in general for the US, which stands in stark contrast with the Cold War period, when the centrality of the European front mandated an enduring US need for a faithful ally. Beyond periodic transatlantic quarrels and poor diplomatic moves by one administration or another, a slow estrangement between the US and Europe has taken place over the last twenty years, which no measure of goodwill can mend. US priorities no longer lie in Europe. Over time, the slowly declining importance of Europe to the US is bound to undermine the tenets of British strategy. Henceforth, European allies, including Britain, are worthwhile only up to a point, namely providing a modicum of international legitimacy and some additional, but limited, military capabilities. On the positive side, the benign indifference increasingly shown by the US also implies that the UK no longer has to make a grand political and strategic choice between the US and the rest. This marks for both countries the end of what was referred to earlier as the ‘Suez Paradigm’. For the short term at least, the foundations of French and British defence policies have in each case eroded, as influencing or opposing US power has proved equally and increasingly pointless and self-defeating whilst America is turning its attention elsewhere. On a positive and rather paradoxical note, this erosion of both national power and security strategy is the very reason why traditional political hurdles no longer stand in the way of bilateral co-operation between Britain and France. The Case for Pragmatism A new Entente eminently makes sense, provided the two countries do not lose sight of its main rationale and abide by a few important political caveats. Given the situation prevailing in Europe today regarding defence, with only six or seven countries having significant remaining capabilities, and an even smaller number ready to make an effort to stay afloat, only Britain and France fulfil both criteria. They stand out as having maintained a large industrial base, significant

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means of power projection, an array of military capabilities that is still respectable, and, as importantly, the political will to exert international influence. In this respect, it is not just the case that they are free to co-operate because the UK does not have to choose anymore between the US on the one hand, and France (or Europe) on the other; they should actually co-operate if only to preserve two crucial and mutually shared interests – first, to ensure that the US does not become completely disinterested in Europe and European security, and second, to try and retain a say over security issues in Europe and on the international arena more generally. This bilateral co-operation should not come with political strings attached – quite the contrary, in fact, as the two countries remain wary of falling into some kind of political trap, be it a creeping Europeanisation of national capabilities, or a further Atlanticisation of European security. British politics, and the recent entry into government of the Conservative Party, preclude thinking in European terms. Likewise, French politics demands a certain dose of prudence when relations with the US are concerned: any suspicion of ‘alignment’ could prove damaging. Thankfully, a full political agreement between the two countries is definitely not required. What could come in handy are a few symbolic concessions on both sides, as well as a measure of understanding for the respective domestic political contexts. As Nicolas Sarkozy has pledged to advance European defence, he might need some gestures from the UK – like renewed British participation in the European Defence Agency or a small civilian-military European headquarters – so as to show he has kept his promises, lest he be accused of betraying European defence for the sake of a bilateral Entente. Perceptions must be carefully managed on both sides. Over the medium to long term, it is hard to predict with any measure of confidence the future evolution of European security. In principle, strong bilateral co-operation built around pragmatic initiatives does not preclude a potential extension to some other European countries – Germany comes naturally to mind, or the

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European Union down the road if the conditions are right. Then again, this extension is not self-evident. More to British liking, this cross-Channel axis of co-operation could also form the European basis of a revitalised NATO. What should be clearly understood from the start by political elites on both sides is that every effort should be made to ensure that pragmatic Franco-British co-operation centred on capabilities will not stand in the way of each nation’s pet project, be it another French attempt to advance European integration or a UK effort to redefine the special relationship, which, after all, is a matter for the UK and the US. Arriving at a genuine agreement on this ‘live and let live’ policy will not always prove possible of course, if only because of conflicting interests. Yet it is essential to try to get politics and ideology out of the way as much as possible. It is by agreeing to disagree and remaining flexible that political concessions and costs can be minimised and operational benefits maximised as planned. Bilateral co-operation should be attempted in earnest, not just because it makes sense or is easier now than before, but more to the point because it is the only pragmatic way out of the pressing financial conundrum that the two nations face. Put another way, the two military establishments risk ending the current decade amputated and shrunk beyond recognition. Only a good level of cooperation allowing for net gains in military capabilities will allow them to linger on. A Menu of Military Options All of the above is predicated on the ability of bilateral co-operation to deliver tangible results. Franco-British co-operation could be successful, provided the details are properly worked out and three starting provisos are kept in mind. First, co-operation must be firmly grounded on a bottom-up approach to capabilities that addresses military needs. It must also distinguish between short-term possibilities and mid-term prospects, and devise progressive steps accordingly, if only to build trust. Finally, an implicit bargain should

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be struck between the militaries and their political masters: whilst the former must commit to a genuine effort to warrant a convergence of specifications and doctrines, the latter would be well-advised to ensure that the savings generated by co-operation return to defence and are not diverted into the general budget. Doing otherwise would undermine the very rationale for pragmatic co-operation as well as the incentives for the institutional actors involved to participate in the enterprise in good faith. In the short run, co-operation should focus on the sharing of military capabilities and equipment. Capability-sharing can take many forms: from resource pooling, to training together in national training centres, to bi-national crews or units.1 Since initial misfires could entail damaging fallout for the whole process, and given that the two partners will want to retain independent means of action anyway, it is probably best to start with modest, low-profile projects. There are numerous low-key items on the menu of co-operation that attract far less media attention, but offer solid starting grounds: managing common expensive stockpiles, and then setting up joint stockpiles of precision guided munitions,2 would fit the bill. The AngloFrench Storm Shadow/Scalp cruise missile comes to mind, as well as British-procured JDAMs3 and French-produced AASM,4 provided combat aircraft are modified accordingly in both countries. Another interesting example is that of air tankers, which fall under the radar screen of political attention yet are both costly and indispensable. For the two armies, pooling together unglamorous, backstage items like bridging or engineering equipment might generate savings important enough to justify the retention of the personnel and units that man them, and therefore the preservation of know-how that is as critical as it is seldom needed. More ambitious is asset or platform sharing. The former could range from strategic intelligence to tactical lift – once the mission in Afghanistan winds down, the French Army could for instance rent British Chinooks, knowing that it probably will never have the budget required to procure the heavy tactical lift it so badly needs. The latter

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implies either a bi-national crew (impractical in the utmost, and highly susceptible to political divisions), or a crew-swapping system that allows each country to benefit from the system or platform when it needs it. Instead of devising political preconditions on the use of these assets, which would be an obvious non-starter, a system of ‘drawing rights’ could be put in place, based on the respective financial contribution of each partner or compensated by other capabilities made available in the deal. To entail real savings, crew swapping should in priority apply to onerous and complex, ‘HDLD’ platforms (high demand, low density) such as naval vessels and large aircraft. To minimise risks, the process should first be attempted on assets that are not too visible or important, like minesweepers, sealift and strategic airlift. Only later on might it be conceivable to include major assets and national flagships such as carriers. Since the prime rationale for building a second carrier is the same for the two countries, namely ensuring that naval aviation is permanently available and not grounded whenever the carrier undergoes repairs, normal or otherwise, it would nonetheless seem sensible to envisage launching a third carrier owned in common but manned nationally, along with two non-overlapping cycles of repair for the carriers Charles de Gaulle and Queen Elizabeth. In the medium term, concurrently with the most ambitious platform-sharing options, common initiatives on procurement should be launched. Not much is currently possible in this regard as most programmes, and major ones in particular, are already under way in each nation. The few short-term opportunities that remain are likely to be unilateral or reciprocal acquisitions, according to the two nations’ respective fields of excellence or comparative advantage. For instance, the likely failure of the Future Rapid Effects System (FRES) programme could prove an opportunity for the British Army to settle on a less ambitious platform such as the Armoured Infantry Combat Vehicle (Vehicule Blindée de Combat d’Infanterie – VBCI). Like the FELIN5 outfit for individual soldiers, the VBCI exists in reality.

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With regard to common procurement, it stands to reason that longer production series make for lower per unit costs. Accordingly, economies of scale entail savings, or alternatively ensure that the most expensive equipment remains affordable. Without the economies of scale generated by common procurement and the ensuing investments, it is almost certain that the insufficient level of defence spending will hurt national defence industries. They will no longer be able to maintain R&D and expertise in the most demanding fields, let alone be competitive in international markets. In fundamental ways, the survival of British and French defence industry is a question of national sovereignty, especially in technological areas deemed critical. Here again, it would be best to start with low-profile projects with immediate returns before turning to ambitious ones, however useful they promise to be. What should be avoided above all are grand projects launched primarily for their political and symbolic value, as well as multilateral projects that unnecessarily multiply military specifications and national demands of juste retour, which all cause prices to balloon. Unlike the A400M transport aircraft, successful past examples like the Jaguar aircraft or the MILAN missile prove that co-operation is indeed possible and profitable provided the partners are few and agree on most specifications. Numerous capability areas could benefit from common procurement, from unmanned aerial vehicles and unmanned combat aerial vehicles (a critical gap currently) to ground vehicles. Jointly developing such crown jewels as attack submarines or a fifth-generation attack aircraft is altogether more ambitious, but could be very rewarding. That said, there should be no illusion that common procurement will be easily achieved. National defence groups, and indeed the two nations, until recently have followed fairly divergent paths, with BAE Systems partially divesting itself from its participation in European consortiums and investing heavily in the rest of the world and the US especially. In turn, the creation of an important subsidiary in America raises questions regarding the possibility of

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BAE participating in joint projects, given severe export controls and restrictions in technology transfers in the US. Although it is to be hoped that the US will understand that its interest is best served by helping its traditional allies to survive militarily, and that it should in consequence ease some of its restrictions, there is no guarantee that such a proposition will pass Congress. Regarding joint Franco-British procurement, prudence is therefore de rigueur and possible options need to be explored carefully. Role specialisation merits a brief mention – an extreme form of capability-sharing that generates savings by apportioning military capabilities and functions amongst participating nations, so that they can concentrate their meagre resources more efficiently. It would make perfect sense for a consolidated European Union, where the supranational level has prevailed. For now however, and as far as Britain and France are concerned, role specialisation would prove extremely difficult to contemplate in all but the most dire circumstances, as it presupposes a very strong political agreement. As soon as it goes beyond secondary functions, specialisation almost invalidates the very possibility of an independent military policy and thus endangers sovereignty. Since preventing further national military decline is the very reason why France and the UK have an objective interest in co-operation, specialisation should mostly be shunned. Conclusion As always with policy recommendations, this paper goes only so far. Offering suggestions and exploring broad general options can hopefully stimulate a fruitful debate. Ultimately, however, only the military itself has the required expertise and legitimate responsibility to come up with a detailed and progressive roadmap allowing for concrete sharing options that will generate savings and preserve existing capabilities and force structures. This can only happen, of course, if there is political will in both countries as well as a shared realisation amongst decision-makers of the conditions necessary for this arrangement to work. First, such

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a deal would have for its primary, indeed sole, objective to ensure that French and British defence systems survive the coming decade relatively unscathed. Second, in consequence it should be pragmatic and not wait for, or aim at, some grand political bargain or diplomatic reshuffling between the two countries or at the transatlantic level. Finally, precisely because it is politically neutral and devised to preserve British and French capabilities and credibility, this New Model Entente has the potential, down the road, to improve the ‘special relationship’ with the US as well as a yet-to-emerge European defence capability. Thanks to the Strategic Defence and Security Review in Britain and the budgetary challenge confronting the two nations, a meeting of minds has perhaps finally emerged. However, political alignments are by nature fleeting, and the implications of a successful deal have not yet sunk in. Besides, it takes time to devise military options and set the technical details whereas financial constraints are building up rapidly and inexorably. Britain and France must therefore hurry to take advantage of the current window of opportunity, which may very well unravel if nothing substantial materialises quickly enough. All the actors involved must convince themselves that other venues are not in the offing for now and that bilateral agreement is the only sensible way forward. For some time to come, it is either Entente or oblivion.

THE SDSR AND CHINA Alexander Neill

One of the core decisions that the British government faced in the Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR) was whether the UK, faced with severe fiscal crisis, would be able to maintain global reach in international security. In this decision-making process, the growing importance of China as an emerging global military power must be recognised. The last decade witnessed an impressive, well-funded programme of military transformation of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) – from a mass army, towards a military capable of short-duration, high-intensity operations against adversaries themselves able to exploit high-technology capabilities. In recent years the pace of modernisation has increased, worrying some quarters in Washington, which has reverberated within the defence and security community in Whitehall. Many analysts have focused their attention on China’s domestic research and development capabilities, the procurement of foreign weapons systems and organisational and doctrinal reform within the PLA. Of central concern, however, is China’s ‘leap-frog’ policy of ‘informationisation’ and its drive towards asymmetric warfare capabilities; command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance; and space operations. In the light of improved military relations between the UK and China after the visit early in 2010 of the PLA’s Deputy Chief of the General Staff, General Ma Xiaotian, there are considerable opportunities for the UK in its engagement with the Chinese

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military. This dialogue will be an opportunity for the UK to fathom China’s intent as it reforms its military, but may also serve to strengthen the UK’s soft power credentials during an extended period of austerity for British defence. Any Sino-UK defence dialogue will also be a challenge because the UK will have to weigh up the national security concerns voiced by the US about the more assertive Chinese behaviour in and around its immediate periphery. The strategic priorities of the PLA are to maintain Communist Party rule, defend territorial integrity, deter Taiwanese independence, and deny or delay US military intervention near its borders. Twenty years ago, China revealed a plan to undertake its own Revolution in Military Affairs, requiring a metamorphosis of the PLA. More recently, the chairman of China’s Central Military Committee, Hu Jintao, proclaimed in 2004 new ‘historic missions’ for the PLA, refining China’s military intent. This included the need for China to protect its national interests and assets beyond its borders and incorporated more emphasis on non-traditional security concerns and ‘military operations other than war’. China’s newfound role for its military, driven by a more strident approach of the Chinese leadership with the West, have significantly changed the parameters for engagement between the UK and China in the medium-term. A PLA Snapshot Of the PLA’s 2.3 million personnel, 1.4 million serve in its ground forces, with the best equipped deployed in the military districts adjacent to the Taiwan Straits. In recent years, Chinese military planners have attempted to reduce reliance on obsolete equipment and, through a long-term plan of modernisation, have tried to create a deployment capability able to reach beyond their region, eventually leading to an expeditionary capability and a capacity for joint operations. In this regard, China has domestically demonstrated a rapid-deployment capability in its far western autonomous regions in Tibet and Xinjiang. China’s peacekeeping operations abroad have increased significantly, as have joint exercises with Russia.

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The PLA Air Force (PLAAF) is transforming from a territorial defence entity to a modern strategic air force able to project offensive air power. It boasts 400,000 personnel and 3,300 aircraft. Of the PLAAF’s 2,000 fighters, nearly 25 per cent are now fourth generation. The PLAAF now has sophisticated guided weapons, precision strike systems and increasingly lethal ground-based air defence systems. PLA sea-borne capabilities have long focused on a strategy of offshore ‘active defence’ centred on Taiwan and the first island chain. Recently however, China’s ‘Far Sea Defence’ blue-water doctrine has evolved to focus on China’s territorial sovereignty and the protection China’s sea lanes of communication. The PLA Navy includes seventyfive principal combatant vessels, more than sixty submarines, fiftyfive amphibious vessels and seventy missile patrol craft. The PLA Navy is retrofitting a Ukrainian Varyag aircraft carrier hull acquired in the 1990s, and many analysts believe that China will indigenously produce two aircraft carriers within one decade. The crown jewel of the PLA is its land-based strategic rocket force, the Second Artillery Corps. Since 2000 it has expanded its conventional short-range ballistic missile arsenal to 1,500 devices, mostly targeted at Taiwan. China’s nuclear deterrent has increased both in quantity and quality; and Europe and the US are well within range of China’s thirty-plus ICBMs. The PLA has rapidly developed its medium-range ballistic missile, road-mobile and cruise missile capabilities, augmenting its strategy to deny access to the US in the Pacific in the event of conflict. The Second Artillery Corps now boasts a nascent ballistic missile defence (BMD) capability, demonstrated by successful anti-satellite tests in 2008 and later in January 2010. British Policy towards China The UK’s policy is to encourage China as a ‘responsible global player’, a phrase which has been used in various permutations by the US and its Pacific allies for some time. White Papers and parliamentary statements by the US, Australia and Japan have all said that China needs to contribute more to international security, commensurate

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with the levels of military modernisation taking place within the People’s Liberation Army. In practice, this means coaxing China away from its policy of non-intervention, encouraging China to become more involved in peace enforcement and increasingly integrated with international forces. Many analysts view this to be part of the ‘smart power’ or hedged integration policy of the Obama White House, encouraging China to be more involved in international security, peace-support operations, humanitarian missions and the countering of non-traditional threats. Supporters of smart power argue that the more China becomes involved in international security ventures, the less the likelihood of the US and its allies finding themselves on the business end of China’s increasingly sharp military instrument. For this reason, China military watchers have pointed to the efforts of the White House to delay and tone down the more acerbic language of the 2010 Pentagon report to Congress on China’s military power. This has become all the more important as the UK’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) considers resorting to soft power to better relations with China. But the problem with this new engagement remains the lingering pan-Whitehall angst in the wake of China’s assertive moves against both EU and UK interests in 2009, which have tempered the more accommodating attitudes towards Beijing. British policy towards China is now framed in the 2009 government document, ‘The UK and China: A Framework for Engagement’,1 the first ever UK government document to lay down a comprehensive approach for the UK’s relationship with China. Designed to create a pan-Whitehall strategy, it sought to encapsulate the importance of engagement with China. Responding to the increasingly well co-ordinated, adroit and sophisticated Chinese diplomatic campaigns in regions where the UK has vested interest, the document asserts that the economic wellbeing of the UK is inextricably linked to that of China, and that the UK must be equipped to make the most of China’s rise. The British government calculated that China would be able to weather the economic storm of the late 2000s, and that the UK and EU’s economic integrity would be dependent on China’s continued

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economic success. In launching the new strategy, the UK announced its intention to take the lead in Sino-European engagement: to breathe oxygen into battered relations between Brussels and Beijing at a time when Sino-EU relations were frayed at the edges. The UK’s strategy has aimed to seek China’s support within the forum of the permanent five (P5) of the UN Security Council. In particular, the UK will now be seeking Chinese leverage to help stop North Korea’s proliferation activities, and attempt to build a unity of vision in curtailing Iran’s aspirations to become a nuclear weapons state. The Chinese View of the UK The traditional and long-standing suspicion amongst Chinese conservatives is that the UK is a satellite state of the US in its defence policy, and in its recent operations abroad. Chinese conservatives may have been encouraged in their view by recent parliamentary and newspaper reports, which suggest that the US-UK partnership has been one-way (in favour of the US) and that the UK should consider re-calibrating this very relationship. China nevertheless values its relationship with the UK: it is a fellow P5 member, maintains a global foreign policy and security capability, and has the capacity for considerable leverage within the EU. For China, the positives of military-military engagement will be a better understanding of joint operations and better integration with multinational forces – as has been the case with the anti-piracy operation in the Indian Ocean. Furthermore, China sees benefit in the long-standing historic relationships between Britain and its former colonial possessions, particularly Pakistan and India. There is certainly potential for the UK and China to work together to recognise and encourage Pakistan’s contribution to the stemming and elimination of Islamic extremism in its border regions with Afghanistan. The UK and China both share a common threat: the training and radicalisation of Islamic terrorists, who have perpetrated attacks both in both countries, has taken place in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan. Uighur separatists fleeing China have sought haven in Pakistan and

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have formed a more virulent jihadist group, which has aligned itself with Al-Qa’ida. The Chinese military will certainly value engagement with the UK’s because it retains an expeditionary capability and is prepared to commit to challenging and protracted military operations in farflung theatres in the strategic national interest. This is important for China as it responds to international calls to tow its weight in multilateral security operations, most notably in Afghanistan. As China pours investment into Afghanistan and eyes the considerable mineral resources of the region, many have compared the situation to China’s behaviour in Africa, where Western security policies have been challenged by burgeoning Chinese influence. China’s answer to this is simply to say that it contributes more to UN peacekeeping operations than both the US and the UK combined, and that it follows an enduring policy of non-intervention in the affairs of foreign countries. China nevertheless understands the problems faced by the West in Afghanistan. China must also deal with a number of challenges along most of its border, which ought to be prompting Chinese strategists to consider whether it is high time to engage in peace-enforcement operations closer to home. The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation is one such security apparatus that could provide assistance in an increasingly unstable Central Asia. The China Vacuum The EU is China’s largest trading partner, while Europe’s economy is larger than that of either the US or China. Given the interdependence of the European and Chinese economies, one might have expected a debate within the EU of both the risks and opportunities associated with the anchoring of Europe’s economic future to China. European society at large is certainly more wary of China’s rise, but this does not seem to have translated into a public debate on the security implications of Chinese military spending commensurate with that of its increasing GDP. Oddly enough, this seems to echo ‘Pacific fatigue syndrome’, whereby the American allies in the western Pacific,

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ostensibly facing greater threats to their security than the likes of the UK, have nevertheless neglected the security debate and are seen to be falling under the economic sphere of a ‘Greater China’. This concern was echoed by a House of Lords report, ‘Stars and Dragons: The EU and China’, released in March 2010, in which the chairman of the Lords EU Subcommittee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Development Policy called on the EU to ‘substantially raise its game in improving the relationship with Beijing’.2 In particular, the chairman Lord Teverson noted that the vast trade imbalances between China and the West are a danger to the global economy. The report also noted that over the course of its compilation, the inquiry had become aware of China’s growing assertiveness, and cited failures at the Copenhagen climate conference, the execution of a UK citizen in China despite strong diplomatic pressure, territorial disputes with India and cyber-attacks all as areas for concern. What appears to be missing from defence and security debate is substantial consideration of the UK’s approach to China in an age where global power and capital is shifting in the direction of the Far East. The strategic backdrop for this debate should be the transition from the ‘unipolar moment’ of the US to a multipolar world where new, rising Asian powers form the nucleus of the shift of global power from west to east. Most Europeans, like their counterparts in the western Pacific, are apparently content to take a more introspective view of security and find it difficult to make a causal link between their own national security and China. More potential flashpoints exist in East Asia than in Europe, and China has a role to play in all of these contingencies – many of which are directly linked to the relationship between the US and its littoral allies on the western Pacific Rim. If a clash were to take place between US and Chinese forces in East Asia, what role could the UK play in this, if any at all? This problem has emerged at a time of improving bilateral military engagement with China. The PLA has increased its programme of visits with the MoD, and continues to show an interest in expanding military exchanges.

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China’s New Assertiveness China, as a new Eurasian continental power, has gained strength by wielding carefully targeted economic leverage and a policy of engagement with countries in its strategic interest (unconstrained by moral considerations), driven by its insatiable appetite for the raw materials that fuel its rapid industrialisation and urban boom. This upsurge in foreign activity is linked to one of China’s core interests: maintaining the magic GDP growth figure of 8 per cent per year, thus buttressing the legitimacy of the Communist Party. China has, in particular, established bolt holds on the African continent, in Central and South Asia, Latin America and in the South Pacific – enhancing relations with many regimes that have poor or deteriorating relations with the UK and its allies. China’s national security concerns are driven by three objectives: regime security, economic security and social stability. On the economic front, China seeks to gain access to commodities and natural resources to sustain economic growth, the threshold for social stability. In recent months, China’s rapid economic rebound out of the global financial crisis has given rise to a newfound assertiveness, which some commentators have described as hubristic. This assertiveness has driven a desire amongst some factions within the Chinese leadership to significantly increase the national campaign to crush the ‘three evils’ of separatism, terrorism and extremism. In practice, this translates to closing in on the Taiwanese independence movement, and the Tibetan and the East Turkestani secessionist movements. Concurrently, some Chinese strategists, alarmed by deteriorating stability across two thirds of China’s borders, have propagated the ‘C-Shape’ theory, which posits the encirclement of China by US interests. Many of China’s more assertive moves in the international arena can be viewed through this lens. The Chinese leadership has decided to assert its territorial claims and up the ante in its border disputes, principally with India, a newfound ally of the US. All of these more strident moves are fuelled by the need to appease domestic

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nationalism in China and by nervousness as the 2012 leadership transition approaches. These moves seem to include striking a more discordant tone with the EU and US, and within the UN. The failure of the Copenhagen climate summit, snubs against leaders on both sides of the Atlantic, and impasse over Iran and North Korea’s nuclear proliferation have all generated concern over China’s ability to handle miscalculation – or, indeed, its strategic vision. This is more keenly felt where China’s military is making its strength known: the South China Sea. As an established continental power, China is now focusing its attention on the Pacific, exploiting its coastal periphery to become a maritime power – one of the ‘historic missions’ announced by President Hu Jintao some five years ago. Recent PLA Navy operations have left the world with little doubt of China’s maritime intentions and its capability to assert its historic claim over the first island chain. This assortment of archipelagos, aligned along the Pacific tectonic plate, spans from the Kuril Islands in the north, south through Japan and Taiwan, to the tropical climes of the South China Sea. Simply put, China views the maritime territory inside this chain as an abutment of its coastline and sovereign territory. This claim offers access to seas from the Pacific (demarcated by the Malay Peninsula in the far south) to the Kamchatka peninsula in the far north which, in turn, provide further access to sea lanes of communication in the Indian Ocean and Arctic Circle respectively. The biggest impediment to China’s grandiose maritime ambition is that most of the first island chain nations either dispute the claim or have security alliances with the US. The Quest for Intent and Transparency The last decade saw fast-paced modernisation of the PLA, eliciting nervous jitters in the US over its presence in the Pacific. The military planner’s key problem is not so much assessing China’s military capabilities, but – more importantly – China’s intent. Consensus of opinion is lacking in Europe on whether China will use its new

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military capabilities for peaceful goals, or with hostile intent towards Western allies. In recent months, in the wake of a $6.4 billion arms package to Taiwan, Sino-US military relations have been frozen by Beijing. The PLA Navy has become increasingly assertive in the Pacific beyond the first island chain, which includes Japan and Taiwan, and has demonstrated a fast-developing capability for joint naval operations far from home protecting Chinese shipping assets, as illustrated in the Gulf of Aden. This new Chinese naval capability has emerged at a time when the UK has conversely cut its own navy. Some in the China policy community demand that the PLA be more transparent: they cite China’s double-digit rate of military spending, and raise concern over omissions in Chinese defence White Papers on the PLA’s capabilities and intentions. The Pentagon’s insistence on increased PLA transparency is certainly understandable, given that the US Pacific Command faces the sharp end of China’s increasingly sophisticated military machine. The US is also bound by the Taiwan Relations Act, which could demand that the US should intervene in a cross-strait war should China invade Taiwan. China’s casus belli with the US would be a conflict over the island of Taiwan, which would widen to a confrontation with global reach. China left the US in no doubt over its anger after the arms package to Taiwan was passed by Congress in October 2009. However, the US has long been aware that the Taiwan contingency has become a decoy for broader rivalry in the Pacific region, centred on China’s long-harboured, but only recently re-ignited, territorial claims in East Asia. But this kind of opprobrium blocks off diplomatic options. In this regard, the US has remained at loggerheads with the PLA, and will remain so. The problem with demands for transparency is that the defence community sometimes overlooks the fact that the PLA is a wing of the Chinese Communist Party. PLA transparency would be akin to opening up the Communist Party’s Central Committee plenum meetings to public debate and scrutiny – simply inconceivable. Those that choose to push for transparency will hit the wall demonstrated by the perennial demands and reflexive rebuttals by the Pentagon and

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the PLA every year. China’s more honest accounting of its military spending may help to provide a clearer picture of China’s military capacity, but will not shed any light on China’s intent. Another reason why a fresh approach may be needed is that Taiwan has come closer to falling into China’s political sphere of influence – and thus the threat of war over Taiwan, between the old rivals of China’s civil war, has been pushed comfortably over the horizon. Top US defence analysts have warned that the military balance across the straits is now in favour of the PLA. Taiwan’s military has been allowed to atrophy by Taiwan’s legislative assembly over the last decade. With the signing of the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement, a free trade agreement in all but word, a cross-strait rapprochement is well underway and there are signs that the current Taiwanese government is prepared to concede, if not agree, to many of Beijing’s demands over territorial integrity. It is easy to fall into the trap of assuming that Taiwan opposes China’s territorial claims in the South China Sea. The truth is that Taiwan’s claim, as the Republic of China, mirrors that of the People’s Republic. The current Taiwanese government has chosen to set precedents by endorsing China’s territorial claims, exacerbating the drift from the US orbit and aggravating the problem for the US. Conclusion In addition to a campaign of adroit and very well-funded diplomacy by China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the UK is now facing an equally well-endowed campaign of military diplomacy by the PLA’s General Staff. Post-SDSR, the UK should recognise that over the next decade increasing resources will be directed by China’s Communist Party towards China’s military diplomacy as a tool to complement and sometimes surpass the capabilities of China’s foreign ministry. In this regard, more weight should be placed on the political-military dynamics of engagement with China and the UK in the medium term. General Ma Xiaotian has himself announced a new phase in military diplomacy, acknowledging that the international balance of power has shifted, boosting China’s international status and clout

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and creating favourable conditions for enhancing military relations with its neighbours. If a new line of engagement between the US, its allies and China does not check military rivalry in the Pacific, a new arms race will divert China’s newfound wealth from domestic development to arming the PLA. The UK, rather than emulating the Department of Defense’s now rather laboured calls for PLA transparency, should focus on fathoming the implications for UK national security of China’s capabilities; not just in the Pacific, but elsewhere. This more refined policy could help direct China’s defence capacity towards benign power projection; peace-keeping operations and humanitarian missions fall under this remit. It will be important too for the UK to focus carefully on what specific British national security concerns exist over China’s new military capabilities – although the British capacity to operate in the Far East would be limited anyway if called upon to do so by the US, the broader threat to British national security is China’s capacity to proliferate arms around the globe, deliberately or otherwise. As the UK mulls over the outcome of the SDSR, defence strategists will have to think carefully about what is to be gained from a new dialogue with the Chinese military leadership, particularly since the UK will be moving into uncharted territory. The Chinese leadership prides itself on taking a long-term view of strategy, and in many ways has the privilege of ‘over the horizon vision’ in key areas of the global economy. The British SDSR is a unique opportunity to share this longterm vision with China as the UK embarks on a decade of economic upheaval and uncertainty for British defence. It is crucial that the UK mitigates any risks in the pursuit of a meaningful engagement with China. Nevertheless, rather than approaching defence relations from a position of caution, the UK must grasp this opportunity in order to reciprocate the Chinese long-term view, and build these objectives into future British policy.

BRITISH STRATEGY AFTER AFGHANISTAN Geoffrey Till The Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR) is less an event than a process. Its broad policy recommendations will need to be further analysed, processed and costed; moreover, such a process will lead into another automatic defence review in 2015, by which time the world will certainly have changed and many of the key assumptions underpinning this one will need to be reconsidered. In short, the decisions announced in October 2010 do not mean we can stop thinking about the strategic interests of the country for a while; indeed, most experts would agree with the House of Commons Defence Committee, which recommended that we need to do a lot more thinking. Perhaps, above all, we should think about the implications of two of the major assumptions that determined the shape of the review, and which were stated rather than justified in the SDSR. The first was the assumption that we could not afford to, and therefore should not, spend 2.7 per cent of our GDP on defence, and instead should aim at getting our defence effort down towards the NATO minimum of 2 per cent. The second untested proposition was that so long as British troops were heavily engaged in it, resources intended for the Afghanistan campaign should in effect be ring-fenced until 2015 and, critically, its effects allowed to dominate the shape of British defence to 2020 and beyond. How much defence spending can we afford is too big a topic to handle here, just as it was in the SDSR (with considerably less excuse), but one obvious point at least should be raised. ‘What the

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economy can bear’ is a moveable feast – or famine, as the case may be. £5 billion for two aircraft carriers or £21 billion for a like-forlike Trident replacement is certainly a lot of taxpayers’ money – but there again so was £17 billion for the shotgun marriage during the financial crisis between Lloyds TSB and Halifax-Bank of Scotland, or the £16 billion for the cross-rail link infrastructure intended to cut 30 minutes off the train journey between London and Birmingham. What is ‘affordable’ in fact depends on national priorities. It is much more of a political than an economic choice, and one that deserves more coverage in the future than it got in the review. The Implications of Afghanistan The SDSR makes it clear that Afghanistan has to be the main effort for the time being. Being seen to lose this war would undermine British and Western credibility for years to come. Now that NATO is committed, the Western alliance cannot be seen simply to cut and run. Preserving the UK’s relationship with the United States means that Britain in particular needs to ‘stick it out’ until conditions warrant a withdrawal, or at least a draw down, in a timetable more or less consistent with the American one; although, it would seem clear that the Obama administration is keen on accelerating the process of withdrawal as much as is decently possible.1 But even when we assume that the outcome is to be acceptably successful, there are many outstanding lessons to be learned. The first is obvious. This is not the sort of war we should be fighting, because it suits the enemy, not us. Partly of course, this is a matter of geography. Afghanistan is a land-locked country, with a primitive infrastructure, complex social characteristics, a traditional aversion to central government and porous border regions abutting foreign areas supportive of the insurgency. As Major General Jeff Mason recently remarked:2 You couldn’t select a worse place to fight as a logistician. Landlocked, significantly far from a port, a country (with facilities) not

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even the third world regards as infrastructure … overall distance and the environment really affect what we do there.

Resourceful adversaries have repeatedly demonstrated their capacity to make the most of the Coalition’s unavoidable logistic vulnerabilities, not least the land transit through Pakistan.3 These problems are aggravated by our own essential characteristics: a free media (easily sceptical of success, able to report every mistake and every failure), the law (which in Afghanistan constrains the lawful much more than the unlawful4), the Western aversion to casualties,5 limited supplies of fully committed manpower, and 24-hour democratic horizons, which militate against sustainable long-term strategies. These all necessarily disadvantage us, and limit our capacity to get what we want. The fact that the Coalition is precisely that – a coalition – multiplies the possibility of imperfect co-ordination. Arguably worst of all, in Afghanistan UN and NATO forces are, for all their dedication and professionalism, labouring under the enormous disadvantage of their association with a regime seen as illegitimate by a disappointingly large proportion of the local population. Good strategy is about making the best use of one’s advantages, and denying the adversary the ability to do the same. In counterinsurgency, this is extremely difficult. Worse, our presence can often seem to be counter-productive, more part of the problem than the solution, especially when, to the locals, our presence seems to take the form of inaccurate air-strikes based on faulty intelligence, which kill or injure innocent civilians. The longer garrisoning forces stay in such places, the worse this gets, unless a very long, perceptive, people-centred counter-insurgency strategy is implemented.6 Of course, to paraphrase one of Britain’s former soldiers, Field Marshal Robertson, confronting an equally unpalatable series of options in 1916, sometimes we fight wars in the ways we have to, rather than we would wish to. We do not have the options to fight just the wars we want in the ways we like. True enough, but since

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to fight that way is to cede the initiative to circumstances and/or to the adversary, it is hardly an ideal way in which to start the war, and still less to proceed with it. Much better, in fact, would be to prevent these kinds of situations rather than to try to rectify them afterwards. Having to engage in them, in short, is a confession of failure. Secondly, counter-insurgency is expensive in both human and financial terms. The UK’s Joint Doctrine Publication 3-40, ‘Security and Stabilisation: the Military Contribution’, talks of a need for 20–25 military personnel per thousand of the population.7 In 2009, the operational costs (partly funded from the hard-pressed national reserve) were £3.7 billion – the equivalent of just over 10 per cent of the defence budget. Former Defence Secretary Bob Ainsworth suggested that Afghanistan-related costs for 2011 would be even more – in the region of £5 billion.8 To this must be added the opportunity costs for defence – that is, the alternatives foregone. Some estimates, in fact, argue that the all-round costs of the Afghanistan campaign account for something like a third of the Ministry of Defence’s (MoD) budget.9 It is extremely difficult to assess whether these costs are either bearable or ultimately productive, because this calculation is related to our capacity to meet the financial and human costs of intervention and on the extent of the threat to what we value – and this means, in effect, also trying to assess the potential costs of not intervening. At the moment, given the impact of the recession, defining what is ‘affordable’ both in terms of what we do and what we do not do becomes even more difficult than usual.10 It is also difficult to prove beyond the doubt of sceptics that this expenditure of blood and treasure is not just affordable, but costeffective in terms of reducing the threat of thoroughly globalised terrorism. Even if Afghanistan ‘works’, will not the dispossessed terrorists take up residence and build their training camps in Pakistan’s tribal badlands, or Yemen, Somalia, northern Nigeria, and so on?11 Are we to invade them next, wonder sceptics. Worse still, they go on, much of the terrorist threat to the UK in fact appears to be homegrown, and may in fact be exacerbated, rather than ameliorated, by

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our counter-terrorism activities abroad.12 Doug Badow, Senior Fellow at Washington’s Cato Institute makes the pragmatic if brutal point, ‘With Al-Qaeda dispersed, Afghanistan, though a human tragedy, does not matter much to America or its allies … Going into Afghanistan was necessary initially, but staying there today is not’.13 The fact that one can reasonably ask these questions reinforces the critical dangers of what the Americans call ‘presentism’ – that is, assuming that the shape and nature of the campaign you are in represents the shape and nature of all future campaigns against which you should be preparing. In fact one thing we can be sure of, politically, is that we will not get involved in another Afghanistan for the foreseeable future – or anything like it. If the past is anything to go by, tomorrow’s main effort will be very different from what we are doing today. Britain and the other contestants need to learn the lessons of Afghanistan – and move on. Meanwhile, we suffer the consequences and the opportunity costs of the campaign. The government has made much of the claim that there will be ‘no strategic shrinkage’ in Britain’s relative standing in the world. But in an era when the countries of the Far East, which are not diverting their resources into Afghanistan, are surging ahead economically and militarily, and when our maritime power relative even to our major European allies will be compromised, this claim seems little short of wishful thinking. Aims and Objectives after Afghanistan Protecting Trading Interests For Britain, the bottom line (an appropriately economic phrase) should surely be about defending its trading interests. The UK (and its constituent countries) is, and has been for the past several hundred years, primarily a trading nation. Britain is heavily engaged in the processes of globalisation. After New York, London is the second most globalised capital in the world.14 Ten per cent of its

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GDP derives from international financial services. Sixty to 70 per cent of the profits that UK-listed companies earn are actually done so overseas.15 Nearly one in ten British people live part or all of the year abroad, while over 4 million foreign nationals live in the UK. A very high proportion of economic activity derives from international trade. According to the Foreign Policy Globalisation Index, the UK is the twelfth most engaged country in the world economy. If one excludes the factors that disproportionately skew the calculations towards countries with a very small population, like Singapore or New Zealand, the UK rises to third position, behind only the United States and Canada.16 Inevitably this means that, in the words of the previous National Security Strategy, ‘The UK is and ever has been a distinctively maritime country.’17 So used are the British to laments about their declining financial and maritime status, the fact that the country’s shipping industry is growing rapidly is hardly noticed. After a twentyyear decline in UK shipping, a major reformulation of regulations and taxation arrangements has led to a merchant fleet now 170 per cent larger than it was in 2000. The shipping industry employs 40,000 people in the UK directly, and another 212,000 indirectly and brings £4.7 billion to the country every year.18 The sea is at least as important to Britain now as it has ever been. The UK is unarguably part of the global system. What happens in distant parts of the world sooner or later affects the UK, and often to a much greater extent than it does most other countries. The things that threaten the system by endangering trade and the conditions for trade include: • Disorder ashore and at sea, especially in areas that produce crucial commodities, or through which critical transportation routes run, or which have clear links to British security and/ or prosperity • Inter-state war. The disruptions to the world economy that a US-China conflict over Taiwan would have are unimaginable. Though the threat is currently low, the UK must help ensure

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this remains the case • Deliberate attack by forces, both state and non-state, hostile to the intentions, values and outcomes of globalisation. Exposure to these threats is not a matter of choice: it is an iron law. But what is a matter of choice is the particular course of action. The UK could hunker down, withdraw behind its moat, hope for the best and rely on others to maintain international security. But this is not in the British tradition or culture, and most analysts think this ‘Little Englander’ option not worth serious consideration. Instead, the UK has adopted a policy of, in the famous words, ‘going to the crisis before it comes to us’, in the hope of interposing some strategic space (geographic and temporal) between the threat and its impact on Britain. It has not always worked, but that has been the aspiration. Stripped to its bare parts, this is a policy of defending trade, and the conditions for trade, wherever these need a military response, and wherever a suitable effect can be had at a bearable cost. This does not mean that Britain should always go to the crisis; financial austerity means that it can, and should, only do so when interests are directly affected – which all too often they will be. The SDSR does seem to have taken this harder-nosed and more pragmatic approach to heart. Moreover, it has also recognised that the best wars are those that are never fought. Preventing Conflicts, Not Just Fighting Them Preventing wars requires a proactive, rather than reactive, national policy. Conflict prevention and deterrence is and should remain at the heart of the UK’s national efforts to defend the system from which it derives so much benefit, at least to the extent that its resources allow. Deterrence is about preventing the malign from doing things we do not want them to do and compelling them to do things we do want them to do. We deter either by denial (showing them that they will not succeed) or by punishment (showing them that the costs outweigh the potential rewards).

