A Resilient Nation – Analysis Part 3

2. A Unified Security Approach

To deal with the new world we need to link all the relevant parts of government…

The document strategy proposes three key new initiates, the establishment of a National Security Council, National Security Strategy and Strategic Defence and Security Review.

2.1 National Security Council

This has rather a USA feel to it and be responsible for all national security policy issues, replacing a number of existing disparate ministerial committees.

The NSC will;

• Agree a comprehensive, long-term National Security Strategy
• Supervise the attainment of strategic goals identified by the National Security Strategy
• Foster a culture of integrated policy-making on the national security agenda between colleagues and their Departments
• Manage crises affecting national security
• Have the capacity to decide on the creation of cross-departmental budgets for the delivery of national security policies

Fig 1 National Security Council

Fig 2 National Security Secretariat

All good stuff but the last point is perhaps one of the most interesting elements of the whole proposal because it will allow the NSC to dictate departmental budget priorities, as a committee that decision should of course be a consensus but expect conflict as vested interests and, empire building, career and other considerations to play their part.

Potentially, this injects a great deal of uncertainty into departmental budgeting processes which in the case of the MoD is the root cause of so many poor and short term decisions.

This assumes that the underlying structures will be maintained, MI5 will still be M15, MI6 will still be MI6 and the Department for International Development will still be the same. The Metropolitan Police will still be the lead agency for anti terrorism in the UK and

Given the state of inter departmental rivalry and political shenanigans as evidenced by the various inquiries into Iraq and self evident incompetence in development in Afghanistan, one can only imagine this will be like wading through treacle, wearing treacle slippers.

Whilst the UK has nowhere near the duplicated complexity of the US, the recent airline attack over Christmas has clearly shown what happens when one has too many agencies, each fighting for budget, influence and the kudos of ‘taking the lead’

Is the proposal just another layer in an already over complex situation and could we go some way to achieving the same goal by de-layering, not adding yet more red tape, although some duplication will be eliminated this is only at the governmental level. For example the existing Civil Contingencies Secretariat

A single unifying council has much to commend it, it is logical and would seem common sense but without any reform to the underlying maze of agencies and organisations it will be facing an uphill struggle from day one.

Perhaps this is a proposal that does not go far enough.

2.2 National Security Strategy

The National Security Council will be tasked with the creation of an overarching national security strategy and updating it at least once per Parliament. The NSS will set the long term framework across government for all security related work including the Strategic Defence and Security Review by;

• Defining and prioritising the UK’s national security goals and interests and the key risks to them
• Clarifying the strategic connections between different risks
• Focusing Departmental attention on these strategic connections and clearly identifying where cross-Departmental working is required
• Developing a cross-Government planning process that can be applied to each interest/risk and which brings together different national instruments
• Informing the development of sub-strategies within it (such as the Government’s counter-terrorism strategy, known as ‘Contest’), by relating broad priorities and policies to them.

Sensibly it will start with a comprehensive and systemic risk assessment with all priorities and policies flowing from that.

The scrutiny and governance aspects are also to be welcomed.

2.3 Strategic Defence and Security Review

The second major task of the NSC will be to oversee and produce a long overdue Strategic Defence and Security Review. Ominously the report states that Equipment programmes cannot be based on wish-lists or the fantasy world of what we would like to do if resources were unlimited

So that’s CVF, JCA, A400, FRES and FSC, T3, FSC and a whole host of other programmes off the menu then.

This section seems to contradict itself

Twenty years ago the Berlin Wall fell, the Cold War ended and the last Soviet tank retreated from Afghanistan. Few defence experts predicted in 1989 that a thousand weeks later British troops would be fighting in Afghanistan, or that by 2001 terrorists trained in the ungoverned areas of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border would have turned airliners into guided missiles or that by 2005 young men born in Britain and trained in Pakistan would have killed themselves and many others on the London Underground.

This basically says that the world is an unpredictable place but then the report goes on to say

That means calibrating our role and our capabilities to the sort of conflicts which are most likely to arise in the next twenty years not the last twenty

So now it seems we can see into the future!

There is nothing wrong in this approach, even with the unpredictability of the world in mind a reasonable approximation of the future can be made but we must retain enough of the balanced capability to hedge against those things that we cannot see, that just might need something we have ditched.

It talks of Cold War capabilities yet it was these that brought success in Iraq and whilst one might think that fast jets are a throwback to another era the operation in Afghanistan would be impossible without them.

Stronger integration with partners, especially the US would seem to be an objective so this means that some capabilities will be reduced, i.e. we will not pursue a balanced force approach, playing to our strengths.

Without seeing the results the review it is hard to make any comment but our oft stated position is broadly the same, specialising in what we do best and over resourcing fewer capabilities yet still retaining a small but balanced capability as a hedge against the unforeseen, which we all know cannot be foreseen!