The Retreat from Strategy

"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 6^th 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