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The centrepiece of this is nuclear deterrence. A nuclear attack anywhere in the world (but particularly on the UK) is surely the very worst thing that could assail the system and Britain’s place in it. Such an attack might come from a terrorist organisation, or from a hostile state. The potential risks are growing. The nuclearisation of North Korea and Iran seem likely to spark the arrival of a new generation of nuclear weapon states, most particularly in the Middle East. This prospect has, in turn, sparked a renewal of the campaign to get rid of nuclear weapons altogether. It is hard to assess the likely outcome of these two countervailing pressures. That being so, there seems little appetite in either of the two main political parties for the UK to adopt the stance of unilateral nuclear disarmament because a nuclear deterrent is seen to offer protection through retaliatory punishment at least against a statebased threat – though what it offers against a terrorist threat that is not geographically fixed is less clear. The SDSR has put off the Main Gate decision on the Trident replacement programme, but seems to have so far rejected the ‘Trident-Lite’ options suggested beforehand, which included possible reductions in submarine, warhead and/or missile numbers, and more radical proposals to drop the ‘continuous’ part of the continuousat-sea deterrent. Whether these reductions would have had much influence on Saudi Arabia’s reaction to a nuclear Iran, say, or more locally to save the UK money, is all open to very serious doubt, however.19 But deterrence also applies more widely – to the deterrence of inter-state war – another of the greatest threats to the system. It is frequently claimed that inter-state war is increasingly a thing of the past, but this means ignoring events like the 1982 Falklands War, the 1999 Kosovo campaign, the 1991 Gulf War, the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Russia’s recent operation against Georgia in 2008, or current tensions around the Korean peninsula.20 And yet the composition of most of the world’s military machines seems to suggest otherwise, since the focus on high-intensity capabilities such as heavy armour,

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missile defence, air superiority and anti-submarine warfare seems to make most sense when conducted against peer competitors, rather than terrorists and other non-state actors. And in many parts of the world such militaries have particular peer competitors in mind, although they might not say so. But there is no tension, no paradox here. It is because countries take the prospect of inter-state war seriously that makes it less likely to happen. This is why being ready to conduct high-intensity operations remains the top priority for most of the world’s militaries, not least in the Asia-Pacific. For all its focus on terrorism, natural hazards, pandemics and ‘new’ cyber-threats, the SDSR still has inter-state conflict, not necessarily involving the UK directly, as a Tier 1 risk. Accordingly, most would agree that the UK should seek to maintain the appropriate highintensity capabilities to help deter inter-state war. But there are two problems with this. The first is the inability to prove that this investment in high-intensity capability problem is cost-effective. You cannot prove a negative – that someone has been deterred, which is the absence of action. The second is that you particularly cannot prove it in advance. The relentless march of technology means we have to prepare today for possible conflicts decades ahead and no-one can be expected to predict exactly how what we do today will play out in the long-term future. But in a future world of climate change, gross shortages in energy, food and water and of major changes in the world’s future military balance, it seems better to be safe than sorry. Or at least as safe as possible against inter-state threats with the resources available. High-intensity capabilities provide a bonus on top of their main role. They provide a good deal of the military credibility that underpins political influence. In many, but not all, situations short of all-out war such capacities offer higher levels of protection for friendly forces, and precision against unfriendly ones; they reduce the prospect of untoward loss of life; they increase the confidence of statesmen and undermine the confidence of adversaries. Conflict prevention can be hard to detach from the concept of

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deterrence. If we take the 1961 operation to defend Kuwait against Iraq as an example, this highly cost-effective, proactive move to bolster Kuwait’s defences prevented war, by deterring Iraq from invading the country. It was far more cost-effective than responding to such an invasion afterwards, as Britain was bound by treaty to do so, and had to do thirty years later. The force levels sent in were seen as strong enough. This is ‘prevention’ in the sense of preventing a war happening in the first place. But there is also prevention in the sense of stopping a conflict getting worse. Sierra Leone is a perfect and successful example of that. And so was the Indonesian confrontation of 1963–66. Finally, there is prevention of the sort aimed at stopping an intractable conflict or its effect spreading geographically. This approach does not seek to solve the issues that caused the problem so much as it aims to contain it so that the conflict does not destabilise a wider area. The tanker war and Western involvement in the Gulf of the 1980s is an example, again successful, of that. The 1991 Gulf War stopped the conflict spreading to Saudi Arabia and the rest of the region, although subsequent efforts to contain Saddam Hussein in the rest of the 1990s were probably rather less successful, though it is hard to know what he might have done if not contained by Western forces. The Balkan operations of the 1990s on the other hand prevented a wider war, and in the end helped resolve the situation. Iraq 2003–09 and Afghanistan 2006 onwards might well be said to fall into the same category, but since these campaigns aimed to overwhelm powerful adversaries and to reconstruct large and difficult areas so that they would not produce similar problems for everyone else again, they are particularly ambitious examples of the genre. Whether we should count them as a success remains to be seen.21 The current international counter-piracy campaign in the Gulf of Aden, on the other hand, could well prove a much more immediately cost-effective, if modest, contribution to international stability, if and when backed up by appropriate actions ashore.

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Overall, the track record of conflict-prevention operations does not seem so bad. As a policy for a country like Britain, it makes as least as much sense now as it has in the past and, given the financial and human costs and risks of not doing so, arguably more than ever now. What is to be Done? First and foremost, Britain needs to focus national attention resources on the places that matter: the Gulf (resources), the Far East (trade) and Africa (resources) – and not on places that do not matter.22 We may think, in our European complacency, that Kishore Mubabani and Martin Jacques are exaggerating their case that the twentyfirst century will be the century of the Pacific, or more precisely, of China. They probably are, but seismic shifts are nonetheless under way towards a totally unfamiliar, much more multipolar, even nonpolar, world in which the strategic dominance of the United States by mid-century can be much less taken for granted by its friends as much as its adversaries. It is hard to exaggerate the importance of all this to the UK. The UK should be focused on the consequences of these shifts, unless its people are content to be sidelined for the rest of the twenty-first century, merely responding to what the new global powers – whoever they are – decide. Second, for a policy of deterrence and conflict prevention to work properly, the UK will need a conscious strategy to help decide where it needs to intervene and where it does not, and to prevent the UK from merely reacting to unfolding events. From this point of view, the thought processes behind the production of the previous National Security Strategy, the more specific Security and Stabilisation documents, the SDSR process and the formulation of a National Security Council are definite steps in the right direction. Third, it means consciously keeping the costs in human and financial terms commensurate with the expected benefits. This is partly a question of limiting liability as much as possible, of avoiding situations of being sucked into somebody else’s problem – and,

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indeed, then becoming part of it as in Iraq and Afghanistan. This may well mean consciously accepting that there are some situations that the UK simply cannot resolve, some things it cannot do militarily and probably should not try. The aim should be to help develop not democracy per se, much as we might like to, but the trading values of good governance, transparency, and the rule of law. Ideological crusades intended au fond to make everywhere function just like Croydon are surely to be avoided; not least as they betray a lack of confidence that concepts of liberal democracy will eventually prevail regardless. Caspar Weinberger always used to talk of an exit strategy – not getting so committed that you cannot escape even if you wanted to. The Iraqi and Afghan campaigns are going to lower the bar on what the media and the public will regard as bearable cost for the foreseeable future. The worry is that this might mean a legacy in which lesser operations that are in the UK’s interest are not committed to because of a widespread fear that everything will go sour. Fourth, it means operating with allies, and especially the Americans,23 and influencing their behaviour. No one country can solve or even contain the many threats to the system on its own, so states have to work together. But the UK must help shape coalition policy, not just execute it. This means having credible military capability, not token forces. It means the ability to lead task groups, not just contribute to them. Staying alongside the United States is clearly critical to this strategy. But there is a problem: recovering from the passing strategic myopias of the Bush administration, the US as part of its reappraisal of its defence needs after Afghanistan is clearly in the business of refocusing its attention and its operational priorities on the Asia-Pacific region in general and on the critical importance of engaging and/or containing China in particular. Despite, or perhaps because of, its burgeoning economic growth, this is an area that is at the same time both fraught with strategic tensions and rivalries, and comforted by constant co-operative rhetoric and institution-building.24 In the future, with much less of a strategic lead over all possible rivals, the United States is going to be able to devote fewer resources

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to other parts of the world than it would wish. This raises the issue of whether Britain should help ‘back-fill’ the gaps left around the world, or be contributing whatever it can to the unfolding of events in the Asia-Pacific. Either way, Washington will need and indeed demand more political and military commitment from the UK in return for the continuation of its security guarantee for Europe, most recently as expressed by its planned maritime ballistic missile defence shield in the Mediterranean. And nowhere is the argument for such European support stronger than in the naval and air dimension of conflict, because that is where the US superiority in the maritime Asia-Pacific is facing its greatest challenge. Coincidentally, there does appear to be a slow awakening on the part of Europeans that other, distant parts of the world do actually matter, and that there is at least a recognition that they should try to do something about it, if only in their own long-term interests. Europe’s involvement in Afghanistan, for all its manifold deficiencies, is at least a step in this direction.25 Fifth, it means adopting a proactive rather than a reactive stance. This requires Britain to be there before things go bad – not just respond rapidly once they have. It is a strategy of engagement and presence in important areas. The UK must be part the scenery in all areas of particular concern helping, in the American phrase, to massage the environment ‘in a nice way’ – to influence events, stop them going awry, monitor what is going on, provide continuous insight and early warning that something more serious may need to be done,26 and to help build local capacities to do what does need to be done. Given the emphasis in the National Security Strategy on ‘spotting risk’, the SDSR’s decision to withdraw the RAF’s ASTOR Sentinel ground surveillance aircraft from Afghanistan once the campaign is over and not to proceed with the Nimrod replacement programme seems quite bizarre. Above all, a proactive policy requires presence of a non-committing sort. This means recognising that ‘stabilisation’ operations which mean, in effect, picking up the pieces after a conflict, is in fact an admission of failure.

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The Means of Future Strategy Making Conscious Use of Soft Power The UK must make full use of of what Joseph Nye famously called ‘soft power’. Britain is still a major economic, cultural and military player with a surprisingly helpful imperial legacy. As anyone who has seen Premier League football on the screens of countries all around the world, or who reads the T-shirts coming down the street and in the metros of most of the world’s cities, and notes the continuing fascination with the Royal Family, the British brand still has a tremendous, if to us surprising, iconic value. English, not Mandarin or Cantonese, is still the world’s lingua franca,27 and the British university system still attracts students in their thousands from around the world. In many cases such soft power means the British should be pushing on an open door, no more so than when it comes to ‘leveraging’, rather than neglecting, the Commonwealth. This organisation is, after all, about the only example of a situation where the British head of state walks in to a room and all the others stand up.28 The Commonwealth embraces 2 billion people, from tiny Pacific Ocean states to entire sub-continents. Its fifty-three member countries conduct 20 per cent of world trade and include some of the biggest (India, the UK, Singapore) and some of the smallest economies. But for all their advantages, the British do not make the most of their soft power. The Commonwealth, for example, has a major image problem; paradoxically, the value of this institution is much better appreciated by the potential targets of this kind of focused influence than it is by the British themselves, or by its antipodean cousins. It has an image problem in the ‘older’, still predominantly Anglo-Saxon countries, but not in India, Malaysia or in swaths of Africa, where opinion polls consistently record much higher levels of support and interest than apply in the UK. Given its potential, the British neglect of the Commonwealth and the connectedly

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unfocused nature of UK aid programmes is heroically short-sighted; it is truly surprising that only now is this is perhaps beginning to be appreciated.29 Much of this strategic use of soft power will and should be non-military of course. But a much more coherent, conscious and focused exploitation of tremendous assets – such as defence attachés, advisory military training teams, reputation in the realms of professional military education and training – would pay dividends. The recent policy of under-resourcing the attaché network and British Military Advisory and Training Teams around the world, not least in Africa and the Far East, in order to pay for current operational costs, and significantly under-resourcing the Foreign Office, is myopic in the extreme, and is looked at in frank bewilderment by those the UK should and could be influencing. These, plus a coherent and national emphasis on capacity-building, disaster relief and the construction of partnerships building, should all be part of a policy of a conscious strategy of active engagement. ‘Security and Stabilisation’ indeed extols the direct and indirect benefits of Regional Military Presence and Advice.30 This is the main reason why the personnel reductions announced in the SDSR, unlike the hardware cuts which have attracted more attention, are so much to be regretted. The possible impact of this on the Five Power Defence Arrangement with Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and Malaysia is a case in point. It is a much-admired modest arrangement, which helps keep the peace in the region, builds up local capacity to maintain order, and keeps the UK in a region likely to dominate the rest of the century. But, as one of the ‘travelling nations’, the UK has already found it difficult to staff the exercises and schedule the necessary visits by ships and aircraft, due to the malign impact of Afghanistan. The loss of 5,000 people each from the Royal Navy and RAF, half a dozen warships and any semblance of maritime patrol aircraft is going to make this even more difficult, for all the denial of ‘strategic shrinkage’.

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The same might well be said of the necessity to resource security commitments in the South Atlantic and the Caribbean. Given on the one hand the manifest dangers of the trade in illicit drugs – so much more serious and far-reaching a threat to wider British security than the practical threat of terrorism has so far proved to be – and, on the other hand, the endemic vulnerability of the island states of the area to other forms of international crime and hurricanes, it would be of concern if Britain’s presence in this area were to be diminished. The fact that the costs of Afghanistan required the MoD to temporarily withdraw the frigate HMS Iron Duke and the disaster-relief fleet replenishment ship Fort George from the Caribbean just when the Haitian earthquake struck in early 2010 meant they were most needed illustrates the human and political costs of not making use of the obvious advantages of a military presence.31 Hard Power: Force Structure Implications But for all the talk about soft power, the SDSR itself has understandably focused on questions of hard power because it is here that the bigticket capital expenditure items can be most easily located. Moreover, the force acquisition decisions already taken do not really match the document’s apparent adherence to the maintenance of a sufficient expeditionary capability. The force structure implications and the capabilities required for such a capability are many and, for the most part, both obvious and familiar since they have figured prominently in Britain’s notunsuccessful strategy over the past several hundred years. First, there would be an emphasis on mobile expeditionary forces rather than large, stationary, garrisoning ones. Since the sea remains at once the world’s largest manoeuvring space (a major source of reduced vulnerability for the forces involved when compared to landbased ones), and also provides the basis for the globalised trading system on which British peace and prosperity depend, it makes sense for such forces to be ‘maritime’ in the sense that Sir Julian Corbett (the UK’s greatest national strategist) used the term – that is, in

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relation to the activities of joint forces in circumstances in which the sea is a significant factor. Second, since the future is unknowable, Britain and its allies cannot afford to neglect any security contingency that looks possible. Going overboard for the requirements of future large-scale and enduring counter-insurgency missions – which any future government will now be extremely reluctant to get dragged into once the Afghanistan campaign is over – would seem to make little sense.32 The UK instead needs a balanced portfolio of forces that can cater for as wide a range of options as the economy can bear, either with existing and planned forces, or with ones that can be quickly regenerated should the need arise. Not coincidentally, the conclusion that the United States has come to in its Quadrennial Defense Review and in its defence budgets for 2010/11 is wholly consistent with all of this.33 Current US thought argues for a move on from its erstwhile focus on the capacity to sustain two medium-scale conflicts at the same time to a wider focus on ‘…a much broader range of security challenges on the horizon. They range from the use of sophisticated, new technologies to deny our forces access to the global commons of sea, air, space and cyberspace to the threat posed by non-state groups developing more cunning and destructive means to attack and terrorise.’ Secretary of Defense Gates added, however, that ‘Achieving our objectives in Afghanistan and Iraq has moved to the top of the institutional military’s budgeting policy and program priorities. We now recognise that America’s ability to deal with threats for years to come will depend importantly on our success in current conflicts.’34 Some big-ticket, high-intensity items have indeed gone: the US Air Force’s F-22 fighter, the navy’s advanced land-attack cruiser CGX, and the army’s Future Combat System (FCS) – but more due to the extraordinarily high cost and dubious rationales behind these systems rather than the blandishments of those who emphasise counter-insurgency. In the current budgets, despite the $159.3 billion devoted to ‘overseas contingency operations’, most of the

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major items have survived intact: the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter ($11 billion), missile defence ($10 billion), long-range strike programmes ($4 billion) and a ‘realistic sustainable shipbuilding programme’ ($25 billion) in reasonable excess of recent estimates of what the US Navy needs to build up to its 313 ship fleet. This is all in aid of ‘more focus on and investment in a new air-sea battle concept, long-range strike capabilities, space and cyberspace.’35 The independent panel on the QDR puts particular stress on the air-sea dimension of defence and, Europeans should note, on the Asia-Pacific. To judge by what is actually being spent in the budget for (at the time of writing) the coming fiscal year, the heated and overexcited media debate about counter-insurgency has settled down into the sensible compromise area advocated by Mackubin Thomas Owens:36 Preparing only for what appears now to be the most likely conflict – the long war option – may very well make conventional war more likely in the future. In addition, the ability of the US to advance its global interests requires that it maintain command of the global commons: sea, air and space. The Long War option is not sustainable without such control. Future warfare is likely to be hybrid in character, possessing interlocking elements of both conventional and irregular warfare. Under such conditions, strategic flexibility must be the watchword for US military and policy makers.

This is not to say that just because the Americans do it, the British should too; but at the very least it would be surprising if, when reviewing defence needs for a future and very uncertain world, the UK should come to very different conclusions from a country that has been a long-term ally, simply because Britain shares similar interests and faces similar risks. As Paul Kennedy wisely says, ‘… scrapping and obliterating what seems, at present operationally irrelevant would be the height of folly. We simply have no idea what the demands upon us will be in ten years time.’37

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One possibility the UK simply cannot afford to forget is the continued risk of inter-state war, partly because this is by far the most serious threat to global peace and prosperity and British interests, and partly because the fact that most other countries are pursuing the technology required for the deterrence or conduct of highintensity inter-state wars which means that Britain has to do the same – and it has to do it now, because the historical record shows that warning times of approaching conflict are always shorter, and time taken to reconstitute required but neglected capacities longer, than economisers assume and people expect. Not everything can be afforded of course, and the precise mix of British forces will need to reflect constantly changing expectations of a constantly changing set of futures. Nor should the interests of a British/European defence industry for the rest of the century be forgotten in the calculations. Sustaining the industrial capacities needed for the rest of the century is a perfectly legitimate part of a sensible national defence strategy. In the Asia-Pacific region, China, India, Singapore and many others realise that, with the 2008–9 recession, the world has moved on from the fragile certainties of Thatcherite monetarism to accept that the state has a major role to play in the support of industry; certainly in the defence sector. For Britain not to follow suit, in the spirit of its own Defence Industrial Strategy, would be short-sighted. Third, current experience suggests that the effects at home and abroad of international terrorism that cannot be deterred seems best contained by a range of intelligence-led, precision operations by the special forces that have been disproportionately effective in Iraq and Afghanistan,38 and long-range airpower in its various sea- and landbased forms.39 The accent on intelligence-led suggests an expanded effort on the intelligence services both at home and abroad. Finally, and more generally, the situations that give rise to failing states or malign regimes where terrorism can flourish can hopefully be prevented by proactive and comprehensive capacity-building by military and non-military forces inside the framework of a globalised

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trading system that is made to seem fairer, and so more sustainable than it appears to many people at the moment.40 The comprehensive approach to strategy-making has to make the desired outcome and the economic system it depends on more acceptable to others – and indeed to many of us. The SDSR has recognised the need for much of this, and indeed has increased relative resources for some of the capacities an expeditionary strategy requires, not least in the special forces and cyber-security. But given the criticality of the ‘maritime approach’, it is little short of bizarre that the unfortunate coincidence of a financial crisis, an excessively costly war and some obvious big-ticket items passing through the defence budget in belated compensation for years of relative neglect have together impacted so severely on the Royal Navy. As bad is that the RAF has chosen to shed those parts of its force, the Harriers and the Nimrod MRA4s, which were the very significant maritime part of its structure and which contributed, or would have so much to the joint force across the spectrum of operations. Moreover, the manner in which the SDSR process was conducted within the MoD seems itself to have gravely damaged the very notion of jointery, a point that deserves attention. Conclusion It may be objected that there is little that is new in the recommendations of this chapter, that it merely marks in many respects a return to Britain’s traditional strategy, wherever possible, of offshore balancing and limited engagement for maximum effect.41 But this, even if true, should be a recommendation not a criticism. Such a strategy has served Britain well over the past several hundred years and, despite the occasional exceptions of the past, and the obvious novelties and manifold obscurities of the present and future, would seem likely to serve Britain equally well now. That being so, there is much to be said for a follow-up strategy of massaging the conclusions of the SDSR to make them a better fit with the mobile, expeditionary strategy that Britain needs. This could prove reminiscent of the claw-back

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campaign which moderated the excesses of the Nott Defence Review of 1981, and which facilitated, amongst other things, the recovery and retention of the Falkland Islands and a continuing military presence ‘east-of-Suez’ ever since.

A FORCE FOR HONOUR? UK MILITARY STRATEGIC OPTIONS Michael Codner There is a view that the United Kingdom (UK) does not really ‘do strategy’, in the sense of designing an enduring concept that addresses a route to the longer term. The argument was well made by Sir John Coles, a former permanent under-secretary of state at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.1 He suggests that the so-called pragmatic British official approach is to create policy that is devoid of a vision of the future, and without any overarching long-term objectives. For British policy-makers, existing policy, such as it is, must form the basis for long-term planning. As this policy is adjusted to meet changing circumstances, long-term plans can be similarly adjusted. If we transfer this model to defence policy planning, the expectation of government would be that the expeditionary capacity defined in the 1998 Strategic Defence Review (SDR)2 – the toolbox for use overseas as and when government chooses – would be sustained into the foreseeable future, but would be modified to address emerging needs for greater homeland protection, garrison operations abroad, affordability and other factors that may emerge. The pattern of policy White Papers from the SDR to the 2010 Strategic Defence and Security Review3 (SDSR) confirms this model.4 It is this chapter’s view, however, that Britain does indeed have a military strategy. This strategy explains how an expeditionary Joint Rapid Reaction Force (in SDR language) with its land, naval and air components is intended to make the UK a safer place for its people through operations of choice overseas. It deals with the vision-free future by emphasising reputation,

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continuity and consistency. The SDSR continues and reinforces this approach. It has not changed it or come to different conclusions. Assumed Premises of a Strategy One can derive a number of fundamental (albeit unverified) propositions from the declaratory policy of the Blair era, which sit comfortably with the continuity of British policy (since at least the Suez crisis of 1956). These are listed below. 1. The UK is a great power and has rebuilt this status economically and militarily since the early 1980s following the post-war decline and retreat from empire. 2. The British public presume that their country has this status and will support policy that clearly reinforces it. 3. This status is supported by a good reputation for ‘value-led’ diplomacy, which is enhanced and modified by ‘the pragmatic approach’. 4. As a trading nation, the UK is particularly dependent on a secure world environment because of its geostrategic position, its social associations and responsibilities. 5. International influence born of the first two propositions is the primary way for Britain to make a contribution to a secure world.5 6. Influence is best achieved through the US, which has the dominant capacity for good or bad. 7. Influence over the US must be sustained and developed, in major part, through a consistent and reliable contribution of a discrete military capacity that has the strategic significance to be genuinely influential. 8. This discrete capability must have operational autonomy if it is to claim strategic significance – UK forces must not be heavily dependent on US capabilities to conduct operations assigned to them. 9. This military capacity must be sufficiently large, effective and agile to fulfil roles and missions in a US-led coalition at the theatre level early in an intervention, when the need for the contribution is most

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urgent and the consequences on policy in shaping a campaign will be most evident.6 10. Expeditionary capability can always be brought home if the priorities become territorial defence or domestic security. These ten propositions were not systematically tested in the Green Paper during the May 2010 election, in the October National Security Strategy (NSS) or in the SDSR White Paper. 7 However, government rhetoric before, during and since the general election has essentially confirmed that all the major political parties accept them as premises to the future evolution of the nation’s military strategy – a process that has effectively been put on hold by the SDSR until the promised withdrawal from Afghanistan by 2015 and the first periodic defence review to be held in that year. From an objective viewpoint the big questions remain: the effectiveness of British influence over the US after the evidence of the war in Iraq; the sustainability of Britain’s status as an economic great power through financial crisis and the consequent affordability of the necessary military forces; and finally Britain’s military reputation as the world’s most competent stabiliser, if not as a prompt and agile intervener. The last point has been challenged on the evidence of Iraq and Afghanistan. As analytical devices these propositions are useful in explaining the UK’s military behaviour since the end of the Cold War, and through the Blair/Brown period to the present. They explain the First Gulf War, Bosnia, Kosovo and Sierra Leone, as well as Afghanistan and the war in Iraq. They explain the subsequent embroilments in Iraq and Afghanistan as strategic continuity rather than deviation or decay. And the Green Paper, new National Security Strategy (NSS) and White Paper all emphasise this continuity, albeit tempered by aspiration to do more preventing and partnering – and constrained by the condition of national interest as modified by enlightenment, however that might be manifest.

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A Force for Honour Colin Gray reminds us of Thucydides’ primitive motives for using the military instrument – fear, interest and honour – and how these could be the generators for British strategy in the future.8 The ten propositions listed earlier can all be derived from these motives and seven of the ten relate to honour. Gray sees honour specifically as reputation. In fact, honour has four aspects, of which military reputation is indeed one that bears heavily on the ability to influence. The second aspect is moral, as expressed in Robin Cook’s ‘Force for Good’, which might contribute to influence. The third is respect for international order as mandated through treaties and international law. And the fourth is reflexive: in other words, the nation’s perception of itself as a world power. For these reasons ‘honour’ is rather a neat descriptor of Britain’s silent military strategic concept. ‘A Force for Honour’ is probably nearer the mark than ‘Force for Good’. We might label these ten propositions the ‘Force for Honour Propositions’. The Expeditionary Motivation Of course national territorial defence remains the absolute obligation for governments in so far as they have the capacity to do it alone. But Western nations who are medium-sized or small military powers are likely to continue to take part in military interventions for three broad reasons. First, it remains part of the strategic bargain with larger nations who are friends and allies – in particular, the US – to ensure collective security in the widest sense, whether in a NATO context or some other arrangement. This bargain is reminiscent of the Cold War, but it certainly remains a major consideration in relation to Russia for new NATO members. For the UK, the strategic bargain with the US in this European context is no longer at the heart of defence policy. However, the UK’s contribution to common defence and security in the context of NATO remains a consideration with a quantitative element.

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Second and third, there are the matters discussed earlier of world influence and moral purpose. The bargain with larger nations and influence over them relate to an important additional factor: inherent (or existential) military deterrent capability. This is the need collectively to maintain sufficient levels of military capability – in particular combat capability – to deter any emerging or existing future power from developing or using the military instrument for bullying or blackmail. It is to exclude the use of military power as a cost-effective option. Moreover, one does not need to identify a particular nation – for instance Russia, China, Iran or some other emergent power – although doing so may be a useful benchmark for military capability. National Obligations The government has inalienable obligations that must be addressed in any strategic choice, unless its resources and national will are so compromised that it is in effect a minor power. However, the UK will not have the means to discharge all of these obligations alone. And a guarantee of collective security and defence will require the UK to honour its part in the strategic bargain. These obligations require government to protect against direct threats (autonomous obligations) and meet government obligations (contributory obligations), particularly where the nation cannot protect against its threats alone. Autonomous Obligations 1. Defence of the UK mainland. Defence of the UK’s territory is the first responsibility of any British government. Although NATO membership provides for collective defence, as an island nation the UK can and must protect against direct threats through air and sea control, and reactive land defence. The basic requirements are intelligence and surveillance, air defence and sea denial (to which a submarine force is a major contributor).

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2. Domestic security within the British Isles. This includes the military contribution: to law and order at home; to preventing and responding to terrorist attack; to preventing illegal immigration, drug trafficking and contraband; and mitigating the consequences of natural disaster beyond the capacity of civil authorities. Although the armed forces will typically support the civil power, the military instrument is uniquely useful for command and control in cases of extreme emergency. The capacity for interventions abroad must be based on the need for this form of military response to be available at home if needed. This includes special and ground forces in cases of insurgency, terrorism, highlevel criminal acts and natural disasters; maritime protection of inland waterways and territorial seas, and preventative action in the UK’s Exclusive Economic Zone and elsewhere on the high seas; and air power to prevent the exploitation of air space by terrorists and criminals. 3. Security and defence of the Overseas Territories. This ‘global archipelago’ comprises Anguilla, Bermuda, the British Antarctic Territory, the British Indian Ocean Territory, the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, the Falkland Islands and Dependencies, Gibraltar, Montserrat, the Pitcairn Island group, St Helena and Dependencies, the Turks and Caicos Islands – and the two Sovereign Base areas in Cyprus. The UK has the backing of NATO in the defence of the British Isles, but the British Overseas Territories are mainly outside the treaty area. Defence requires land, maritime and air components to be rapidly deployable and available if necessary for garrisons, presence9 and other preventative and inducement operations. 4. Evacuation of UK civilians from areas of conflict. When British citizens are at risk, the UK must be able to respond autonomously. These operations are particularly challenging because of the short notice for planning, and high levels of uncertainty and risk. Maritime and airlift capacity is the principal enabler for this kind of obligation. This is likely to be a collective task, but a nation

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with the economic and military power of the UK, and a very large number of nationals living abroad, ought to be able to conduct some of these operations autonomously if necessary. In any event, the UK’s obligation in providing capability and leadership will be in proportion to the number of British civilians involved and the relative size of the nation. Contributory Obligations 5. Defence of the NATO Article V area. As a signatory of the Washington Treaty, the UK must defend its mainland and also the land, waters and airspace of NATO Allies against encroachment, bullying and ballistic missile attack. The UK must define and provide an appropriate contribution, in particular for preventative, precautionary and pre-emptive operations; these threats are likely to differ from those envisaged during the Cold War. An important element of this category is existential (or inherent) conventional deterrent capability or risk management in an uncertain world.10 6. Protecting access to economic resources. This is a global challenge requiring a multinational response. There is a debate as to how critical this access is to national security, in particular sea lines of communication. Clearly any response must be collective, but a major power has an obligation to its electorate to contribute and show leadership in proportion to its size and relative dependency on external resources and trade. Many but not all aspects of maritime security fall under this obligation. 7. Proactive counter-terrorism. It is argued that contemporary terrorism is best tackled at its source, yet offensive operations abroad may be a catalyst for indigenous terrorist attacks at home. Committing to the expeditionary strategy nevertheless obligates a proactive approach to this kind of terrorism. The principal instruments are special forces, specialist infantry and air power, which may in certain circumstances benefit from maritime basing.

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8. Evacuation of UK civilians: alongside those of allied nations when this cannot be done alone. Operations of Choice These may be either contributory or autonomous. Although the Sierra Leone intervention began as an evacuation of non-combatants (autonomous obligation), it is widely perceived as an example of an autonomous operation of choice. These operations are not important in the definition of the future expeditionary force structure, except insofar as autonomous capability must be kept available for operations of obligation, even during major operations of choice. The first fundamental issue is whether the UK should sustain and evolve the capabilities for multinational deployments and interventions in these categories, in addition to those for operations of obligation (both contributory and autonomous). That has been answered by government assent to the Force for Honour propositions. The second issue is what sort of contribution Britain should make, and this depends on the strategic option (discussed later) that is chosen. If that choice is hedged, the Force for Honour propositions will be compromised. Afghanistan must be seen through, and thus there are appropriate capabilities that must at least be sustained in the short to medium term: 1. Discretionary interventions. In particular, the strategic choice taken defines the nature of discretionary operations at the outset when government actually makes the commitment of forces. Once that commitment is made, discretion may vanish through embroilment for reasons of – among other things – reputation. These operations of choice include expeditionary operations that are motivated by ‘Force for Honour’ purposes – world influence, humanitarian justification, and to support the US-UK relationship. Some aspects of maritime security – for instance disaster relief – fall into this class of intervention. 2. State-on-state conflict outside the NATO Article V area. This ‘threat’ appeared last in the Tier 1 threat list in the recent National

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Security Strategy. These scenarios are often presented as the justification for the UK to have a ‘balanced’ force addressing a full range of so-called high-intensity capabilities. Heavy armour, air defence and deep-strike aircraft, and aircraft carriers are the usual candidates. Britain must define an appropriate contribution that is coherent with the capabilities needed for its obligations and for discretionary interventions. Balance only has meaning in the context of autonomy, so Britain can be selective in its high-intensity capabilities that are not required for autonomous operations. 3. Inducement and influence operations. These are discussed in the chapter in this volume on armed inducement. Britain may well use its armed forces, in particular maritime forces, autonomously in crisis prevention and in the early stages of crisis in support of diplomacy for symbolic, active deterrent or compellent purposes, or for other precautionary or proactive reasons. The same classes of operation could be multinational or could develop in that way as the situation evolves. The capabilities are unlikely to be force drivers because effective inducement depends on the message it sends as to the capacity for violence if things turn sour. Military Aid to Civil Authorities Obligations 2 and 6 expose the issue of the roles of armed forces in relation to civil authorities and agents such as blue-light services and coastguard forces. The government clearly has the obligation, but must decide what military contribution is appropriate. In the UK there is an unfinished national debate on this subject. Neither the military nor civil departments are prepared to approach the matter objectively for reasons of resource allocation and culture. (The chapter in this volume on the military’s role in national resilience considers these matters in more detail.) The proposition that needs to be considered is as follows. The armed forces are a state-owned reserve whose defining feature is combat in the defence of the nation. However, it has a range of very

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useful capabilities, in particular the ability to provide command and control in extreme circumstances where information is poor, on an occasional basis. Where these circumstances are rare, it is cost-effective not to duplicate these capabilities with civilian capacity. In the case of the UK, there are no constitutional or legal barriers to these costeffective options, and the nation does not own a coastguard force or paramilitary forces for this reason. However, availability of this reserve must be ensured when choices are made for expeditionary interventions. Although this capacity for aid to civil power and ministries is not a defining feature, it is not a secondary role. Once defined, these become tasks of obligation. Forces on roulement in the UK between expeditionary deployments can to some extent provide this reserve, but the demands of training in core skills and preparation for operations mean that these forces are unlikely to be adequate without support. In the case of maritime security under Obligation 6, it is relevant that the seas outside territorial waters are mostly not under national jurisdiction, meaning the military is usually the only law enforcement authority available. Unresolved Strategic Choices for the UK There are currently huge economic uncertainties and questions as to the longer-term implications of political change in many key powers. The US, Russia, Iran, India, South Africa, Israel, France, Germany, Afghanistan and Japan have all recently gone through electoral processes of which the medium- to long-term outcomes are not certain. Relative power amongst the emergent and re-emergent BRIC powers (Brazil, Russia, India and China) and their traditional great power competitors is shifting conclusively. However, it is possible to identify some broad strategic options for the UK that bear comparison with the options that were available in 1997. The SDSR did not tackle these choices head on, praying in aid the War in Afghanistan as the reason for limiting decisions to the short-term horizon. Indeed, the UK could not sacrifice its reputation in this

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respect unless the review and electoral processes had thoroughly considered and dismissed the ten Force for Honour propositions presented earlier. So the broad strategic options for the longer-term future remain bluntly as follows. Option 1: The Global Guardian Option This option focuses more specifically on a continuation of ground operations for robust stabilisation, which will provide continuity in Afghanistan for the foreseeable future. It will also allow governments to develop and sustain aspirations for global influence through regular and long-term ground commitments, and the ability to act as a framework nation for ground operations.11 High-intensity ground combat capability would be retained to provide effective escalation dominance and to contribute to transatlantic inherent deterrent capability. Naval and air forces would have relatively minor supporting roles. This could be characterised as the ‘continental’ option in the ‘continental’ versus ‘maritime’ debate of Jonathan Swift and others over the seventeenth to twentieth centuries. 12 It bears mention that the Swift context was essentially European, but Basil Liddell Hart included an expeditionary aspect to the ‘continental’ option in a lecture at RUSI (then the Royal United Services Institution).13 This is the best option for continuity in Afghanistan for the foreseeable future, but risks creating a force structure that is not well prepared for other uncertainties, and the prospect of a medium and long term in which there is a general political aversion to commitments to enduring ground occupation. Option 2: The Strategic Raiding Option This ‘maritime’ option recognises that there is unlikely to be the political will in government or in the electorate for further embroilment in operations such as Iraq and Afghanistan in the foreseeable future.14 It limits this capacity for ground campaigns and refocuses on shortterm operations using agile specialist ground forces. It emphasises sea basing and very early presence and inducement operations.

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High-intensity ground combat capability is retained, but is highly specialised strategically. Special forces and agile infantry such as the Parachute Regiment, Royal Marines and other air-mobile formations would be supported by light- to medium-weight armour, with a view to developing ground forces more widely as specialist forces, but with a ceiling on numbers in favour of quality. The premise is that a small (relative to other Western nations of similar size) elite ground force would limit government choices very specifically to short-term early interventions, which would be influential in shaping the pattern of subsequent operations. The UK would make a substantial contribution to maritime security, which would permit a degree of international leadership in this respect. The UK’s contribution to transatlantic and European security and inherent deterrence should focus on proactive and maritime capability. This option specifically provides for preventive, precautionary and pre-emptive deployments to contribute to shaping the security environment proactively. The problem with this option is that it is unlikely to be fully achievable while priorities remain in Afghanistan. Option 3: The Contributory Option A selection would be made from the present capabilities of the UK’s armed forces in order to contribute to needs identified in an international context, such as the bilateral US-UK relationship, the European context (whether within a NATO or European Union force planning construct), or another multinational context. This option would sacrifice any possibility of national autonomy for intervention operations, because the UK would be dependent on other nations for all the capabilities it had surrendered. Option 4: The ‘Northern Lights’ Option There is a very reasonable alternative military strategy that none of the political parties have adopted: reinterpret world status and influence in terms of moral standing; abandon Trident; reduce the defence budget

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to 1.6 per cent of GDP; develop a force structure specifically to address autonomous operations of obligation, with an additional expeditionary capability primarily for United Nations-mandated humanitarian operations, similar to the models of Canada and the Scandinavian countries. The relationship with the US would remain important, but would be based on American respect for British moral standing and leadership in this community of ‘Northern Lights’ countries.15 But such a grand strategy is not going to going to happen – yet.16 Option 5: The Gendarmerie Option This option accepts that aspirations to be a major expeditionary power are unaffordable and focuses ground forces on contributing to stabilisation options as the offer – albeit a weak one – in a strategic bargain without the aspiration to retain framework-nation capacity or significant high-intensity combat capability. This option could also include some constabulary naval capability to contribute to maritime security. Option 6: The ‘Little Britain’ Option This option focuses specifically on defence and internal security of the British Isles, air space and territorial seas, offering such capacity as is available as a contribution to overseas operations if and when the home situation permits. This option abandons any strategic bargain. There is also the question of the UK’s Dependent Territories around the world to which there is a legal obligation for defence and security. A government taking this option would have concluded that these responsibilities are unaffordable and would need to relinquish them and transfer them formally to some other authority or, alternatively, insist that these territories assume their own independence in this respect regardless of capacity and consequences. Some Implications Clearly, options one and two reflect the continuing debate and imply sustainment of comparable levels of defence funding to those that

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emerged from the October 2010 Spending Review with growth after 2015. But there still needs to be a rationalisation of capabilities. (Options three to six would allow significant further reductions in defence funding). Options one and two also imply retention of specific high-intensity combat capability and therefore, inter alia, the ability to take part in and provide conventional deterrent capability against major inter-state war. Under option three the UK could develop a high-quality specialism in some niche capability areas, which would confirm it as a military partner of choice with some concomitant international influence. Equally, it could continue to reduce capabilities across the board in a ‘balanced’ way to the extent that it loses critical mass in key capacities or environments. The SDSR sets the UK on that route with a probable outcome of dwindling influence. Options four, five and six rely on the relative security of an island nation in a benign geostrategic situation, although economically vulnerable to world events. Options five and six also imply a relinquishment of aspirations to sustain global influence. Option four presumes a different route to influence. So, as government has accepted the Force for Honour propositions and effectively dismissed the ‘Northern Lights’ option, it must make a choice sooner rather than later between options one and two as the direction for the future. A proper commitment to both is unaffordable. Option one allows capabilities to be developed with continuity from the present operational commitment to Afghanistan in the longer term. Assuming things do not go too badly there, it will also sustain the British martial reputation. However, it would reduce strategic versatility in a future in which government and the electorate will be wary of long-term embroilment in land campaigns. Option two will provide this versatility and greater autonomy (with respect to proposition eight). It may also be better suited to meeting national obligations to Dependent Territories, evacuation of nationals and maintaining sea access. However, the route from Afghanistan to option two is beset with the risk of compromise. If the

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nuclear deterrent is vital to national honour, retention is compatible with options one and two. It is also a contribution to deterrence and the strategic bargain and should be evaluated accordingly. Of course, there would remain the autonomy question. If one accepts that the government is committed to a future debate over options one and two, it is possible to construct a logical sequence of requirements that ongoing spending rounds and the 2015 review will need to address. A Future Force Structure It would be fairly easy to define a core force structure based on the needs of autonomous obligation and maritime security where the matter of appropriate contribution is purely one of scale. These categories nevertheless clearly require situational awareness, expeditionary command and control, fighter aircraft, submarines, surface combatants, special forces, and agile and deployable specialist infantry and combat support with the necessary air and maritime lift. For the other categories of contributory obligation, the key consideration is what constitutes an appropriate contribution. Unlike during the Cold War, NATO’s force planning system is not an imperative; and the 1998 SDR outlined the UK’s decision to define its contribution to a Joint Rapid Reaction Force by its own requirements. In light of an ongoing political commitment to an expeditionary strategy, NATO will probably continue to receive what Britain is prepared to offer, so long as that matches the minimum element of the strategic bargain. In return, the UK gains collective defence. The appropriate contribution is therefore a combination of the capabilities discussed above, and those additional capabilities needed for contributory operations of choice. In defining appropriate contribution, legacy capabilities cannot be dismissed. If the United Kingdom already possesses a useful contribution for inherent deterrence, is it not sensible to offer this? Heavy armour and the full fleet of Typhoons to Tranche 3B come to

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mind. The first could have some role in discretionary expeditionary operations, but not in operations of obligation. The second involves contractual commitment without the option for large savings. In addition, the UK must retain and develop command and control capability for the high operational level, so that it can lead (alongside France) the rationalisation of the European contribution to NATO. The UK can be an effective framework nation for operations of an appropriate scale, and can embed these capabilities in the NATO command structure. The final stage in this logical sequence is defining and scaling the additional capabilities for expeditionary operations of choice. First, the capabilities for operations of autonomous obligation and maritime security should be costed;17 added to this should be the further capabilities required for contributory operations of choice. The combination would then form the appropriate contribution for contributory obligation. Hence the nation’s expeditionary clout (that is the capability above and beyond what it needs autonomously for its direct security) is what the British public is prepared to pay for in order to assure world status and influence. The financial premium for status and influence also includes the nuclear deterrent and its replacement system. Implications for Specific Capabilities Notwithstanding the decisions made in the SDSR to reduce capabilities, these categories bear comment for the longer term. Command and control and communications at the high-end operational level with a robust home-based strategic capacity are a sine qua non for any of these strategic options. However, it could take different forms depending on the choice made (carrier, shorebased and so on). Intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and target acquisition also spans the range of strategic choices, but the balance of specific systems depends on the strategic choice made. Helicopters are similarly a capability area that would be needed for

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either a continental- or maritime-focused expeditionary capability. The requirement to rationalise the fleets, reduce the number of types and improve operational availability are all well understood. Aircraft carriers and amphibious ships have obvious utility for obligation three and four operations, but the case is much stronger for the carrier if the maritime expeditionary option is taken. Fixedwing strike may be a defining capability for carriers, but sea-based command and control, and the versatility they provide for deployment of a number of other platforms and capabilities and for manpower, are as important. Their roles in inducement operations cannot be overstated. Fixed-wing attack aircraft have a core justification in obligation one and three operations. The issue of total numbers is affected on the one hand by the affordable scale of expeditionary capability, and on the other by the protection afforded by the legacy issue discussed above. In the longer term the size of the Joint Strike Fighter force in relation to Typhoon numbers depends on the continental/maritime strategic choice. Infantry size in the short term is somewhat ring-fenced by operations in Afghanistan. In the longer term, the total numbers beyond the requirements for autonomous operations of obligation depend on the one hand on affordable scale of expeditionary capability, and on the other the continental/maritime strategic choice. An increase in the proportion of specialist infantry – useful in either future – will reduce affordability. Personal equipment and infantry training must be highly adaptable to a changing strategic environment and the challenges of irregular and urban operations in new forms and environments. The scale of artillery, engineering and other combat support capabilities will relate to the overall size of the infantry. Deployability and adaptability will be features that transcend strategic choices. Civil engineering has an important role in stabilisation and related operations. A continental strategic choice could place more emphasis on these capabilities.

