"Though much is taken, much abides; and though we are not now that strength which in old days moved earth and heaven; that which we are; we are, one equal temper of heroic hearts, Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will to strive, to seek, to find and not to yield".
“Ulysses”,
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Virtue
Imperialism
Yesterday,
Foreign Secretary David Lammy said Britain would ‘champion’ the fight against
climate change and the ‘nature crisis’ because they were more fundamental than the
threat from terrorism or “imperialist’ dictators. Really? There in a nutshell is the problem
with Britain’s leaders: the confusion of interests with values, the ridiculous virtue
imperialism it generates, and the chronically poor choices British governments
make when it comes to the real security and defence of the British people.
My
just published new book, co-written with General Lord Richards is called The
Retreat from Strategy (London: Hurst) does not pull its punches about the
impact of said retreat on Britain and its hard-pressed armed forces. There has
been a profound failure of grand, national and defence strategy at the very heart
of the British Establishment for many years, both Parliament and Whitehall. This
is because the retreat from strategy is also a retreat from realism caused by
London’s reinvention of ‘strategy’, the ways and means to achieve ends, as
ultra-liberal politics of the moment.
Guilt, Policy and Strategy
Since
the financial and banking crisis of 2008, probably before, London has retreated
ever more into a fantasy world of values even at the cost of British vital
interests. Worse, the method of British ‘strategy’, such as it is, has seen
actual imperialism replaced by a form of guilt-driven value imperialism which is
little different from the appallingly self-serving “white man’s burden” of the
late nineteenth century. Indeed, the
idea that the rest of the world will follow where Britain leads, be it climate
change, migration or a host of other idees du jour is frankly ridiculous. Britain’s
grand strategy, the application of still immense British means in pursuit of
high strategic ends has thus become little more than performative politics.
London’s
appetite for putting values before interests is nowhere clearer than in its
dealings with Mauritius over Diego Garcia. Part of the Chagos Islands, Diego
Garcia hosts a British-owned, US air base vital to American Indian Ocean
strategy. And yet, London wants to hand over Diego Garcia to Mauritius, which
is over 1500 miles from Diego Garcia, has never had a legitimate claim on the
Chagos Islands, and which is deeply in debt to a China which would love to see
the Americans expelled from the air base.
How Much Threat can Britain Afford?
The evidence for the
retreat from strategy is plain to see. All recent national security strategies,
defence reviews and their associated documents are political rather than
strategic documents based on the principle of only recognising as much threat
as the Treasury believes Britain can afford. The consequence is equally clear. For
a country with the 6th largest economy in the world and given the
threats London itself perceives Britain neither spends enough nor does it spend
anywhere well enough on defend to balance the ends, ways, and means of the
armed forces.
What geopolitical and
defence-strategic role should the Britain of today aspire to? Britain is no longer a global political or military
power. Rather, it is a very important European regional-strategic power.
Logically, it should focus its defence effort on the Euro-Atlantic
community. Unfortunately, whilst Britain
is still an immensely powerful modern state it has no clear strategic
anchor or priorities. Defence strategy is reduced to little more than how much
threat can virtue afford. Worse, in a world driven by a competition between state
and other powerful interests Britain’s retreat further destabilises an already
fragile geopolitical system. Putin was clearly encouraged to invade Ukraine by
what Moscow perceived to be a lack of both will and power in capitals like
London.
Britain’s Defence Pretence
Critically, the British
armed forces are unable to meet anything like the roles, missions and tasks
government publicly expects of them. The Royal Navy, Army and Royal Air Force
might have a little bit of everything, they do not have much of anything. This patent
lack of mass, manoeuvre and sustainability or capability at sufficient capacity
means they would be simply unable to deal with any of the threats they could
face if they are at scale. Even planned increases will only help to back-fill a
very hollowed out force, and only if the new Labour Government honours those
increases.
Britain cannot stop
the world and get off by withdrawing onto its nuclear-armed island and hope for
the best. Britain’s history is full of the unexpected and there is no reason to
believe such danger is any less remote today or tomorrow. That is the reality
of ‘strategy’ that is more about fixing the myriad problems an incompetent
London has imposed on the British people than securing Britain and its future.
Rather, London has chosen to not only increase the level of risk both the
British people and its allies face by retreating from strategy, but it is also
imposing an inordinately greater risk on the ill-equipped and under-funded
young men and women in uniform it WILL send into harm’s way.
The core assumption
implicit in British strategy is that the Americans will always be there.
However, the Americans are becoming increasingly over-stretched globally and for
that ‘contract’ to endure Washington will rightly demand the British do more militarily
and do it in and around Europe. And yet, the British armed forces continue to
be hollowed with the seemingly endless loss of fighting power compounded by the
Russo-Ukraine War. Britain is starving its armed forces of vital munitions and
training simply to keep Ukraine in the fight but not giving the Ukrainians
anything like enough fast enough to ‘win’.
And, even under current planning for the British future force the
defence, technological and industrial base needs to be markedly upgraded and
expanded.
The Hardest Choice
Here’s the cruncher. Both
General Lord Richards and I believe in the independent British nuclear
deterrent. Unfortunately, since Cameron and Osborne imposed the cost of the
deterrent on the defence budget, one of their many strategically illiterate
decisions, Britain has been avoiding the hardest choice of all: London can
afford either a credible and safe nuclear deterrent or an appropriately
powerful conventional force…but not both.
What to do? Make NATO
work. Spend at least 2.5% GDP on defence and plan to spend 3% GDP on defence.
Only then, and only possibly, will London for once do what it says it is doing –
fund a modern nuclear deterrent and act as one of NATO’s two strategic
conventional reserves, but not both. London’s pretence must end and the only
way to end it is to return to a strategy in which the ends, ways and means of
British power are both credible and in balance. Anything else is little more
than the appeasement of a dangerous reality.
Britain and its power
still matter. Geopolitics is built on powerful states communicating their vital
interests to others to avoid misunderstanding. When a state confuses interests
with values it causes confusion because said state becomes unpredictable. The
reason for such confusion is not enough of the London High Establishment
believe in Britain as a power any longer.
As the book says, “There is little understanding at the apex of power in London about
the utility of soft and hard power, and its considered application in an
increasingly unsafe world. Strategy has become politics by another name and
thus little more than strategic pretence – the short-term dressed up as the
long-term, the irrelevant offered as the substantive, and the management of
irreversible decline. Not only is Britain’s
‘managed decline’ being very poorly managed, but Britain is not in fact
declining”. It is just very poorly led,
Mr Lammy.
Julian Lindley-French
