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The Subjugation of Defence Strategy to the Politics of Coalition

Adrian Hilton believes that our defence strategy has reached a tipping point; it is time to invest in our Armed Forces or accept we are just another European country.

By Adrian Hilton

20 Jul 2011, 18:00

I was invited last week to attend a Henry Jackson Society event at Portcullis House to launch a defence report by Bernard Jenkin MP and George Grant entitled ‘The Tipping Point: British National Strategy and the UK’s Future World Role’. The report is available for download here.

Essentially, it concerns the strategy (or, rather, the lack of it) in the global pursuit of the British national interest and the propagation of British values (which are never defined, but, being Henry Jackson, are primarily concerned with issues of liberty and democracy). In consideration of Britain’s continuing role on the world stage, we are asked ‘whether we wish to maintain our position as a global power or become by default just another European country’.

Some will say it’s a bit late to ask that question, Bernard. The 1998 bilateral St Malo Declaration and the multilateral Lisbon Treaty of 2009 both oblige the UK to work towards an emerging collective EU military capacity. We are consistently told that the era of the nation state is dead and that we must rationalise our fragmented and inefficient military capabilities if we are to compete with existing and emerging superpowers. And so we have witnessed the evolution of a European defence industry and the development of technology and terminology with a distinct EU identity: European Rapid Reaction Force; European Airlift Centre; European Security & Defence; EU Elite Strikeforce; Eurofighters; and, of course, the Euro Army. And only a few days ago, Foreign Secretary William Hague rejected Baroness Ashton’s proposal for a European Union Permanent Joint Headquarters to command military missions undertaken through the Common Security and Defence Policy. If we haven’t quite yet surrendered sovereignty of command and control over our military capability, we are certainly ‘pooling’ it to the extent that we are compromising our ability to act unilaterally. If we continue in accordance with the precepts of ‘ever closer union’ towards EUtopia, British forces will eventually be subject to a direct EU military command structure.

Bernard Jenkin is clearly of the view that we’re not ‘just another European country’ – yet. But we have certainly reached the pivotal tipping point: the time to decide whether we will ever again be capable of unilaterally defending our global interests, or are simply prepared to treat national defence like every other public service and subject it to stringent cuts. After all, we’re all in this together (except, of course, Health and International Development, whose funding is sacred and inviolable). And we can afford to relax a little now on defence spending because the Cold War is over, Alex Salmond isn’t about to make incursions over Hadrian’s Wall, and Britannia no longer rules the waves except on the Last Night of the Proms. Yes, there’s Iraq and Afghanistan, but both are now shining examples of Islamic democracy and, pace a little local difficulty with their own recalcitrant extremists, are well on the road to peace, prosperity, and a free-market economy.

Just like Tunisia, Egypt, Syria and Bahrain, in fact. And I’m sure it won’t be too long before Libya also joins the free and democratic world, along with North Korea and Iran: jaw-jaw works so well, doesn’t it? Well, perhaps Libya needs a bit of war-war, but don’t want to make a habit of it, do we? So the threats to our national interest are manifestly fewer: we are more secure now than we’ve ever been, even if Argentina’s President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner is agitating again for the ‘return’ of the Islas Malvinas.

The report highlights that the National Security Strategy ‘sought to prioritise identifiable threats, but failed to address the problem of strategic shocks that we cannot predict. To paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld, it deals with known knowns and known unknowns but not the unknown unknowns’. And yet we proceed with cutting our aircraft carriers, weakening our strike capability, and reducing our troop numbers. If Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya are known knowns, the Falkland Islands continue to be a known unknown, and the unknown unknowns are – well, potentially the gravest existential threat to the United Kingdom in its history. Without the power to defend democracy, we risk losing it. Without the will to defend our liberties, they will gradually be eroded or suddenly lost in a ‘strategic shock’. Such power and will must ultimately be projected in military might because, as the history of the world and observations of the human condition teach us, conflict is the natural state and the aggressor can be defeated by no other means. So, yes, let’s reduce the deficit, but not at the expense of our global interests or our historic traditions and values.

By raising this subject and daring to instigate the debate, Bernard Jenkin walks a relatively lonely path. But he’s not the first: Churchill was demanding increases in defence spending and urging rearmament when it wasn’t remotely fashionable. Someone will probably tell me that this is UKIP’s policy or that Labour will make manifesto commitments to sort it all out. But the immediate problem is that none of this is Liberal Democrat policy, so it is not a Conservative priority. The politics of coalition are causing the Government to abandon its primary duty – defence of the realm – and everything becomes about accommodation and compromise. Bernard Jenkin may talk of the need for a ‘strategic shock’ to disturb the slumber. But the coming of such a cataclysm could be too late. As this nation nearly saw with Kaiser Wilhelm and Chancellor Hitler, and as the Falkland Islanders nearly found at the hands of General Galtieri, it wouldn’t really take much of ‘strategic shock’ for our liberty and democracy to disappear altogether, permanently.

And then it would be for the historians to work out why England – the Mother of Parliaments – and why the United Kingdom – that once-great leader of the free world – ever decided to count her soldiers like beans, along with doctors, nurses and teachers; why she decided to rank aircraft carriers with social housing; why she decided to equate Trident with high-speed rail; and why she began to confuse military strategy with opinion polls.