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Strategic and operational airlift must be adequate to the scale of the ground elements of the expeditionary force. Numbers of armoured vehicles will depend on the overall size of ground forces. A major issue is adaptability to operational environments. There is much to be learned from the experience of Iraq and Afghanistan in melding the Urgent Operational Requirement (UOR) system into that of planned acquisition processes. It is not certain that the modularity options that air and maritime platforms offer are the only way ahead for armoured vehicles. A combination of modularity and institutionalised off-the-shelf purchases may allow for the right adaptability. Surface combatants have roles in category one to four operations and of course in maritime security. There is a particular problem with numbers. It is difficult to quantify capability requirements for inducement (in particular presence, preventive, proactive and precautionary operations), which are relevant to most of the operations of obligation. For maritime security beyond the national EEZ and those of overseas territories, the issue is one of appropriate contribution. Finally, a maritime expeditionary strategic choice would also have implications for the sea control roles of those vessels also relevant to category five (NATO Article V) operations. There is also the issue of the balance between high- and low-capability vessels, and the pressing need for modularity to allow for relatively cheap future platforms to be adapted quickly to a changing security environment: for instance, the emergence of a very real ballistic missile threat. Heavy armour and artillery does not fit neatly into the force development sequence discussed earlier. The only strong argument for the retention of any heavy armour capability is that of a legacy capability that can continue to contribute to category five operations. Of course, in that context it is a capability that is provided for abundantly by continental European nations. An expeditionary strategy based on either strategic choice (continental or maritime focus) places a heavy emphasis on precision

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weapons, because intervention operations impose particular moral demands on military forces. ‘Network enabled capability’ may have fallen out of fashion as a concept, but integration of capabilities in relation to an accurate common operating picture will be increasingly important, as will technical and behavioural interoperability between arms and services and with coalition partners. Cyber-attack will be an increasing threat as networks become more crucial. Military capacity to counter it will provide capabilities that will be useful in domestic security. The ability to conduct urban operations proactively will place particular demands on technology, as will the technological competition in the development and countering of improvised explosive devices. The use of remotely piloted vehicles will continue to expand and replace manned capabilities, and will migrate into autonomous systems in the longer term, bringing a range of moral and practical challenges. Finally, the dependence on space systems will continue to increase, although the United Kingdom faces the problem of sustaining autonomous capability with limited national space assets. Mother Hubbard and Her Dogs of War18 The ten Force for Honour Propositions that, one can adduce, were unstated premises for the 1998 Strategic Defence Review, have been accepted by the coalition government without any real debate engaging the electorate in the financial premium that is involved. These propositions relate to reputation, national self-perception, international influence, the relationship with the United States, national autonomy and moral purpose, and also to the national interest and obligations of government. The expeditionary strategy set out in the 1998 SDR required a force structure that was unaffordable. The UK’s defence budget was cut modestly in the October 2010 Spending Review, leaving two hard choices for the longer term of robust expeditionary capability. The first is on the scale of capability for expeditionary operations of choice, which is a matter of acceptable affordability. The second is

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that between continental or maritime prevalence in such capability. Continental prevalence allows for a continuation of capabilities postAfghanistan; that is, once fresh commitments are made to sustained ground operations, a greater ability to influence through scale and permanence is possible. Troops on the ground express the greatest military commitment. Maritime prevalence, on the other hand, allows for a rational expansion of the requirements of operations of obligation (obligations one to four and six), and a greater ability to influence through inducement operations early in the emergence of crises. A smaller army would offer fewer opportunities for participation in enduring coalition ground operations, and a de facto lower risk of embroilment. But the costs require consideration: the emphasis on agile specialist infantry would require higher salary levels to attract and retain suitable individuals. To date, however, the decision between continental and maritime prevalence has not been made. Only the maritime option will preserve vestiges of full national autonomy to serve purely national military obligations and interests abroad. The SDSR capability cuts reinforce the strong possibility that compromise between the hard continental and maritime expeditionary choices will result in a contributory option that meets neither the robustness criteria of the tough options nor the financial economies that a rationally bargained contributory option would achieve. The implications of making the hard choice between these options − or indeed the consequences of feeble compromise − are considerable. There is a logical sequence for defining the future force structure that proceeds from the requirements for autonomous operations of obligation through to contributory operations of choice. This can generate a core set of capabilities, which could be expanded and added to depending on whether the recommendations of the review point to the continental or maritime strategic choice. Ultimately, the scale of a future expeditionary force will be limited by affordability. As this scale represents the scale of elective operations, it is not unreasonable for the force structure to be limited by budget within

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what is specifically required for operations of obligation. The corollary is that the government must be prepared to pay for the kind of defence capability Britain needs to ensure its place in the world. In the event the defence budget suffered cuts of 7.5 per cent in real terms – rather less than expected – in the 2010 Spending Review. But this probably had more to do with sustaining effort in Afghanistan and preserving options for a longer-term debate than confirming a strong enduring commitment to defence as a principal lever in world influence. Evidence of this commitment would be a rising defence budget after the four year Spending Review period. ‘Force for Good’ was doomed as it was a Labour strap-line emphasising the virtue of liberal intervention over the demands and limitations of national interest. A ‘Force for Honour’ may still have mileage, but will require the building and sustainment of broad political consensus, strong and conscious electoral support and levels of funding that are at the top end of expectations for the future beyond 2015.

JOINTERY AND THE DEFENCE REVIEW Trevor Taylor We … are determined both to practise a wholly corporate approach to our business, in the interests of defence as a whole, and to communicate that collective leadership to our people. (Ministry of Defence response to the Cabinet Office Capability Review of 2007) Only 20 per cent of staff said in 2008 that ‘MoD as a whole is well managed’ (early 2009 figures indicate that this has risen to 27 per cent) compared with the central government benchmark of 32 per cent. (Cabinet Office Capability Review of the Ministry of Defence, March 2009)

The Strategic Defence and Security Review might have been expected to pay attention to defence management overall, and how the capabilities desired for the armed forces are to be generated efficiently and effectively. Within this area, a key question concerns the extent to which the British Army, Royal Air Force and Royal Navy should be relied upon as single services, and where matters are to be arranged on a joint, tri-service, defence-wide basis. Joint arrangements do not necessarily mean centralisation, with joint agencies demonstrating that some elements can be delegated on a defence-wide basis. In practice, the short time allocated for the review’s preparation (around five months) meant that this difficult area could not be addressed

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in any depth, although the SDSR did detail some expected savings from the cuts being introduced. In essence, matters of efficiency and effectiveness were handed to the Defence Reform process led by Lord Levene, which is to report in July 2011. It remains to be seen whether this exercise will seek to grip the central question of whether defence should be managed mainly on a single and often rival service basis, or on capability lines. Background From as far back as the end of the First World War, there have been pressures to erode the autonomy of the three services in the interest of producing a more integrated and efficient defence machine. These pressures have normally been resisted by the single services, which have been keen to maintain their separate spheres of competence, identity, ethos and culture. The improved co-ordination and integration of service activities first required the creation of a strong Ministry of Defence headed by a secretary of state, which began to be put in place only after 1964. A key development came with the 1981 Nott Review when Navy Minister Keith Speed refused to accept the proposed naval cuts and had to resign. The defence minister at the time, John Nott, then decided to abolish the single-service junior ministers, replacing them with officials holding functional defence-wide responsibilities. Front Line First: The Defence Costs Study (DCS) in 1994 introduced a series of changes, not the least of which was the ending of single-service advanced staff training, replacing it with the emergence of the Joint Services Command and Staff College and the institutionalisation of the Advanced Command and Staff Course. The DCS changes were focused on reducing the duplication of specialist capabilities, creating larger-scale bodies covering defence as a whole. As the then-Secretary of State for Defence Malcolm Rifkind wrote, ‘we will be conducting many more command, training and support activities on a joint basis because we expect almost all future operations to be joint’.1

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The Strategic Defence Review of 1998 moved things on yet further, although not without resistance from the single services. The changes included the creation of a Defence Logistics Organisation for the support of all defence equipment. This brought together much activity in the areas of storage, transport, maintenance and repair and procurement, which had previously been handled by the individual services. Moreover, a Permanent Joint Headquarters (PJHQ) was created for the direction of UK military operations, replacing the practice of allocating the command of an operation to the single service that was predominantly involved. Joint Force Harrier and the Joint Helicopter Command were also created as means of securing more value from air assets and a Joint Concepts and Doctrine Centre (JCDC) was set up to articulate and develop defence-wide thought. The pressures for increased joint elements within the UK military machine have come from two sources: the need for enhanced efficiency in the use of funds during the preparation of military capability, and the need for optimum military performance on operations in an era when joint and coalition operations are commonplace. As these pressures evolve over time, it can be argued that jointery will never reach a steady state and should be seen as a continuous process rather than a particular end outcome.2 Even if the separate identities of the three services were abandoned altogether, it would still be necessary to consider issues regarding the co-ordination of defence forces with other elements of the security sector; while, of course, pressures may also arise to break up the armed forces once united. Change Since 2000 Since 2000, however, the move towards jointery in the defence sector has stalled; there has arguably been movement in the other direction. It is difficult to discern significant consequences from the outputs to date of the JCDC (today the Development, Concepts and Doctrine Centre, DCDC) and, while the formation of the Defence Equipment and Support Organisation (DE&S) in 2006 created a huge institution responsible for almost half the defence budget,

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it constituted the merger of two already joint bodies: the Defence Logistics Organisation and the Defence Procurement Agency. The single services were also given responsibility for specifying servicelevel agreements for both the support of individual systems and the use of funds by the DE&S to deliver that service level. In other words, the services began to act as true customers responsible for both what was needed and how funding should be prioritised and managed. Arguably there has been movement back towards single-service autonomy. A key development was the navy’s initiative to merge the organisations and Top Level Budgets (TLBs) of the commander-inchief fleet (the ‘front-line commander’) and the Second Sea Lord. The former had been responsible for the generation of naval forces at specified states of readiness, involving significant collective training activity. The latter was in charge of the recruitment, retention, career development and individual training of naval personnel. By merging these two bodies, the navy generated some savings (an irresistible offer to the government) but at the same time made it much more difficult for the Ministry to increase the joint element of the personnel function. Any thought of a ‘Defence Personnel Organisation’, to sit alongside the Defence Logistics Organisation, became less feasible. The other services, which also had separate force preparation and personnel structures, were aware of the implications of the navy’s move. They took themselves in the same direction: the commander in chief air command has had a single budget for training and people from 2007.3 With its larger number of people, it took the army longest to make this change, and the single army TLB was created only in April 2008.4 The MoD itself then reinforced single-service structures by restoring the financial roles of the single-service chiefs. Under the separate front-line command and personnel structures introduced with the SDR in 1998, the service chiefs were not TLB holders and their offices were funded from the MoD Central TLB. However, after the services had merged their personnel and training sections at the individual level, the Ministry decided that the single-service

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chiefs would become the TLB holders for their services in order to improve the match of ‘accountability with delivery responsibility’.5 A further sign of the stalled move towards jointery was the status of the role of chief of joint operations, which was created in 1998. The services are understood to have resisted this appointment becoming a four-star position during the SDR process. Despite the prominence of operations in the UK’s military activity since 1998 and the fact that the MoD sees support to operations as its ‘over-riding priority’, the post remained at the three-star level although four of the five commanders to have held the post have gone on to take up four-star positions. Intriguingly, the Cabinet Office Capability Review of the MoD in 2007 omitted to mention the role of Chief of joint operations even in an advisory role: ‘military operations are the responsibility of CDS, drawing on the advice of the three single service Chiefs of Staff and the VCDS, within the Chiefs of Staff Committee which CDS chairs’.6 Finally, attention should be drawn to the evolution of the former Equipment Capability Customer area, these days called the Capability Sponsor (CS). This body replaced the ‘Systems’ area that existed until 1998. The defining idea of the Equipment Capability Customer organisation, whose role was to define military requirements and to generate the financial plan for their procurement, was that it should operate in ‘capability’ terms and should not serve single-service agendas. It was organised so that its component elements (directors of equipment capability, now heads of capability) would cross singleservice boundaries. However, for military officers serving there their next appointment and possible promotion depended (and depends) on their ‘home’ service. An officer thinking of a change in capability that would damage that home service or even a particular branch of a service must also consider the impact of such a choice on his or her career. In the years since its formation, the responsibilities of this organisation have widened beyond equipment so that its staff are charged with oversight of all the various elements associated with

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turning equipment into useable capability and with the examination of solutions to capability gaps that involve the redeployment of existing resources, rather than new equipment. They must chair a large number of stakeholder meetings, with the services having significant voices, which are concerned both with capability planning and capability delivery.7 In the Ministry’s management structure, the CS is formally accountable for the timely provision of all the Defence Lines of Development (DLoD) needed to generate capability. In addition to equipment itself, these lines of development comprise training, people, infrastructure, doctrine, organisation, information and logistics. The CS can only hope to persuade the Top Level Budget holders responsible for these elements to do what is needed, as it directly controls no funding itself. In the years since 1998, the MoD has sought to manage its funding along both ‘capability’ and single-service lines, a far from comfortable matrix arrangement. In this evolving situation, the ECC (and then CS) staff has repeatedly been cut – most recently as a result of the MoD ‘streamlining’ exercise. It thus has to depend on others to generate the information it needs and physically to draft the detail of requirements. The formal justification for this is that the CS should be concerned with decision-making at the strategic level and with requirements articulated at the high level. This, however, fails to take account that with many requirements, the devil (much of the technical challenge, the cost and the risk) is in the detail. The workloads of heads of capability and their military staffs, and the short periods that they occupy in that post, mean that they can struggle to absorb all aspects of the requirements they support. The financial planning role of the CS is weakened by the practice of the DE&S retaining responsibility for the in-year financial management of equipment spending (by slowing or accelerating projects, the DE&S, and on occasion ministers, affects the long-term costs of all projects). The CS is also headed by a three-star officer. Of the four officers who have held this post, just one so far has been

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promoted to a four-star position. In short, the Capability Sponsor organisation has important responsibilities for capability management and development, but lacks personnel numbers and political weight. This is perhaps understandable once it is appreciated that the stronger the Capability Sponsor, the weaker the individual services. So perhaps jointery has gone as far as it should. Certainly, some distinguished military figures feel that the defence ‘business space’ – capability preparation activities – should not be exposed to any further ‘centralisation’.8 There is also a case for reorganising the Capability Sponsor itself largely along single-service or environmental lines, and for ending the capability-based approach introduced in the Smart Procurement initiative of 1998. The DE&S itself has an extensive single-service manifestation, since it has in its structure three threestar officers (chiefs of materiel) responsible for relations and deliveries to fleet, land and air. Reorganising the Capability Sponsor organisation along largely single-service lines would have two dangers. Most obviously, it could encourage ‘replacement’ thinking, in which the services look for better versions of existing equipment, rather than radical possibilities opened up by new technology which could disrupt existing organisations and cultures.9 Secondly, it could lead to neglect in investment in the key enablers of capability, C4ISTAR10 and logistics, which are essentially joint in nature. A further point is that anecdotal evidence strongly indicates that service chiefs rarely think in ‘defence’ terms and are driven centrally by their perceptions of their own service’s interests. As members of the Defence Board, they should always be concerned with the interest of the Ministry as a whole, but few in Whitehall believe that the service chiefs often adopt such a stance. There is a need to recognise two sources of single-service rivalry: on the one hand, there is the drive to protect key projects that are seen as capturing the importance and the nature of the organisation – Typhoon for the RAF and the carriers for the navy appear to fall into this category. The army, as a more people-centric body, has often focused on the protection of

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units rather than projects. On the other hand, the fact that defence resources are relatively fixed and increasingly scarce means that a competition for resource is inevitable among organisations and sub-organisations staffed by people who believe in the importance of what they do. Even within the army, the Royal Armoured Corps sometimes feels in competition with the Royal Artillery, and so on. It is scarcely surprising that someone who spent the first twenty-plus years of his or her career with a particular service finds it difficult to put ‘defence’ first in the Defence Board, while being responsible for the management of that service in the ‘day job’. Significantly in the public domain, the Cabinet Office Capability Review of the Ministry of Defence in 2007 pointed to the challenge of developing a corporate perspective in the Defence Board.11 In the years since, resource pressures have intensified and financial threats – rather than organisational – to service standing have increased. This period has been marked by RAF efforts to take over naval air power12 and army-led complaints about the resources being taken up by major projects such as Typhoon and the carriers. It is hard to believe that collegiality has increased. The 2009 Capability Review of the Ministry of Defence stressed the progress made by the Ministry in reducing its headcount and in building relations with other ministries. However, it also said that the Ministry needed to do more to improve its corporate decisionmaking, to strengthen its capacity for ‘tough resource decisions’, to improve prioritisation, and to develop ‘a more robust overarching strategy for the department’.13 Service rivalries manifested in the Defence Board cannot make such progress easier and the contrasting and competing views expressed by leading figures in the single services as to defence needs and priorities (see Box 1) arguably damage the public image of the Ministry of Defence. The half-interested public are likely to reach the same judgement as football crowds sometimes chant at the referee: ‘you don’t know what you’re doing’.

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Possible Ways Forward Rather than seek vainly to press the service chiefs to think in defence terms, one possibility would be to accept their orientation. Their central role would be recognised as ‘providers’ of force elements at specified rates of readiness but, to use the language of the Ministry, they would not have a ‘decider’ role with regard to when and how those forces might be used. They would not form part of the Defence Council or the Defence Board. In terms of advice to ministers, the chief of defence staff would maintain his current predominant role supported on operational matters by the chief of joint operations and on managerial/business space questions by the vice chief of the defence staff. The service chiefs could and presumably would feed their views to the vice chief, CJO or CDS himself, depending on the issue at hand, through the Chiefs of Staff Committee. Arguably, the Ministry itself has moved in this sort of direction by giving more prominence to the Group of Four (CDS, VCDS, the permanent secretary and the second permanent secretary).14 As many states in Europe and elsewhere already do, the MoD could organise military management at its highest level with a true general staff that covered Box 1: Selected Public Expressions of Single-Service Views. ‘COIN bias must not distort UK procurement, warns air chief ’ (Jane’s Defence Weekly, 24 February 2010). ‘Army chiefs question need for Trident nuclear deterrent’ (Guardian, 23 February 2010). ‘First Sea Lord to warn against navy spending cuts’ (Daily Telegraph, 19 January 2010. ‘Carriers versus tanks: Royal Navy joins battle for resources’ (Guardian, 2 February 2010). ‘The heads of Britain’s Army and Royal Navy have this week been engaged in a vigorous public argument on the future of the UK’s armed forces’ (Financial Times, 21 January 2010).

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all three service arms. In the UK, the General Staff is the directing body of the army alone. This would, however, have to take account of the risk that real cohesion among uniformed personnel could make it harder for the civil service and even politicians to exercise influence in defence questions. However, there should also be explicit recognition, not least by the Treasury, of any conclusion that some inefficiency in defence management is acceptable as a means of reinforcing the political direction of defence. It is possible (but unlikely) that the MoD could choose to organise its armed forces as a whole, and not just its equipmentbased planning, on a capability rather than an environment basis. The MoD recently divided defence into thirty-six or so capability programme areas, many of which cross single-service frontiers. The single services as such could be wound up and the uniformed armed forces re-organised around these capability areas. This would be a massive organisational change, which would pose significant risks to the morale element of UK fighting power. It is not going to happen. But the MoD cannot simply ignore the logical tensions between simultaneously planning its armed forces on a capability and on an environmental service basis. Some changes should be considered at least in the personnel sections of the armed forces to allow equipment sponsor staff in particular to act as well as think in capability terms without having to worry about the impact of such behaviour on their career prospects. Conclusion This chapter suggests that the jointery issue should at least be opened for re-examination. In the past, the MoD has seen joint organisations as improving the performance of UK forces on operations, and as a means of rationalising the peacetime and wartime management of the Ministry’s resources. By reducing unnecessary duplication of function and by running training and other bodies on a larger ‘defence-wide scale’, the MoD has sought to improve the efficiency with which it uses its resources. Although the defence secretary said repeatedly that

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he wants the armed forces to form one of the three pillars of future defence, and although the services currently resemble three separate pillars, the SDSR failed to look at the operation of joint bodies, or consider whether they should be expanded or rolled back as part of the overall effort to optimise the capability derived from the resources available. There is also the question of the reconciliation of structures intended to deliver capability management with the management of the individual services, and of the apparent need to align the strength of the Capability Sponsor with its domain of accountability. The issue of the possible further integration of the single services is far from the only organisational matter to be addressed after the SDSR. It is necessary to consider the wider definition of ‘purple’ (joint) bodies within the MoD to include the relative responsibilities of the civil servants, military personnel and the role of the private sector, in both the generation and delivery of capability. The government also aspires to generate a much more coherent, crossgovernment approach to security matters, with a range of ministries working well together under the direction of the National Security Council. But it would not appear that the UK yet has the optimum balance between single-service identities and areas of autonomy on the one hand, and ‘team defence’ and capability management on the other. This chapter has sought to show that the movement towards greater service co-ordination and integration has deep roots; that evolution appears to have halted; and that there are significant areas that are at least worthy of debate.

THE SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP AND THE BRITISH ARMY Antulio J Echevarria II How committed is the UK to the ‘special relationship’? The shape of the British Army will tell. Official statements and opinion polls suggest that the special relationship is still politically and strategically important to the United Kingdom. The Ministry of Defence’s Green Paper of 2010, Adaptability and Partnership, highlighted Britain’s partnership with the United States as its most important bilateral relationship, and the more recent Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR) reinforced it.1 This view was underscored several times by Britain’s Secretary of State for Defence Dr Liam Fox, as well as a number of general officers in a series of public speeches aimed at framing some of the most pressing issues for the new government’s strategic reassessment. At the same time, the Green Paper, the SDSR, and more than a few scholars and defence analysts also suggested that the United Kingdom should consider whether another ‘potential first partner of choice’ could offer ‘opportunity for even greater cooperation.’2 Added to this, while the majority of the British public presumably believes the United States is ‘Britain’s most important ally’, it also feels ‘pessimistic about the state of the alliance and its future.’3 Political rhetoric and media hype notwithstanding, it is clear that the special relationship is not to be taken for granted.4 In an era of domestic and international change, a comprehensive strategic reassessment is not only to be expected: it is healthy. Changes in political leadership on both sides of the Atlantic, a realignment of strategic priorities from Iraq to Afghanistan, and an increase in

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budgetary pressures due in no small part to the repercussions of economic recession ought, at a minimum, to prompt a relook of strategic priorities. The transatlantic partnership has endured crises over nuclear weapons co-operation in the late 1940s, the Suez Canal in the 1950s, the Skybolt programme in the 1960s, the Falklands war and the US intervention in Grenada in the 1980s and severe handwringing regarding the Balkan wars in the 1990s. And it has done so, presumably, because the benefits of the relationship are more than unilateral.5 If that remains true, it should survive for some time yet, though perhaps less as an ‘unseemly knee-bending allegiance to the White House’ than as something perhaps closer in character to ‘the candid friend, the best friend’ relationship Prime Minister David Cameron described.6 Nonetheless, generous doses of soothing rhetoric can, as often as not, mask incremental efforts to give oneself distance in a relationship. And that is worth at least some concern. From an American perspective, British debates regarding potential realignment in a ‘multipolar world’, however understandable, expose the reality of underlying tensions with regard to the nature and extent of Britain’s commitment to the special relationship. The military dimension of that relationship is of particular concern to Americans, precisely because the world does indeed appear to be entering a ‘postUS’ moment. How long that moment might last is anyone’s guess. Historically, the military dimension of the special relationship has been its most essential pillar. It is worth noting that all the crises mentioned earlier had the military pillar in common. Today the United Kingdom ranks among those precious few modern states capable of projecting and sustaining credible military force. Put simply, were the United States to lose such a ‘best friend’, particularly at a time when its own influence is being overtly and covertly challenged on multiple fronts, the effect would be severe. With that sort of leverage in mind, one sure way for the United Kingdom to signal a substantive commitment to the special relationship – should it wish to do so – would be by maintaining a credible ground force in any theatre, and the attendant capability to sustain

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that force long enough to achieve the desired political objectives. The distribution of defence cuts articulated in the recent SDSR are likely to be seen as a strong signal of commitment by America’s political and military leadership. It shows, for one thing, a willingness to share the risks and costs of putting forces on the ground in crisis situations in pursuit of our common interests. This is important because the decision to commit ground forces is not taken lightly in either the United States or the United Kingdom. The Western reputation for aversion to casualties has long been misunderstood, and much more has been made of it than is warranted.7 Still, the truth is that in many places lives do matter, and the uncomfortable corollary for Western democracies is that casualties, both military and civilian, will make headlines. These, in turn, will quickly give rise to thorny questions about policy aims, and the apparent costs of achieving them. This was, of course, one of the reasons it was so difficult for the United States to agree to commit ground troops in the Kosovo campaign in 1999 whereas, interestingly, the United Kingdom had come to that realisation much earlier. Other types of military power are also undeniably essential. The virtues of a balanced force, of ‘jointness’ (or jointery), need not be extolled to an audience already well schooled in them. In short, nothing complements a military service that is superior in one dimension of warfare better than the support of military services capable of claiming superiority in the other dimensions. It makes little sense to have a world-class army, in other words, if one’s navy and air force are hollow. Moreover, there is usually more than one way to achieve desired strategic ends, and certainly not every crisis requires the commitment of land forces. Nonetheless, what constitutes ‘balance’ in military capabilities is ultimately subjective. The ‘eye of the beholder’ counts for more here than anyone else’s when it comes to seeing balance in defence capabilities. Achieving balance is a Pyrrhic victory if it means fundamental capabilities are lost with regard to taking control of, or providing security for, people and places on land; that sort of victory will lead only to strategic

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inflexibility. The SDSR looks to avoid cutting any core capability entirely, and appears to accept risk with regard to time – that the UK will have enough of it to reconstitute certain capabilities in the event of a crisis. While that cannot be known, what is known is the range of missions that military forces must execute, and the fact that the majority of them are labour intensive.8 On this point, however, the Future Character of Conflict document really does a fine job of laying out the essential broad categories for contemporary missions: standing overseas commitment and contingency operations overseas; humanitarian assistance and disaster relief; evacuation of British citizens overseas, peacekeeping, peace enforcement, military assistance to stabilisation and development, power projection, focused intervention, and deliberate intervention.9 Although the doctrinal names of these mission sets have changed over time, they are basically the same as those which ground troops have been performing since before the end of the Cold War. It is also obvious that contemporary militaries will need to execute such missions whether the wars in which they do so are dubbed regular or irregular, conventional or unconventional. During the Cold War, militaries were larger, while the operations themselves were necessarily more limited.10 What is missing from this otherwise excellent mission analysis, however, is a description of the two basic types of intervention and their implications for force structure. Type I interventions are those in which circumstances are such that the risk of escalation is low or nil. Partly, this is because the crisis is politically or geographically isolated; but also it is because the political objectives in these cases can be achieved with either deliberate and decisive or quick punitive actions. Examples of Type I crises would include Panama in 1989–90 (Operation Just Cause) and Iraq in 1998 (Operation Desert Fox). Type II interventions are those in which the potential for vertical or lateral escalation is moderate to high.11 Simply put, vertical escalation is the use of weapons of increasingly greater destructive power; whereas lateral escalation is defined by expansion of the conflict to

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neighbouring states, or the involvement of other parties (including violent non-state actors) in the fighting. The intervention in Iraq in 2003 was a Type II conflict; however, US leadership in general anticipated that it would be a Type I crisis. The risk of escalation was judged to be minimal or nonexistent. Yet events proved otherwise. Various insurgent groups, criminal gangs and terrorist organisations, many with the backing of powerful states, joined the fighting, and did so for a range of reasons. The means used by insurgents and other groups did not escalate anywhere near the level of weapons of mass destruction; but, unquestionably, the many improvised explosive devices and other techniques became ever more destructive as civilians and military personnel were ruthlessly targeted. Despite some genuine constraints early on regarding the ability of military formations to deploy into the Iraq theatre of operations, it is also clear that traditional precautions for hedging against uncertainty – particularly, the positioning of forces in reserve and in sufficient quantity to provide security – were downplayed. Among the reasons for this was the desire to validate a decade of theories which claimed, in short, that knowledge, speed and precision would enable smaller forces to accomplish more. The days of putting large numbers of forces on the ground to preclude escalation, or at least continuation, of the conflict were purportedly over. That was industrial-age warfare; this was the information age. Mass was now an anachronism. Afghanistan is essentially a Type II conflict as well, at least for the time being, because it is extremely difficult to isolate the conflict and prevent insurgent forces from withdrawing into Pakistan and reconstituting. After years of fighting in both Iraq and Afghanistan, it should be clear that Type II conflicts pose special challenges that require concerted allied or coalition efforts and relatively large, wellsupported ground forces from the start. Despite all best efforts, it will not always be possible to preclude or avoid escalation – to prevent Type I crises from becoming Type II. At times, the decision to escalate, or to ‘surge’, will originate with us; at times, it will not. For that reason, intervention forces need to have the ability not only

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to get into a crisis, but also the wherewithal to maintain a credible presence to remain in theatre for as long as circumstances require. That includes having the muscle to bring about the conditions necessary to facilitate exit. This, in turn, means not only sustainable combat forces with optimal rotation cycles, but also headquarters and command structures capable of conducting actual campaign planning. Campaign planning and practical integration and coordination cannot be done without a functioning higher-level command structure and trained officers. A growing body of literature suggests that the optimal rotation cycle is six months in theatre followed by twenty-four months in recovery and retraining.12 To get that kind of cycle requires a 5:1 unit ratio. It would seem that the SDSR acknowledges the above, though British Army experts are, rightly, only cautiously optimistic at this point. From an American perspective, the ideal force configuration for addressing such crises is one that would enable a British division to plug into a US corps. Or, in smaller crisis situations it would suffice to have a British brigade that could plug into a US division. In this light, the campaigns in Basra and Helmand are less significant as tactical lessons than they are as evidence of the need to participate with a sizable and sustainable force. For British defence policy to repeat the mistakes that underpinned American strategic thinking during the era would be a waste and a pity. A few words of advice from one ‘best friend’ to another: Do not sacrifice staying power for precision and speed; do not give up effectiveness for efficiency. You will only pay more in blood and treasure in the end. Given all this, with Britain’s SDSR already released, the pertinent question remains: how will the guidelines it has laid out on paper play out in the months and years ahead? Will the government continue to move in the direction of strengthening the ability of British ground forces to deploy, and to maintain an enduring presence in places such as Afghanistan? Or will intra-service rivalries force the desired outcome to be compromised? In short, it is one thing to ‘frame’

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strategic issues in speeches, articles and strategy documents, and quite another to carry them through against stubborn resistance. It is worth keeping in mind, therefore, that there is no getting around the fact that crisis resolution often requires taking control of, or providing security for, people and places on land. In the case of Kosovo, the decision to commit ground forces essentially broke the deadlock before the troops themselves even arrived. But that is rare. The scenarios that played out in Iraq and Afghanistan are more likely. The critical issue is the range of flexibility that ground forces provide any government in the event of a strategic crisis; but the forces must be credible and capable of intervention. Currently, the United Kingdom is one of the few Western nations that can deploy and sustain military forces at the brigade and division level, though analysts rightly point out areas where improvement is needed. The proposed Transformational Army Structures (TAS) programme looks promising as a way of improving and maintaining that capability. The concept of five modular or multi-role brigades,plus supporting logistics and artillery brigades capable of being organised around two divisional headquarters is enormously appealing. Added to that is the additional flexibility afforded by the division-size Early Effect Force. Such capabilities would send a strong signal to friends and enemies alike that the ‘deputy sheriff’ is still in town.13 They would also enable the United Kingdom to continue to influence multinational operations, which would in turn prove useful in securing British interests in a dynamic, multipolar world. The tone in the London press tends to obscure the fact that the British military is well respected, especially by American soldiers and officers. It is uniquely positioned to lead multinational operations, including the command and control of military forces from multiple nations. However, while many in the British Army are cautiously optimistic about the outcome of the SDSR, it is not clear that the TAS (and the flexibility it provides) can become a reality given the strains of the ongoing campaign in Afghanistan. The public’s appetite for intervention will come and go, as well it should; but there will

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be crises regardless. Some will be Type II crises. It has never been possible to predict the nature of a future crisis with any degree of certainty, but it has always been possible to forecast the need for certain capabilities. Knowing the types of missions that military forces will have to perform, and providing a real capability to execute them, is the best way to hedge against wider uncertainty. To be sure, there are risks inherent in committing ground forces in crisis situations. However, that turns the very decision to create or retain ground forces capable of being committed into a powerful statement about a government’s willingness to put its political capital on the line. But, again, which direction will the new British administration take? Official press accounts indicate the ‘special relationship’ is still more or less intact.14 More importantly, the ‘hard choices’ that came out of the SDSR process suggest that the relationship truly is to be given more consideration rather than less.

REDEFINING THE MILITARY’S ROLE IN DOMESTIC SECURITY Mark Phillips When the Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR) was published, commentators noted a disconnection between it and the National Security Strategy. One area that illustrated this was the government’s failure to redefine the military’s role in the homeland context. While the National Security Strategy prioritised terrorism within UK borders (notwithstanding upstream work) and severe civil contingencies affecting UK territory as two of the four Tier 1 risks, these did not drive the planning assumptions and capability requirements in SDSR. At present it is unlikely that civil authorities and other departments and agencies will be able to deal with each of these risks by themselves. It is also unclear whether they will be able to deal with them even after any process of up-skilling over the medium and longer term. Yet despite the revised military tasks paying lip service to the need for greater military involvement in defending the UK and supporting civil emergency organisations in times of crisis, the final policy proposals represented mere tinkering, with calls for ‘improved links’ between specialist military units and the police, and the greater involvement of ‘defence specialists’ in an enhanced Cabinet Office crisis management organisation. These initiatives were a far cry from Conservative Party commitments in opposition to establish a military homeland command and put in place a dedicated regular force contribution to homeland security and resilience tasks. Despite going to some length to explain the purpose of strategy as linking ‘ends’, ‘ways’ and ‘means’ and prioritising activities –

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implying that the result of SDSR was ‘strategic’ – the government itself recognised that this was not the case. The National Security Strategy noted that ‘it has been essential to prioritise risks in order to prioritise capabilities. That does not automatically mean greater resources are allocated to the higher priority risks. But it does indicate where particular effort must be made to prevent or mitigate risks.’1 The SDSR was inevitably (and perhaps understandably) skewed by the need to achieve success in ongoing operations in Afghanistan. It arguably postponed key strategic choices and decisions until 2015 as a result, including those about the military’s homeland role. The challenge going forward will be to make the Review and related force structures and capabilities more consistent with the National Security Strategy. There is, however, clear reluctance amongst the professional defence and security community to fundamentally rethink and redefine the role of the military in helping achieve domestic security and resilience. A survey conducted just after the publication of the SDSR asked whether it ‘should have done more to emphasise the role of the armed forces in homeland defence, even at the expense of other capabilities’: 49 per cent of the respondents disagreed, 39 per cent agreed, and 12 per cent ‘did not know’.2 This implies one or both of two things: that much greater examination and explanation of the risks likely to be encountered on British territory is required, matched against the capabilities of civil authorities, or that progress is hampered by Home Office over-protectiveness of the civil lead and Ministry of Defence (MoD) over-defensiveness of its expeditionary mandate and concern about possible raids on the defence budget. The government has yet to address these problems. Instead, the SDSR reinforced the existing framework for the military contribution to homeland security provided by ‘Military Aid to the Civil Authority’ (MACA). However, MACA and the related compendium of capabilities that the MoD can offer for domestic counter-terrorism and resilience tasks have often been overtaken by events such as foot and mouth disease, flooding disasters and strikes. It is also very likely that they – and associated legal constraints for

Redefining the Military’s Role in Domestic Security 197 the deployment of the military within the UK – would be overtaken should non-state actors employ military-level capabilities and tactics (albeit on a smaller scale) as were seen in the November 2008 Mumbai attacks. This is not to suggest that the military has not contributed to homeland tasks: it has undertaken operations that were unexpected and for which it was therefore unprepared, and at times when it was overstretched. But this situation is far from adequate: greater certainty is needed for each of the armed services, other relevant departments and the emergency services, with resulting implications for planning, command and control and training. MACA also does not recognise fully other ‘softer’ functions of the armed forces (for example, their role in training and doctrine development and their contribution to non-quantifiable tasks such as the government’s Prevent strategy which aims to counter radicalisation. The government needs to think more creatively about the future role and capabilities that the MoD can – and should – contribute to homeland security. The Strategic Context and Existing MACA Framework The ‘Military Assistance to the Civil Authorities’ framework is subdivided into: Military Aid to the Civil Power (MACP) which comprises the use of armed service personnel to aid the civil power in maintaining law and order and enforcing the law; Military Assistance to Government Departments (MAGD), which is the use of armed forces personnel to ensure the continued provision of essential services; and Military Assistance to the Civil Community (MACC), which is the military contribution to emergency assistance and special events. The framework has always rested on the assumption that the military contribution should be subordinate and supplementary rather than pivotal.3 It emphasises the significant constraints on the ability to use the armed forces at home and the difficulties in applying general military training and knowledge for domestic tasks. The legal basis for MACA is quite ponderous (if not onerous) and in some instances does not necessarily provide adequate direction

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or guidance. The deployment of the military within the UK requires authorisation: under Section 2 of the Emergency Powers Act 1964 by two members of the Defence Council on the same day, which has been used for all major crises; under Part 2 of the Civil Contingencies Act 2003, which has not been used to date, but allows a senior minister to issue emergency regulations; or under the system of common law. It can be argued that the last does not provide sufficient guidance to the armed forces on how to act. Recently, attempts have been made to speed up deployment times by pre-authorising the movement of certain units and equipment, but their actual use still requires ministerial approval. The net result is three-fold: the military primarily contributes guaranteed, specific niche capabilities that are unique and beyond the capacity of civil authorities, unless the need to act is urgent and there is an immediate lack of civilian resources; the law requires the active approval of ministers when additional capabilities and manpower are used to augment civil authorities, and only after all other options have been examined (including mutual aid); and the military has struggled to be properly integrated into domestic planning, most notably for the 2012 Olympic Games. In practice, however, the assumption that the military should always be – and always is – subordinate and supplementary, rather than pivotal, has not held true in every instance. There have been occasions in which the military contribution may have been de jure subordinate to civilians and supplementary, but de facto anything but. Examples include cover for the fire service strike in 2002, when the military provided the entire service, and the response to the 2001 foot and mouth outbreak, when the capacity of government departments was completely overwhelmed. More recent events such as the Gloucestershire floods of 2007 involved the military in a more traditional manner in increasing the logistical capacity of the emergency services – but the military was in the lead until the police and others had reached a sufficient level of capability, even if this was achieved in a relatively short space of time.

