It’s been 8 months (I know!) since I started the Think Defence FDR series of posts and we have covered a wide variety of topics with a number of authors across 56 posts.
Its time for a quick recap.
Purpose
The stated objective of Think Defence is to simply get people talking about defence issues and if we can get 1 person to take an interest where previously they might not, then that’s job done. I certainly have no illusions that we are going to inform the debate or make people listen to our deranged ambling.
Plus of course, I enjoy it!
One of the questions I posed a short while back, as prompted by a couple of comments, was what should be the Think Defence position?
Do we carry on regardless, advocate an increase in spending, discuss ways of meeting the coming budget reductions or stand on the sidelines moaning about them when they do come?
I think the conclusion was, there is room for all views, it’s only a blog after all.
There are actually two issues in play, how to get through the current budgetary problems and how to put defence on a sustainable path for the future.
General Position
The Think Defence general position on the future of the UK armed forces can be summarised in four bullet points;
- The UK defence establishment needs not only more money but much much better spending
- We are not Belgium
- The UK needs to have the confidence to innovate in defence
- We need to once and for all get a grip on equipment costs
There seems very little chance of more money, in fact there is likely a 4 to 5 year reduction of up to 25% if the budget report is to be believed. Our 8 months of deliberations have made the assumption that spending would remain rather static, the announcement today is somewhat of a game changer.
We are not Belgium, the UK is a powerful sovereign nation with overseas obligations, a permanent seat on the UN Security Council and a wide range of political , commercial and other interests around the world. We should not retreat from the top table, even if we have to share that table, or even our seat, with others.
The UK has a proud history of military innovation and commercial military success but both these have evaded us for too long. We need to get back in the business of making things other nations actually want to buy and this means innovation.
Finally, because everything is based on money, we need to get a grip of defence costs and if this means a radical reappraisal of the link between politics, industry and the military then so be it.
The RUSI Question
In parallel with my feeble efforts those frightfully clever people at RUSI have also been running an FDR series and one of the fundamental questions they raise seems to revolve around how we configure our forces for the future. Do we go for maritime based strategic raiding, land based global guardian (COIN) or a contributory approach where we concentrate resources in a range of capabilities.
Another option might be to spread the pain equally and reduce all three services in equal quantities, this seems to be a suggestion in the latest RUSI paper.
There is also another option, the Think Defence option.
That is, actually recognise that medium and large scale operations will be carried out in conjunction with others and configure our forces based on the contributory model. This does not mean that we completely dispense with the ability to mount an all arms full spectrum sovereign operation but this will be at a small scale. Retaining these capabilities at this small scale also provides a hedge against emergent strategic threats and retains core skills that would be very difficult or impossible to rebuild within any reasonable timeframe.
So if I had to describe the Think Defence position in RUSI terms it would be a fudge.
A small but strong central core of strategic raiding surrounding by a larger contributory outer based largely on global guardian plus key niche capabilities.
To Do
Still on the ‘To Do List’ is the remainder of Land Combat (including one on close combat and weapon calibres), logistics, training, acquisition and a few other miscellaneous subjects.
I am going to summarise my thinking on actual capabilities in a future post, its quite a big job to summarise a rambling 50 odd posts plus comments.
My thinking has also changed since starting the series so perhaps it is time for a coherent reappraisal.
“We are not Belgium, the UK is a powerful sovereign nation with overseas obligations, a permanent seat on the UN Security Council and a wide range of political , commercial and other interests around the world. We should not retreat from the top table, even if we have to share that table, or even our seat, with others.”
Belgium has political, commercial and other interests around the world – and nobody so far seems to suggest that their lack of military ability is the reason for their troubles. In fact, countries like the Netherlands seem to do very fine without a large military.
A permanent seat in the UNSC does not require military backing. It’s rather the opposite – a partial replacement for military might.
What overseas obligations? Those few islands? The weak link with Commonwealth nations that hasn’t exactly led to many successful interventions in the past?
The UK could easily switch to an alliance deterrence & defence military – and save bucks in the long term by doing so.
It is a matter of perception, we accept that the role is correct because the public expect that we should occupy that role. This is not immutable, it certainly could change, but it is not the case now.
I disagree about the UNSC point, fundamentally a UN security council member must be able to act in concert to coerce a recalcitrant nation, with the credible threat of military action if necessary.
‘What overseas obligations? Those few islands?’
And there’s the crux. Not only do they house a small portion of the 10 million Britons who live overseas which the UK has a duty to protect considering they are next door to a country intent on regaining them and who makes no secret of it, they potentially have vast energy & mineral resources for the future.
As may British antarctic territory. Drilling is not allowed there now but wait till oil reserves start to diminish and cheap oil is a thing of the past.