Redefining the Military’s Role in Domestic Security 199 As the nature of threats and hazards continues to evolve, the importance of being able to deploy and employ military capabilities in a timely manner, as well as their ability to operate effectively with civilian counterparts, increases. It is likely that the scale and frequency of natural disasters will increase over the next decade. In relation to terrorism, the MoD’s internal Future Character of Conflict4 work (although not always accepted during the course of SDSR, particularly in the Cabinet Office) argued that non-state actors will be capable of employing military-style capabilities and tactics and innovating to exploit UK vulnerabilities. It gave the example of the 2008 Mumbai attacks, which involved more than ten co-ordinated shooting and bombing incidents and assaults that overwhelmed the civil authorities. According to press reports in December 2009 and October 2010, this style of attack has been a significant risk to the UK. The UK is also hosting (and will continue to want to host) a number of very demanding international events which will interface with different threats and hazards, and for which the emergency services and other agencies do not have sufficient numbers to secure. The Future Character of Conflict document called for the role of the military in homeland security and consequence management to be reviewed and publicly concluded that ‘at home, Military Assistance to the Civil Authorities, such as that being planned for the 2012 Olympics, is more likely to be required than is currently envisaged’.5 It is therefore worth exploring what additional capabilities the military should provide on a more certain basis, and how they should be used. Balancing Homeland and Expeditionary Demands The armed forces currently provide guaranteed, small-scale niche capabilities that civil authorities cannot be expected to develop (at least on a significant scale). These include counter-Improvised Explosive Device, CBRNE6 detection and clearing capabilities, special forces in respect of counter-terrorism and air interdiction. In addition, the MoD provides a number of ‘services’ including search and rescue, fisheries protection, mine countermeasures and policing of certain

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parts of the critical national infrastructure (CNI). The key questions looking ahead are twofold. First, whether the capabilities usually provided in extremis, such as logistics support, crisis management expertise, engineering skills, communications and command and control infrastructure, should be guaranteed. Second, whether the military should provide ‘critical mass’ in certain domestic crises and, in some instances, even take the lead. The challenge is balancing the competing demands of different homeland and overseas tasks. This is more difficult in the context of current (large-scale) operations in Afghanistan, which are expected to continue in significant numbers until at least 2015,7 and the process of cuts in each of the services which will start to have effect in the next financial planning round. Beyond 2015, a key priority for the MoD will be to rebalance the armed forces and restore contingency. The appetite for expeditionary operations, stabilisation, and counterinsurgency in particular, remains unclear. Antulio Echevarria argues in this volume that maintaining a credible and sizable ground force is a signal of the UK’s commitment to the ‘special relationship’,8 and the outcomes of the SDSR suggest that the government has accepted the need for land forces of a certain size to be able to undertake mediumscale enduring operations and, at a push, a large-scale divisional effort. However, the government has also indicated a desire to shift towards preventative activities which will involve a smaller footprint abroad, albeit over longer time periods than current operations. The latter could facilitate a greater military contribution to homeland security and resilience, but as options are developed for the Future Force 20209 an increase in personnel numbers for each of the services should not be ruled out; current SDSR force projections are only likely to based on tasks abroad, and the government will at some stage have to consider the implications of homeland tasks for the size of the armed forces. This contribution should be drawn from each of the three services, not just from the army as is commonly assumed. Ultimately it will be a political decision about where the balance is struck between home and abroad. In the years running up to 2015,

Redefining the Military’s Role in Domestic Security 201 the MoD will only be able to make a more limited contribution. In addition to current standing tasks, the focus in the domestic context (including for the Olympic Games) should be on providing: • Training and Logistic Support to the Civil Power. This is an existing activity under MACP, but probably underrated and under-utilised. It has the potential to significantly increase the capacity and capability of civil organisations and should cover the development of doctrine and tactics, techniques and procedures, exercising, the use of ranges and simulators, and the provision of engineering expertise in times of crisis • Consolidating maritime and waterway protection • A response for unique threats, and in particular the military component of the response to Mumbai-style attacks in different parts of the country. The size and nature of the military contribution for the latter, including whether it is high readiness and provides the lead, will vary depending on the intelligence picture and level of capability of the local police force. The Metropolitan Police, for example, is trained to a much higher standard of firearms use than most other forces and would probably be able to contain the threat, allowing the military to deploy in a supporting capacity over a longer period of time. Current government proposals to up-skill police around the country will, however, take a while during which time an interim solution must be found. They are also are unlikely to be successful; most police forces lack sufficient mass to be able to achieve or maintain the requisite level of capability. Mass is only likely to be achieved through the merger of the Civil Nuclear Constabulary and Ministry of Defence Police (given their higher levels of firearms training than most police forces and footprint across the country) to form a national CNI police force and a national response capability for unconventional terrorism, including Mumbaistyle attacks and chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear events. In determining the military contribution to Mumbai-

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Over the longer term, and as the armed forces are re-balanced, there is scope for looking at a greater guaranteed contribution by also: •

Integrating the military into the National Risk Assessment process. Currently the MoD just takes account of the process and related planning assumptions. The military should earmark or develop capabilities/skills for those risks in the process which are identified as high impact and high probability, but for which the country remains in a poor state of preparation and readiness because civil authorities remain unable to respond to them effectively. These risks are likely to include bio-terrorism (the military already provides certain levels of support but this should be reviewed), major disruption to energy infrastructure and large-scale flooding. The difficulty from the point of view of many within government is that of predicting when natural events will happen. However, it is possible to know where natural disruptions are most likely to occur and, when this is combined with shorter-range intelligence and information, factor likelihood into the availability of local units (by correlating this against the rotation, deployment and harmony guideline cycles) • Unless the police service has been able to develop sufficient firearms and chemical, biological and nuclear capabilities, requiring the military to provide a larger response to these threats • Increasing the engineering and infrastructure skills base of the military, including providing communications infrastructure in large-scale emergencies • Requiring the military to provide a command and control capability when planned responses have been disrupted or

Redefining the Military’s Role in Domestic Security 203 destroyed, including emergency service Gold, Silver and Bronze arrangements10 and providing training and logistic advice to these structures • Revisiting the cuts to ISTAR assets in the SDSR, including investing in unmanned aerial vehicles, and deploying these in support of the civil authorities (which do not tend to have sufficient numbers of these assets).11 In many instances, the armed forces and their assets will need to be deployed as quickly as possible, particularly as the scale and frequency of risks increases. While the pre-authorised deployment and movement of assets is a welcome step, it probably does not go far enough, as their actual use still requires ministerial authorisation. But in fast-moving situations where a comprehensive picture of what is happening is unlikely to be available to senior decision-makers for some time, this could hamper the response. The existing situation also runs contrary to the ‘mission command’ approach of the armed forces, which is to delegate authority to the lowest possible level. The police, who continue to elevate decisions up to the highest command level through the Gold, Silver and Bronze structure, have not adopted a mission command approach and this arguably goes some way towards explaining events such as the Stockwell shooting. So the constitutional, political and legal frameworks for the use of the military in UK operations should be reviewed to become more flexible. There is also scope for reviewing what the manpower balance should be between regular and reserve forces in the military contribution to homeland tasks, including whether reserves can be held at higher levels of readiness or already have certain specialist skills which can be utilised. Organising the Military for Homeland Tasks Following the 2001 foot and mouth outbreak, 2002 fire strike and 2007 floods, emergency services and others called for greater certainty about what the military could contribute and when. This

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is still lacking. But their call was not just for a list of capabilities that might be available; it reflected a wider misgiving about the lack of military involvement in joint training, exercising and command and control with civil authorities. This is important not just to improve the technical capacity of the different organisations to work together by helping ensure commonality in key enablers such as logistics, connectivity and information systems, and organisation – otherwise known as interoperability – but also to develop a culture of operating together and information sharing. The latter can be referred to as interoperating; it is necessary to achieve the promise that technical solutions provide and is influenced by personal relations, laws, customs, training, exercising and doctrine. There is a general assumption that technical interoperability is of most concern and difficulty, but solutions are and will be available to solve most technical interoperability problems provided there is the political and organisational will to do so. The existing regional brigade structure which underpins the military contribution is, however, primarily geared towards liaison with the emergency services and other departments – including making civil authorities fully aware of MACA principles and the limitations of armed forces required to support homeland tasks – rather than on integrating the military with them. A system of joint regional liaison officers operates within the area boundaries defined by the army’s regional brigade structure. They scope requests for military assistance before submitting them to the MoD and act as the link with civil authorities. Where they cannot have frequent contact with civil organisations as a result of distance, commanding officers of military units within the region can support them by acting as military liaison officers. Joint regional liaison officers are additionally supported by Royal Navy and Royal Air Force specialist advice. The quality of contact between these officers and civil authorities has varied, though all were brought together through Government Offices of the Regions, Regional Resilience Forums and Local Resilience Forums. The coalition government has, however,

Redefining the Military’s Role in Domestic Security 205 decided to disband the regional government offices and, along with them, the Regional Resilience Forums. As a result of the SDSR, the army will also lose two regional brigade headquarters. The Civil Contingencies Secretariat will want to ensure that residual resilience functions are rehoused in locations consistent with locations of the army’s five multi-role brigade headquarters. The Office for Security and Counter Terrorism will likewise want to ensure this when relocating the residual counter-terrorism functions from the old government offices, such as CBRN and CNI protection. The focus of joint regional liaison officers going forward should be on integrating local military units into exercise and training programmes. Joint regional liaison officers are currently given some strategic and policy direction by the Directorate of Counter Terrorism and UK Operations in the MoD. This directorate also provides a ‘secretariat’ function, supporting ministerial decisions and owning the MACA framework. Operational direction to military units (when approved) is nominally the responsibility of the commander-in-chief land and land command, acting as the standing joint commander and command (respectively). However, operational command actually remains with each single-service commander in chief of the contributing forces, notwithstanding commander-in-chief land’s coordinating function. In addition, the SDSR announced that there would be greater involvement of ‘defence specialists’ in an enhanced Cabinet Office crisis management organisation; it is not clear how this will interface with the Directorate for Counter Terrorism and UK Operations or Land Command. While greater defence expertise in the centre is welcome for the purposes of quicker military involvement in crisis management, improving links between the Cabinet Office and MoD Directorate and integrating the military into the National Risk Assessment, the landscape is complicated. And particularly as other agencies develop national tasking and co-ordination bodies – such as the National Crime Agency for the police – there is a good argument for revisiting the Conservative Party’s original proposal for a triservice military command, along the Permanent Joint Headquarters

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(PJHQ) model but on a smaller scale, for homeland defence and security. This command would: • Act as a single focus for operational demands on the armed forces for homeland roles • Allow easier integration with central government departments/ agencies and tasking of regional structures and local units • Provide a single focus for developing command and control mechanisms at the operational and tactical levels • Identify acquisition, doctrine and training requirements for homeland defence and security. This would have implications for the role and status of the single-service chiefs and commanders in chief. The secretary of state for defence already announced his intention to create an ‘armed forces pillar’, which raises the question of to what extent the single services will be treated as a collective (joint) entity in budgetary and capability terms.12 The MoD itself proposed ‘looking at how we could restructure the senior planning and decision-making processes to ensure they fully reflect operational demands, including by enhancing the authority of the chief of joint operations’.13 The Levene Review and Defence Reform Unit should look at this. A situation could be imagined where the single services become force providers for two joint commands (PJHQ and a homeland command), concentrating on personnel and training and operational readiness, rather than having semi-operational responsibilities. The ‘Soft Power’ Value of Defence at Home Recently, however, the assumption has been made that the armed forces should have a minimal UK footprint – at least in terms of deployment or participation in UK operations – to ensure they do not contribute to the drivers (and therefore level) of radicalisation in the country. There is no direct evidence that a greater military footprint would have this effect; operations abroad might receive a negative reaction at home but this reflects a broader problem with the lack of

Redefining the Military’s Role in Domestic Security 207 debate or explanation of government policy rather than hospitality to the armed forces per se, and could be changed by greater community engagement on the part of the military, departments and agencies to foster societal understanding about their role (if not greater societal support). The lack of a homeland function goes some way towards detaching the armed forces further from communities. The biggest terrorist-related risk at the moment is not penetration of the UK by terrorists from abroad, but radicalisation within the UK, and the armed forces can in fact make a valuable contribution to countering the radicalisation process. Much controversy has surrounded the government’s Prevent strategy. In opposition, the coalition government supported the overall intention of Prevent but criticised its focus, scope, implementation and delivery. It was particularly critical of the conflation of cohesion and integration activities with crime prevention and counter-terrorism efforts, with the latter two tending to taint the good name of the first. The government’s review of Prevent is ongoing, but is likely to recommend refocusing the strategy on those individuals most at risk of being radicalised or those individuals for whom there is evidence they are being radicalised. The intention would be to intervene in non-criminalising ways and Prevent funding would therefore be used to develop a range of targeted interventions and deradicalisation programmes. These could involve a range of diversionary activities. For example, recent research has found that excitement is an increasingly important part of Al-Qa’ida’s appeal14 and the military would be well placed to challenge this by diverting individuals to (or supporting) activities such as leadership courses and adventurous training weekends. This would make use of existing military skills and training and spare capacity at existing military facilities including buildings, training groups and vehicles. This element of the military contribution to homeland security is under-explored, as most attention has focused on the contribution the armed forces can make to the Pursue, Protect and Prepare strands of the counterterrorism strategy.

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Conclusion The Strategic Defence and Security Review reinforced the existing framework for the military contribution to homeland security. Looking ahead to the future strategic context, this framework and its associated political, cultural, legal and constitutionally aspects are too restrictive. A corollary of this is that it might reinforce the reluctance of other departments and agencies to think about how they can contribute to what are considered ‘traditional’ military tasks abroad, such as the police role in expeditionary interventions and conflict prevention. The borderlines of military and non-military are becoming increasingly blurred but even if government says it has recognised this, this has not been reflected in strategy, policy, capabilities, culture and law. The government needs to think more creatively about the capabilities which the MoD should and can contribute to homeland security and how the armed forces should be structured to make this contribution.

THE CASE FOR THE RAF Eric Grove

It may surprise some, especially in the context of the Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR) and the terrible damage inflicted therein on Britain’s maritime air capabilities, that a specialist in naval warfare with good connections with the Royal Navy should be making the case for the continued existence of the Royal Air Force. Others with maritime loyalties have come out in favour of the abolition of the junior service and the division of relevant assets between the Royal Navy and the British Army.1 It is the contention of this chapter, however, that this would be ill-advised at best, and disastrous at worst. Sadly, the RAF has not done itself – or Britain’s security – many favours over the years with its defensive attitudes towards its monopoly of ‘air power’ and its fixations with particular land-based strike platforms that sit at the heart of its service culture. However, much of this defensiveness and irrationality has resulted from a sense, not entirely unreal, that it was indeed in danger of partition between its older sisters. Only by reassuring the RAF of its continued existence, exploiting its fine history, traditions and ethos and assigning it a set of necessary duties relevant to the current and future strategic situation, can the UK obtain an optimum joint defence posture that makes maximum use of its resources of trained and motivated service personnel. This chapter will consider the reasons for which the RAF was set up and how relevant those factors remain today. It will assess the balance of advantage the UK has gained from having a third service,

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and if those advantages still remain. It will then examine the human factors that affect the possible break up of any major institution. Finally, it will argue for a truly joint approach in which a confident RAF fits its necessary capabilities to work in the closest harmony with the other services to produce an appropriate and affordable defence policy. The Emergence of an Independent Air Force Air policy in the First World War was a mess, reflecting the basic conflict between the unity of aviation that covers both land and sea, and the requirements of the surface services for a dedicated aviation component. The Asquith government had tried to mediate this by creating a federal Royal Flying Corps (RFC) with central institutions but Naval and Military wings subordinate to the Admiralty and War Office. How this institutional framework would have developed in peacetime as what we would now call a joint organisation is unknown. The signs are co-operation between the two wings would have remained close. The outbreak of war, however, led to the two wings following different paths. The Military Wing was totally absorbed in supporting the British Expeditionary Force. This allowed the Naval Wing, supported by First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill, to pursue a wider agenda. Already called the Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS), it was a proto-air force with its own ranks (some of which still survive in today’s RAF), its own cap badge (still used by RAF officers), and roles connected with the air defence of the United Kingdom that had little, if anything, to do with naval warfare: the RNAS was responding to the rapidly evolving technical dynamics of air power. Its aircraft carried out the world’s first strategic bombing raids. It is clear that the members of the RNAS, with their own system of seniority separate from the mainstream Royal Navy’s, regarded themselves as a race apart. The fall of Churchill caused the Admiralty to re-absorb the Air Department as an integral part of the navy. Oddly this did little to interest the Admiralty (as opposed to the Grand Fleet) in

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the development of a ‘fleet air arm’. Instead, the Admiralty tried to develop its own private air force while maintaining maximum naval bureaucratic control. The RNAS airmen chafed under greater control by those they regarded as ignorant conservatives. Moreover, inter-departmental problems proliferated over aircraft procurement and allocation. Attempts by the Cabinet to set up co-ordinating institutions foundered. The Admiralty, more interested in enhancing the blockade with strategic bombing than giving the Grand Fleet air support, hid aircraft away from the army behind the French lines. This quarrelling might have been sustainable until the defects in Britain’s air defences (that had developed into a bifurcated affair between involving the two wings, depending on whether the enemy was flying over land or sea) were shown up by the German Gotha bomber raids in 1917. Something had to be done. A new Air Ministry was set up and all aircraft combined in the new Royal Air Force. This reflected a basic strategic truth. The advent of effective long-range aircraft meant that Britain needed an air force as much as it needed a navy. A powerful continental air power could threaten a decisive attack against the heart of the Empire that might be much more rapid in its effect than a maritime blockade. An air force devoted primarily to air defence and offence was now as important as the Royal Navy. By the end of the war, the vital utility of aircraft as part of operations on land and at sea had been proven. The pressure of financial stringency led to serious suggestions to do away with the new air institutions. For a time, the War and Air portfolios were combined in the hands of Churchill. Perhaps partly for this reason the RAF developed a culture based more on that of the Military Wing of the RFC than the naval. This was also helped by the appointment of Trenchard as chief of air staff. The ‘Father of the Royal Air Force’, who had commanded the RFC in France, underwent a ‘Road to Damascus’ conversion on the merits of strategic bombing. The RAF used this threat to survive. The wartime struggle over the creation of a fleet air arm continued in a new context. After a bitter battle

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that did nothing for good inter-departmental relations in Whitehall, a dedicated Fleet Air Arm (FAA) of the Royal Air Force was duly created in 1924 under an uneasy system of dual control. Playing on the very real fears of catastrophic air attack on British cities, the RAF eventually prospered. By the late 1930s, Britain’s basic defence priorities were clear – air and sea, with ground forces a poor third. The RAF became so large that it could – albeit reluctantly – allow the navy to take over the FAA completely. This inter-war investment in sea and air power saved national independence. The navy meant the Germans could not invade; the RAF prevented a successful campaign of coercion from the air. The Battle of Britain in 1940 demonstrates which services are truly vital to national security. The development of Fighter Command, it is true, was regarded by the mainstream of the RAF as a diversion from the proper offensive use of air power. Nevertheless it is likely that, in the absence of an air service, inter-service wrangling over who should provide defensive capability – when and where – would have prevented the development of what was the only real air defence system in the world. The creation of this system was a condition for both the British declaration of war on Germany in 1939 and Britain’s protection from effective daylight bombing in 1940. On the other hand, Churchill’s indulgence in the RAF’s ambitions to use Bomber Command to win the Second World War on its own was an expensive failure. Aircraft mainly contributed to victory as part of joint and combined campaigns. Nevertheless, it was an independent air offensive, carried out by the US Army Air Forces, that decisively defeated the Luftwaffe in early 1944, a necessary prelude to the Normandy landings. The advent of nuclear weapons gave strategic bombing a new lease of life, but this was challenged by the takeover of the nuclear deterrent role by the Royal Navy in the 1960s. This caused perhaps the fundamental role of the RAF to disappear. The RAF’s refusal to accept a joint carrier-based limited war role, and instead to take the offensive against the navy’s carriers to safeguard an independent ‘island stance’ for its tactical strike aircraft, caused further strains in inter-

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service relations and an unfortunate reduction in carrier capability. In the end, ‘Flexible Response’s’ need for tactical air superiority, strategic air defence and long-range tactical strike provided a safe environment for the RAF. Post-Cold War, however, most of the RAF is concerned with operations in support of the other two services. The intimacy of this relationship has fuelled the new debate on the RAF’s institutional independence. The RAF after the SDSR The problems created by a narrow minded, overly defensive RAF have been dramatically shown in the SDSR: the preference for the obsolescent Tornado over the more flexible modernised Harrier; the inexplicable advice that Tornado was better than Harrier in Afghanistan despite clear evidence to the contrary; the cancellation of Nimrod; and the premature withdrawal of Sentinel. Harrier, Nimrod and Sentinel were intimately connected with joint operations. Keeping the ‘independent’ Tornado and scrapping the other platforms, despite the huge negative joint impact, forestalled any argument that the navy and army should partition the RAF. Maritime and army co-operation systems in this mindset are as much a threat to a vulnerable RAF as they are vital to the operations of the other two services. Paranoia has some strange results. Yet partition would create perhaps greater problems than those posed by its threat and the sectarian RAF response to it. What would be the architecture of partition? Transport aircraft, both fixed and rotary winged, would presumably go to the army. This would, however, leave the question of the navy’s transport helicopters. Retain a joint force perhaps? Then there is Typhoon. Although expensive, it provides both an air-to-air and, now, an air-to-ground capability that will remain useful in a wide range of scenarios. Adequate air-to-air capability is still important for the most basic reasons of national defence. The regular interception once or twice a week of Russian Bear and Blackjack aircraft2 approaching the UK in 2010 is a clear demonstration of this.

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The substitution of technology for the navigator provides very useful manpower saving, something that seems to have been forgotten in the preference for Tornado. It is hard to see who would operate Typhoons in the absence of an air force. The problem harks back to the circumstances of the RAF’s creation. The aircraft fly from land bases, so they must be army. But, they operate over the sea – especially in their home defence role – so they must be navy. Who would then operate the radar stations ashore – the army because they are on land or the navy because they look out to sea? This is a recipe for a return to the inter-service wrangles of the First World War. Moreover, putting basic national air defence needs in the hands of those with other priorities would lead to neglect. If one accepts the case for a core capability of national air defence, it makes sense to attach to it other air assets of a broadly ‘strategic’ nature, notably ISTAR,3 heavy lift (both fixed and rotary winged), and in-flight refuelling. Although civil aircraft can be and are used to fly troops to benign sites, military transports with defensive suites are required when opposition is expected. Also, some heavy-lift capability under direct service control provides a level of availability that private chartering (perhaps from politically dubious overseas operators) could not offer. It is entirely appropriate, of course, that the army and navy have their own air assets. The navy in particular operates in such a distinct environment, and is so dependent on air platforms for its effects, that the Fleet Air Arm is an absolutely central part of its overall structure. Yet tensions between the ‘Wafus’ and the ‘Fishheads’ are inevitable,4 and at times FAA fast jet pilots think that their non-airmen colleagues do not fully comprehend the problems of fully exploiting carrierbased air power (see ‘Sharkey’ Ward’s idiosyncratic account of the Falklands War).5 The relatively complacent attitude taken by naval chiefs towards the temporary abolition of carrier strike in the SDSR reinforces this point. This indicates basic problems of service culture, which would affect navy control of all land-based fixed-wing combat air power.

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Equally, it is absolutely vital that the Fleet Air Arm re-acquires some of the planned F-35C Joint Strike Fighter order (the navalised variant) to get the most out of the capability of the aircraft carriers when they reappear, in order to become the most important platforms for the UK’s expeditionary air power. The RAF’s cultural unwillingness to embrace carriers has not been at all helpful. Someone unaware of the traditionally hostile RAF–RN relationship would have been surprised at the hostility of some (but not all) airmen to a programme to give the service new, fifth-generation aircraft and mobile air bases. The preference shown to Tornado rather than Harrier in the SDSR also demonstrates a clear lack of commitment to the carrier role and confirms a most unfortunate lack of good faith in making Joint Force Harrier work. This can only fuel arguments for RAF abolition. The RAF’s counter-productive defensiveness verges on paranoia. Such was clearly stated by a past assistant chief of the air staff in a conference on carrier air power a few years ago. The attempts of the navy and army to destroy the infant RAF were cited in evidence to make one understand the RAF’s reluctance to welcome fully the Joint Force and carrier basing. This self-defeating attitude cannot but be encouraged by calls for RAF abolition. This is unfortunate, as only the Joint Force approach, wholeheartedly adopted by all sides, can create a productive synthesis from the inter-service dialectic. Joint Force Harrier turned out to be a failure because one party to the agreement wanted to subvert it. This must not happen again. At least one F-35C squadron, the one permanently embarked, must be a naval component of a newly created ‘Joint Force 2020’ if the potential of carrier strike is to be completely fulfilled. The RAF must not regard this as an attack upon them. It is merely a reflection of the specialist skills required by those operating most of the time in the maritime environment. This does not deny that specific skills and service ethos are needed to maximise the potential of air power. But it must be done in a joint manner given the overlaps with other services. The RAF may be the junior service, but it should not act, as it tends to do,

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like an under-confident, immature adolescent. It has much of which to be proud as the senior air force in the world. Its operational maturity was a great advantage in its battle with the Luftwaffe in 1940. The RAF has a long and well-publicised tradition that has a clear consonance in popular culture, through the Battle of Britain and Dambuster legends. It is an important part of national culture. Abolition would be a major political issue that would hijack a more constructive strategic debate. This is not just sentiment. Armed services develop an ethos that is vital to their efficiency and fighting spirit. This is the reason the army clings to its inherently inefficient regimental system. What would be the effect on the morale of airmen and women of abolishing the RAF? Would they all go happily into the other services? How would entry, training and promotion be handled? The administrative problems alone would be expensive and difficult to surmount. Chaos might even result. Most air capabilities would need to be maintained, although recruitment could well be a problem. It all might well end up costing more, at least in the short term, and the attitudes of what would be an understandably sulky and resentful set of airmen would lead both to serious tensions within the remaining services and an overall loss of national capability. One possible alternative solution would be to form some kind of more unified service. Calls for such unification make it seem that the dreadful lesson of the Canadian experience is being forgotten, that dreadful saga of strange green uniforms and unhappy personnel.6 In 1964 the Royal Canadian Air Force, the Royal Canadian Navy and the Canadian Army formed the unified Canadian Forces to reduce costs and increase efficiency. The process was completed in 1968, but has since been widely considered as a step too far in the amalgamation of armed services. There has been significant retrenchment since. The Canadians eventually had to go into reverse and re-invent the separate services.

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Other Roles for the RAF Some say the days of the RAF are numbered because of the replacement even of the computer-aided pilot by remotely piloted vehicles, unmanned combat air vehicles (UCAVs). These may be controlled remotely on the ground, often at some significant distance. Nevertheless, useful though they are for ground surveillance, they are often used in ways, for example in strikes against terrorist leaders, that have more in common with strategic bombing. They are usually cued by airborne surveillance assets. Although the possible disappearance of the ‘mounted’ combat aircraft presents some cultural problems for air forces, it does not make UCAV missions any less an application of ‘air power’ or any less the business of the RAF. It could be argued that the UCAV strengthens the case for the RAF by providing a new long-range, high-endurance aerial platform of great utility both tactically and strategically that transcends tactical relevance to operations at sea or in the air. There is a valid argument that a service which concentrates on flying and a culture of ‘air power’ is needed to develop and operate air platforms to maximum advantage – as long as the overlaps with the other services are handled through wholeheartedly supported joint frameworks.7 The RAF’s existing and recently improved ISTAR capabilities create a logic that would see the RAF as the natural lead service for Britain’s efforts in the military uses of space. As well as space platforms being a vital part of strategic ISTAR, space is also a natural extension of the air environment. It is, indeed, hard to say where the atmosphere stops and ‘space’ begins. This does not mean that other services do not have interests in space, and some joint structures might respond to this, but the RAF should be the framework service. The UK has not developed much in the way of independent space capabilities because of a close relationship with the US, but this also advises a lead RAF role given the position of the US Air Force in American space efforts. People who regard themselves as airmen make natural partners, a factor with a wider combined relevance.

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Another role that lends itself to the RAF is cyber-warfare, much emphasised in the 2010 National Security Strategy and SDSR. This is not just because of the service’s current familiarity with the computer dimensions of ISTAR, but also because a ‘strategic’ attack on computer assets is a modern parallel to the direct ‘knock-out blow’ from the air that the RAF was formed originally to counter. Defending from a major threat of national dislocation because of cyber-attack could be the twenty-first century equivalent of Fighter Command in 1940. This would be rather like armouring and motorising the horsed cavalry in the inter-war period: changing the technology, but maintaining and exploiting a traditional warfare ethos. Given the increasing importance of this kind of hostile activity, and its enormous potential impact, a service that sees cyber-warfare as a core role is an urgent requirement. From the recent statements of some senior officers, the other services would probably not dispute the RAF filling this gap. Cyber-warfare could easily get lost among the other priorities of the navy and army. The RAF, even reduced to 33,000 personnel, will still be a sizeable and sustainable service, the fourth largest in European NATO after France, Germany and Italy. Looking at other air forces in the ‘British tradition’, the very independent Royal Australian Air Force is only 14,000 strong. Even New Zealand, which has abandoned fast-jet combat aircraft, still retains a Royal New Zealand Air Force of 2,600 to operate air assets jointly, in close co-operation with the other two services. Conclusion The RAF operates in an environment that is increasingly joint, but is still single service in certain core ways. It has an enviable tradition and ethos. It is also made up of human beings. Attacking its very existence will only make it dig in its heels even more and act in defensive and not necessarily constructive ways, as it is doing today. The aim should be to encourage the RAF to forget old-fashioned single service interests and capitalise on its traditions by moving into

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new areas such as cyber-warfare and space, and into wholehearted cooperation with the other two services by retaining such joint platforms as Sentinel, whose proposed abandonment is as inexplicable as the premature abolition of Joint Force Harrier. If radical proposals on service abolition appear in the run up to the 2015 SDSR, then there is one that corresponds to national strategic logic. With Afghanistan over, the UK might dispense with the army in its current form, with the RAF taking over the paratroopers and air assault forces, and the navy expanding the Royal Marines. These could cover any necessary expeditionary operations while, directly responsible to the Ministry of Defence, an expanded Territorial Army looked after home defence and the Guards and Household Cavalry, perhaps funded by the Home Office, concentrated on ceremonial duties. On normal Royal Navy and RAF levels of effort, they might be able to deploy rather more than the 10 per cent or so of total ground force strength that the army seems to be able to manage. Such a proposal is no more unreal – or less mischievous – than those to abolish the RAF.

ARMED INDUCEMENT IN CONFLICT PREVENTION Michael Codner Shortly before proceeding through the Mona Passage (between the islands of Hispaniola and Puerto Rico in the Caribbean) a signal came through and the ship came down in speed. Any plan was in the offing ... During Saturday there were two changes of plan and at lunchtime after a violent alteration of course which was felt throughout ship it was announced that we were now on our way ... to Grand Cayman.

This account is from the handwritten journal of a Midshipman on the frigate HMS Sirius, in April 1970 in the Caribbean. There had been a mutiny in the Trinidad and Tobago Regiment. In Antigua, there was a general strike. Haiti’s two gunboats had trained their guns on the presidential palace. And all three governments had asked for military assistance from the UK. However, each was a sovereign nation1 and the priority for the UK government was riots over land reform in the Cayman Islands, then as now a Crown Colony. The final signal ordering this choice came from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, not the Ministry of Defence. The requests were for neither decisive military action nor effective constabulary support. For land operations, Sirius had only a platoon of Royal Marines onboard and a similar number of sailors with basic internal security training. The ship anchored off George Town. The one member of staff to be put ashore was this midshipman who assisted a British Army Intelligence Officer in collating information.

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A day later sailors were allowed to ‘banyan’ (picnic) for the afternoon on a lonely beach. Attacks planned by rioters on government buildings did not take place and there were no further incidents. Sirius sailed to take part in a series of Variety Club events in San Juan, Puerto Rico. During the same year-long deployment, the Sirius responded to the sinking of a ferry boat off St Kitts and Nevis recovering a number of bodies (mainly of women and children); assisted the Bahamian government with fishery protection; and was at hand for hurricane relief and response to other natural disasters. There were many ship visits to capitals and other seaports.2 This modest intervention was typical of military operations in the period, and not only those from the sea. And outside the context of present major wars and violent crises, this is the day-to-day business of the armed forces of ‘expeditionary’ nations. The problem for strategic planners is that naval or gunboat diplomacy of this sort, and its army and air force equivalents, has a relationship to national interest that is hard to define, and its effectiveness is nigh impossible to measure quantitatively. The reason for this second problem with armed inducement is obvious.3 It is usually about stopping things happening: that is, deterrence and risk management. Or on a larger military scale it is about dominating escalation of violence. It takes historians to establish from the records of decisions by key actors whether the interventions were effort and money well spent. Failures are, of course, very obvious as the 1981 Falklands War, the Rwanda genocide of 1994 and the 1991 Iraq War bear witness. Prevention Defining these military contributions to diplomacy has been a particular challenge for British defence policy and one that has been largely avoided. In the debates (such as they have been) leading up to the 2010 Strategic Defence and Security Review, much was said about ‘prevention’ – clearly a very attractive concept for politicians eager for roles for their armed forces that will never again in their careers in government draw Britain into the nightmares of the 2003

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War in Iraq, its messy aftermath and the present war in Afghanistan. Prevention of course also includes a whole range of activities associated with eliminating the causes of violence, such as nation building. The term is even being used ill-advisedly in Britain, where it is employed to mean sustained intervention in counter-insurgencies and other complex emergencies. In these cases, the sense is preventing widespread violence from getting worse. ‘Stabilisation’ is typically a mission that follows the failure of prevention – and in the recent past, the outbreak of war. For the purpose of this chapter, its meaning is restricted to prevention of the outbreak of widespread violence. It should be noted also that prevention is by no means the only military contribution to diplomacy. Defence Diplomacy In classic military doctrine the instruments of security are military, diplomatic and economic in both the national and multinational context. More recently ‘information’ has been included as a fourth instrument, such as in the United States (US) military DIME (Diplomatic, Information, Military and Economic) concept. It has long been accepted that the use and effects of these instruments must be well integrated at national and multinational levels, so there is nothing particularly new about ‘the comprehensive approach’4 except as its use as a catalyst for implementation. And short of the outbreak of widespread violence, from a British viewpoint the military instrument is a contributor to foreign policy rather than vice versa. During the lengthy period of consultation leading up to the UK’s 1998 Strategic Defence Review ministers introduced the expression, ‘defence diplomacy’. As defence diplomacy was first presented, it appeared that for once the Ministry of Defence (MoD) would do some thorough analysis of the concept of armed inducement and incorporate it into this new mission. This was not to be. The Mission of Defence Diplomacy5 as it subsequently appeared in that White Paper had a reasonably inclusive definition: ‘To provide forces to meet the varied activities undertaken by the MoD to dispel hostility, build

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and maintain trust and assist in the development of democratically accountable armed forces, thereby making a significant contribution to conflict prevention and resolution.’6 However, in its substance it dodged the issue of armed inducement. It was somewhat sterile and limited to the following tasks and functions: 1. Arms control, non-proliferation, and confidence and security building measures 2. Outreach activities designed to contribute to security and stability through bilateral assistance and co-operation programmes 3. Other military assistance programmes with overseas military forces and defence communities. Task 1 is of course not a military task in the sense that the armed forces are not instrumental to it, except in abiding by the measures negotiated by diplomats with military advice. Tasks two and three require military resources and military staff in embassies, but do not involve the operational use of the military. The mission has endured broadly in this form through subsequent White Papers, although ‘military presence’ has been introduced as a consideration. ‘Coercion’ appears in texts from time to time, and nuclear and conventional deterrence have had their place. However, these concepts, which all suffer from the problem of validation mentioned earlier, are all aspects of armed inducement that deserve thorough analysis as a principal contributor to ‘defence diplomacy’ if prevention is to be a sound emphasis for the UK’s future defence policy and military strategy. Soft Power, Smart Power and Influence The term ‘soft power’, as first defined by Joseph Nye, has been stretched to include the use of armed forces for a range of benign purposes, which include the ‘defence diplomacy’ tasks above. But Nye’s own meaning was the influence that a nation could employ that was not

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overtly through the diplomatic, military and economic instruments, but subtly though informal diplomacy, culture and reputation. In her appearance before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on 13 February 2009 the US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, reinvigorated the term ‘smart power’ (which was also coined by Nye). In her meaning it had to do with using the military instrument in elegant and non-dominant ways that were well integrated with the diplomatic and economic uses and also with ‘soft power’ in its original sense. Her purpose was clearly to redress the emphasis of the early George W Bush administration on the dominant role of the military instrument in security. But the expression serves a useful purpose in the military context in emphasising the uses of armed inducement. Ultimately both of these expressions are about the capacity and ability of a government to influence world events in its own interest that may extend beyond direct security, for instance in developing markets for economic reasons. Benign intervention in natural disasters and other humanitarian crises may overtly have a specific moral purpose, but this type of response also may contribute to influence and ultimately to security through developing global perceptions that the UK actively supports international moral norms. Accepting the contributions of ‘defence diplomacy’ as defined in British defence policy, the remainder of this chapter addresses the analysis of armed inducement. Analysis of Armed Inducement At this stage it is useful to draw the distinctions between the physical and cognitive domains in the application of the military instrument. The military delivers its effects in two broad ways. Firstly, it can deny the opponent his military capability by destroying it or removing access to it physically. Secondly, it can coerce the opponent into conceding by influencing his decisions in the cognitive domain. Denial and coercion are closely related. Most wars and conflict situations are ultimately terminated in the cognitive domain by a decision to

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accede by such authority as may remain. However, destructive action at the tactical level may persuade leadership at the operational level to retreat, in turn allowing physical advantage at the strategic level. Conversely, a tactical force may disperse or withdraw through fear, allowing physical advantage at the operational level, which in turn may persuade strategic leadership that the case is hopeless. The focus of this discussion of inducement is of course on posture and actions short of full-scale combat. However, it is important to bear in mind that coercive effect in the cognitive domain is every bit as relevant in combat as in the context of armed inducement. Indeed, deterrence itself continues into combat with regard to choice of weapons (deterrence of the use of nuclear capability and other weapons of mass destruction); geographical scale of conflict (deterrence of escalation outside a particular theatre); and deterrence against other forms of escalation such as the targeting of civilians or decapitation of political leadership. The following analysis of inducement indicates latent and active aspects. All inducement can be supportive or coercive, but this Figure 1: Analysis of Military Inducement.7 Military Inducement

Latent

Active

Inherent

Precautionary

Supportive

Military

Deterrence

Posture

Action

Coercion

Compellance

Active Deterrence

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division only becomes apparent in active inducement when there is an identifiable subject or set of subjects and there are specific military actions and perhaps accompanying rhetoric. Superimposed on this analysis is the degree of inducement expressed by capability and rhetoric. There is a spectrum of armed inducement. Figure 2: Spectrum of Military Inducement. Symbolic

Robust

Limited Violence

Capability too modest for violence

Potential for limited violence

Deterrent or compellent using raids, demonstrations or selective denial

Inducement can shift from latent to active very rapidly and this is the essence both of a precautionary, preventative or pre-emptive posture and of inherent deterrence. For instance, a continuousat-sea nuclear deterrent (CASD)8 using a submarine-borne nuclear missile may be providing inherent deterrence, but CASD specifically permits a rapid transition to active deterrence and indeed use of the weapon if deterrence fails. In conventional cases the maritime environment typically permits nuanced shifts from latent to active inducement. This feature explains the emphasis on naval inducement in doctrine and the provenance of some of this analysis. The analysis is, however, equally appropriate to the land and air environments, and indeed to cyberspace. Elements of Inducement The first factor that is essential to a general understanding of inducement is that effect is achieved through influencing the perceptions of actors, whether these are actual or potential opponents, actual or potential friends, or from the wide number

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of different stakeholders for whom the consequences may be a spectrum of engagement ranging from consent through to assent to mere acquiescence. There are three elements to all forms of inducement that apply to deterrence. These are perception of capability to deliver violence, perception of will and reputation of the ability to implement intentions effectively. Directed inducement will usually be aimed ultimately at elements of leadership of an opponent, or neutral or friendly actor with whom the decisions will rest. This actor may be a state government or a non-state actor of some description. However, inducement may be effective against some elements of a multiple leadership, or at some levels of leadership, with the result that the leadership as a whole may be effectively influenced. Furthermore, inducement may affect support for leadership. The effect on, say, a population could be to undermine or reinforce the leadership’s decision to continue with a course of action. It is also relevant that a population could become more united against a common opponent as a result of coercive action, and this support would strengthen the hand of a leadership. It bears mention that it is a feature more of compellence than deterrence that populations may habituate to coercive action, particularly if the effect is incremental. Deterrence may be reinforced by limited denial or punishment. However, the use of limited violence in this way could harden the resolve of a population against the deterring power. One final factor is the perceived legality and morality of deterrent action. This could influence the support to a leadership that is the target of deterrent action amongst the population or by other groups for whom support could be valuable (for instance potential friends and allies). It is also relevant to the support given to the leadership of the deterrent power by friends and allies and by its own population. It has been suggested that there is a useful distinction to be made between dissuasion on the one hand and deterrence on the

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other. Dissuasion could be used to mean purely diplomatic action to prevent actors from taking particular courses of action, while deterrence would imply that military capability and intentions would be a contributing factor.9 Understanding the Cognitive Domain A problem for military strategies that emphasise prevention is that the cognitive domain is less predictable than the physical domain. In the debate over the effects-based approach, it is frequently overlooked that positive effects are only a subset of consequences of military action, and that many other effects could be negative. The cognitive domain is complex because of the vast number of variables. Furthermore, students of complexity in its technical sense would argue that unpredictability is a defining factor of complexity. Another feature of the cognitive domain is that the academic disciplines that explore it (sociology, social psychology, anthropology, and others) are immature in comparison with the natural sciences. An important conclusion is that any strategic or operational plan that is heavily dependent on an understanding of the cognitive domain in a particular theatre is extremely high risk. Solutions cannot be engineered. The de-risking of such plans requires branches and sequels that are not so dependent on ‘managing’ the cognitive domain. Once again, it is compellent strategies and operations that are most at risk in this respect. Intuitively, a nation, alliance or coalition cannot be totally dependent on conventional deterrence, whether inherent or directed, and there will usually be plans to address its failure. Nevertheless, nations will typically see strategic choices that emphasise deterrence as more financially economical, particularly in the context of alliances and economies that might be made in plans to address the failure of deterrence. One method of de-risking deterrent strategies is to have a commonly accepted international framework of understanding (which may be expressed in law and agreed practices) in which deterrence operates. There were presumptions of such a framework during the Cold War,

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which fortunately were never tested. In the present environment there is no truly comprehensive conceptual framework. In any event, such a framework would most probably exist among and between nation actors, and the most difficult security challenges are posed by non-state actors operating within unshared conceptual frameworks and, perhaps, with transcendental aims. Nuclear Deterrence While nuclear deterrence fits into this general analysis, there are some important features that need to be highlighted. Inherent Deterrence The issue of inherent deterrence is particularly salient in the present security environment. It is patently unhelpful for existing nuclear powers to identify targets for deterrence in their declaratory policies, and since the Cold War most have avoided declaring direct deterrence. However, nuclear powers need benchmarks for their capabilities, which will probably be the existing levels available to the other nuclear powers, among other measures of requirement. Deterrence of Other WMD The issue of nuclear deterrence of non-nuclear weapons and war is particularly testing. Declaratory policies typically do not imply that nuclear weapons have this role. Equally, uncertainty as to the occasions for use is a feature of inherent nuclear deterrent strategies. There is also a presumption that major nuclear powers are unlikely to confront each other in conventional war, because the risk of escalation raises the question of deliberate first use. Probability of Response There has been a shift from the Cold War nuclear deterrent message of a high level of probability that nuclear weapons would be used in certain defined situations (Flexible Response and the ladder of escalation), to messages of deliberate uncertainty as to the

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circumstances of use. Intuitively, the world is hardly a safer place as a result. Communications A related issue is that of communication of nuclear policy and intentions. During the Cold War, there were clearly defined protocols involving formal signal traffic, which would have served to minimise misunderstanding amongst a relatively small number of actors. There is now a larger number of state and potentially non-state actors with very different characteristics, operating in a more globalised environment with a host of informal means of communication involving the media and internet. In addition to the complexity problems mentioned earlier, there is the one of reinforced misunderstanding through informal communications and ill-considered rhetoric. Perception of Legality, Morality and Entitlement The framework of international treaties and agreements governing ownership of nuclear weapons and restraining proliferation may have international legal standing, but perceptions as to the morality of entitlement within strategic cultures will affect national decisions to pursue nuclear weapon capability. It is important for existing nuclear powers to reinforce the moral standing of their ownership through their declaratory purposes if they are to justify non-proliferation measures and limit nuclear arms races. Declaratory devices, such as ‘no first use’ policies and ‘negative security assurances’,10 are examples. A crucial moral justification for major nuclear powers’ ownership is extended deterrence: that is, the treaty obligation to provide nuclear deterrence to non-nuclear powers. Utility of Armed Forces Navies have agonised over the military contribution to diplomacy because there is a unique naval contribution early in the emergence and development of a crisis when the sea offers access without the

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need for permissions and other diplomatic arrangements.11 It can be at these early stages that leaders have not made decisions on specific choices and actions: it is these situations in which armed inducement may be useful. However, common sense would suggest that this ability to take tentative actions without commitment is weaker in terms of influence than the insertion of ground forces into territory. The utility of land-based air forces lies crudely between the maritime and army extremes. Land bases require sovereignty or permission, but demonstrate permanence, if at a distance, and regular air sorties can influence perceptions over large areas. Of course, the commitment that ground interventions demonstrate can initiate trains of unpredictable and unwanted consequences. In turn, reneging on commitments undermines reputation, which is an essential element of armed inducement and influence. Conclusions Inherent, undirected or existential capacity for inducement is an important concept in the present security environment, allowing nations on the one hand to build relationships across difficult boundaries in a globalised world while on the other preserving deterrent capacity to deny options for the use of the military instrument for bullying and blackmail without provoking arms races. While there is a distinction to be made between latent and directed inducement, and inherent and directed deterrence in particular, the posture and behaviour of forces can communicate a rapid shift from one side of the divide to the other. There is a spectrum of direct inducement, from symbolic actions to the limited use of violence. Deterrence in particular may be reinforced by limited violence, but this runs the risk of unintended consequences. Inherent deterrence has particular relevance in the nuclear context, but there is the associated problem of deliberate uncertainty and the risks that this could spawn − particularly in an environment in which communication means are multiple, diverse and open to misunderstanding.

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It is helpful to understand deterrence within the broad concept of inducement. Directed deterrence is a subset of military coercion, its partner is compellence. Strategic culture is an intrinsically important variable in multipolar deterrence. If states or other actors do not share a common strategic culture when they communicate and respond to the intention to deter, there is a high risk that the deterrent message will not be delivered effectively and with predictable consequences. Strategic culture is fundamental to effective communication. Understanding the differences and shaping perceptions in an alien culture are key challenges.

DEFENCE INFORMATION SUPERIORITY: STILL UNDERPLAYED Bill Robins Information superiority is a challenging area.1 It is not ‘sexy’. Chiefs of staff cannot be photographed in front of it. Its benefits are difficult to measure. It is associated with impenetrable jargon, over-hyped promises, escalating cost and with delivering disappointing results later than promised. Nevertheless, the importance of information as a tool to support national security and defence is widely acknowledged. But with a few exceptions, the attention paid by senior management to its effective use is insufficient. The result appears to be a capability still underplayed. This chapter examines why, and what can be done. The context in which defence information work is conducted involves concerns about cyber-attack from both state and non-state actors, and about the ready availability of sophisticated technologies to unscrupulous people. Increased pressure from the media calls for matching agility in the Ministry of Defence’s (MoD) ability to handle information. Accountability for conduct, long after a contentious event, calls for first-rate record handling. Meanwhile, the need for stringent savings at all levels of government and industry places a new emphasis on cost management and efficiency. Getting the right information to the right place at the right time, so that the right decisions are made and implemented, has never been more important. Recent History For some time, headlines have indicted poor government-wide Information Superiority (IS) programme management: it causes

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delays, lost opportunities, wasted money and frustration. Anecdotally, it is reported that many commercial concerns are not much better than the government, except at hiding problems from the public. Improved programme management is a necessary foundation for improved IS. Well-run IS can be very worthwhile: significant improvements in operational performance have been claimed as a result of its effective use. In one example, the time needed to issue battlegroup orders was reduced from two hours to fifteen minutes; in another, fighter aircraft kill rates were increased by 150 per cent. And wellhandled information can enable improvement in areas beyond operational management. Knowledge management can raise an organisation’s ability to learn from experience and use lessons from previous conflicts more effectively. Cross-departmental working can be made more effective. Well-managed informal networks, properly secured, can raise the quality of decisions and reduce the time to make them. Despite the potential of well-handled information to improve operational excellence, IS-related appointments still tend to be seen as specialist, or even ‘geeky’, and generally not for operationally focused officers, or for civil servants with any ambition. The irony of this view is that if it is left to the purely technical specialists, IS will indeed be less effective than it should be. Competent programme managers and good engineers are a necessary but far from sufficient condition for successful IS. Information as a Mainstream Competence IS needs more attention from senior management throughout British defence. The US Department of Defense (DoD) claims to have put some 38 per cent of its modernisation funds for 2008 into communications and mission support systems. According to Intellect, a UK trade organisation, this compares with the UK spending of some 15 per cent of a similar modernisation package into the same type of capability.

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British officers returning from operations report that mainstream US officers at all levels appear to be more educated in IS, more at ease with it, and able to make better use of it than their UK counterparts. If true, this indicates that unless the UK raises its game to become a learning organisation and improves its information exploitation skills to something like the US level, any increase in the proportion of dwindling defence funds allocated to British IS capability could be wasted. Information superiority is a mainstream business. The new nature of conflict demands mastery of the information dimension. The Strategic Security and Defence Review (SDSR) offers an opportunity to improve matters. Some of the issues that need addressing are indicated below. There are a number of qualities that a well-managed information regime in UK defence should demonstrate. Excellent Programme Management In addition to the obvious need to bring programmes in on time, to cost and to meet performance targets, IS programmes must also meet a number of other needs. First, adaptability: people handling information must be able to deal with fast-changing situations, to interact securely with other government departments and fighting services, at all levels and with allies. Second, interoperability: the relationship on the battlefield with some allies is showing signs of deepening to interdependence in terms of the ability to exchange services and so depend on each other’s logistics, networks and services. This will demand an ever-richer interchange of information. Third, agility: battlespace agility is not just about fire and movement. It has always been a technology and acquisition race as well. Consider a comparison: Military Information Services (MIS) frequently take years to enter service and have to be geared to almost any scenario. At the other end of the spectrum, terrorist and insurgent information services emphasise both design for the operational task in hand, and speed of acquisition. These actors are now able to exploit very sophisticated technology: nowhere is

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this more apparent than in the grim race between ISAF and the Taliban in Afghanistan for mastery of the counter-IED conflict. Military acquisition approaches are changing to cope with this. The requirement for increased pace at the enterprise level shows no sign of abating. The ability to handle complexity is vital: the mix of defence and security is a complex and ambiguous business. British defence must be able to deal with complex problems, and handle weak signals and recognise their importance – a skill which has not always been apparent on Operation Herrick in Afghanistan, or, previously, in the run up to the London 7/7 bombings. Being able to do this requires not only effective technology – including data tagging, storage, retrieval and new approaches to database design – it also demands first-rate information exploitation2 and information management.3 Most importantly, it demands the development of an IS culture encompassing individuals at senior levels. It calls for strong concept development and a productive, sustained conversation between the operational and the information systems communities. There are signs that some senior officers in both the MoD and Permanent Joint Headquarters (PJHQ) are aware of the issue. They may need to bite a few others. The Response Programme Management The MoD is already some way in improving its standard of programme management. Three important initiatives have been developed with the support of the MoD Key Systems Advisor (KSA) team − a small, expert group. They aim to improve the governance of information in support of operations, maintain the integrity of defence networks and ensure that all systems in defence are designed to fit into the defence enterprise.

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Governance Operational commanders have complained that the MoD Equipment Programme (EP) has continued its stately dance without paying much attention to current operations. This has been particularly galling where supposedly fast-moving information systems are concerned and commanders saw significant sums of money devoted instead to long-term programmes. Things are improving: an Operational Information Superiority Programme Board (Op ISPB) under the two-star chairmanship of the director of information superiority is now providing a focus for all information matters in support of current operations. The Board now scrutinises the EP against the needs of current operations, with the swifter, but usually less well integrated, Urgent Operational Requirements (UORs) being considered at the same time for the best operational benefit. Network Integrity Maintaining a complex web of operational information networks is a demanding task, managed by a number of interdependent organisations. A single Network Capability Authority (NCA) has now been formed in the MoD to ensure that all systems making calls on any UK network are integrated with it. The relevant MoD departments are now co-operating in an unprecedented way, to the ministry’s great benefit. Coherence across the Defence Enterprise Finally, the Systems Engineering Integration Group in the MoD is starting to drive the System of Systems Approach (SOSA) to ensure that all defence systems (submarines, networks, fuel tankers, aircraft and soon, finance and administration applications) are designed from the start to support the coherence of the defence enterprise. All parts of the enterprise must apply nine SOSA principles to their plans to reduce the chance of unwelcome surprises later, when change becomes expensive. These principles focus on the need to

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meet clear business and operational needs, to design for re-use and upgrade and to be clear about interoperability needs at the start. It all sounds obvious, but it was not happening. Like the other initiatives above, SOSA is an enterprise-wide initiative of great significance for the integrity of the British defence effort. Culture and Technology As part of the MoD’s information strategy, the chief information officer’s (CIO) staff and others are raising awareness and improving the information culture within the defence. The CIO’s ‘Information Management Passport’ initiative aims to improve information management skills across the defence. PJHQ’s Command and Control Battle Laboratory at Shrivenham gathers lessons from operations and develops improved information exploitation techniques, which the front line commands of each service then build into training before deployment. All this is important, but a more fundamental change is needed to enable the MoD to handle its complex, fast-moving challenges. The CIO must be empowered to do his job. The Need for an Empowered Chief Information Officer A few years ago, the present author lamented to a Cabinet Office civil servant that the MoD had no CIO. ‘Really?’, said the official, ‘I can count at least six’. To start to improve matters, some two years ago the appointment of director-general information was given more responsibility and re-titled CIO. However, his authority is still limited in comparison with the authority of the CIO of most other government departments or commercial concerns. This is partly because of the complexity of the MoD, and its distaste for turf battles over authority and resources. The result is disparate and incoherent approaches across the army, navy, air force and civil service to issues of information management and exploitation, and to training and development. Particularly disappointing is the apparent disappearance of the role of ‘head of the defence information superiority profession’ – a focus for ensuring a sense of identity, pride and professional

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excellence in the 4,000 IS professionals in the defence enterprise. So despite some improvements, different cultures, rules and approaches still apply in each service and in the ‘operational’ and ‘departmental’ parts of the defence enterprise. The result is the continuation of an incoherent approach to information issues. This is damaging in a world where defence needs a single focus for integration with other government departments to support a single defence and security strategy. It is difficult to see that focus working effectively while the MoD’s CIO is denied the authority to support the Defence Board in leading a single enterprise. It is hardly conceivable that a department of some half a million people – many of them deployed across the globe conducting dangerous, complicated and technologically advanced operations with other government departments and other nations, all of them needing up to date and secure information – can do without an empowered CIO. There are grounds for hope: an SDSR thread is examining the tangle of IS relationships across defence in order to simplify them and to propose better arrangements. The Issues If and when the CIO is given the power he needs, there are a number of issues that he will need to address. All will require judgement and wisdom. Commercial Information Technology Revolution versus Military Reality Security requirements and limited network capacity in theatre have led to complaints from some officers that they are unable to get an acceptable standard of IS support on operations. They say that the systems they operate in the field are much more expensive than those used by their families back home, but much less able. There are of course some good reasons for this, the need for physical robustness and security and limited capacity in operational networks amongst them. Improvements may be possible by adopting ‘service based’ approaches to IS. Under these arrangements, an enterprise could

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hand over responsibility for its information services provision to a commercial provider. The client organisation would then call for its services from ‘a computing cloud’;4 uncaring, at least in theory, about where the information is stored. For the MoD, cloud computing raises legitimate concerns about an unwise dependency on overpowerful suppliers for vital operational services; about the security and guaranteed availability of operational information; and an overall worry about over-exposure of vulnerabilities. But directors in the MoD Information Systems and Services (ISS) organisation in Corsham are clear that MoD information provision must move to a service model, managing the vulnerabilities effectively as it does so. Only in this way will performance improvements and economies of scale be made to supply the increasing amounts of information needed by forces on operations at an acceptable price. All of this is achievable only if defence networks increase in capacity. The increasing use throughout defence of Internet Protocol based systems will help here. Other initiatives could help applications to be less demanding of resources. But network limitations will always affect the way in which defence operates, no matter how many sophisticated maps, streamed video clips or terrorist biometric profiles are sent over defence networks in the future. UK Focus versus Coalition Interoperability Progress is being made, although not fast enough for some, in interoperability. The UK is now moving away from a regime in which British systems were designed for use by British people and organisations only, to one in which information can be readily exchanged with allies and partners. Coalition operations demand easy and secure information transfer across joint boundaries (army, navy, and air force), allies, coalition partners, other government departments (including the Foreign Office and the Department for International Development), as well as NGOs. Prior to the World Wide Web, such widespread interoperability requirements would have been expensive, costly and time consuming to meet, if they

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could have been met at all. Web-based techniques and tools now enable critical information to be used by designated communities at various levels of security. But all this demands that UK networks are able to cope with the demands of constant web-trawling and that the significant training bill can be met both for users and specialists. There is also a need to refine the way in which information risk is assessed and managed: commanders grumble, with some justification, that the security people who accredit systems for use are more nervous about losing information than losing battles – a genuine risk if information cannot be released in time to commanders who need it. On the other hand, commanders in a theatre may not be aware of the wider, global risks to the information they are using. A more holistic view of risk management is needed: this is currently being forged by the CIO’s team. The need to share sensitive information with semi-trusted allies and others means that defence systems must become smarter about dealing with such friends. Tools are now needed that allow orders (for example) to be tagged line-by-line so that only releasable information is shared. Again, a wise approach to risk is needed. This raises the next topic. Security versus Openness Ten years ago, UK military information systems were forbidden to connect directly to the Internet – the security risk was considered too high. Now workable controls allow Defence Information Infrastructure users to exchange information relatively securely with the rest of the world. Teenagers who now use social networking and constant communication as a matter of course will be the commanders, senior civil servants and intelligence officers of the future. Many of them will be ‘information radicals’ who believe that widespread information transfer is a basic right. The caricature information radical sees few threats and promotes universal access for all to access all the information that they want.

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Operators in theatre normally take a more measured view: a company commander wants just enough information to do the job and not get his people killed. The network operator is determined that his network should not collapse under the weight of unnecessary traffic. So a three-way debate is in progress: between idealists demanding more information and greater openness, security people worried about increasing threats and network operators ensuring that networks keep running. No tidy answer exists: the most sensible approach will always be one of the management of acceptable risk. The concept of information risk owners in government organisations has done much to focus the minds of mainstream managers on achieving the right balance between the need to share and the risk of compromise. Underlying all this is the need to be clear on where the risk lies. The speed with which the media operate now places more emphasis on the need for the MoD to manage its own information dynamically. The MoD must have a correct and timely answer to a reporter who wants to know what is going on. More importantly, the MoD, PJHQ and commanders must have the right response to an operational or intelligence problem in enough time to act. A corporal at a remote roadblock can find himself on the news in minutes. And it is the concept of the ‘strategic corporal’ that has sharpened up the defence establishment to the need to respond to breaking news from a remote place in real time and to manage the security risk entailed. Openness versus Specialisation In a recent operation in Afghanistan, a US Marine Corps captain – an operations manager, not an information specialist – redesigned the way in which operations orders were developed and issued in ISAF headquarters. Instead of sending the developing order round by email to all the contributors, which took time, tied up networks and was constantly trying to catch up with itself, he designed with J65 a web-based system using Wiki6 and blogging tools to achieve a co-operative build of the operation order in a quarter of the time, more accurately, and with a lot less effort.

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The key point to draw from that example is that information issues are too important to be left to the specialists. Situations like these put the technical specialists in the right place; as guarantors of the integrity, availability and security of the systems providing the information. The healthiest relationship for IS is one in which the mainstream people are in charge and are acting as leaders, giving clear direction to the specialists: clear about what they want, where, when and in what form. And clear about the acceptable risks. In the UK, this calls for a new understanding that the Defence Board has still to demonstrate: that it needs an enterprise-wide focus for the management and exploitation of information, driven from the top by people who understand the issues. There is one final point: Wiki techniques reveal one of the key differences between open and closed information worlds. Wiki methods help to ensure that all the talent in an organisation is able to contribute to an initiative. Only in this way will the cumbersome bureaucracies in the MoD and in theatre be able to make best use of the considerable talent they possess. Wiki and its brother approaches may not suit those who prize tidiness over creativity and innovation. But only by changing such a mindset will they meet the challenges of a new information age.

FAILING INTELLIGENCE: REFORM OF THE MACHINERY Mark Phillips The Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR) assigned significant priority to the intelligence and security agencies. It emphasised intelligence as a key enabler of all aspects of national security and largely protected the agencies from budgetary cuts. As intelligence is increasingly used across a larger number of government departments and in all aspects of policy-making following the review, how the intelligence community is managed and governed becomes more important. Yet SDSR was silent in this area. The Butler Inquiry first identified the wider utility of intelligence across all parts of government when it reported in 2004 and, notwithstanding the Inquiry’s focus on the use of intelligence in the run-up to the 2003 Iraq War, this trend provided context for many of its recommendations. In addition to problems of validation that were internal to the agencies, Butler’s recommendations either directly or implicitly addressed four broader issues: the relationship between intelligence and policy-making; the function of the central intelligence machinery in relation to the separate intelligence and security agencies; and the nature of intelligence assessments and the process leading to their production. The final report was written in the understated style of a traditional Whitehall mandarin: hard-hitting to those familiar with the system who were able to read between the lines, but worded in such a way that it could be (and inevitably became) subject to varying interpretations over time. The government of the day said it accepted all of Butler’s

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recommendations, but those intimately involved with the Inquiry remain critical of its failure to implement the recommendations fully and within the spirit of the report. Labour was criticised consistently by opposition parties for this failing, but the coalition government now faces the same challenge, and at a time when the four areas looked at by Butler are perhaps more significant than they were in 2004. It is not clear, however, that the coalition has gripped a full understanding or taken full control of the intelligence machinery. The Chilcot Inquiry is likely to return to the issue of the use of intelligence when it reports on the lessons from the experience of Iraq. Dr Brian Jones, an expert involved in intelligence in the run-up to the Iraq War, has noted that:1 British intelligence has evolved rather than been designed. Consequently, it comprises a confused and incoherent assembly of disparate centres of expertise and experience, the full value of which is denied to the nation through a poor definition of its overall function and an inadequate understanding of its potential by those who run it and use it ... Of course, efficient and effective organisations, and appointments to them, should be designed to prevent the short circuits in process which so often cause great damage. The organisation of British intelligence is demonstrably not fit for purpose in this regard. The fact that this has not been recognised or acknowledged seven years on from a calamitous failure indicates that the oversight of all aspects of British intelligence is also ineffective. Therefore, a thorough review of all aspects of British intelligence is needed. Such a review would require guidance from a clear political and policy statement on what is expected of intelligence. The Butler review focused specifically on WMD intelligence but some of its recommendations have wider relevance and represent a good springboard for further work.

Dr Jones proposed the formation of a single overarching intelligence agency. This is an idea that has tended to constantly emerge and disappear over time. The practicalities involved in moving

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to this model would be quite difficult, not least politically. Any such move would also risk diluting the unique cultures, specialisms and experience found within each of the individual agencies. However, there are a number of smaller (and arguably more politically and culturally acceptable) reforms government could make, which would have a disproportionately positive effect. Butler’s Recommendations and Their Implementation Beyond the focus on Iraqi WMD intelligence, the Butler Report made nine conclusions and recommendations about the process and nature of intelligence assessment, the nature of the relationship between intelligence and policy-making, and the scope of the central intelligence machinery. Intelligence Assessment On assessment, Butler recommended that: • The work of the all-source Defence Intelligence Staff (DIS) be integrated more closely with the rest of the intelligence community and that DIS be resourced to meet wider national priorities and support other agencies • The size of the Assessments Staff be reviewed to ensure it has ‘the volume and range of resources to ask the questions which need to be asked in fully assessing intelligence reports and in thinking radically’, including whether there should be a career specialism for analysis. Both of these recommendations were more radical than they appeared at face value. Together they amounted to a clear recognition that the UK had neglected its validation and assessment capability at both agency and national (Joint Intelligence Committee) level, including expertise in a number of areas and the ability to bring to bear allsource capabilities. The government accepted both recommendations. In response, it said the central Requirements and Priorities (R&P) process would be applied to the DIS, to ensure the staff helped

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meet wider priorities and worked from the same page as other agencies. However, the government confirmed that the DIS would primarily meet Ministry of Defence (MoD) needs, which might differ from those in the R&P. In relation to the Assessment Staff, the government expanded the staff by a third and established the post of ‘Professional Head of Intelligence Analysis’ to advise on a number of areas, including gaps and duplication in analyst capabilities; the recruitment of analysts and their career structures and interchange within and beyond government; analytical methodology across the intelligence community; and training opportunities. In practice, the professional head of intelligence analysis role is combined with the position of JIC chairman, so an executive deputy implements the functions (a situation which attracted much criticism from the Intelligence and Security Committee – ISC). The achievements to date have been two-fold. Firstly, there has been expansion and development of training opportunities, including opening single-agency courses to other analysts, starting courses with academic partners and developing a national intelligence analysis techniques course. Secondly, the development of a challenge process within the Joint Intelligence Organisation, which uses critical thinking techniques to strengthen the assessment process. However, the professional head of intelligence analysis is limited in what he can achieve: the role is to promote best practice, but there is no authority to impose solutions in the intelligence community, and it therefore relies on collective acceptance and agreement. Arguably none of these steps resulted in an increase in the capacity of the assessment process as Butler had implied was necessary: the government interpreted the recommendations as calling only for a ‘stronger framework for intelligence assessment’.2 Intelligence and Policy-making In addition to looking at how to improve the assessment process, Butler explored factors affecting the relationship between policy-making and intelligence. The Inquiry asked whether the Joint Intelligence

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Committee’s objectivity was in danger of being compromised by the presence of more policy heavyweights than in the past. No changes were recommended to the JIC membership although, basing this conclusion on the ‘tradition of the JIC [which] has prevented policy imperatives from dominating objective assessment in the JIC’s deliberations’ and the fact that many policy heavyweights were not permanent members, the review did leave open the possibility that this might become an issue in the future. In relation to the use of intelligence by the cabinet and for the purposes of collective government, the Review gave no recommendations, but noted concern that: [T]he informality and circumscribed character of the Government’s procedures which we saw in the context of policy-making towards Iraq risks reducing the scope for informed collective political judgement. Such risks are particularly significant in a field like the subject of our Review, where hard facts are inherently difficult to come by and the quality of judgement is accordingly all the more important.

In particular, Butler noted, assessments or briefings were not given to all Cabinet ministers, which limited collective and wider discussion. This relates to a broader issue, which has been the subject of much criticism by the ISC in the past and has added importance given the widespread use of intelligence across all policy areas: namely, the infrequency of meetings of the then-Cabinet Sub-Committee on Intelligence and the breadth of ministers involved in setting the JIC’s Requirements and Priorities, collectively considering operational authorities and setting the framework for the Single Intelligence Account. Finally, the Review recommended that the conventions for the use of language in JIC assessments be reviewed. The report said: 3 [T]he view currently taken by the witnesses we interviewed is that ministers and other readers are not helped by assessments which are expressed in language of ‘on the one hand’ and ‘on the other’, and which

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thus leave the reader with no conclusion … The consequence is that the need to reach consensus may result in nuanced language. Subtleties such as ‘the intelligence indicates’ rather than ‘the intelligence shows’ may escape the untutored or busy reader’.

The then government’s response was three-fold: to include an ‘assessment base’ box in JIC papers, which sets out the extent and depth of the information drawn upon; to review and re-issue guidance to the Assessments Staff on language to be used; and to have alternative and minority hypotheses or uncertainties included in JIC minutes and, where the JIC cannot reach consensus, for dissenting views to be reflected in a chairman’s note on the face of the assessment. While Butler deliberately chose not to push a particular approach to the language of JIC assessments and the way in which alternative or minority hypotheses or uncertainty are expressed, he not only reinforced that this was already an issue for the purpose of good policy-making but, as with the Review’s question about the increase in the number of policy heavyweights on the JIC, also marked this as something that should not be set in stone. Why Butler Remains Important The continuing, and indeed mounting, importance and complexity of the four broad areas looked at by Butler – namely, the relationship between intelligence and policy-making, the function of the central intelligence machinery, and the nature of both intelligence assessments and the assessment process – is demonstrated by seven events and factors. First: the continuing trend for intelligence to be used in support of a larger number of policy areas across government. Government needs to think about how best to manage and facilitate this through the JIC and within the context of the statutory reporting lines and authorisations of the single agencies. Second: the persistent allegations of complicity in torture currently faced by the Security Service and Secret Intelligence Service. The

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cases involved identify the need for central government to pay greater attention to the operations of the intelligence and security agencies, including how the agencies operate. Moreover, the reporting of the allegations has tended to forget that officers operate within a legal and policy framework set for them by the government of the day, yet in the early days after 9/11 it is arguable that government did not give as detailed guidance as was necessary to those deployed on the frontline. How ministers address this in the future will be crucial. Third: the London 7/7 bombings, which raised important questions about the role of the challenge function in intelligence assessment. The overall assessment by the Joint Intelligence Committee in the years before 7/7 was that suicide bombing, while commonplace in terrorist tactics abroad, was not likely in the UK and would not become the norm in Europe. More recently, the government has also been slow to respond to the risk of Mumbai-style attacks and there have been different assessments across government about the level of ambition of possible attacks using this model which have not been reconciled. In turn, this relates to a broader issue about how ministers use intelligence assessments for the purposes of decision-making, and how assessments should be structured and written to facilitate this. Fourth, and a point which is also very likely to feature in the 7/7 inquests, is the need for the intelligence community to make better use of existing information and resources. It is clear from the ISC’s reports into 7/7 that there were indicators known to the Security Service about two of the bombers, Siddique Khan and Shazad Tanweer, such as their trip to Pakistan for training, which would now raise alarm, and should have done even then. The ISC itself commented that the Security Service should have been able to establish the connections between the bombers; the implication being that had they done so, they would have realised that they were dealing with something serious. The Committee concluded that if decisions about surveillance of the individuals had been different, there might have been a better chance of preventing the atrocity; it held resource constraints largely responsible for this state of affairs, but

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the Security Service itself acknowledged that its funding request was governed by its understanding of the threat which, as events showed, was inadequate: the extent of the home-grown threat and the risk of suicide bombing were both discounted. The conclusion to draw is that more intelligence undoubtedly helps correct assessment, but better use of the information agencies already have is as important, including the greater use of challenge functions. This point about making better use of existing information also featured in the case of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who attempted to bomb an airliner over Detroit during Christmas 2009. Abdulmutallab was known to the intelligence community from his time in London, when he came into contact with a number of targets. He was later denied a visa and placed on a security list for applying to study at a bogus college – a known route for attack planning, preparation and execution. This case raises questions about the collation and co-ordination of operational level intelligence and, therefore, the functions of the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre (JTAC) and, in turn, JTAC’s relationship with the Joint Intelligence Committee. Fifth, the increasing demand for the intelligence and security community not just to provide information, but also to ‘do something about it’, including providing advice and taking action to influence events in line with the government’s policy priorities. As with allegations of complicity in torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, this will require all of central government – both ministers and officials – to pay greater attention to the operations of the intelligence and security agencies. Sixth, intelligence functions are no longer confined to the traditional agencies. The military has of course always had a defence intelligence setup and representation on national level intelligence structures (although not proper integration). The police service has also always had an intelligence role in relation to national security through Special Branch. This has evolved in recent years as all police officers (and, indeed, other local authorities) now find they have an

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intelligence function, collecting community intelligence in relation to terrorism and extremism in particular, but also organised crime. Community intelligence has tended to be undervalued but recent cases have demonstrated its importance – even if not its glamour. Processes need to be put in place to deal with this bottom-up feed of information, and any tension that results between the police and Security Service, as the former become re-focused on community intelligence, will need to be managed. For both these reasons, it is therefore worth asking questions at a national level about what the police service representation on the central intelligence machinery should be. While the deputy professional head of intelligence analysis has integrated national law enforcement agencies into the assessment process, it is not clear that this extends to the level of the JIC on a formal or permanent basis. Similarly, the previous government established a new organisation with responsibility for intelligence in relation to serious organised crime and for facilitating law enforcement action with partners at home and abroad. The Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) inherited the former function from the Security Service and Secret Intelligence Service. The latter has proved difficult, with unfair expectations placed on SOCA to fill level two and three capability gaps when its formation was meant to be part of a broader package of law enforcement reforms – and the gap can still only be filled by reforming other aspects of the police service. As serious organised crime has become a national security issue – and arguably should receive more priority than it has to date, given the damage it causes to UK interests at all levels – it is worth looking at what representation organisations like SOCA (and, as its successor, the National Crime Agency) should have in the central intelligence machinery. Finally, there is the need for greater inter-agency working − particularly in a strained financial climate − and the continuing demand for greater international co-operation. In the UK, it is not clear where leadership on these issues rests at present, which means that international partners do not necessarily have a coherent view of

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intelligence community policy and government does not secure the full value for money and combined effectiveness it could from the agencies. Collective Authorisations and Decision-making: The Role of Ministers The current reporting lines for the intelligence and security agencies are to the home secretary (for the Security Service) and foreign secretary (for the Secret Intelligence Service and GCHQ), except in the case of activities in Northern Ireland where responsibility lies with the secretary of state for Northern Ireland. These ministers authorise the operational activities of the agencies. However, the intelligence community provides products capable of supporting a wider range of government departments and policies, in diverse areas such as climate change, energy security, economic well-being, international development, extremism, community cohesion and integration, and operates within a context where the distinction between ‘home’ and ‘abroad’ no longer holds. This places importance on a number of things: the need not just for inter-agency working, but interdepartmental working; the need for the intelligence community’s activities to be consistent with overall government policy direction; and for the linkages between different actions and policy areas to be taken into account in decision-making. In some areas, it is also the case that ministerial responsibilities do not fit within the reporting lines of the agencies. For example, the security minister is responsible for cyber-security and information assurance − which are the primary tasks of GCHQ but becoming more relevant to the work of SIS and the Security Service − yet has no role in authorising activities in this area. Moreover, there is a noticeable trend for government departments to expect the intelligence community to not just provide informative products, but to take action based on those products and influence events in line with policy priorities. This is not a step towards the CIA model of paramilitary activities and political action. Nor is

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it entirely new: the agencies have always undertaken disruption activities, notably in relation to the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. However, the expectation that this will occur more frequently and in a larger number of areas requires other departments to be more aware of what the intelligence community is doing. Taken together with accusations of complicity in torture and related issues of legality, it also requires government to collectively take a closer oversight role of the activities of the agencies and set the framework within which they operate, not just the responsible ministers. Even if final authority still rests with certain ministers, the relevant cabinet committee on intelligence provides the forum in which collective consideration and decisions in respect of authorisations can and should take place. However, the Labour government did not convene the Cabinet Committee on Intelligence and Security Issues (later a sub-committee of the National Security, International Relations and Development Committee) frequently and it remains to be seen how often the coalition government will convene the National Security Council Sub-Committee on Threats, Hazards, Resilience and Civil Contingencies in restricted form for intelligence matters. It is also clear that the membership of this subcommittee – limited as it is to the prime minister, deputy prime minister, foreign secretary, chancellor, home secretary and defence secretary – is not broad enough to be able to assess in great detail the effect of agency activities across all departments. The subcommittee’s membership should be reviewed to become more flexible, and the committee’s remit changed to include ‘the collective consideration of authorisations for the operations of the intelligence and security agencies’. There is also scope for the involvement of more ministers in the oversight of the Single Intelligence Account (SIA) and JIC R&P. As Sir Michael Quinlan noted in 1993, the SIA is not just the aggregation of expenditure on the different agencies – it is the vehicle for government to consider what overall value it is getting from the intelligence community’s work and capabilities. In relation to the

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R&P, it is worth noting that permanent secretaries have always had a role in setting these through the permanent secretary’s Committee on the Intelligence Services and, when Labour established the National Security, International Relations and Development (Intelligence) ministerial committee. The National Security Council (Officials) arguably inherited this function. It is the fact that all permanent secretaries were involved that is important, compared to the limited number of ministers involved in approving the R&P. The range of ministers involved in oversight of the SIA and approval of the R&P, through the relevant NSC or subcommittee, should therefore also be reviewed. Towards a Director of National Intelligence? While these reforms will help achieve greater alignment of the intelligence community with the rest of government, there is the separate (albeit related) issue of how to achieve greater alignment and jointery (if not integration) between the agencies themselves. This issue is not new. In 1996, Michael Herman noted:4 [T]he intelligence community is in rather the same situation as defence was about thirty years ago. The JIC has a distinguished history in collective assessment. But in its managerial role it resembles the US chiefs of staff thirty years ago, not obtruding regularly on single-agency autonomy. Effective central management needs more than a committee. Arguably Britain needs someone on managerial intelligence issues who is in the position of defence’s modern CDS, advised by a committee but with personal responsibility.

Since Herman wrote, additional structures have emerged within the Cabinet Office to try and ensure the strategic alignment of the agencies and where necessary to arbitrate between them. The most notable feature was the creation of the intelligence co-ordinator post at permanent secretary level, which existed between 2001 and 2007. The co-ordinator had responsibility for the overall ‘health’ of the intelligence community, acted as accounting officer and from 2005 to

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2007 was also the chairman of the JIC. In 2007 the functions of the intelligence co-ordinator and JIC chairman were again separated. The result was that the cabinet secretary reassumed the role of accounting officer; the JIC chairman (at permanent secretary level) became responsible for the Assessments Staff; and the co-ordinator function, which retained responsibility for policy and legal issues affecting the intelligence community, was discharged at a lower (director general) level in addition to wider national security issues such as the National Security Strategy, civil contingencies and counter-terrorism. In 2009, the Cabinet Office tried to give greater clarity to its functions in relation to the intelligence community by redefining the Intelligence Secretariat. The Secretariat was to be comprised of two teams: one covering policy areas such as parliamentary engagement and accountability, law, strategic international engagement and legislation; and one covering the SIA and pushing for collaborative working and corporate services. In recommending these reforms, the Cabinet Office nonetheless recognised that: 5 [T]here is no bar in the future to a permanent secretary level coordinator with overall responsibility for the health of the intelligence community, including aspects of the assessment and analytical functions. But only a very senior permanent secretary could credibly assume the Principal Accounting Officer role and the responsibility will continue to rest with the Cabinet Secretary at this point. Equally, the current arrangements for the JIC Chairman are one of a number of ways in which the Butler criteria for strengthening the assessment function of the JIC and these could be explored in future.

Following the 2010 general election, the role of accounting officer for the intelligence community transferred from the cabinet secretary to the newly created post of national security adviser (in which capacity he ‘sponsors’ the intelligence community’s bid across all government departments in negotiations with the Treasury). In addition, the national security adviser assumed responsibility for the

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Cabinet Office’s Intelligence Secretariat. It can be argued that the national security adviser’s breadth of responsibilities precludes him from giving the detailed attention that is necessary in this area. It is also not clear that the position’s responsibility for the Intelligence Secretariat is consistent with the Butler Report’s emphasis on separating intelligence from policy; a distinction must be made between the process of ‘national security policy-making’, which is the role of the National Security Council supported by the national security adviser, but which the intelligence community takes direction from (and can advise), and that area of policy which sets the framework for the activities of the intelligence community and in doing so provides context for intelligence assessment. The latter, according to Butler, should be kept separate from policymaking but is currently the responsibility of the national security adviser. A recurring problem not necessarily solved by the creation of such a position (who is also accounting officer for the intelligence community) is the lack of adherence to central priorities by the single agencies. Previous agency heads have indicated two things. Firstly, that they are not bound by the R&P. For example, in November 2008 the chief of SIS said that he sets his own priorities quite distinct from those established by the JIC:6 The JIC priorities are not gospel as far as SIS is concerned. We do have to make our own judgment as to where we put our operational resource, and that is my responsibility under the statute. Nobody tells me I have to report to the JIC. I am responsible for the proper operational conduct of our business, so therefore it is my duty, and our duty, to make our own judgments about where we invest.