Even if the Falklanders see all oil revenue rather than the UK the tax on future revenues would be substantial for the exchequer.
I think its time to put to bed the ‘those few islands’ mentality. They are a distinct British national interest, not some slap each other on the back didn’t we do well in 1982 mythical creation.
JBT ref: “I disagree about the UNSC point, fundamentally a UN security council member must be able to act in concert to coerce a recalcitrant nation, with the credible threat of military action if necessary.”
Really ? So how come there is only one member of the UNSC who could actually back up any rhetoric with military power, unilaterally, that being the USA. China might be getting there, Russia likes to think they could (well they can against some small neighbours) but the UNSC is a badly broken institution where selfish use of veto outweighs the ‘greater good’ on a regular basis. So I don’t see many members of the UNSC acting in concert very often.
France, Britain & the US are all capable of strategic power projection.
There are of course other factors that are arguably equally important including soft-power and economic-power.
Russia certainly used to be the first/second most powerful military actor, the fact that it is not now is in no small part to sensitivity over how one treats a wounded bear (read 10,000 nukes and a bad attitude).
China is also in a unique position, with the worlds largest population, the worlds second largest defence budget, and the worlds largest economy within the next generation, do you want to argue against their inclusion.
There is no escaping the fact however that the UNSC’s ultimate role is act as the ultimate arbiter, and that means enforcing decisions when necessary, which also means wielding the ultimate threat of military sanction.
That the UNSC is flawed is not in doubt, nor too that it could be more representative, but the role is still crucial.
http://jedibeeftrix.wordpress.com/2010/04/11/britain-in-the-world-just-another-medium-sized-country/
Just some disjointed ramblings:
Aha, Finally I understand “we are not Belgium”. Radio 2 on Tuesday(?) ran an article on the Jeremy Vine show where it was asked if we actually needed a military at all. In light of that, maybe we should change the quote to “we are not Denmark” in remeberance of the mythical “border telephones”.
The radio 2 show got me thinking about how to defend a “balanced” military. My answer was that, if we disband strategic capability, when the Russians try to double the price of their gas – what would back up our diplomacy if not the credible threat of force? After all iirc the CIS has used gas supply threats to coerce Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus & Ukraine into making compliant decisions about leaving the CIS/joining NATO. It’s just the way the Russians work; probably always will be.
dd
If russia doubled the price of gas, we’d buy more from texas/qatar.
We wouldnt bomb them.
If shale pans out, latvia will be exporting more than russia
Very nice summing up on the state of this (currently, and understandably) FDR-driven site; all hats tip to Admin.
A couple of (surely rambling, beware) thoughts:
While it’s important to knock down, “are we or are we not Belgium” has always been a very particular kind of canard. Partly it’s a piece of metropolitan English zombie masochism (i.e. one that won’t die), tied in to quite a few decades of political economy (in the neutral, non-Marxist sense of the term) and cultural politics.
You get it from the left in the inverse vanity of flagellating about empire: we’re still incredibly important in the world be cause we know how to martyr ourselves publicly for our sins, without ever actually discussing in detail some of the very genuine and particular sins of Empire or how to prevent us or anyone else repeating them because it’s so much cooler to be martyrs who are smart enough to see the wicked world for what it is than actually help people out. From the right it’s a particular kind of Little Englandism that got one of its first great doses of fertilizer from the National Government in the Thirties, one of the first twentieth-century instances where the Square Mile’s elites got the chance to start killing off what was still vibrant and diverse in British industry to improve their dividends, all while singing hymns to pottering around in suburban gardens. Best not to notice a great nation being run down for the sake of its banking sector — how’s your bridge game these days? The sooner the broader British culture is rid of its sickness, which has clung on from both political flanks far too long, the better.
It also picks a deliberately bad example. Belgium having broad, global commercial interests (indeed being the place we call Belgium at all, unless you’re from one of Douglas Adams’ other worlds and know what a bad word it is
was first an act of great-power diplomacy — slicing Antwerp off from the Netherlands to slow down Dutch renovation as a commercial and naval power — and later on an early experiment in “disaster capitalism” — the “Congo Free State.” Only when the Germans looked like they’d come knocking a second time in the 1930s did Belgium commit a genuinely large proportion of its national resources to the armed forces. And that was limited by another obvious factor anyway, that even now Belgium has *one sixth* the population of the UK. So take as an example the Belgians’ old heavy mob, the Para-Commando Brigade that spent quite a lot of time in and out of former African dependencies between the Sixties and 1994. Then create a proportional resource (per capita) for a UK-sized Belgium. You get the combatant units to stand up two full airborne divisions. Do it by factors of GDP and it’s smaller, but not vanishingly so, and in line with Belgium’s particular, historical patterns of defining and spending for national security (save for the mixed regular-reserve corps they had in the Cold War to keep the fighting as far from Belgium as conventional arms and plenty of powerful allies would allow.)