Secondly, previous versions of the National Security Strategy have had little impact on the focus or nature of their work.7 The current division of responsibilities between the national security adviser and JIC chairman will not necessarily rectify this. The

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former has responsibility for developing the UK’s National Security Strategy which, when first published in 2008, was meant to form the basis for the R&P process undertaken by the JIC chairman. The coalition government placed emphasis on the importance of a National Security Strategy and aimed for its iterations to be more directive and binding than those produced under Labour (which, it was argued, were descriptive and did not prioritise interests, risks, tasks or direct cross-government work). It certainly makes sense for the National Security Strategy to continue to set the framework for the JIC R&Ps. But given that the intelligence community’s performance is measured within the SIA, there is no single authority tasked with ensuring the agencies contribute to achieving what is set out in the NSS – the R&P and SIA are more separated than they should be. The individual agency heads are of course frequent participants in National Security Council meetings, so should have had a role in guiding the 2010 National Security Strategy and Strategic Defence and Security Review. In turn these documents should be reflected in the priorities they set for their organisations. This cannot be assumed, however, and the relationship of the JIC chairman to the agencies in this set-up is relatively unclear. It is also the case that the participation of agency heads could lead them into the field of policy-making, contrary to Butler doctrine. The lack of adherence to the R&Ps and National Security Strategy indicates the quite significant discretion individual agencies (and certain ministers) have had to date. This hampers progress in two further areas: questions of inter-agency strategy and strategic engagement with international partners. Interagency strategy encompasses the need for joint tasking, strategies and teams between different organisations working in the same area, as well as the need to shift towards shared support services such as human resources, IT, estates and cross-community career planning. The intelligence community has gone some way in this direction; the Secret Intelligence Service and GCHQ in particular

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are working to establish joint strategies and teams and are moving in the direction of common support services. However, government should push these existing streams of collaborative working further and make sure the Security Service is included. Collective decisions and allocations of spending and strategy at ministerial level should help achieve this, but there remains the absence of a senior, official, day-to-day ‘owner’ of the intelligence community to drive this forward on the government’s behalf. In relation to foreign partners, a number of other intelligence establishments have created a director of national intelligence post spanning the entire intelligence community. For the UK, this raises a question about how the intelligence community in total is able to engage with international interlocutors at a strategic level. The JIC chairman is not really able to perform this external role and agency heads therefore enjoy taking the lead abroad. The picture is further complicated by existence of the director general responsible for the Intelligence Secretariat, who reports to the national security adviser. The difficulties this poses were identified by the case of Binyam Mohamed, which challenged the control principle: no one agency or individual was able to take the lead in dealing with this at a strategic level with the US. At home, on the other hand, fear of political contamination renders a perceptible reluctance for agency heads to come very far into the open – although this is slowly changing, as indicted by public speeches from each of the heads in the latter part of 2010. But the nature and level of their public engagement is ad hoc and often reactive. It is not consistent and still leaves a gap in public understanding which, given the subject matter, is not necessarily easy for ministers to fill. Speeches are only likely to fuel public demand for greater and more regular openness which the agency heads might be unable or unwilling to meet. It follows from each of these considerations that there is a combined need for: • Strategic direction of the intelligence community as a whole,

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including in the areas of tasking, resource allocation and shared support services Someone with an ability to speak with authority for the entire intelligence community with foreign interlocutors Advice on a continuing basis to the NSC and its machinery, that maintains separation of accountability between intelligence assessment on the one hand and national security policy/policy-making on the other Separation of the professional intelligence craft from policy formulation Protection of the professional heads of services from the political arena Greater demystification of the role of intelligence in national security and public understanding thereof.

This can be achieved by increasing the status, role and remit of the chairman of the JIC in the following ways: • Transferring responsibility for the SIA process to the chairman of the JIC. The chairman would in effect be the (statutory) intelligence adviser to the National Security Council and, as such, tasked with ensuring the R&P and SIA are consistent with the National Security Strategy developed by the national security adviser. This would not preclude agency heads from attending NSC meetings to advise on their areas of specialism as required • Giving the chairman responsibility for the Intelligence Secretariat, to ensure consistency with the Butler doctrine and because issues such as legal authorisations provide important context for assessments • Task the chairman to represent the intelligence community’s policy to foreign counterparts and the public. These functions would be in addition to the chairman’s existing responsibilities for the R&P, production of intelligence assessments

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and development of an intelligence analyst cadre in government. It is likely that an increase in resources within the Cabinet Office would be needed to support this expanded role. This set-up would build on the experiment of the intelligence co-ordinator position held by Sir David Omand between 2001 and 2005. Since David Omand’s tenure, the post declined in importance and, from 2007, did not exist. The position proposed here would be more senior, assertive and authoritative, and therefore able to drive things forward more easily and with a clearer mandate. There is particular similarity between this proposal and the director of national intelligence position established in the US. Although implementing this innovation in the US has proven difficult, the position is starting to bed down and many of the challenges can be attributed to three factors: the prime position given to the CIA in the past and the reluctance on the part of the organisation to give this up, whereas no single agency has been given (or attempted to acquire) overall primacy in the UK; the number of organisations that form part of the US intelligence community, whereas the UK community is markedly smaller; and the fact that the director of national intelligence was not given formal budgetary authority and other central mechanisms to direct the individual agencies. The Use of Intelligence Assessments in Policy-making In addition to the need for wider ministerial involvement in decisionmaking and authorisations, an ongoing issue remains the utility of the intelligence assessments provided to ministers (for which the JIC chairman is ultimately responsible). The Butler Inquiry summarised the key characteristic of JIC assessments, namely that ‘they contain single statements of position; unlike the practice in the US, there are no minority reports or noted dissents. When the intelligence is unclear or otherwise inadequate and the JIC at the end of its debate is still uncertain, it may report alternative interpretations of the facts before it such as they are; but in such cases all the membership agrees that the interpretations they are proposing are viable alternatives’.8 However, the

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Inquiry also noted that a recurring issue was whether JIC assessments are drafted and presented in a way which helps readers to pick up the scope of uncertainty attached to intelligence. In studying assessments relating to the Iraq War, Butler found two things of particular note. First: assessments about chemical and biological weapons ‘were less complete, especially in their considerations of alternative hypotheses; [and] used a different ‘burden of proof’ in testing Iraqi declarations’.9 And second: the JIC did not ‘show fully the basis on which it derived’ the calculations on Iraq’s ballistic missile programme.10 The Inquiry did not recommend a convention for intelligence assessments but did suggest that the ‘way in which alternative or minority hypotheses, or uncertainty, are expressed’ is reviewed. It referred to the practice in the US, which is to attach degrees of confidence and notes of dissent to its National Intelligence Estimates.11 It also recommended that all reasonable sustainable hypotheses should not be dismissed finally until there is sufficient information to do so.12 It is important for those developing intelligence assessments to understand how the products are used for the purposes of decisionmaking by ministers. Iraq identified the challenge of insufficient nuances and caveats being given to assessments. The risk remains that, despite the innovation of the ‘Assessment Base’ box in JIC papers following Butler, busy members of the government will continue to assume that a consensus view of the JIC gives a certain basis for policy decisions and planning. It is important that alternative hypotheses and interpretations are included in assessments which take ministers through the different calculations. This will improve both the quality and utility of the intelligence product. In turn, of course, ministers must be able to devote sufficient time to proper strategic thinking and assessment. The Future of the Assessment Community Another factor that affects the quality and utility of the intelligence product is the nature of the assessment process – both structures and people.

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In addition to the Joint Intelligence Committee, in 2003 the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre was formed. JTAC is based at the Security Service headquarters. It is a multi-agency organisation responsible for all-source analysis and assessment of intelligence relating to international terrorism, at home and overseas. JTAC sets threat levels and issues warnings for terrorism and terrorism-related subjects. As it evolved, the Centre also acquired responsibility for producing indepth reports on trends, terrorist networks and capabilities. There is a risk that this latter function has become too strategic in nature, with the JIC ‘sub-contracting’ its function in relation to international terrorism to JTAC. The case of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab illustrated this; the value of JTAC should lie in its ability to collate all necessary information held by agencies on a particular individual topic or subject, both to make a fuller assessment of the risk and to determine if the threshold for sharing intelligence with partners is crossed, but this did not happen. More emphasis should be placed on the co-ordination of operational intelligence by JTAC: partners like the US expect this. Notwithstanding this situation, JTAC’s products tend to be a successful example of all-source analysis. The challenge it has overcome to a larger degree than the JIC is to be close to the agencies for the purposes of helping guide their collection efforts, accessing single source analysis and discussing interpretations with collectors. The Cabinet Office Assessments Staff has never had this capacity. The situation has not changed markedly since the Butler Inquiry reflected in 2004 that:13 The resources of the Assessments Staff are very slight in relation to those of the collecting agencies. Moreover, for the most part the Assessments Staff is made up of officials from departments on shortterm secondments. When the Assessments Staff were set up in 1968, it was envisaged that they would have a permanent staff but the shortage of opportunities for advancement has made that impracticable… The Assessments Staff do a remarkable job, given their limited role, in

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pulling together objective assessments. But they have limited scope for employing formal techniques of challenge. These would clearly not be appropriate in every case but might well be desirable for major issues when the ‘prevailing wisdom’ risks becoming too conventional. Their limited role also means that much of the task of assessing the influence of informants’ circumstances on the nature and quality of their reporting falls to the intelligence agencies, and is vulnerable to agencies championing their own sources.

Although Butler implied that government should establish a professional career stream for analysts, this was never implemented. The tendency has been to tinker with the existing set-up by: increasing resource allocation to a small extent; establishing an analysis techniques course and academic programmes with key universities; and, more recently, trying to increase capacity by having the Assessments Staff adopt critical thinking methods and creating a cross-government challenge group for intelligence assessments. While these changes meet some of the smaller recommendations made by Butler – to have challenge as an accepted and routine part of the assessment process, built into the system14 – they do not deal with the issue of critical mass for the Assessments Staff. The deputy head of professional intelligence analysis has recently completed a review of cross-government intelligence analysis capacity which provides a real opportunity to look at options for establishing a proper career path which: encourages individuals to specialise and stay in posts for a lengthy period; increases the all-source capability of the Assessments Staff; and improves the relationship between the Staff and singlesource agencies, including access to records. This issue of career streams is part of a broader challenge the individual agencies will face: how to re-skill their staff to meet the demands of the internet age; how to ensure continuity of operational experience in key areas and over the long term (particularly if there are redundancies); what balance to strike between generalists and specialists; and how to improve in-house training.

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The capacity of the central staff could be increased not only by developing a proper career stream, but also by drawing on ‘external’ expertise. An obvious source, as indicated by Butler, is the Defence Intelligence Staff. The DIS is a unique all-source assessment capability across government but, despite being covered by the R&P process which allows the JIC to have greater leverage over its work, this has not had an enormous effect. More worryingly, the DIS has continuously faced resource cuts. Rather than focusing on the narrow ambition of ‘aligning’ DIS efforts with the rest of the intelligence community, government must therefore revisit calls by Butler for the Staff to be integrated with the intelligence community by increasing the size of the SIA. This would allow the centre to commission work from the Intelligence Staff directly and also help alleviate the continuous resource cuts imposed by the MoD in this area. As the use of intelligence products extends across a wider range of departments and policy areas, the importance of improving allsource assessment capacity and capability at the centre must not be underestimated. Michael Herman made an observation in the late 1990s that ‘no comparable breadth of all-source analysis and output is yet reflected in the subjects on which intelligence assessment bears most strongly on policy. Its greatest influence as an authority is still in the difficult-to-define national security field’.15 The intelligence community will need to be able meet the increasing demand from across government for this product. This demand is perhaps reflected in the membership of the JIC. Membership has always been drawn from the collection agencies, those responsible for the assessment of intelligence, and those who use the intelligence (the policy customer). This is probably a good balance for setting the R&P and reviewing the performance of the community. But there is – and always has been – disquiet at the fact that this set-up shares authority for the production and issuing of assessments with customers of the product themselves. As more policy areas and departments make use of intelligence, the JIC membership risks becoming unwieldy, even if not formally or at

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every single meeting. There is also the curious position of some key collectors and producers of intelligence – particularly in relation to counter-terrorism and serious organised crime – not having proper representation on the committee. The police service and SOCA should have formal representation. One option would be for the JIC to be comprised of the collection agencies and those responsible for assessment only (particularly if the capacity of the latter is increased and can draw on open source intelligence and wider information and horizon scanning from across government), with customers being involved in (or feeding into) inter-agency teams and the National Security Council (Officials) committee setting the R&P, monitoring performance and assessing the implications of assessments across government. Conclusion The importance of many of these recommendations was implicitly recognised when the Joint Intelligence Committee’s terms of reference were changed in October 2009 to include assessment, early warning, formulation of requirements and priorities for intelligence gathering and other tasks undertaken by the intelligence and security agencies, oversight of the community’s analytical capability and liaison with foreign intelligence organisations.16 However, the centre does not have the capacity to fulfil these functions to the extent required currently. The Strategic Defence and Security Review placed significant emphasis on the intelligence and security agencies as ‘enablers’ of national security, broadly defined across all parts of government. Allegations of complicity in torture and the case of Binyam Mohamed further point to the need for stronger central oversight and direction of intelligence policy. However, although intelligence will increasingly assume a wider and more important role across government, SDSR failed to look at the key issues of governance, management and use of the intelligence community by ministers and officials. The 2004 Butler Report made many recommendations of direct relevance in

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these areas but, although the government of the day and all political parties accepted the Report, the recommendations have not been implemented to the extent required. There is a good case for a relatively small number of changes to be made to the central intelligence machinery which would have a disproportionately positive effect, including involving a wider range of senior ministers in authorising and overseeing the agencies collectively; drawing on the director of national intelligence innovation in other countries to help the centre assume (and have the capacity for) stronger strategic direction of the community as a whole; improving the quality and utility of intelligence assessments in relation to policy-making by ensuring that products include alternative hypotheses and interpretations, allowing ministers to think strategically; establishing a formal career stream for intelligence analysis; and integrating the DIS into the SIA and JIC Requirements and Priorities process properly. The SDSR provided a relatively clear political and policy statement on what is expected of intelligence but did not consider the crucial challenge of how intelligence should be delivered; this is something that government needs to take much more seriously.

THE ARMED FORCES AND THE BRITISH PEOPLE Hew Strachan The Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR) presents a unique opportunity to redefine the relationship between the armed forces and society in Britain, with possible and positive effects for recruitment, retention and resettlement. The Conservatives’ preelection commitment to rebuilding the military covenant raised the question of whether it was possible to reconstruct something whose foundations are only ten years old and whose edifice is recognised only by the army. But their determination to honour their manifesto and the subsequent incorporation of the military covenant in their agreement with the Liberal Democrats has placed the personnel issues of the armed forces much higher up the political agenda than is suggested by the press’s attention to aircraft carriers, tanks and fast jets. Equipment may be the capability on which so much of the defence debate has focused, but it behoves us to remember that people too are a capability – and one that currently accounts for about a third of the defence budget. Armed Forces and Government The core element of the military covenant is the relationship between the armed forces and the government. It is an implicit contract between those who serve, who accept an unlimited liability, up to and including death, and the government which they serve. However, the British government has never been entirely happy with its side of the bargain. In the nineteenth century it recognised two reasons for

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giving pensions – disability as a result of service and length of service. In other words most of those who served received no reciprocal reward from the state for their efforts. In 1832 the weekly wage of an agricultural labourer was 12 shillings and of a skilled worker £1. The soldier received only a shilling a day, as did the military pensioner provided he had completed twenty-one years’ service. The government, both then and often since, tended to be motivated not by an obligation to those who had served, but by a determination to reduce the costs they generated. In 1829 Lord Hardinge, who had fought under Wellington in the Peninsula War and in the Waterloo campaign, was the secretary at war (and – paradoxical as it may seem to those who have a false idea of the antiquity of our current constitutional arrangements – a future commander-in-chief of the British Army). Hardinge reduced the entitlement to a pension to a maximum of three years for those who had been disabled in service, but had completed less than twenty-one years’ service – long enough to get ‘the wounded to work’. Similarly, after the First World War, in 1921 the Ministry of Pensions ruled that after 1928 no new pensions would be considered for those discharged before 1921. Then, as now, the tendency to present the psychological consequences of service late rather than early meant that many of those suffering mental wounds incurred on the Somme or at Ypres found themselves disqualified for a pension by the lapse of time between the wound and their presentation of it. In other words, most of those who served up to and during the Second World War were neither eligible for a pension by reason of disability nor qualified by dint of long service. They received no support from the state, whether directly financial or not, nor – it might be observed – were they well paid while they were in uniform. This might not have mattered if the burden of service had been borne by all society equally. But Britain’s experience of conscription is very limited, being confined to the years 1916–19 and 1939–61. Unlike France, Britain has no political tradition which links military service to the idea of citizenship. The British do not believe, as

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Rousseau did, that the corollary of political rights is the obligation to shoulder a musket on behalf of the state that gives those rights. Many who served in the First World War, possibly the majority, did not even have the vote, as universal male suffrage for those aged over twenty-one was not introduced until 1918. There is therefore an inherent paradox in the arguments of those who debate whether today’s servicemen and women should be accorded the privileges of citizenship or citizenship-‘plus’. When enlisting, service personnel swear an oath of loyalty to Her Majesty, her heirs and successors. This is the nearest that they get to a contract of employment. The oath says nothing about the rights of the employee, but a great deal more about his or her obligations. Its implications include the so-called ‘unlimited liability’, and so effectively conclude that service personnel are not so much citizens of the UK as subjects of the Crown. Our understanding of citizenship stresses individual rights; the armed forces emphasise the subordination of the individual within the team. There is not much reciprocity here, despite the fact that a covenant implies mutual obligations. The situation in which Britain finds itself today is therefore a new one, for which precedents are lacking. The growth of the welfare state after 1945 in many respects left the armed forces trailing in its wake, just as they were left behind by many of the changes in the society which they allegedly represented – the legalisation of homosexuality, the ending of discrimination on grounds of race, and the pursuit of equality between the sexes. The armed forces confronted most of these issues by late 1990s, although they continue to have to be vigilant about their observance. Until 1969, with ongoing commitments east of Suez, overseas service and the mobility within service life provided a rationale for welfare delivered on the basis of paternalism rather than of rights – especially within the regimental ‘families’ of the army. After 1969, the army recognised that the withdrawal from empire and the consequent location of units at home would require service personnel and their families to be more integrated with the rest of society. Just as marriage

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allowances would disappear, so – or at least so the expectation ran – would married quarters. Soldiers would go to work just like civilian employees. But those expectations have only been partly fulfilled. Forty years on, the distinction between the lives of service personnel and their families and of the other residents of the country can still be stark. The response of the Labour government, the Service Personnel Command Paper (SPCP) of 2008,1 recognised that point. After 1969 the armed forces progressively stripped out the support given to the wider military family, but other government departments did not step into the gap. Increasingly since 2008, especially at central government level, they have done so and the genuine achievements of the SPCP have been handsomely acknowledged by the coalition government. The SPCP provides many of the benchmarks for current improvements and new initiatives – the army’s ‘Firm Base’ programme designed to link the regional brigade structures to local communities and the pilot ‘Welfare Pathway’ scheme intended to provide support to those who are in service, to their families and to those transitioning out of service. The full benefits from the SPCP are still percolating through to local government and have often yet to be fully appreciated. Armed Forces and the Nation The military covenant is, however, not just a covenant between the armed forces and the government; it is also a covenant between the armed forces and the nation – the people of Britain. This relationship has been in much better shape for much longer. The County Police Act of 1839 relieved the British Army of primary responsibility for internal order at home. No longer an instrument of domestic repression, it became more popular the greater its distance from Britain as it garrisoned the empire. The public’s high estimation of the armed forces, established by the mid-nineteenth century, has rarely wavered from that day to this. It is particularly buoyant at the moment, but it is also remarkably resilient, remarkably unaffected by

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incompetent commanders, by breaches of discipline (such as Camp Breadbasket) or by allegations of bullying (as manifested in the Deepcut scandal). Its overt expression has been charitable support for the armed forces, going back at least to the Crimean War. The Soldiers’, Sailors’ and Air Force Association dates from 1885 and has now celebrated its 125th anniversary, and The Royal British Legion was a product of the First World War. The success and multiplication of the service charities has relieved the government of the obligations that in other nations would be and often are borne by the state. The public’s desire to engage with the armed forces and to fulfil its obligations under the military covenant remains extraordinarily strong, as the success of Help for Heroes shows. But there are challenges: the challenge of converting sympathy, which is almost boundless, into genuine understanding, which is in much shorter supply; the challenge created by charitable activity itself, which portrays those who serve, their dependants and veterans as victims – and victims not just of the enemy but of a state which is portrayed as callous and neglectful. As a consequence the public can fail to understand how much the state does do – particularly for the severely wounded. It also fails to realise that most of those who serve are fit and robust, find their job challenging and exciting, revel in its comradeship and miss it when they leave, but nonetheless go on to successful careers and fulfilled lives after they have completed their service. The military covenant did not begin as a relationship between the armed forces and either the government or the nation. When the army coined the term in 2000,2 it did so within army doctrine on the moral component of ‘fighting power’. It was therefore an extension of the values and standards to which all three services subscribe. Its implementation lay within the chain of command, just as values and standards shape the command relationship. Since 2000 the military covenant has grown arms and legs, carrying a burden greater than its rather slender foundations in army doctrine are capable of bearing. It does not, as yet, apply to the other two services, and it has no

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foundation, again as yet, in law. But it is used by the press as a stick with which to beat every drum, from equipment to operational tempo to overall force strengths. It has become politicised. It is used by some senior officers to beat the government, but not as yet to call to account those who fail within the command chain. The Armed Forces Covenant Task Force The task force on the implementation of the military covenant,3 set up at the behest of the coalition government in July 2010, and answerable in the first instance to the External Reference Group of the SPCP, has focused its efforts on personnel and welfare issues. The armed forces have hitherto tended to insist that these are the responsibility of command, so perpetuating the paternalism of the ship’s captain or the regimental commanding officer. But some do not naturally fall within the command chain. The armed forces are caught between a twentieth or even a nineteenth century form of employment and an increasing expectation generated by the military covenant that they will deliver twenty-first century results. Today’s civilian employers have far greater responsibilities within the workplace for their employees than their predecessors did, in relation not just to health and safety but also to pensions, hours of work, the working environment and so on. The employer has an obligation to prevent bullying and to provide redress from sexual and social harassment. However, at the same time the employer is far less involved in what happens to his or her employee outside the workplace. He or she is no longer concerned whether the employee is divorced, sexually unfaithful or gay. A worker is increasingly unlikely to live in a tied house or to send his or her children to a tied school. His or her pension is portable from one career to another, and in most ‘middle-class’ occupations he or she is encouraged to contribute to a pension pot from the first day of employment. Employees are meant to take charge of their own finances and housing, and to seek independent advice in order to do so. The armed forces, by contrast, follow far fewer twenty-first century employment practices within

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the working environment, but interfere far more than most twentyfirst century employers outside it. Furthermore, they do so without the full range of ‘human resource’ and personnel professionals used by civilian businesses and companies. As the civilian workplace becomes more legally complex, two trends are evident in the direction of personnel. First, the management of ‘human resources’ is an increasingly important specialisation; second, welfare issues are handled outside the direct chain of authority by professionals in particular fields, as well as by doctors, social workers and counsellors. In the Ministry of Defence, Personnel, its ‘human resources’ branch, is staffed by career servicemen and women and by civil servants, neither group necessarily professionally qualified in ‘human resources’ issues. The ministry lacks a ‘people strategy’ for its workforce to read, a document which sets out in clear prose their possible career options and opportunities. The deputy chief of the defence staff (personnel) does not sit on the Defence Board, despite the fact that manpower consumes a third (and increasing proportion) of the defence budget. As a result the SDSR has been driven by a definition of capability shaped disproportionately by equipment; ‘people’ issues have been treated as secondary and sequential, rather than primary. As a three-star officer, the deputy chief of defence staff (personnel) is outranked by the four-star single service chiefs; what he does can be second-guessed or reinterpreted by the single services in its implementation. Opportunity for Reform Nonetheless, the armed forces in 2010 stand at a point where they have a real opportunity for constructive and far-reaching reform in the areas which affect the military covenant. Recruiting is buoyant, and voluntary outflow is at a historic low – 3.4 per cent of the army each year as opposed to an average in the past of 6 per cent. The anticipated cuts in manpower as a result of the SDSR can only improve the armed forces’ negotiating position within the labour market. There is a real opportunity to raise the bar at the point of

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enlistment, not least for the army, some of whose recruits have the educational attainment of seven-year olds and some of whom have personal and psychological problems that make them unsuited for the service. If the opportunity was taken, the armed forces would get a better return on service, as there is a clear link between retention and educational attainment. They would also discharge into civilian life personnel who would find it easier to resettle and who would be less likely to join that very small group of ex-service personnel who find themselves homeless or in prison. If the armed forces do not seize the moment, then they risk facing very significant challenges when the economy recovers in the near future. The crisis will be deepened by the outflow of those who are staying in at the moment because the economy is weak, and by the raising of the school leaving age to eighteen. But if the armed forces are to break the mould, they need to offer an employment model that more obviously matches the expectations of school leavers in the twenty-first century. In 1910, the majority of the UK’s working male population – 80 per cent or more – defined itself as working class in that it earned its living by manual labour. A recruiting model that drew its recruits from the largest group of employees was sensible (even if it struggled to meet established strengths). In 2010, most of the British population defines itself as middle class, with aspirations to domestic stability, home ownership, pensions and the other indicators of relative security. To some extent the Royal Navy and the RAF have adapted to this model: senior warrant officers have degrees or equivalent qualifications, as do senior warrant officers in the army’s technical branches. The Royal Marines claim that 40 per cent of recruits at Lympstone are capable of taking degrees. The US armed forces have found that the poorest 20 per cent of the country’s population provides only 11 per cent of their strength, and is the cohort least represented in its ranks. Of their recruits, 74 per cent are high school graduates. Such a high proportion aids retention, since those who are better educated stay longer. Retention is central to the competence of America’s forces, as it is to those of

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the UK. Unlike civilian businesses, the services cannot easily buy in skills through lateral ‘hirings’, at least not within the current hierarchical rank and promotion system. Instead, they have to grow their own skills base. The UK must be readier to adopt policies that better reflect the aspirations of what earlier generations used to call ‘a better class of recruit’ in order to meet the demand for forces that (in today’s catchphrases) are both more ‘agile’ and more ‘flexible’. There are signs that it is ready to do so – through ending arms plotting in the army, concentrating bases within Britain, and delivering a greater degree of stability (outside operational tours) – both generally, and specifically in the UK itself. Improved single-living accommodation, now in hand, is a first step; rationalising married quarters, enabling and promoting home ownership, and minimising unnecessary moves are the next. One measure, which would go a long way to address the issues regularly encountered by the External Reference Group of the SPCP, would be to align military communities with the civilian communities from which they recruit. The logic that quarters 5 Scots (The Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders) in Canterbury, and 3 Rifles (which recruits in northern England) in Edinburgh, is hard to fathom. Undoubtedly, families derive support from the military community of which they are members when their battalions are deployed to Afghanistan, but they would be even further sustained if they were simultaneously closer to their kith and kin, so that the spouses of those deployed could turn to relatives for help and their children to their grandparents. The twenty-first century model of employment demands more. People should be judged for the skills they possess rather than the rank that they hold. Once talent has been recognised, promotion from the ranks should be both easier and quicker. Education should be promoted as a means to further and enhance a career, not as a reward for long service and good conduct. Serving personnel ought to be trusted to organise their own lives and should be prepared in life and citizenship skills, not made dependent on a paternalist organisation to do it for them. It should be easier to take career breaks – for

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paternity, maternity or education – and easier to shift from regular service to reserve service. And given the possibility of an immediate demand for skills which the armed forces will not have anticipated, for example specific linguistic competences, consideration should be given to the possibility of ‘lateral hiring’ on a more regular basis than at present: the US Army is planning to offer direct commissions as captains to those with the skills it needs provided they have acquired five years’ relevant professional service and a master’s degree. Veterans It is not only the armed forces that need to rethink their job offer. Collectively, the British public and the service charities that reflect its concerns need to re-examine the treatment of veterans and the support they receive. The fact that Britain has adopted a definition of who is a veteran that is probably the most inclusive of any country in the developed world does not help in the clarification of policy. One day’s service qualifies a person to be called a veteran, even if most of those in this category are unlikely to be in receipt of any benefits or entitlements as a consequence. The definition has created a constituency which, when family members and dependants are added in, accounts for almost 20 per cent of the country’s population. Not only is this much larger than the currently small size of Britain’s armed forces might lead one to expect, but it is also one whose members are frequently unaware that they are considered to be veterans. The profile of the British veteran community is already shifting and is going to change very dramatically in the next decade or so. By linking veterans to Remembrance Sunday and to the public image created by members of the Royal British Legion, Britain associates them with the two world wars. As those who served in the Second World War die, the overall number of veterans in the UK will fall and their age profile will shift. Already most of those veterans seeking help as a result of their service (rather than as a consequence of old age) are in their thirties. Most are reluctant to

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define themselves as veterans and most are also anxious to move on to new careers. But for those who have long-term and possibly disabling injuries, whether physical or psychological, their needs are likely to be greater and more long lasting than has been the case in the past. In September 2010, twelve triple amputees were in the defence medical system; not only had they survived injuries which would have been fatal in previous wars, but they could also look forward to much longer life expectancies than could earlier generations. Changing demand needs to be met by changes in the provision of welfare. The Ministry of Defence (as the former employer) cannot always be the best and most objective champion of the former employee, and the charitable sector collectively needs to co-ordinate its activities better so that it is more ready to meet the demands of those who need its help rather than find itself serving the interests of its constituent bodies. Much is already in hand, through the Army Recovery Capability and through Haslar Company for the Royal Navy and Royal Marines, as well as through the efforts of the Confederation of British Service and Ex-Service Organisations, but there is more that needs to be done. Conclusion Three approaches, which could both inform this process and also help build the military covenant, centre on education, communication and local delivery. Education has already been mentioned several times: education in service will give a better return on service and prepare serving personnel for their transition to civilian life. As importantly, however, the public needs to be educated so that those who sympathise with the armed forces but do not empathise with them learn to understand their priorities and philosophies. Communication is related to this approach. Those who are serving are often not fully aware of the opportunities already open to them, despite the efforts initiated as a result of the SPCP. The same can apply to those who have left the services, many of whom prove to be surprisingly ignorant of their existing rights and entitlements, as

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can those who find themselves dealing with serving personnel and veterans but have not themselves served. Local delivery is an enabler of the first two approaches. Serving personnel and their families live alongside, but often not in, local communities. The army, through its Firm Base scheme, has recognised the need to bring the two into greater alignment. In Scotland, both the navy and the RAF meet alongside the army and the representatives of the Scottish government in the Firm Base Forum, thus acknowledging – in this area at least – the value of a joint approach. Naval bases, RAF stations and now the army’s super-garrisons provide the means to give the inter-departmental cooperation achieved at central level through the SPCP meaning at the local level through liaison with local authorities. And it is at the local level that veterans can be best supported. The British armed forces have often had to be reminded that there are examples of good practice worthy of their emulation to be found in the armed forces of other countries. What is striking about the military covenant is that, for once, the boot seems to be on the other foot. Countries overseas are looking at the UK. That does not mean that Britain should not continue to look elsewhere – to Canada’s military human resources strategy, or to New Zealand’s efforts to produce a tighter definition of who is or is not a veteran – but it now has an opportunity to set its own best practice and so to provide an example for emulation by others. Popular concern for the armed forces, generated by the tempo of recent conflict and by the casualties that have ensued, has generated an appetite for action. But it is likely to be ephemeral, just as was the popular response after the First World War. In seizing the moment, the government needs to produce measures that are robust and sustainable, not least when public attention has been diverted elsewhere but when the needs of those who have served or are serving remain.

PROCUREMENT REFORM David Gould

Major Ministry of Defence (MoD) procurement reform initiatives, invariably welcomed and announced with fanfare as the definitive answer to earlier shortcomings, regenerate at roughly ten year intervals (continuous improvement is a daily but less spectacular occurrence). This might suggest that success from such initiatives has at the very best been short lived. Certainly this is so if success is defined as keeping performance, cost and time in some sort of pre-determined equilibrium throughout the life of a major project: albeit, failure in these terms is not confined to defence, nor indeed to government, nor indeed to the UK. This broader problem of complex projects may indicate that such a simple criterion of success may be unattainable unless there are changes to the way projects are defined in their scope, and consequent changes to planning and budgeting systems. Plans and budgets are entirely man made: large projects involve a wider confrontation with the laws of physics and much else besides. Procurement reform may be much too narrow an idea to deal with the inherent level of complexity, difficulty and uncertainty in large projects which − while necessary − do not in fact comprise the main body of capability development today. Taking a very brief and slightly superficial look at what has been attempted, there are some consistent features that run through defence procurement reform from the 1970s onwards. These include: • Organisational consolidation • Attempted strengthening of some version of customer/supplier

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arrangements • Transfer of responsibility to the private sector. There have also been some ‘consistent inconsistencies’: common themes that get very different treatments. These include: • Technology management (closely related to the next point) • Treatment of risk and uncertainty • Control through incremental approval. Illustrating some of these in turn throws some light on what has and has not worked, which may help to avoid repeating the cycle. Consolidation When the author of this chapter joined the MoD, it was to the newly born Procurement Executive, though colleagues were adamant they belonged to the Admiralty. Consolidation of the three single service acquisition organisations and part of the Ministry of Supply by 1970 made sense, given the reduced scale of acquisition and of defence as a player in the economy generally in the early part of that decade.1 There may have been some marginal benefit from consolidated purchasing power, although not as much as the former retailer Sir Derek Rayner, who established the Procurement Executive, probably hoped. For example, though sharing much common base technology, guided weapons remained separate fiefdoms of the three services, with each probably paying for analogous technology at least twice over. This demonstrates that in the public sector, as in the private, merger and organisational change does not of itself guarantee the desired outcome: it is the follow-through that counts. In the field of guided weapons, and in their associated command systems, the environmental (land, sea, air) differences in technology were rapidly narrowing at the time, so consolidation made all kinds of sense in theory. However, the approach to technology management did not become unified until the complex weapons strategy of the 2005 Defence Industrial Strategy – after a waiting time of forty years −

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although useful progress was made along the way through industrial consolidation, with MBDA providing an excellent example of the acceptance of limitations and expense of maintaining competition in artificial market conditions. Vertical consolidation can also bring about unintended consequences in terms of horizontal separation. In the early 1970s, consolidation in acquisition led to a degree of separation between acquisition and logistics at one end, and research at the other, which is still not completely resolved. Creation of Defence Equipment and Support (DE&S), through the merger of the Defence Procurement Agency (DPA) and Defence Logistics Organisation (DLO – itself a massive merger from a few years earlier), was the result of a desire for a greater focus on through-life management: but it still left out the critical front end of research and technology, and still retained within it heirlooms from the DLO that, arguably, could have been contracted away or demerged long before. Good technology management is critical to success. Organisational change seldom solves complex problems − at best it provides a bit more opportunity. Finally, large consolidations tend to ‘throw everything into the pot’, rather than thinking through what elements need to be separated first to give the new organisation the desired focus. Once merged, it seems hard to prise out the less central bits. Certainly, this was the case of DE&S and the DLO before it. In short, organisational change may be necessary and sensible, but is seldom sufficient and carries with it a risk of over-emphasis on organisation, to the detriment of understanding and focus. Customer Supplier Arrangements These enduring agreements between customers and suppliers to provide goods and services are much loved by procurement reformers, following the theory that market discipline will produce equilibrium between cost/price and performance. But this all depends on the existence of a reasonably well-functioning market, which in the curious conditions of defence economics is seldom

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the case, because the market is too small and too specialised, and often distorted for political gain. Of course, it applies and works well when defence is ‘shopping’ for commodities and tried and tested ‘off-the-shelf ’ capabilities (provided what is needed is on the shelf, and the supplier is willing to sell it and continue the relationship through life). This can also apply when somebody else has taken all the technology risk – usually the US – or when the technology is predominantly commercially based and thus the progeny of genuine market conditions. The market model is applied in internal procurement reform. The effect of this is to create the illusion of an internal market, but in reality what emerges is a three-way relationship between the capability or requirement manager, the delivery agency internally (regardless of what it is called2) and the industrial supplier. Unlike a well-functioning market, the relative strengths of the parties vary dramatically throughout the defence acquisition cycle, in ways that have nothing to do with a rationally functioning market, and therefore do not produce an efficient allocation of resources. The cost (and ultimately the initial price, as suppliers get to know the budget) is set by the requirement or capability manager through the budgetary and planning process. The internal supplier is in a weak position to impose discipline, as he has little control over the budgetsetting process (and less since the McKinsey reforms3) and due to the fierce contest for resources inside the MoD the scope for altering this is minimal once it has been set. A point of no return is then reached in a project, producing a crisis whereby the necessary time and cost contingencies are reinstated. Next, the requirement manager normally sets about negotiating the highest level of performance possible from the Procurement Executive/DPA, often egged on by potential suppliers who are well aware of how the process works. The requirement manager has the upper hand, since they and the budget planners have the whip hand when it comes to the approval process. No project team leader ever gets approval by saying flatly that the project cannot be done for the budget, however much he or she may

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think it. Similarly, the requirement setters have no strong incentive to trade down early enough in the cycle to make such trades really effective. The industrial supplier is then faced with meeting a requirement that has been negotiated up, with a budget that has been negotiated down, introducing a high level of financial risk, which they often accept as a lesser evil than walking away from the contract. Consequently, they become expert at negotiating contract changes or provisions, which weaken the fixed price element. Curiously, suppliers seldom drop out of competitions because the price has become too keen – although there have been some exceptions, for example L3 in the Nimrod replacement programme, reflecting much credit on their management. BAE Systems’ robust approach to pricing after the Nimrod MRA4 and Astute crises was also salutary. Thus, the customer’s delivery agency and supplier progressively accept more and more risk. They end up with a project ostensibly having a 50 per cent chance of success in performance/cost/time terms, but a real probability of closer to 5−10 per cent. Overruns in cost and time follow. The outcome more often than not reflects the true 50 per cent cost (equal probability of over/underrun.) Inevitably, a high proportion of projects initiated in this way run into trouble, but only after a few years during which a large part of the budget has been consumed. At this point, the buying side is typically forced to make concessions in cost/performance – and always time – or lose their emerging asset. A good case in point was the landing ship dock Bay-class ships, where this outcome was explicitly confirmed by the National Audit Office.4 What we observe here is the spectacularly unintended consequence of holding the nonsensical notion that cost, time and performance should be treated as independent variables. Doing so enables the different players to practise the worst kind of ‘entryism’ just illustrated.5 The factors are of course highly interdependent, and very difficult to quantify when dealing with relatively untried technology (and see below for risk and uncertainty).

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Transfer of Responsibility to the Private Sector This is another inevitable direction of change, which has seen some spectacular successes as well as some failures, which all provide useful lessons. Among the many successes, less emphasis should be placed on the direct outsourcing of simpler functions, (e.g., management of airfields, first line aircraft servicing, catering – outsourcing activity without any innovation yields limited benefits and diminishing returns). Rather, the excellent success in moving to availability contracting for fast jet and rotary wing aircraft should be highlighted. The key here has been to outsource enough parts of the process to allow the private sector to alter it and to innovate. This involves more than just the nature and duration of the contract, but the entire relationship between the ministry and industry. In the military aircraft industry, the design authority has always been the industry, and the ministry has never tried to replicate it. Also, since the consolidation of the UK aircraft industry in the 1960s and 1970s, competition has been less of a driver. In addition, the post-Cold War consolidation of the RAF onto fewer main operating bases created the conditions for fundamental change in the way in which aircraft support was organised, leading to massive reductions in third and second line directly controlled support6 (and of course personnel numbers). The lesson from this is that to gain the maximum benefit from transfer of responsibility to the private sector, there needs to be fundamental change in the way functions are organised and managed. Even still, best performance is still impeded by dependence on legacy logistics IT systems. There is still more to do. The contrast with the Royal Dockyard privatisation in the late 1990s is illuminating. While successful in transferring ownership (incidentally, with the consideration from Devonport being used to buy out the redundancy entitlements at Rosyth, which was a necessary condition for later commercial success), and therefore transferring significant non-nuclear liabilities, the way in which the business was managed remained largely untouched.

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This provides a textbook lesson on the limitations of privatisation (transfer of asset ownership) as a driver. By privatising, the theory was that competition between the two dockyards would produce better outcomes in refitting costs. But the dockyards had no value without a refitting programme, so the asset being sold was in effect the profit stream from a forward allocated refitting programme. Because refits were specified in detail by the MoD design authority, including a man hour content for each task, and because there was also a regular negotiation over dockyard rates of charging (direct plus indirect labour cost), the dockyard companies were incentivised to minimise the input hours for refits during negotiation (increasing the per-hour charge) and maximise them once the contract was let (driving up the number of hours at this higher rate). This is another good example of the shifting correlation of forces described above. Certainly, important improvements have been made in refitting practice (although a bit too much is owed to de-scoping refits at the expense of long-term quality) and in techniques such as on-condition maintenance. But the traditional structure in naval systems, including the past practice of the MoD being the design authority, and concerns about ‘home porting’7 of ships, appear to have impeded the naval sector from making as much progress in modernising its business as the air sector has. However, the major benefit was deemed to emerge from competition for refits beyond the allocated programme, but this potential was negated by the successive reduction in Royal Navy hulls leading to an unsustainable price war for the scarce but sought-after refits remaining. The obvious outcome – dock and shipyard closure – has been postponed by the future carrier project, but will have to be faced soon. The difficulties in land systems are different again, and likely if anything to prove even more intractable unless a complete systems approach can be overlaid on future fighting vehicle acquisition. There are some recurrent themes of procurement reform that never quite get consistent treatment.

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Technology Management The MoD, and to a large degree the wider government, seem to be semi-permanently in two minds about the purpose of expenditure on research and technology development (this is not making reference to specific project-related development costs). On the one hand, it can be to mature technology to the point where it can be introduced into the project cycle at levels of risk which are understood; and on the other, it can be part of a process of discovery – referred to colloquially as ‘blue sky research’. Both are entirely legitimate, but in the case of a capability driven organisation such as the MoD it would seem logical for the emphasis to be very much on the former. Good early technology choices are vital to project definition and therefore to understanding the probability of outcomes, as is a clear understanding of why new technology is being introduced into a project – performance or cost related – as it almost always increases risk and uncertainty, which can only be mitigated by targeted technology maturation before the project is fully defined in cost, time and performance terms. Premature decision-taking involving technology not as well understood as it needs to be carries a high risk of future trouble, as the A400M predictably demonstrated. This does not mean there will not be an excellent product at the end in this case − indeed there is every indication that there will be. But ‘entryism’ needs to be practised by all sides to get political consensus on project launch, with governments and EADS shareholders picking up the pieces (as shareholders, providers of tax dollars and purchasers of US government debt frequently do in the US). It is to be hoped that the recent consolidation of MoD research and technology activity in Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL) is a precursor to a more ordered and better understood approach to technology management in projects, with the department showing less aversion to risk (which will help in the future), and more willingness to choose winners and not ‘back losers’, as happened in the 1970s. But as this is only the most recent of several changes in this area, the jury must still be out.

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Risk Transfer, Risk, and Uncertainty These are seriously dangerous concepts which, when mishandled, can produce spectacular, self-defeating catastrophes. Transferring the provision of goods and services to the private sector does not of itself transfer risk. Providers of such goods and services are, like insurance companies, expert at laying such risk back on their customers. The insurance analogy is revealing. Insurance works economically where the outcome being insured against is sufficiently well understood in terms of probability of occurrence and impact so that an acceptable price can be fixed. Where these conditions do not apply, cost becomes prohibitive or the event simply cannot be covered (as the nuclear liabilities at the Royal Dockyards showed).8 Thus, in defence procurement, the amount of risk allocated to – the term risk transfer should be banned in this context – a supplier has to be a rational, not a dogmatic decision. In the case of the Type-45 destroyer, final integration risk was in fact taken back from the contractor, this being a more rational and economic distribution of responsibility. But if risks are to be managed in-house, this assumes that enough high-quality technical and managerial capability resides there – something to which constant attention needs to be paid. One of the pernicious consequences of a dogmatic approach to risk ‘transfer’ is that it lends credence to the mistaken view that maintenance of specialist in-house capability is unnecessary. The term ‘risk transfer’ in military capability acquisition should be banned, simply because the capability impact of the risk of project failure in this area always lies with the military and government. It is best never to pretend otherwise. It is of course unusual, though not unprecedented, for a project to fail completely in delivering capability. The Nimrod airborne early warning aircraft was a case in point, though fortunately there was an available alternative. More frequently, risk manifests itself as cost or time penalties, which do of course carry with them capability degradation of one sort or another. This brings us to the treatment of risk in projects.

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The basic proposition is simple: risk has a calculable probability of occurrence, and a quantifiable impact. Anything else is uncertainty, and should not have a value allocated to it. The problem lies in approval processes which find it hard to cope with risk and abhor uncertainty (and this is not just a public sector problem). Even ignoring the distortion of ‘most likely’ calculations referred to above, in complex projects some features will defy a most likely forecast until relatively late stages. Forcing such a forecast prematurely into an approval is asking for trouble. The more complex the system, or the more challenging the environment, the more this holds good. Take, for example, the ASTOR/Sentinel airborne surveillance project, which encompassed the challenging development of dual-mode radar, information processing, and an air-to-ground modem of, at the time, unprecedented capacity. However much factory test is done at each stage, system test cannot be done until the first complete system is built, relatively late in the project, at which stage without extraordinary good luck (which no-one has any means of predicting) further software and even hardware development is bound to be required to solve issues that cannot be experienced prior. Clearly, a contingency in time and cost is required, but a ‘most likely’ calculation made prior to the start of system test will be a fiction, and such projects on the whole are too infrequent to yield to statistical analysis. System engineering will take the necessary time to get the desired outcome. Similar features are observed in complex weapon programmes, where development work on the final stages of guidance, fusing and arming cannot be defined accurately until testing takes place in conditions fully representative of the enormous environmental stresses under which these systems operate. In short, uncertainty persists in complex projects until quite late stages, and a good project approval or control system should recognise this, not pretend it is not so. This brings us to the issue of incremental approval.

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Incremental Approvals Fundamentally, this is about how decisions get taken. When doing something that has been done many times before, process and methodology are usually good friends, but not much good for innovation: and it is innovation that makes projects complex, and generally lies at the heart of providing improved capability. There is a real danger that process checking can become a substitute for understanding. The contrast between Sir Gordon Downey’s approach (Comptroller and Auditor General in the late 1960s and early 1970s), and that recommended by McKinsey & Co in the late 1990s is revealing. Downey’s approach was a highly structured incremental journey through feasibility, project definition, development and production (indeed with subsets among these), with check and hold points at each stage. While undoubtedly describing accurately things that need to be done by making each stage a formal decision point, the whole process becomes time consuming, costly both in-house and for the supplier, and certainly not agile. One can easily deduce that more effort goes into ‘getting approvals’ than actually getting on with the project. McKinsey & Co originally proposed a single pass system, i.e. just one major decision point at the appropriate stage of maturity, relatively late when necessary − hence the generalised recommendation to allow 15 per cent of spend before that point. This was not ever intended as a hard and fast rule. Much less would be right in some cases, and more in others, particularly depending on the degree of technical challenge. Although the single pass became two pass subsequently, the principles remained intact. This was never properly implemented, for which there are all sorts of reasons, mostly budgetary. Where McKinsey behaviour can be observed is in minor projects (under £20 million acquisition cost) and particularly Urgent Operational Requirements (UORs). Effectively, these have a lighttouch decision process, and a much better record of successful outcome. Success is due to lower complexity, but the key is that

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projects themselves are broken down into understandable and welldefined increments, allowing rapid and relevant decision-taking on technology, supply chain and so on, with no great penalty if a technology dead end has to be abandoned (which should be counted as good decision-taking). Unfortunately, the financial and planning constraints surrounding UORs prevent this from being exploited fully. The lesson from this should be applied to larger projects, which should be broken down into smaller increments, even accepting that the delivery of full capability will initially be outside the scope of the early increments. Decisions will be taken more frequently, but lightly and quickly so as to allow valuable work to continue while moving from one increment to the next. This is a risk aware approach, as compared to risk averse. Recommendations Perhaps this chapter has focused too greatly on what has not worked well in procurement reform. But experience suggests that there is no single formula for success, and we should be wary of any assumption that there is. There is also an unstated presumption in phrases like ‘smart’ procurement that all which went before was ‘dumb’. Nevertheless, there are some tentative conclusions to be drawn. The characteristics of large and complex projects probably are special, as evidenced by the difficulty in forecasting outcomes. This is a universal problem that is not confined to the defence sector or the UK, and although the private sector suffers the same problems, governments around the world do seem to struggle the most. This leads to two conclusions. First, performance on major projects is not a good guide to what goes on elsewhere: a lot of excellent work goes on in the ‘undergrowth’. Second, major projects should be broken down into easier increments: change the scope and the expectation while keeping the ambition. Consequently, in the UK we should discard the Major Projects Review, as currently instated, to focus more on the generality of

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capability acquisition. The focus should be more on value creation, and less on performance against increasingly discredited targets. The latter can lead to too much effort being spent on manipulating targets with no real physical change in project performance. There will be fewer major projects in the future anyway, so a change to a more systematic approach to measuring capability development is inevitable, albeit challenging. Where large complex projects do still need to be undertaken, or where smaller ones have similar characteristics due to the degree of technical challenge, they should be broken down into smaller, understandable segments. It should not be assumed that everything required to complete the delivery of capability can be fixed at one time. Integration and other technical risk − as well as uncertainty − will remain until relatively late stages: this should be expected. The process and decision-taking should be simplified wherever possible. More decisions should be taken, but taken more easily and quickly (including the decision to abandon a course of action). The quality of a decision is measured neither in its complexity, nor the number of people involved, but in the outcome. A smaller, tighter organisation overall will greatly help, both in DE&S and in the wider ministry, and across ministries with similar capability requirements. All that is not central to capability development and provision should be removed. This should be regarded as a speciality where the MoD has a unique and irreplaceable role: it is not like commodity purchasing for a supermarket chain. Of course, the MoD does require commodities, and where procurement tasks are routine and repetitive they are probably better handled by the private sector, provided private suppliers are given the scope to innovate and change process. Never should processes simply be contracted without ensuring their efficiency and, where necessary, innovating. In contrast, it should not be assumed that the private sector always knows best. Government needs to understand what its military and civil service specialists should do, and do well. As the

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ultimate provider of military capability and guarantor of security, they should always be at the top of the acquisition ‘food chain’. This implies a much smaller acquisition community inside government, but one whose skills in military, technical and commercial terms are the match of the highest quality private sector organisations. This will challenge many assumptions about military and civil service recruitment and career development. We should expect far less capability development to be achieved through major projects. One can foresee far more room for systembased development through incremental improvement of embedded systems, and incremental development copying the UOR approach, but planned on a system basis, and without the short-term financial constraint. Not only will this be easier to manage, but it is inherently more agile in the face of uncertain threat development. But it will not work unless accompanied by a light touch decision-taking process. Defence, and potentially other technology organisations in government, should be brought into the streamlined acquisition structure, with a focus on crossing the ‘valley of death’ between technology investigation and maturation into project quality products, and wherever possible militarising commercial technology rather than the other way around. Finally, government should be as transparent as possible with industry, both domestic and that of allies. Without this, industry is hamstrung in making investment decisions. This should be so even if – especially if – the news is superficially bad. Trust is essential.

DEFENCE INDUSTRIAL STRATEGY UNDER THE COALITION Keith Hayward The UK’s Defence Industry Strategy (DIS)1 of 2005 and its first cousin the Defence Technology Strategy (DTS)2 were to be a continuous process. Each was conceived as a working document; a process, not an end in itself. DIS II3 flickered and died with the first hint of economic contraction and fiscal expediency. It would not appear without a budget and numbers to go with sectoral4 commitments. The UK defence industry – at least its upper echelon – accepted that this was sensible; but it did leave several gaps to be filled in sectoral coverage, and some important updates of relevance to companies lower down the pecking order. Events conspired to delay a revamped DIS. The general election of 2010 wrought its unprecedented result and the new age of austerity blew in with an emergency budget and the promise of a killer public spending round. Defence was afforded some protection, but given the state of defence inflation, even a modest inflation-based increase in spend would not have been enough to stave off a budgetary crisis sometime before 2014. Now it is understood that there are three aspects of review and reform that will be relevant to industrial aspects of defence planning that are underway following publication of the Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR) White Paper. These projects are: the Defence and Security Industrial and Technology Plan – the follow-on to DIS and DTS; the Defence Reform Unit activity, led by former chief executive of the Procurement Executive,5 Lord Levene; and the continuing Enabling Acquisition Change work

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initiated by DIS. On the face of it, this process of longer and more considered study is sensible; it allows for the establishment of the longterm parameters of defence commitments, within specified financial constraints, and then the use of those to establish a framework for capability choices and provision. The danger is, as the UK defence trade association recognised,6 that a new DIS would throw the old one out of the window and start again. The government has assured industry leaders that they will be consulted, and will undoubtedly put in their own advice and special pleading. Old favourites such as ‘sovereign capabilities’ will remain important criteria, but it is not yet known what the exact meaning has been put on this concept by the coalition defence team. The worry in this respect could be a drift back to a narrowly defined set of ‘sovereign criteria’ – the six core capabilities, including nuclear engineering and cryptography. The question is whether the last decade has embedded a more subtle view of what needs to be done on shore – as a Times headline put it, the UK defence base needs factories not just garages. Cuts Shape Structure The SDSR White Paper announced some cancellations of programmes. The nuclear deterrent seems to be ring-fenced, and the aircraft carrier contracts and other legally enforceable commitments have also escaped the axe from an industry viewpoint. This of course is the long-term planner’s nightmare: a sensible industrial structure, appropriate to a broad review of future needs, is now hostage to breach-of-contract negotiations. Worse still, in a rush to keep on top of short- and medium-term commitments – particularly to keep forces in the field well equipped – investment in future technology is sacrificed. A healthy structure needs its world-class companies; systems integrators with broad-based competence and an appropriate degree of vertical integration, as well as internationally competitive original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). These form the heart of not

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only domestic provision, but also the core of Britain’s contribution to international partnerships. Domestic competition at this level has often ceased to have real meaning, and the future will see more globalised prime contractors bidding for core work.8 This, however, means accepting a need to give large, nationally located primes a reason to stay on shore. Long-term partnerships should continue to play a role, providing a revenue flow over a specified part of a programme’s life. The globalised top-tier companies are a route to market for the competitive domestic supplier, and a source of expertise that, if allowed to disappear elsewhere, will not come back. Altering the risk-reward balance might also encourage more corporate research, but not until there is an established framework of potential demand to guide investment – the premise of the original DIS and DTS. Supply Chain Issues One of the key attributes of the UK defence industrial base is the breadth and depth of the supply chain. Yet surprisingly little is really known about its extent and health, or of the interaction with the rest of the British manufacturing sector. The Ministry of Defence (MoD) did some work on critical suppliers, and the former Society of British Aerospace Companies carried out a survey in 2006 mainly directed at discovering location and some characteristics of the aerospace supply chain (it revealed in particular that aerospace, defence, autosport shared many suppliers).9 Regional trade associations are closer to many of these companies, but much can happen at the top end of the business with unintended consequences lower down, or at least with consequences that only unfurl too late for remedial action. British suppliers are amongst the most competitive in the global defence industry. They have been most affected by competitive pressures passed down from the MoD through primes and OEMs. They have also largely taken on board the lessons of lean manufacturing. On the other hand, there is a myth (often invoked by politicians and officials) that innovation and industrial dynamism

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are to be found amongst the smaller companies (defined as SMEs – small and medium enterprises). This is true to an extent, but not necessarily in defence. There are some examples of this being the case, especially in the uninhabited systems community10 and in software development. But the bulk of core defence and securityrelated research is conducted by bigger players (albeit sometimes in specialised SME-like divisions). These assets are a leadership cadre for the supply chain. Nevertheless, an atrophied supply chain means a diminished overall industrial capability; a number of critical capabilities go off-shore; regional jobs are lost and smaller companies (most of them) with a foot in both civil and defence markets find life generally more difficult. Once lost, they are probably gone forever. Defence Exports Many commentators have remarked that, in the wake of the global economic crisis of the late 2000s, Britain must rebalance its economy away from a dangerous dependence on financial and other services. There are three outstanding high-value manufacturing sectors – pharmaceuticals, autosport and aerospace/defence – that must be the focus of any export-led recovery. The country should be able to use its freely floating currency advantages to export more. The defence sector has long been strong in both areas. This has been based on overall competitiveness and the quality of its products – notably in exporting equipment for incorporation in other national programmes. The new government has stated its commitment to overseas sales and the advantages of scale that this might engender.11 Increased sales volumes take one further and faster down the learning curve with reduced costs all-round. But saying this is one thing – achieving this goal is quite another. The historic support from the British government in promoting defence sales must be acknowledged. The former Defence Exports Services Organisation (DESO) was much envied by some of the UK’s neighbours. In 2008, DESO was absorbed into the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills

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as UKTI DSO.12 Its loss was much mourned as a signal support to British industry. So far, the change has not noticeably undermined official support. On paper, it should have also brought closer links to the old Department of Trade and Industry commercial attaché system. The future has some ominous prospects as the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills comes under pressure to cut internal costs. Reducing export sponsorship generally would be a retrogressive step. On the other hand, further reorientation of UK defence export support is needed. The old DESO was good at promoting UK-built platforms although the types of government purchased platforms have dwindled. It was also excellent at securing offsets for UK defence imports.13 Future UK export promotion will have to emphasise still further sales of equipment, sub-systems and components. This requires a more sophisticated set of marketing skills and awareness than selling complete hardware to armies, navies and air forces. There are also more ‘strategic’ factors to account for. Consideration of the potential for exportability has for several decades been a notional consideration for the UK government customer when deciding the specification of a platform or system - but one that has been more honoured in the breach than in the observance perhaps. UK customer needs, combined with the compromises of some collaborative programmes, have had a negative effect on some export prospects. For example, the Eurofighter Typhoon may yet do well enough in export markets, but had it been optimised earlier for the ground-attack role, and were it a little lighter and a little cheaper, it would give the French Rafale and the US F/A-18 Super Hornet a much harder fight for customers. In this respect, the so-called ‘80 per cent’ solution,14 no procurement delay nor cost escalation, could all help improve performance. In theory, it should get an acceptable version of a new platform into service earlier and hopefully cheaper (for example, a Eurofighter in the market in the early to mid-90s would have been a real contender for several potential customers). Looking forward, there are grounds to be pessimistic: no more Hawk

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trainer aircraft, and Britain now tends to import fighting vehicles. Looking at ships, naval exporting has a poor historic record, and current trends driven by ring-fencing and contracts could leave the UK with un-exportable carriers and submarines and over-expensive frigates.15 Thanks to a mix of government support and innovative work by British companies, the UK is holding its own in unmanned systems, but there is a very different business model emerging that requires fast prototyping, production on demand and adaptation to rapidly changing market requirements. In this respect, both the UK customer/sponsor and the UK supplier will have to change the way they do business, and industry seems to be moving faster than the MoD. Modularity and open system architectures will not only encourage better domestic procurement practices, but should also facilitate the new business model implied by unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and the rest. In all cases, the new conditions underline the importance of government support for equipment sales and a strong domestic role in supporting foreign equipment bought by the UK, as well as an underlying investment in technology and continuing commitment to cost-effective manufacturing. Relaunching European Collaboration Perhaps a thin silver lining in a dark crowd, the budgetary crisis that has swept Europe is sharpening the focus once again on the need for a more collective approach to defence spending. Conversations between French and British officials on airlift, tankers and UAVs are all to be encouraged. In European defence, these are the two core nations. Agreement on a bilateral basis could give more direction and stronger leadership to collaborative programmes. Collaboration in the missile sector, for example, has been a model of joint activity, especially when compared to A400M military air transport experience. The success of collaboration in the missile sector has been based on a number of factors: relatively few partners; clear requirements, often

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from one customer; and supplied by a transnational company where work sharing has usually been based on national centres of excellence. The A400M was a classic multilateral programme that took an age to define and was subject to a juste retour industrial carve-up that increased costs and added to a long-delayed gestation. But there are still potential differences over the appropriate focus for European defence and security policy-making. The British are still sceptical of non-NATO architectures, and while the coalition government in London may not collapse the whole edifice, the dominant Conservative Party element will be reluctant to see it expand. Other potential areas of tension might relate to freedom to invest, and budgetary and political pressures may force the adoption of wider collaborative agreements that might again constrain better management of programmes. This is all déjà vu: some forty years ago, European defence aerospace collaboration came of age with an Anglo-French package of helicopters, missiles and combat jets. The package produced some very good pieces of equipment. But it also led to a split over combat aircraft work packages that cast a shadow over Anglo-French defence collaboration for two generations. Lessons should have been learnt from this and later scarring experiences. To repeat, there is better hope for another Storm Shadow type of project as the basis for future co-operation.16 If the London-Paris axis is renewed, drawing in partners on a ‘best athlete’ principle, with shares based on competence as much as supposed production commitments, there might be some hope of delivering international programmes closer to notional national levels of efficiency (all things, of course, being equal in respect of national procurement effectiveness). It should be hoped that the A400M should be the last of the juste retour collaborations (where work share is awarded on the basis of project funding rather than efficiency) – but this was said also of the Eurofighter. However, industrial alliances are likely to have a greater say in how collaboration is best undertaken, determining who takes part, and under what terms – again with the ‘best athletes’ competing for sub contracts. But there is still a danger

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that governments may hover in the background, exerting a baleful political influence, undermining economic and commercial efficiency. One need only consider the space sector to see how programmes like the next generation of European meteorological satellites are delayed and carved up by national industrial interests. It is important that these lessons have been learnt and that in future, governments will exert the lightest of light touches over how collaboration is organised. A more important question than how to collaborate, perhaps, is co-operation on what? A collaborative European Medium-Altitude Long-Endurance (MALE) UAV is not going to fill many factories or maintain many core capabilities. More complex unmanned combat aerial vehicles (UCAVs) might replace Typhoon and Rafale – but again, how many would be needed and over what timelines? And to break out into the wider uplands of European defence industrial co-operation, the demand side needs fundamental reform – the hoary field of common requirements and specifications, a coherent defence research programme and more defence markets generally. In this respect the new European procurement regime needs real teeth to ensure that EU members really have to show good cause when they close down a procurement project to national suppliers only. The Transatlantic Temptation There is also the matter of Britain’s transatlantic defence industrial links. In industrial terms only Finmeccanica of Italy can match Britain’s corporate footprint in the US, or its presence in core programmes such as the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. While for example a European UAV effort might attract attention, the temptation to work with the Americans on the ‘big’ programmes is going to be ever-present. The US might be cutting budgets too, but even a reduced American defence market is still larger and better structured than Europe’s. But there is the rub; the US is a reluctant sharer of core technologies. The US-UK Defence Trade Treaty has now been ratified by the Senate and this regulation should make life

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easier for UK firms, especially smaller companies selling into US programmes.17 However, in the long run, technology dependence will loom large in a national perspective. John Weston, late of BAE Systems, once said that his heart lay in Europe, but his wallet in the US. This dilemma has yet to be resolved. Sadly, European programmes may be few and far between, so by default the UK industrial base will seek salvation in the North Atlantic market. Resolution – indeed prudence – demands a commitment to research and technology acquisition that facilitates leadership and equality in European programmes, and leverage elsewhere. But here the British future may be even darker. Technology Acquisition The UK defence industry has already warned the MoD that a failure to fund research and technology adequately will ‘threaten the future security and prosperity of the UK’.18 The latter sentiment may be somewhat hyperbolic – the social return on defence R&D is lower than other sectors, including civil aerospace – but it has a general validity. A healthy UK defence industry sector depends on investment upstream in areas of high-risk, uncertain technology. Equally, future capability is directly linked to such investment, as is the attractiveness of the UK as a location for inward defence industrial investment and leverage and influence in international partnerships. UK defence companies are currently well represented in the world top 100 as defined by Defense News. But this is in part the product of two or more decades’ past investment; MoD spending on defence research and technology has been in long-term decline and was slated for a further 25 per cent cut by 2010/11 under the last UK government – down to £439 million. Another significant sum removed from this already attenuated budget line, and the UK will be dangerously close to the critical mass on which future military capabilities, operational flexibility and defence industrial security will depend.

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Towards DIS Mark 2: The Defence and Security Industrial and Technology Plan? Optimists may have hoped that the technocratic approach of Lord Drayson, former under-secretary of state and minister for defence procurement, would have been seamlessly inherited by his successors. This may still be the case. A new generation of officials committed to a wider view of procurement, industrial and technology base factors hard-wired into the system, imaginative and long-term solutions to austerity planning, might deliver a satisfactory outcome. Nevertheless, a more realistic set of aspirations might be in order. It looks as though defence industrial choices will be driven by contractual momentum and soft cuts. This may leave, at best, a patchy and incoherent set of programme commitments, and some areas of the defence industrial base scrabbling for work; at worst, it could lead to an unbalanced domestic industrial base increasingly unfit for purpose, with limited export potential and fewer attractions for globalised defence companies. It is all too possible to see another round of procurement reform on its way. This has been discussed elsewhere. But whatever of the verdict on Smart Acquisition (the ‘faster, cheaper, better’ mantra that explained the initiative brought at best a partial improvement to the process), it was introduced with industrial participation and partnership. From the Gray Report and other bone-picking exercises, the need for change is even more evident and pressing.19 Both sides of the fence must grasp the need to adopt a more commercial approach to defence acquisition. In any event, it is essential to involve industry in the process. The Way Ahead How, then, can the UK pick a way out of this worst-case scenario? As ever, there is a clarion cry for investment in technology acquisition, where a relatively small sum buys the UK a future – not only for its defence industry, but also to maintain a successful, hightech manufacturing enclave. Technological capability puts the UK

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into a leadership role in European programmes, if and when they appear; it affords leverage in US-led programmes, and wins business in emerging defence markets. It is also important to remember the Defence Technology Strategy and its review of core, emerging and potentially disruptive technologies, when planning future investment in research and technology acquisition. Further, commitment to long-term partnerships must be maintained, as long as they show continuing value for money and savings. This ties the big and restless members of the defence industrial community into a UK presence and maintains the prospective routes to market for the smaller suppliers. The caveat is to ensure that the chosen few do not become complacent and, consequently there should be adequate and appropriate review points that takes into consideration both performance and changes in circumstances that might demand a shift in the balance of participants and leaders. The UK must continue to promote the idea of ‘the best athlete’ as the focus for negotiation. A real look is needed at commercial models of customer behaviour, and then matching those with emerging best practices in the defence business. This directs the UK to a further round of procurement reform that includes industry as part of the process of reform. Finally, a broad-based approach to export sales support that embraces solid analysis of defence markets that includes prospects for partnership and sales into overseas programmes is vital. This entails both military awareness and commercial acumen – the best of old style DESO and the developing expertise of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. The SDSR poses a number of challenges to the UK defence industrial base. It will have to cope with cancellations and a reduced revenue stream from through-life contracts. There is a promise that the headline changes will be followed up by a long-term look at the technological and industrial implications. There are hints of new initiatives and requirements in robotics and maybe space-based

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systems. But uncertainty over the strategic direction for UK industry will remain until the government and the MoD spell out their views on exactly what the domestic defence industrial base is to do over the next twenty years – and with whom.

CONCLUSION Michael Codner

This book has not attempted a systematic analysis of all the factors and issues that should scope, shape and guide a security and defence review. Its focus has been on the military instrument of security, for two reasons. First, as Michael Clarke writes, Britain is at a strategic moment and the future purposes of its armed forces are intimately related to the choices that remain to be made. Second, the funding of defence is at a crisis point. The SDSR has made cuts in equipment and personnel, but the strategic choices require some guarantee that defence spending will be sustained. The detail of economies and savings is yet to be worked through and aspirations to global influence are likely to require increases in spending after 2015. Third, a rational approach to defence policy and military strategy requires a purview that extends beyond twenty years – far further than that of the other instruments of security – if the equipment plan in particular is to deliver an efficient and effective return on investment. It is already time to start work on the 2015 review. Of all the services, the army faces huge uncertainty once the withdrawal from Afghanistan begins in earnest. It has largely sustained its personnel numbers – quite rightly – to see through a major war, but faces a root-and-branch review of its force structure, with implications for the regimental system and the regional presence in the UK linked, of course, to the return from Germany and the need to rationalise the garrison structure. The threat of personnel cuts of 20 per cent that

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preceded the SDSR has not gone away, and the debate about the role of heavy armour is unresolved notwithstanding the cuts. The RAF has taken the expected reduction in numbers and classes of fixed-wing aircraft with no serious implications for its future roles and purpose. Its survival as an independent service makes absolute sense in the short to medium term, as Eric Grove argues. However, in the longer term, the increasing use of uninhabited systems will demand clear justification for a uniformed cadre of expertise in the exploitation of aerospace. The bid to extend this expertise to the information domain is reasonable, but not conclusive. The Royal Navy, more than the other services, remains on a knife edge with regards to its future. It has sacrificed escort and amphibious platform numbers to retain core capabilities – carrier aviation and nuclear submarines. However, the long gap in carrier availability and fixed-wing aircraft leaves it at continued risk. While the SDSR says that the carriers are needed, the government’s rhetoric has presented the Queen Elizabeth-class as a white elephant. What will happen to the mothballed carrier? The navy’s mission is clearly one of reconstitution and regeneration towards a future with two potent sea bases flying the state-of-the-art F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. Escort numbers can be built up when required if the Type-26 programme can use cheap hulls, modularity and generate economies of scale through international collaboration. For all the effort that went into the February 2010 Green Paper, the dancing around defence issues during the general election, the mismatch of National Security Council ‘security’ timelines and the need for political decisions on defence matters, and the stress of the period August to October 2010 in which key decisions hovered until the last hours, means the SDSR has still left hard choices to be made. The ongoing studies and reviews of Ministry of Defence management, acquisition policy and practice, force structure and more will be taken forward in the context of a financial planning round which must still see through the detailed savings to meet the 7.5 per cent cuts imposed by the October 2010 Spending Review.

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And the really big choices and questions are still to be made and answered (or dodged): a policy and force planning context of NATO/Europe, or a set of partnerships that are more global/Asiafocused; the nature of the British contribution to collective security, deterrence and risk management; serving national interest, but retaining world respect through commitment to values; engaging early in prevention, but avoiding embroilment; defining prevention and the balance between the largely unquantifiable concepts of inducement and stabilisation; and the decision between ‘home or away’ if defence funding remains seriously constrained in the future. There are internal political uncertainties. What will be the outcome of the next general election? Would a Labour/Liberal Democrat coalition abandon the nuclear deterrent? Would possible constitutional change, involving an increase in the ‘war powers’ of Parliament, fundamentally undermine a land-orientated expeditionary strategy? And all this is, of course, set in the context of an uncertain future security environment in which ‘prevention’, ‘adaptability’ and ‘partnerships’ will be tested to the extreme. Two choices have been made in the SDSR. One is a commitment to sustaining and developing the ‘special relationship’ with America in one form or another. The other is to grow a pragmatic relationship with France. In a typically British way, neither is sustained by the sort of longterm vision that each of these partners will themselves have, either implicitly or explicitly. In more than one sense, a great deal remains to be done.

NOTES AND REFERENCES

Introduction 1. Michael Codner, ‘The Hard Choices: Twenty Questions for British Defence Policy and National Military Strategy’, RUSI occasional paper, 2009, available at

. 2. Lee Willett, ‘The RUSI Maritime Workshop Series 2010: Interim Report’, RUSI occasional paper, 2010, available at ;

Richard

Winstanley,

‘Whither Welfare? Structuring Welfare in the Military Community’, RUSI occasional paper, 2010, available at .

The United Kingdom’s Strategic Moment 1. National Audit Office, ‘Major Projects Report 2009’, December 2009; HM Government, Securing Britain in an Age of Austerity: The Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR), Cm 7948 (London: The Stationery Office, October 2010), para. 2.4. 2. SDSR, ibid., para. 2.D.3. 3. Ministry of Defence, Adaptability and Partnership: Issues for the Strategic Defence Review, Cm 7794 (London: The Stationery Office, February 2010). 4. The Office of National Statistics reported in summer 2010 that total indebtedness in the UK, including off-balance sheet and long-term items was almost £4 trillion. Not all of this looms immediately over the government, but coalition leaders were clear that they had to extract well over £80 billion out of

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A Question of Security public expenditure to fend off a crisis and maintain the country’s international credit rating. On the ONS Report, see ‘Britain’s Debt: The Untold Story’, Independent, 14 July 2010.

5. See Michael Howard, The Continental Commitment: The Dilemma of British Defence Policy in Europe (London: Penguin, 1974). 6. SDSR, op. cit., Para. 2.D.12. 7. Robert Cooper, The Breaking of Nations: Order and Chaos in the Twenty-first Century (London: Atlantic Books, 2004), pp. 75–80. 8. Giampiero Giacomello and R Craig Norton (eds.), Security in the West: Evolution of a Concept (Milan: Vita e Pensiero, 2009); pp. 19–22. 9. Gideon Rachman, ‘China Can no Longer Plead Poverty’, Financial Times, 26 October 2010, p. 13. 10. SDSR, op. cit., para. 2.2. 11. William Hague, ‘The Future of British Foreign Policy with a Conservative Government’, speech to the International Institute for Strategic Studies, London, 21 July 2010. 12. See Bruce Jones, ‘The Coming Clash? Europe and US Multilateralism under Obama’, in A Vasconcelos and M Zaborowski (eds.), The Obama Moment: European and American Perspectives (Paris: European Institute for Security Studies, 2009), pp. 63–77. 13. Philip Stephens, ‘Austerity Spells the End of Britain’s Post-imperial Reach’, Financial Times, 22 October 2010, p.13.

The Lean Years: Defence Consequences of the Fiscal Crisis 1. HM Treasury, Budget 2010, HC 61, June 2010, pp. 8–9. 2. For a useful analysis of the Strategic Defence Review, see Colin McInnes, ‘Labour’s Strategic Defence Review’, International Affairs (Vol. 74, No. 4, 1998), pp. 823–45. 3. This calculation takes into account £147 million of spending on Bosnia and £14 million spending on Kosovo during 1998/99. House of Commons, Hansard Written Answers, 2 May 2000. Operations spending during 2008/09 included £2,559 million for Afghanistan, £1,958 million for Iraq and £19 million for the Balkans. ‘Further memorandum from the Ministry of Defence’ in House of Commons Defence Committee, Spring Supplementary Estimate 2008-09,

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HC 301, March 2009, p. 7. On the real increase in defence spending, see UK Defence Statistics 2009, Tables 1.1 and 1.5. 4. Calculated for the period from 1983/84 to 1990/91. HM Treasury, Public Expenditure Statistical Analyses 1999–2000, Cm 4201 (London: The Stationery Office, March 1999). 5. National Audit Office, op cit., press release, 15 December 2009. The Gray Report contains a detailed analysis of this issue. See Trevor Taylor, ‘The Gray Report’, RUSI Newsbrief (Vol. 29, No. 9, November 2009). 6. Ministry of Defence, Delivering Security in a Changing World: Future Capabilities (London: The Stationery Office, July 2004). The reference to the QDR is from Paul Cornish and Andrew Dorman, ‘Blair’s wars and Brown’s budgets: from Strategic Defence Review to strategic decay in less than a decade’, International Affairs (Vol. 85, No. 2, 2009), p. 253. 7. Ministry of Defence, Adaptability and Partnership: Issues for the Strategic Defence Review, Cm 7794 (London: The Stationery Office, February 2010). 8. These figures compare final unit procurement costs, and therefore include any cost increases that take place between project inception and completion. These three projects account for 50% of the total value of the fifteen largest ongoing equipment projects for which the MoD has taken the decision to invest. National Audit Office, Ministry of Defence: Major Projects Report 2009 (London: The Stationery Office, December 2009), Figure 3. 9. See Malcolm Chalmers, ‘The Myth of Defence Inflation’, RUSI Defence Systems (June 2009, Vol. 21, No. 1), pp. 14–15. The impact of growth in the unit capital costs of new equipment on the procurement budget as a whole is worsened if one allows for development costs, since these have to be spread over a smaller number of production units. On the other hand, since support costs appear to be rising less rapidly than new equipment costs, overall equipment cost growth may be moderated. 10. For military salaries, see UK Defence Statistics 2009, Table 2.24; for average earnings (including bonuses), see Office for National Statistics, National Statistics Online, available at . 11. The unadjusted total number of civilian personnel fell from 175,200 in April 1988 to 89,500 in April 2008: a reduction of 51%.

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12. Stephen Daggett, ‘Resourcing the National Defense Strategy: Implications of Long-Term Defense Budget Trends’, testimony before the House Committee on Armed Services, Congressional Research Service, November 2009, p. 2. If only UK service personnel are included, the rate of growth is 2.2% per annum. 13. The figures used here are on the ‘net cash requirement’ basis used in Ministry of Defence, Defence Statistics 2009, Table 1.1, and are expressed in 2008/09 prices. They exclude additional Treasury-funded operational spending of £4,026 million in 2008/09, on the assumption that most of such spending reflects one-off extra costs that do not build total capability. The Treasury provides time series on spending on a functional basis, including around £1.6 billion annual ‘defence’ spending by the security and intelligence services. Public Expenditure Statistical Analysis, various years, available at . The Treasury definition of defence spending is not consistent between 1998/99 and 2008/09, making it more difficult to show trends over this period. 14. Number of major vessels as of 1 April, including Royal Navy and Royal Fleet Auxiliary. Based on figures in Ministry of Defence, Defence Statistics 2009, Chapter 4, available at . Excludes patrol craft, survey ships and mine countermeasure vessels. 15. Number of aircraft as of 1 April, including combat, C4/ISTAR, air support, logistics, helicopters and training aircraft from all three services. Based on Forward Available Fleet in ibid, Chapter 4. 16. Number of ground formations as of 1 April, including British Army, Royal Marines and RAF Regiment. 17. In order to make this series consistent over time, it has been necessary to make two adjustments to time series published in Defence Statistics, various editions. First, the 1988 figure excludes positions that were later privatised, and are therefore not included in 2008. Second, the 2008 figure excludes unpaid staff, including those on loan to US bases (around 2,000), as well those on long-term sick leave, maternity pay and career breaks. These are excluded from the published 1988 figure. The author thanks the Defence Analytical Services Agency for the considerable help they provided in constructing this comparison. 18. Full-time equivalent, including Gurkhas and untrained personnel.

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19. This is the rate of growth in total real core defence spending per person employed (excluding civilians in posts that were privatised after 1988). 20. See Malcolm Chalmers and Lutz Unterseher, ‘Is There a Tank Gap? Comparing NATO and Warsaw Pact tank forces’, International Security (Vol. 13, No. 1, Summer 1988). 21. Further details are available from the author. 22. National Audit Office, Ministry of Defence: Major Projects Report 2009 (London: The Stationery Office, December 2009), Figure 3. 23. This estimate assumes that 25% of the MoD workforce, accounting for around 15% of MoD personnel spending, will receive the flat-rate £250 annual increase promised in the 2010 Budget. Because members of the armed forces (up to one-star) will continue to receive annual pay increments, it also assumes that reduced levels of recruitment will lead to ‘incremental drift’ in average military pay levels throughout the next four years. 24. ‘Strategic Defence and Security Review’, House of Commons Debates, 19 October 2010, col. 798. 25. National Audit Office, Major Projects Report 2009, December 2009, and also used in National Audit Office, ‘Strategic Financial Management of the Defence Budget’, July 2010, pp. 11–15. These reports also estimate a funding gap of as much as £36 billion, but only on the assumption of no increase in the cash MoD budget between 2010/11 and 2018/19. The MoD’s estimate of a £38 billion funding gap, which uses a baseline of a MoD budget that is constant in real terms, is thus significantly more pessimistic (but probably more realistic) than that used by the NAO. 26. ‘We must start to tackle this legacy before we can begin to put Defence on a sound and sustainable footing for the future’, SDSR, p. 15. Author’s emphasis. 27. The SDSR’s baseline personnel figures for the army and Royal Navy are consistent with those available in the most recent Monthly Manning Report. But it uses a baseline figure for the RAF (around 38,000) that is significantly below both the current trained strength (40,400) and the previous planning requirement (41,020). Ministry of Defence, ‘UK Armed Forces Monthly Manning Report at 1 September 2010’, 21 October 2010. The most plausible explanation for this discrepancy is that the baseline figure for the RAF is derived from previous plans for 2014/15, which had already factored in some reduction in personnel numbers.

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28. SDSR, op. cit., p. 32. 29. In addition to the withdrawal of the four remaining Type-22 frigates, one carrier (HMS Ark Royal) is being decommissioned immediately, a choice will be made as to whether to decommission the second carrier (HMS Illustrious) or the helicopter carrier HMS Ocean, and one of the two Albion-class landing platform docks (only commissioned in 2003/04) will be placed on extended readiness. 30. Reductions include the withdrawal from service of Harrier, a reduced Tornado fleet as Typhoon comes into service, and the withdrawal of the newly constructed £3.6 billion Nimrod maritime reconnaissance aircraft. The Sentinel airborne ground surveillance aircraft (which only entered began to enter service in 2008, at a cost of £800 million) is to be withdrawn once it is no longer needed in Afghanistan. The plan to order twenty-four Chinook helicopters has been reduced to twelve. 31. The regional administrative structure is being rationalised, and the number of deployable brigades reduced from six to five. Holdings of tanks and heavy artillery will be reduced by 35­–40%. 32. Figures adjusted to exclude privatised posts. They also exclude unpaid employees, around 6,000 of which are included in the current total of 85,000. 33. Once adjusted for privatised posts, the number of civilian personnel increased from 50% of the number of trained service personnel in 1988 to 54% in 1998 before falling back to 48% in 2008 and 45% in 2010. The plans announced in the SDSR assume that this can be reduced to 38% by 2015. 34. Confederation of British Industry, ‘Doing More for Less: A Credible Strategy for Restoring the Public Finances’, CBI report, October 2009, p. 12. 35. UK Defence Statistics 2009, Table 2.27. 36. ‘Strategic Defence and Security Review’, House of Commons Debates, 19 October 2010, col. 799. 37. Institute for Public Policy Research, ‘Shared Responsibilities: Final Report of the Security Commission’, 2009, p. 49. This figure for army personnel appears to refer to trained personnel, including Gurkhas. 38. All figures, including the UK, are from IISS, The Military Balance 2010 (London: Routledge, February 2010). Figures refer to personnel levels in November 2009, and exclude paramilitary forces.

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39. Christopher Hood, Carl Emmerson and Ruth Dixon, ‘Public Spending in Hard Times’, Institute for Fiscal Studies, 2009. 40. Saki Dockrill, ‘Britain’s Power and Influence: Dealing with Three Roles and the Wilson Government’s Defence Debate at Chequers in November 1964’, Diplomacy and Statecraft (Vol. 11, No. 1, March 2000), pp. 211­–40. 41. RUSI, ‘The British Defence and Security Election Survey’, occasional paper, April 2010, available at . 42. Julian Lewis MP, ‘The Politics of the Future Frigate’, RUSI Defence Systems, (February 2009, Vol. 20, No. 3), pp. 34­–35. 43. See, for example, the arguments made by David Kilcullen, The Accidental Guerrilla: Fighting Small Wars in the Midst of a Big One (London: Hurst, 2006). 44. Written Ministerial Statement by Secretary of State for Defence, 15 October 2009. The Ministry of Defence has confirmed that this commitment applies to both procurement and support spending. 45. HM Treasury, 2007 Pre-Budget Report and Comprehensive Spending Review (London: The Stationery Office, 2007), p. 210. 46. Government of Australia, Defending Australia in the Asia-Pacific Century: Force 2030, White Paper, 2009, p. 137. 47. Government of Canada, ‘A new long term funding framework’, in Canada First Defence Strategy, White Paper, 2009, Chart 2. 48. These indicative figures include spending on the nuclear deterrent. Under the previous Labour government, MoD financial planning assumed that the capital costs of the nuclear deterrent, which were due to rise sharply in the years before 2019/20, would be financed as an addition to whatever core defence budget is agreed. This practice was discontinued soon after the coalition government came to power in May 2010, thus ensuring that the MoD faced a more direct tradeoff between conventional and nuclear spending. On reasonable assumptions in relation to Trident renewal costs, it could account for around 4% of total defence spending by 2019/20. In order to maintain levels of spending on other capabilities in real terms, therefore, the total budget has to rise by around 0.8% per annum. 49. NATO, ‘Financial and Economic Data Relating to NATO Defence’, NATO Press Release, 10 June 2010, Table 3.