Just on the admittedly shaky per capita basis, some small nations’ security resources like Norway’s army reserve system or the Royal Danish Navy look positively vast when you telescope out to a British scale. (What about quality v. quantity? I suspect thirty-three Iver Huitfeldt-class air defense frigates, loaded for a bit of general-purpose bear as well, would go over well with the Admiralty.) The Dutch, who spend less per GDP, nevertheless seem to have a less badly broken procurement system and extrapolate their military out per capita to very much the same resources of people power and kit as the contemporary British Armed Forces, and by GDP to a more modestly defensive (less able to power-project despite their nice amphibs) but still quite substantial body.
So, a lot of the “maybe we *are* Belgium” mentality is a cultural pincer, one prong that prefers being stylishly useless to stepping up and getting things done, the other pretending TheHomeCountiessorryEnglandsorryBritain’s a modest if proud little patch to obscure the systematic death of its great productive base. And a lot of the other arguments either ignore the luxury of some smaller states’ strategic position (like Belgium’s) or the scale of those countries’ defense establishments relative to the fact that they’re a lot smaller than the UK. (Based on GDP especially, the Portuguese put the Belgians to shame.)
I suppose a lot of that angles in one of the post’s last questions — what issues of national security are best addressed, or necessarily addressed, by means other than military resources and their application? But on the subject of those resources, that we talk about here with such conviction, I think the long-term, strategic direction needs not to be about management of ever-scarcer national resources, nor about hanging on to a particular *version* of great-power status that the rest of the world probably regards (falsely, when you look at what the Forces can still do despite evisceration) as a combination of nukes, hauteur, and the giant casino in the Square Mile. It should be instead about renaissance, regeneration, the creation of novel and distinctly British resources and approaches, of new and expansive value in British national capital rather than platitudes of same that lead down the familiar managed decline because important thinks don’t actually change. Within that the FDR needs to create the security conditions for a turn of the page in Britain’s prosperous and significant engagement with the rest of the world that’s a few decades overdue.
/end rant
Looking very much forward to the day that next summary post shows up. Plus of course talking about gear and afflicting the parliamentarily comfortable in the meanwhiel
Thats two of you that has given me a battering about using Belgium.
OK OK, it was a poor example but I wanted to place the conversation in the context of great power status. We are a great power, not just on a historical basis but here and now.
Commerce, entertainment, literature, language, science, core values, resilience and even Britians Got Talent provide testimony to this. British Standards are still used as the basis for the vast majority of the important international management and technical standards, foreign students still flock to British universities and the world plays sports generally invented here.
Yes, certain aspects may have been in some decline since the war but come on we are not Little Britain just yet and I don’t want the UK to be in a perpetual state of managing decline.
The armed forces provide but one element of this great nation status so lets be realistic but lets not be defeatist either, yes, we might need to create our own new reality but lets have some confidence about it
Jackstaff for PM ! (Or even King !!)
Admin,
Don’t sweat it, boss. Actually my wobbly thrust wasn’t aimed at you at all, more at Sven’s initial “well, if you’re going to be Belgium, be Belgium, that works pretty well.” The argument misses out that there are particular strategic geographies that apply to smaller nations but don’t to a place the UK’s size (on track to be the second-largest population in Europe west of Russia.) Also that plenty of those smaller states still find ways, in a world climate of reduced defence outlay, to box their own weight.
Good list of attributes, to which more could be added and some restored: like British presence in the physical sciences, which until about the end of the Seventies was quite major, and in all sorts of niche industries as well. The Britain of the Slump still turned out rayon and linoleum upon the world (for better or worse
, there’s hovercrafts (go on Jed), Dysons, Mini Coopers (German-owned, yes, but designed and built in the old country), and beyond on which to stand and build. And a fabulously, serendipitously rich ecosystem when it’s looked after (hedgerows aren’t just quaint, nor is four-field farming), plus other means to self-sufficiency. A 21st century rejoinder to “built on coal and surrounded by fish.” For nearly all the nation-states hemming over managed decline, not just the UK, quite a lot could be solved by deciding to make finance back into an economic sector rather than a feudal system, and getting back to making and doing (which does very much involve creativity — art really does inspire and define.)
Jed,
family tree.
I’d just settle for seeing a few of the Westminster rascals trade in some substance for platitudes about innovation and change. As for kings, I think the old girl very much has her eye on young Billy, and we’ll get to see if he has some proper Anglo-Saxon bottom like his grandma and others farther back along the (not overly branched
A shorter version of that typically rambling first graf would be: even Belgium ain’t Belgium.