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50. UK reporting of defence expenditure to NATO is on a cash basis, and therefore excludes the non-cash elements of depreciation and capital charges, but includes spending on assets in the course of construction. It accords to the nearcash estimate of defence spending. It includes the costs of operations, and also includes spending on pensions. The author is grateful to Neil Davies, Defence Analytical Services Agency, for assistance on this point. 51. Data for NATO member states are taken from NATO, op. cit. Figures for nonNATO states are taken from IISS, op. cit.

Strategic Considerations for the Anglo-American Alliance 1. Liam Fox, speech given at RUSI, London, 8 February 2010, available at . 2. William Hague, speech given at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, London, 1 July 2010. 3. See the chapter by Trevor Taylor in this volume. 4. Trevor Taylor, ‘The Ministry of Defence Green Paper and Top Level Defence Policy’, RUSI.org, 5 February 2010. 5. David Cameron, ‘A Staunch and Self-Confident Ally’, Wall Street Journal, 20 July 2010. 6. House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee Report, ‘Global Security: UK-US Relations’, 18 March 2010, p. 3. Available at . 7. Ibid. 8. Malcolm Chalmers, ‘Preparing for the Lean Years,’ RUSI Future Defence Review Working Paper No. 1, July 2009, p. 1. 9. See the chapter by Malcolm Chalmers in this volume. 10. Robert Gates, speech to NATO Strategic Concept Seminar, National Defence University, Washington, DC, 23 February 2010. Available at . 11. NATO Group of Experts, ‘NATO 2020: Assured Security; Dynamic Engagement: Analysis and Recommendations of the Group of Experts on a New Strategic Concept for NATO’, 17 May 2010. 12. Ibid., pp. 23–24. 13. Travis Sharp, ‘An International Regulator: A US View on Future UK Defence

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Plans’, RUSI.org, 28 April 2010.

Entente or Oblivion: Franco-British Defence Co-operation 1. Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance, Reconnaissance. 2. See Lawrence Freedman, ‘The Transformation of Strategic Affairs’, Adelphi Paper (No. 379, 2006), for an overall discussion of the pros and cons of Transformation. On the 2006 Lebanon war, see Ron Tira, ‘The Limitations of Standoff Firepower-Based Operations: On Standoff Warfare, Manoeuvre, and Decision’, Memorandum 89, INSS, March 2007, for a detailed analysis of the faulty assumptions that guided Israeli strategic planning prior to and during the 2006 war with Hizbullah. 3. See Charles C Krulak, ‘The Strategic Corporal: Leadership in the Three Blcok War’, Marines Magazine (US Marine Corps, January 1999). 4. The ‘hardening’ of operations has been a favourite theme of General Jean-Louis Georgelin, chief of staff of the French armed forces 2006–10. 5. On hybrid warfare, see David Johnson, Military Capabilities for Hybrid War: Insights from the Israel Defense Forces in Lebanon and Gaza, Occasional Paper, RAND, 2010. Hybrid warfare and COIN are not equivalent concepts, as they operate on different levels: hybrid warfare describes ongoing tactical and technological developments, whilst COIN focuses on political and societal aspects. 6. See the chapter by Michael Codner in this volume, ‘A Force for Honour: Military Strategic Choices for the United Kingdom’. 7. See Louis Gautier, ‘Les chausse-trapes du Livre blanc’, Politique étrangère (IFRI, Paris: Vol. 72, No. 4, December 2007). 8. For a detailed account of British defence’s financial situation, see the chapter by Malcolm Chalmers in this volume. For a French perspective on the British situation, see Pierre Chareyron, ‘Les armées britanniques – un modèle en crise’, Focus Stratégique No. 23 (Paris: IFRI, July 2010). 9. The Major government’s proposals for restructuring Britain’s armed forces were announced in July 1990. Detailed plans were set out in Statement on the Defence Estimates 1991: Britain’s Defence for the 1990s, Cm 1559 (London: The Stationery Office, July 1991).

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10. Figure for 2009 UK budget, Eurostat. . 11. These figures and the ones that follow are drawn from IISS, The Military Balance (London: IISS and Routledge, 1990 and 2010 editions). 12. For Operation Telic, the UK deployed approximately 30,000 ground troops, 115 aircraft, and 100 helicopters. 13. The Armée de Terre, Manuel d’Emploi de la Brigade (TTA 904) states that a brigade can hold an 8 km long, 4 km deep front in ‘firm defence’ (défense ferme), a 15 km front in elastic or attritional defence (défense d’usure), and a 10 km front on the offensive. 14. Light infantry brigades have been excluded, but the same reasoning is valid when applied to holding areas against irregular adversaries; actual ratios generally admitted are even worse, with twenty soldiers per 1,000 inhabitants, or ten counter-insurgent forces (police and local forces included) per insurgent.

The SDSR and China 1. Foreign and Commonwealth Office, ‘The UK and China: a Framework for Engagement’, 22 January 2009, available at . 2. House of Lords European Union Committee, ‘Stars and Dragons: The EU and China’, Vol. 1, 7th Report of Session 2009–10 (London, The Stationery Office, 23 March 2010), available at .

British Strategy after Afghanistan 1. ‘Raid on MoD cash to pay for Afghan conflict’, Daily Telegraph, 16 December 2009; Robert Gates, Department of Defence News Briefing, 1 February 2010, available at . 2. Military Logistics International, ‘Coping with the Unexpected’, July/August 2010. 3. Xinhuanet.com, ‘Pakistani Security Forces stop 100 NATO tankers in tribal areas’, 22 July 2010; Xinhua Global Times, ‘2 NATO oil tankers torched in Pakistan’s Balochistan province’, 28 June 2010.

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4. The security services are required by this to divert much of their into preparation for court cases and public enquiries into over such things as rendition flights, black prisons, Guantánamo Bay and the alleged ill-treatment of suspects. Although a good degree of this will probably be shown to be ill-founded in the end, it diverts effort from the apprehension of terrorists and strains relationship with the sister services of the UK’s allies, most notably the US. 5. AFP, ‘US troop buildup carries high costs’, 25 November 2009. Military surveys of military forces show declining morale and increased marital problems amongst returning veterans. One in five lower-ranking soldiers serving in Afghanistan is shown to suffer from acute stress, anxiety or depression. The Iraqi and Afghan campaigns have so far cost the US $768.8 billion. Movement costs in rugged Afghanistan require 83 litres of fuel per soldier per day, which is not only expensive but an unavoidable source of operational vulnerability. AFP, ‘Militants destroy NATO oil tanker in Pakistan: police’, 25 November 2009. 6. Doug Badow, ‘US should resist temptation to stay put in Afghanistan’, Straits Times, 4 January 2010; Jane’s Defence Weekly, ‘Afghan sitrep’, 30 June 2010; John J Mearsheimer, ‘Afghanistan: No More The Good War’, Newsweek, June 2010. 7. Ministry of Defence, ‘Security and Stabilisation: The Military Contribution’, Joint Doctrine Publication 3-40 (Shrivenham, DCDC: November 2009) p. 2–15. 8. Jane’s Defence Weekly, ‘UK boosts Afghan spending as committee warns on shortfall’, 31 March 2010. 9. Michael Clarke, ‘Defence review: Can Britain still pack a punch?’, Daily Telegraph, 20 October 2010. 10. Daily Telegraph, ‘Defence budget figures simply do not add up’, 16 December 2009. 11. The internet appears central to the connectivity of ‘international terrorism’ and reduces the importance of geographical location. Significantly, many of the servers for such sites are located in the UK. Straits Times, ‘English sites extend reach of Al-Qaeda’, 21 November 2009. On Yemen: Straits Times, ‘Terror fight in Yemen: US must keep focus’, 6 January 2010. 12. Daily Telegraph, ‘British al-Qaeda hub “is biggest in West”’, 16 January 2010; Daily Telegraph, ‘Two thirds of terrorists in Britain are home-grown’, 5 July 2005.

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13. Badow, op. cit. 14. Foreign Policy, ‘The 2008 Global Cities Index’, 15 October 2008. 15. Haether Connon, ‘Change in the weather’, The Investor (No. 66, Summer 2010). 16. Foreign Policy, ‘The Globalization Index’, November/December 2007. 17. HM Government, National Security Strategy Update 2009: Security for the Next Generation (London: The Stationery Office, March 2009), pp. 97–99. 18. ‘Making waves: Defence special’, Newsletter of the Chamber of Shipping, Spring 2009, pp. 1–2, 4. 19. Tim Hare, ‘Nuclear Policy at sea: A Part-time Deterrent will Not Do!’, RUSI Journal (Vol. 154, No. 6, December 2009), pp. 54–58. 20. John Horgan, ‘The End of the Age of War’, Newsweek, June 2010; Greg Mills, ‘Between Trident and Tristars?’, RUSI Journal (Vol. 155, No. 3, June/July 2010). Counter-intuitively, most surveys also show that the level of intra-state conflict is declining too. 21. This partly depends on what we subsequently think our objectives were. What victory means is curiously understudied in the strategic literature. See As William C Martel, Victory in War: Foundations of Modern Military Policy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). Assessing the level of success clearly depends in large measure on being clear about why we fought the war in the first place. 22. This approach to policy will be less hard-nosed than might at first glance appear. Pragmatic issues of self-interest justify humanitarian assistance to a much greater degree than is often realised. 23. A sustainable ‘special relationship’ between the US and the UK, it is increasingly recognised, will need to be based on hard-nosed calculations of common interest, rather than sentiment; but arguably that is the way it has usually been. Guardian, ‘The special relationship is over, MPs say. Now stop calling us America’s poodle’, 29 March 2010. 24. Mapping the strategic landscape of the Asia-Pacific Region in the mid to late twenty-first century has become a major academic industry, though not one that Europeans pay as much attention to as they should. One school foresees the prospect of major tensions and potential conflicts (China v the US, Japan, or India or any combination of the three; Taiwan; the Korean peninsula; Japan v Russia or Korea, India v Pakistan, the list goes on). The alternate school

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argues that a lively awareness of the mistakes Europeans have made in the past, growing economic success and interdependence, and Asian values will produce a harmonious future in the area. There is almost as much debate as what all this will mean for the rest of the world. For some lively insights into all of this, see Kishore Mahbubani, The New Asian Hemisphere: The Irresistible Shift of Global Power to the East (New York: Public Affairs, 2008) and Martin Jacques, When China Rules the World (New York: Penguin, 2009) pp. 409–13. 25. Stephan Frühling and Benjamin Schreer, ‘NATO’s New Strategic Concept and US Commitments in the Asia-Pacific’, RUSI Journal (Vol. 154, No. 5, October 2009), pp. 98–103. 26. Daniel Goure and Rebecca Grant, ‘US Naval Options for Influencing Iran’, US Naval War College Review (Vol. 62, No. 4, Autumn 2009) is a useful, if particular, application of such thinking. The article emphasises the value of naval forces for such operations but makes the point that ‘It is important that the US government articulates the general strategy and purpose behind its longterm force deployment plans. Also, the United States should make explicit the kinds of conditions that would alter those plans.’ (p. 19). 27. Jacques, op cit. 28. New Straits Times, ‘Najib: Move away from business-as-usual mode’, 28 November 2009. The Commonwealth has an image problem, but mainly with the old Commonwealth – Australia, New Zealand and Britain. One third of those polled in Australia and New Zealand would be sad to leave the organisation, but double that in Malaysia and India said the same. The UN secretary general, French president and the Danish prime minister all thought the sixtieth anniversary meeting of the Commonwealth worth turning up for. 29. Guardian, ‘Tories to put Commonwealth first and demote China in aid shakeup’, 1 January 2010. It is encouraging to note that the Royal Navy’s Future Surface Combatant programme is formally being discussed with both Australia and New Zealand: Jane’s Defence Review, ‘UK, Australia begin talks on future ships’, 27 January 2010. The Royal Navy put on a spectacular show at Singapore’s IMDEX gathering in April 2009 with the presence of HMS Bulwark and HMS Ocean. 30. ‘Security and Stabilisation’, op. cit, p. 2–5. 31. The Times, ‘Royal Navy flotilla withdrawn to cut costs, weeks before Haiti

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A Question of Security disaster’, 20 January 2010. Even a temporary withdrawal of the Royal Navy from the Caribbean was historically momentous. The Italians, however sought to fill the gap with their 27,000 ton aircraft carrier Cavour.

32. David Blagden, ‘Strategic Thinking for the Age of Austerity’, RUSI Journal (Vol. 154, No. 6, December 2009), p. 60. 33. For a challenging review of the range of threats posed to US forces, see Andrew Krepinivich, ‘The Pentagon’s Wasting Assets: The Eroding Foundations of American Power’, Foreign Affairs (July/August 2009). 34. Robert Gates, Department of Defence News Briefing, 1 February 2010, available at . 35. Ibid.; Robert O Work, The US Navy: Charting a Course for Tomorrow’s Fleet (Washington: CSBA, 2008), p. 14, argues that meeting this target would cost some $20 billion dollars a year. 36. Mackubin Thomas Owens, ‘Let’s have flexible armed forces: Don’t assume the next war will look like the last one’, Wall Street Journal, 29 January 2009. 37. Paul Kennedy, ‘History, Politics and Maritime Power’, RUSI Journal (Vol. 149, No. 3, June 2004). 38. Daily Telegraph, ‘Special forces unite to destroy Taliban leaders’, 13 December 2009. 39. These will certainly need to include unmanned aerial vehicles, one of the most significant – or the most threatening – aspects of the robotics revolution that so many commentators see unfolding over the next few years. See Peter Singer, Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century (London: Penguin, 2009). 40. Mike Moore, Saving Globalization: Why Globalization and Democracy are the Best Hope for Progress, Peace and Development (Singapore: John Wiley & Sons, 2009). 41. Colin Gray, ‘Britain’s national security: Compulsion and Discretion’, RUSI Journal (Vol. 153, No. 6, December 2008) makes the point admirably.

A Force for Honour? UK Military Strategic Options 1. John Coles, Making Foreign Policy: A Certain Idea of Britain (London: John Murray, 2000). 2. Ministry of Defence, The Strategic Defence Review, Cm 3999 (London: The

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Stationery Office, 1998). 3. HM Government, Strategic Defence and Security Review: Securing Britain in an Age of Uncertainty, Cm 7948 (London: The Stationery Office, October 2010). 4. Ministry of Defence, The Strategic Defence Review: a New Chapter, Cm 5566 (London: The Stationery Office, 2002); Delivering Security in a Changing World: Defence White Paper, Cm 6041 (London: The Stationery Office, 2003); Delivering Security in a Changing World: Future Capabilities, Cm 6269 (London: The Stationery Office, 2004). 5. Malcolm Chalmers, ‘A Force for Influence? Making British Defence Effective’, RUSI Journal (Vol. 153, No. 6, December 2008). 6. Michael Codner, ‘The Strategic Defence Review: How Much? How Far? How Joint is Enough?’, RUSI Journal (Vol. 143, No. 4, August 1998). 7. Ministry of Defence, Adaptability and Partnership: Issues for a Strategic Defence Review, Cm 7794 (London: The Stationery Office, February 2010). 8. Colin Gray, ‘Britain’s National Security: Compulsion and Discretion’, RUSI Journal (Vol. 153, No. 6, December 2008). 9. In British naval doctrine, ‘presence’ is defined as the exercise of the use of naval force in support of diplomacy in a general way, involving deployments, port visits, exercising and routine operating in areas of interest. The purpose is to declare interest, reassure friends and allies, and to deter (convince a potential aggressor that the consequence of coercion or armed conflict would outweigh the potential gains). 10. This is the capability to deter any existing or emergent significant military power from developing and using military capability of its own for bullying, blackmail and, perhaps in due course, direct threats to territory. 11. The defence section of the recently published IPPR Report on the UK’s security policy reinforces this focus on land stabilisation options. See Institute of Public Policy Research, Shared Responsibilities: A National Security Strategy for the UK: the Final Report of the IPPR Commission on National Security in the 21st Century (London: IPPR, 2009). 12. Jonathan Swift, On the Conduct of the Allies (Cork: Corpus of Electronic Texts, 2008), . Editor: Michael Codner. 13. Basil Liddell Hart, ‘Economic Pressure or Continental Victories’, RUSI Journal (Vol. 76 No. 50, 1931).

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14. Gwyn Prins uses the expression ‘strategic raiding’ in a specific sense: ‘the swift, surprising use of force, implicitly on the ground – against the strategic centre of the new-old insurgent threat’. See Gwyn Prins, The Heart of War: On Power, Conflict and Obligation in the Twenty-first Century (London: Routledge, 2002). However, its provenance is in the distant past and in this paper means ‘raiding to achieve strategic effect in response to diverse threats’ where ‘raid’ is used literally to mean a ‘sudden attack made by (a) military party, ship(s) or aircraft’ (Oxford English Dictionary). 15. An uncomfortable class of nations with a distinct moral motivation for military intervention, including Canada, Norway, Denmark and Finland. 16. The author is grateful to Professor Michael Clarke for drawing attention to Michael McGwire’s concept for an alternative British grand strategy, which is similar to this. 17. Having made a judgement as to the scale of appropriate contribution in this category. 18. Anonymous 2010 (after Oliver Goldsmith): ‘Will you both roam the world for me and mind my door?’ Asks Mother Hubbard of her dogs of war. She spreads her ‘Daily Mail’ beneath the table To snatch each lonely crumb as she is able, When – lo – an inside photograph exposes A skeleton, a dog, the Mary Rose’s! Ask! Did it drown because the ship was faulty? Or starve perhaps as victuals were too paltry? These insights born of history beside – Alas, poor Hatch, ‘the dog it was that died’.

Jointery and the Defence Review 1. Malcolm Rifkind, ‘Introduction to the Ministry of Defence’, in Front Line First: The Defence Costs Study (London: Ministry of Defence, July 1994), p. 1. 2. See Trevor Taylor, ‘Jointery: Military Integration’ in Teri McConville and Richard Holmes, Defence Management in Uncertain Times (London: Frank Cass, 2002), p. 70. 3. Ministry of Defence, Annual Report & Accounts 2007-8 Volume II (London: The

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Stationery Office, 21 July 2008), p. 290. 4. Ministry of Defence, Annual Report & Accounts 2008-9 Volume II (London: The Stationery Office, 20 July 2009), p. 213. 5. Civil Service Capability Review, ‘Ministry of Defence: Progress an next steps’, March 2009, p. 11. 6. Civil Service Capability Review, ‘Capability Review of the Ministry of Defence’, March 2007, p. 12, , accessed 3 September 2009. 7. Capability planning is undertaken through Capability Management and Capability Planning Groups in London, with delivery overseen by around thirtysix programme boards, chaired by ES but supported by programme support offices based at the DE&S premises in Abbey Wood. 8. Richard Dannatt, speech at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, 30 July 2009. 9. For a detailed exposition of some relevant historical experience in this regard, see Terry C Pierce (ed), Warfighting and Disruptive Technologies: Disguising Innovation (London: Frank Cass, 2004). 10. Command, Control, Communication and Computers, Information/Intelligence, Surveillance, Target Acquisition and Reconnaissance. 11. Civil Service Capability Review, op. cit. in note 6, p. 23. 12. See, for instance, Michael Smith ‘Head of Royal Navy threatens resignation over push to scrap Harriers’, The Sunday Times, 7 December 2008; Thomas Harding, ‘Harrier dispute between Navy and RAF chiefs sees Army ”marriage counsellor” called in’, Daily Telegraph, 4 February 2009; Lewis Page, ‘Navy glovepuppets minister in carrier battle against RAF’, theregister.co.uk, 17 February 2009. 13. Civil Service Capability Reviews, ‘Ministry of Defence: Progress and next steps’, March 2009. 14. The Group of Four is not mentioned in Ministry of Defence, ‘How defence works: the Defence Framework’, but it is referred to positively in Civil Service Capability Reviews, op. cit. in note 5, p. 8.

The Special Relationship and the British Army 1. Ministry of Defence, Adaptability and Partnership: Issues for the Strategic Defence Review, Cm. 7794 (London: The Stationery Office, February 2010), p. 15; HM

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A Question of Security Government, Securing Britain in an Age of Uncertainty: The Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR), Cm 7946 (London: The Stationery Office, October 2010), pp. 59–60.

2. Adaptability and Partnership, op. cit, p. 15; SDSR, p. 60; Christopher Coker, ‘Do the US and UK Share the Same Level of Commitment to NATO?’, presentation at the RUSI, 18 May 2010; Hew Strachan, ‘The Strategic Gap in British Defence Policy’, Survival (Vol. 51, No. 4, August/September 2009), pp. 49–70. 3. Legatum Institute/RUSI, ‘Special Relationship at the Crossroads: Where Next for Britain?’, survey analysis, 18 May 2010, . 4. Derek E Mix, ‘The United Kingdom: Issues for the United States’, Congressional Research Service, Washington, DC, 14 May 2010. 5. Eric Edelman, ‘A Special Relationship in Jeopardy’, The American Interest (July/ August 2010), pp. 25–34, suggests it will survive current challenges too. 6. Catherine Mayer, ‘Why Britain’s Affair with the U.S. Is Over’, TIME, 29 March 2010. The first quote is from Time, ‘Nick Clegg: In the Balance’, February 2010; the second is attributed to David Cameron. 7. Compare: Jeffrey Record, ‘Collapsed Countries, Casualty Dread, and the New American Way of War’, Parameters (Summer 2002), pp. 4–23; James Burk, ‘Public Support for Peacekeeping in Lebanon and Somalia: Assessing the Casualties Hypothesis’, Political Science Quarterly (No. 144, 1999), pp. 53–78. 8. Huba Wass de Czege, ‘Redefining the Military Strategic Problem Set,’ Army (Vol. 58, No. 11, November 2008), pp. 19–25. 9. Ministry of Defence, op. cit., Annex B. 10. Stewart Patrick, ‘Weak States and Global Threats: Fact or Fiction?’ The Washington Quarterly (Vol. 29, No. 2, Spring 2006), pp. 27–53, calls into question assumptions concerning the threats posed by failed and failing states. 11. These types are discussed more fully in Huba Wass de Czege and Antulio J Echevarria II, ‘Toward a Strategy of Positive Ends’, Strategic Studies Institute, Carlisle, PA, September 2001, pp. 18–22. 12. Bob Brewin, ‘Top Military Doctors Say Six to Nine-Month Combat Tours Would Reduce Stress’, Government Executive, 17 April 2008, available at .

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13. Colin Gray, Another Bloody Century: Future Warfare (London: Weidenfield and Nicholson, 2005), p. 77. 14. ‘US “deeply values” special relationship with UK – President Obama’, Number10.gov.uk, 27 June 2010, . Scott Wilson and Michael W Savage, ‘Obama, British Leader Discuss Strain in Nations’ Ties’, Washington Post, 27 June 2010.

Redefining the Military’s Role in Domestic Security 1. HM Government, A Strong Britain in an Age of Uncertainty: The National Security Strategy, Cm 7953 (London: The Stationery Office, October 2010), para. 3.17. 2. RUSI, ‘The Defence and Security Review Survey’, occasional paper, October 2010. 3. Michael Codner, ‘A Purple Proposal: Organising and Integrating the Military Contribution to National Resilience’, RUSI Newsbrief, October 2005. 4. Ministry of Defence, ‘Future Character of Conflict’, Development, Concepts and Doctrine Centre, Shrivenham, 3 February 2010. 5. Ibid., para. 25. 6. CBRN/CBRNE − chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear (and explosives). 7. It is unclear whether the government has yet defined or understood the conditions that need to be met to allow a transition of responsibility to Afghan security forces and therefore a gradual decline of British forces including (from 2015) no combat role. The experience of Basra shows that if forces withdraw before all conditions are met, they will be required to intervene again at a later stage for a longer period and in a larger size. 8. See Antulio Echevarria’s chapter in this volume. 9. See Cabinet Office, ‘Fact Sheet 5: Future Force 2020 – Summary of size, shape and structure’, available at , and ‘Fact Sheet 7: Future Force 2020 – British Army’, available at . 10. A Gold, Silver, Bronze command structure is used by emergency services of the United Kingdom to establish a hierarchical framework for the command and control of major incidents and disasters. The Gold Commander is in overall

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A Question of Security control of their organisation’s resources at the incident. They will not be on site, but at a distant control room, i.e. Gold Command, where they will formulate the strategy for dealing with the incident. The Silver Commander is the senior member of the organisation at the scene, in charge of all their resources. They decide how to utilise these resources to achieve the strategic aims of the Gold Commander; they determine the tactics that should be used. They will not, however, become directly involved in dealing with the incident itself. A Bronze Commander directly controls the organisation’s resources at the incident and will be found with their staff working on scene.

11. Intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition and reconnaissance. 12. See also Trevor Taylor’s chapter in this volume. 13. Ministry of Defence, Adaptability and Partnership: Issues for the Strategic Defence Review, Cm 7794 (London: The Stationery Office, February 2010), para 3.5. 14. Jamie Bartlett, Jonathan Birdwell and Michael King, The Edge of Violence: a Radical Approach to Extremism (London: Demos, 2010).

The Case for the RAF 1. For example, Julian Thompson in The Times, 21 July 2010. 2. NATO codenames for classes of Russian long-range bomber aircraft. 3. Intelligence, Surveillance, Target Acquisition and Reconnaissance – the functional elements of information superiority. 4. Naval slang for naval airmen and the surface navy respectively. 5. ‘Sharkey’ Ward, Sea Harrier over the Falklands: A Maverick at War (Barnsley: Pen and Sword, 1992). 6. See Larry Millberry (ed.), Sixty Years: The RCAF and CF Air Command 1924– 1984 (Toronto: Canav Books, 1984). 7. Future roles of the RAF in space and cyber power are addressed in the commander-in-chief air command’s 16 September 2010 Lord Trenchard Memorial Lecture at RUSI. See Simon Bryant, ‘Air, Space and Cyber Power: Strategic Choice and Operational Imperative’, RUSI Journal (Vol. 155, No. 5, October/November 2010).

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Armed Inducement in Conflict Prevention 1. Antigua and Barbuda was an Associated State but had responsibility for all internal matters. The UK government was responsible for foreign policy and external defence. Trinidad and Tobago was and is an independent member of the Commonwealth. Haiti had no historic connection of these kinds with the UK. 2. As a member of the two-frigate British West Indies Squadron, HMS Sirius visited Curaçao (Netherlands), Guadeloupe (France), Bermuda (UK), Barbados, Grenada, Dominica, Cariacou, St Vincent, Turks and Caicos, Antigua and Barbuda, Trinidad, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, Miami and Key West (US). 3. ‘Armed inducement’ is a preferable expression to ‘armed suasion’, which does not have obvious meaning outside academic communities. It is not, however, an academic neologism. ‘The suasioun of swetenesse’ features in Geoffrey Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde (c1385). 4. UK Ministry of Defence in ‘The Comprehensive Approach’, Joint Discussion Note 4/05, January 2006, available at . This concept was first presented by the UK military, but has since been adopted by NATO and more widely to refer to the systematic integration of government departments and other entities at the national and multinational levels in delivering security. It was an aspiration that has been dogged in its implementation. 5. It was one of eight Missions which also included: peacetime security; security of the Overseas Territories; support to wider British interests; peace support and humanitarian operations; regional conflict outside the NATO area; regional conflict inside the NATO area; and strategic attack on NATO. 6. HM Government, Strategic Defence Review: Modern Forces for a Modern World, Cm 3999 (London: The Stationery Office, 1998). 7. This analysis is derived from Edward Luttwak’s analysis of armed suasion in Edward N Luttwak, The Political Uses of Sea Power (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974). 8. The relevance of CASD to the UK nuclear deterrent remains an important subject of debate. 9. The problem with this distinction is that ‘dissuasion’ was used by France in the Cold War as the French translation of ‘deterrence’. France pursued an

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A Question of Security independent nuclear strategy from NATO, and ‘dissuasion’ using French pronunciation has legacy meanings embracing the préstratégique concept and tous azimuths targeting. In any event, if the distinction is not apparent in translation into the language of a nuclear power, it is probably not a useful one to pursue, except in that in English ‘dissuasion’ might have a gentler nuance.

10. The conditional undertaking not to use nuclear weapons against a state that does not possess them. 11. British naval doctrine uses the concepts of ‘symbolic actions’, which could be directed or undirected and supportive or deterrent, but would constitute posture and deployment without the use of violence – ‘naval presence’ is in this category of undirected symbolic use; and ‘preventive, precautionary and preemptive uses’ where there is not a specifically defined mission or purpose except in the widest sense of avoiding maldeployment, expressing interest, and being prepared to address a range of possible objectives.

Defence Information Superiority: Still Underplayed 1. In the interests of brevity, this chapter uses the abbreviation IS for information superiority, despite its customary meaning of ‘Information Systems’. There appears to be no approved defence definition of information superiority. The most useful informal definition used in some quarters is suggested as: ‘the achievement of a better understanding than an adversary of the battlespace and the ways in which it could be influenced’. 2. IX: information exploitation, the creative skill of using information for winning effect. 3. IM: information management, the management skill of ensuring the availability, security and integrity of information. 4. Cloud computing is a system whereby data and applications are stored remotely and accessed across an external network (the Internet) as needed. 5. J6: the Joint Information Management branch in a military HQ. 6. A Wiki is a type of collaborative editing system whereby information pages are created, managed and linked to each other by users. Some moderating authority is needed to ensure a degree of integrity. Wikipedia is a well-known example of the concept in practice.

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Failing Intelligence: Reform of the Machinery 1. Brian Jones, Failing Intelligence: The True Story of How We Were Fooled into Going to War in Iraq (London: Biteback Publishing, 2010), pp. 273, 275. 2. Cabinet Office, ‘Improving the Central Intelligence Machinery’, October 2009, para 5. 3. Lord Butler of Brockwell, ‘Review on Intelligence of Weapons of Mass Destruction’, Report of a Committee of Privy Councillors, HC 898 (London: The Stationery Office, 14 July 2004), para 603. 4. Michael Herman, Intelligence Power in Peace and War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996, reprinted 2006), pp. 317–20. 5. Cabinet Office, op. cit., para 31. 6. Intelligence and Security Committee, Annual Report 2008–2009, Cm 7807 (London: The Stationery Office, March 2010), para. 113. 7. Ibid., para 106. 8. Butler, op.cit. 9. Ibid., para 209. 10. Ibid., para 197. 11. Ibid., para 604. 12. Ibid., para 607. 13. Paras 598 and 599. 14. Para 607. 15. Michael Herman, Intelligence Power in Peace and War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996, reprinted 2006), p. 126. 16. See .

The Armed Forces and the British People 1. Ministry of Defence, The Nation’s Commitment: Cross-Government Support to our Armed Forces, their Families and Veterans, Cm 7274 (London: The Stationery Office, July 2008). 2. British Army, Soldiering – The Military Covenant, Army Doctrine Publication Volume 5, AC71642, February 2000. 3. Cabinet Office, ‘Strategic Defence Review Fact Sheet 12: The Armed Forces

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A Question of Security Covenant’, available at .

Procurement Reform 1. These were the departments of the Controller of the Navy, the Master General of the Ordnance (Army), and the Controller Aircraft. These titles are still retained on the Service Boards but are assigned to appropriate members of the relevant service who work in joint acquisition organisations. 2. From the 1970s the MoD’s delivery agency has been successively the Procurement Executive (PE), the Defence Procurement Agency and Defence Logistic Organisation for goods and services in the ‘logistic’ category, and recently Defence Equipment and Support. 3. The Smart Procurement Initiative for acquisition reform (subsequently labelled ‘Smart Acqusition’) was informed by a study and recommendations by the management consultancy, McKinsey and Company. 4. National Audit Office, Ministry of Defence: Major Projects Report 2007 Volume III: The Landing Ship Dock (Auxiliary) Project (London: The Stationery Office, 2007). 5. ‘Entryism’ has a particular meaning in defence acquisition and procurement of ‘tactics and devices to secure a contract (by suppliers) or to secure a capability (by military arms or services) through understating costs or requirements to ensure initial success followed by incremental increases in both’. 6. First-line support is maintenance support provided usually by uniformed staff to aircraft in front-line airfields and bases. Second-line support involves more substantial maintenance and repair in the operational environment by uniformed personnel and increasingly by civilians. Third-line support is typically major repair, maintenance, refitting and upgrades executed usually by civilian contractors such as the manufacturing company in factories or other substantial construction facilities. Increasing use of thorough-life capability management contracts entails an evolution of these definitions. 7. The base port of a ship is significant for social reasons. Naval families buy houses; spouses may be in long term employment; and children may need continuity of schooling. Maintenance and refitting of ships allows contact with families so a fusion of these requirements is important for ‘home porting’.

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8. Partnering at HM Naval Bases at Devonport and the Clyde, involving commercial management using government-owned commercially-operated arrangements have presented problems of transfer of liability, in particular aspects of environmental and specifically nuclear liability.

Defence Industrial Strategy under the Coalition 1. Ministry of Defence, Defence Industrial Strategy, Cm 6697 (London: The Stationery Office, 2005). 2. Ministry of Defence, Defence Technology Strategy for the Demands of the 21st Century (London: The Stationery Office, 2006) 3. The promised, costed follow-up paper to the DIS. 4. The industrial sectors identified in the DIS were systems engineering; maritime; armoured fighting vehicles; fixed-wing aircraft; helicopters; general munitions; complex weapons; and C4ISTAR (command, control, communication, computers, intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition and reconnaissance). 5. The Procurement Executive was replaced by the Defence Procurement Agency as part of the Smart Acquisition Reforms published in 1998. This in turn was replaced by Defence Equipment & Support in the EAC reforms that followed the DIS. 6. The principal defence and security trade associations – the Defence Manufacturers’ Association, the Society of British Aerospace Companies and the Association of Police and Public Security Suppliers – merged in 2009 into A|D|S (Aerospace|Defence|Security). 7. Sovereign capabilities are identified in the DIS. 8. A MoD definition of a ‘prime contractor’ is one who has overall responsibility for the management of the contracted requirement on time, within budget and fit for the purpose for which it was intended. A prime contractor may subcontract within a supply chain. Original equipment manufacturers are frequently prime contractors. Prime contractors are also known as Tier 1 contractors within a supply chain. 9. SBAC, ‘Action Plan for 21st Century Supply Chains’, July 2006, available at . 10. The range of uninhabited systems includes uninhabited or unmanned aerial vehicles, armed uninhabited or unmanned combat aerial vehicles, ground

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A Question of Security systems for a wide range of roles including surveillance and the detection and disposal of unexploded mines and other ordnance, and potentially combat, and maritime surface and subsurface platforms with a similar range of roles.

11. The SDSR states that the defence industry and technology policy will inter alia seek ‘to secure ... greater promotion of defence exports’. 12. The new organisation in the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills is the UK Trade & Investment Defence and Security Organisation. 13. Offsets are industrial compensation agreements that arms importing governments impose on their foreign suppliers. These may include: coproduction; subcontracting, licensed production; training; technology transfers; or other investment in the importer’s economy. See G Ianakiev and N Mladenov, ‘Offset Policies in Defence Procurement: Lessons for the European Defence Equipment Market’, available at . 14. An ‘80 per cent’ procurement solution is one that delivers 80 per cent of the capability required of a system at a proportionally greater cost saving, and perhaps very much more speedily. 15. However, there could be major export or and international collaboration possibilities for an 80 per cent solution, a highly modular Type-26 frigate. 16. Storm Shadow is a conventionally armed air-launched stand-off cruise missile manufactured by MBDA for British, French and Italian armed forces. 17. The Defence Trade Treaty was ratified by the US Senate on 29 September 2010. 18. In a letter from the Defence Industries Council to the minister of state for defence procurement in June 2010. 19. Bernard Gray, ‘Review of Acquisition for the Secretary of State for Defence: An Independent Report by Bernard Gray’, October 2009, available at .

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Lisa Aronsson Dr Lisa Aronsson is Head of the Transatlantic Programme at RUSI. She is also an Advisory Board Member of the Transatlantic Project at the IDEAS Centre for Strategy and Diplomacy at the London School of Economics and remains active in the academic community. Dr Aronsson has a PhD in International Relations (2009) and a Masters with Distinction in International History (2003) from the London School of Economics and a BA Magna Cum Laude from Wellesley College (1999). Malcolm Chalmers Professor Malcolm Chalmers is Professorial Fellow in British Security Policy at RUSI, as well as Visiting Professor of Defence and Foreign Policy in the Department of War Studies, King’s College London. He was a member of the Cabinet Office consultative group for the Strategic Defence and Security Review, and of the defence secretary’s advisory forum on the 2010 defence Green Paper. He was previously a special adviser to Foreign Secretaries Jack Straw and Margaret Beckett. His recent publications include contributions to the RUSI FDR Working Paper series; ‘The Myth of Defence Inflation’, RUSI Defence Systems, June 2009; ‘Britain’s New Nuclear Debate’, RUSI Journal, April 2009; and ‘A Force for Influence: Making British Defence Effective’, RUSI Journal, December 2008.

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Michael Clarke Professor Michael Clarke is currently the Director of RUSI. Until July 2007 he was the Deputy Vice-Principal and Director of Research Development at King’s College London, having been the founding Director of the Centre for Defence Studies at King’s. He has been a specialist adviser to the House of Commons Defence Committee since 1997. In 2009 he was appointed to the Prime Minister’s National Security Forum in pursuit of the new National Security Strategy, and in 2009 was appointed to the Chief of the Defence Staff’s Strategic Advisory Panel. Etienne de Durand Etienne de Durand has been Director of the Center for Security Studies, IFRI, since 2006. He deals with policy issues of French and American defence, and recent military interventions. He currently teaches at the Institut d’Études Politiques in Paris, having previously taught at the École Speciale Militaire de Saint-Cyr Coetquidan, the Joint Defence College and the University Jean Moulin Lyon 3. He was a Visiting Fellow at Harvard University and MIT 1998–99. Antulio Echevarria Dr Antulio J Echevarria II became the Director of Research for the US Army War College after a military career of twenty-three years. He has held a variety of command and staff assignments in Europe and the United States, has also published extensively in scholarly and professional journals on topics related to military history and theory and strategic thinking. David Gould David Gould worked for the Ministry of Defence from 1973 to 2008. Over the course of service his responsibilities covered NATO, Nuclear Plans and Operations, and Royal Air Force Equipment and Logistics. He is currently a member of the Oxford University Business Economics Programme Steering Committee.

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Eric Grove Eric Grove has taught naval history and maritime strategy at the Britannia Royal Naval College, Dartmouth, The Royal Naval College Greenwich, the United States Naval Academy, the University of Cambridge, and the University of Hull, where he became Reader in Politics and International Studies and Director of the Centre for Security Studies. He is currently Professor of Naval History and Director of the Centre for International Security and War Studies at the University of Salford. Keith Hayward Professor Hayward has been a consultant to the UK and US governments and several European aerospace companies. He is a Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society. During 2002−3, he was seconded to the DTI as part of the Enabling Team overseeing the production of Aerospace Innovation and Growth Team Report. As a Research Fellow of the RUSI, he has been associated with the Institute’s work on defence procurement, the defence industrial base and defence R&D policy. Alexander Neill Alexander Neill is Head of the Asia Security Programme at RUSI. He is a graduate of the School of Oriental and African Studies, and prior to joining RUSI was an analyst for the British government which included a tour with the British Embassy in Washington, DC. His research interests include Chinese foreign and national security policy and international relations, the influence of globalisation on the Asia region and the Taliban insurgency in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Mark Phillips Mark Phillips is Head of the Land Operations and Capabilities Programme at RUSI. Prior to joining RUSI, he was chief of staff to Baroness Neville-Jones during her time as Shadow Security Minister and National Security Adviser to the Leader of the Opposition and,

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after the 2010 general election, Security Minister. Mark co-authored the Conservative Party’s national security Green Paper, A Resilient Nation (January 2010). Andrew Rathmell Andrew Rathmell is director of the Libra Advisory Group. He has worked in high-level roles in post-conflict Iraq’s reconstruction and stabilisation. He was formerly Senior Lecturer in War Studies at King’s College London and director of the International Centre for Security Analysis. Bill Robins Major General (Rtd) Bill Robins CB OBE led tactical communications units in parachute, mechanised, armoured and infantry formations of the British Army. After working for government, Marconi and BAE Systems, he now runs his own consultancy specialising in defence and security information management. He chairs the Board for the Defence Fixed Telecommunications Service PFI programme for both partners, the Ministry of Defence and British Telecom. Hew Strachan Professor Hew Strachan is Chichele Professor of the History of War, University of Oxford, a fellow of All Souls College, and has been the Director of the Leverhulme Programme on the Changing Character of War since 2004. He is author of a number of volumes on military history, including his most recent book, Carl von Clausewitz’s ‘On War’: A Biography (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2007). Trevor Taylor Professor Trevor Taylor is a RUSI Professorial Research Fellow in Defence Management. He analyses issues of defence equipment procurement. Previously at Cranfield University, he headed the Department of Defence Management and Security Analysis and the Centre for Defence Management and Leadership. He has served as

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chairman of the British International Studies Association and head of the International Security Programme at Chatham House. Geoffrey Till Professor Geoffrey Till, a maritime strategist and scholar, is the Dean of Academic Studies at the Joint Services Command and Staff College, Shrivenham, and Head of the Defence Studies Department at King’s College London’s War Studies Group. Prior to that, he was Professor of History at the Royal Naval College at Greenwich. He has been a NATO Defence Fellow and is currently Visiting Professor at the Armed Forces University, Taiwan.