1998 to 2020 is a long time in national security

The Integrated Review of security, defence, development and foreign policy commissioned by the December Queen’s Speech was well underway when the Coronavirus struck. Now, as with so much of

public life, it looks likely that it will be suspended and completed next year. The Queen, and later the Prime Minister, promised the deepest review since the end of the Cold War, but

perhaps that was an understatement. We would need to measure in centuries, not decades, the last time that British national policies were fundamentally unilateral and free of the collective

responsibilities imposed by the EU and, before that, empire. A point neatly illustrated by the constant evocation of the buccaneering spirit of the first Elizabethan Age by the more

rhetorically minded Brexiteers.

Clearly, there’s a lot riding on the process, and Covid-19 — which has shown gaps in national resilience, illustrated the value of military assistance at home and re-ordered the public

finances — has complicated matters even further. It all seems a long way away from the 1998 review which could rhapsodise about Britain as a Force for Good in the world and set the scene for

Tony Blair’s Chicago speech a year later. In that speech, Blair laid out the moral and intellectual case for global intervention by an activist West. How much has changed in the intervening

years?

A lot has changed, including the loss of the West’s strategic confidence on the back of failure in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. What might have been a decisive intervention in Syria was

sub-contracted to Russia and prosecuted with a ruthless singularity which left state building to the locals and the protection of human rights to others. A symptom of the failure of

confidence is the distance now between Washington and any other Western capital, including London. This is certainly a characteristic of Trump’s strategic solipsism, but a successor Democrat

president is also likely to have their eyes on the Pacific Basin rather than the petty squabbles of Europe, as the future shape of Nato may testify.

For the enthusiast, the sunlight uplands of Brexit Britain offer the opportunity to re-define our role in the world, but, beyond a few ritual platitudes, no department of state, Cabinet rank

minister, academic department or broadsheet newspaper has offered a definitive view of what that might look like. There have been a few distractions and the Integrated Review still offers

the chance of getting this right and it must be taken, otherwise what was that endless process all about?

In terms of threat, the picture is both more complicated and more dangerous. The Good Friday Agreement formed part of the 1998 euphoria and Irish Republican terrorism has been replaced by

the much more implacable and unbiddable jihadist form. There is no immediate sign of this threat reducing, and, it has provoked a nascent response from right wing extremists which at the

moment is more posture than reality but serves to muddy the waters further. Internationally, Russia has rearmed, found a strident voice and a muscular role in the Middle East but it is more

likely to be an irritant than a determinant in global affairs.

By contrast, China has the most integrated national strategy in the world today, combining military, political, economic, cultural and ideological strands derived in part from Confucian

tradition and in part from contemporary fusion doctrine. The relationship with China poses an exquisite challenge for national statecraft requiring resolution in the face of intimidation or

subterfuge allied with co-operation in response to global issues like climate change; Foreign Office sinologists will earn their pay over coming years.

Both countries are leading practitioners of Grey Warfare, the use of every instrument of national power short of physical force. Cyber operations, economic entryism, intellectual property

theft, espionage and the selective use of surrogates, all underwritten by sophisticated information operations, creates an ambivalent and insidious threat that has none of the clarity of

conventional military operations but much of the risk and is the new normal strategic challenge.

Finally, there’s the money. Even though productivity levels have remained disappointing after the 2008 Financial Crisis and debt levels historically high, the incoming Conservative

administration looked set to invest in defence just a few short months ago. Now, even the most perfectly formed V-shaped recovery will only set the scene for a ferocious competition in

future Comprehensive Spending Reviews and defence will find itself well down a queue led by the NHS, national resilience and the fiscal stimuli to lead economic growth.

So how do the luckless authors of the Integrated Review have any chance of squaring this seemingly intractable circle of bigger challenges and slimmer resources? One way may be to view the

world as a series of concentric circles, centred on the United Kingdom, and seen through the lens of cold eyed strategic self-interest. All the factors listed above point to an increased

threat to the metropolitan homeland and some of the more obvious national vulnerabilities within this first circle need to be fixed immediately.

The quantum increase in global, and particularly Russian, missile technology means that national air defence systems require long overdue improvement. In addition, it’s no use claiming an

invulnerable nuclear deterrent if improvements in both anti-submarine warfare and the stealth capabilities of all forms of submersibles means that our nuclear armed submarines can be

compromised before gaining the oceanic space of the Atlantic. And that’s before we maintain and improve our defences in the constantly escalating global cyber wars.

On a more prosaic level, both the flooding and pandemic emergencies have shown the value of military expertise and manpower to the civil power and national resilience — the Cinderella of

national security policy — can only increase in importance. A trend compounded by the requirement to monitor coastal waters to protect fish stocks and limit illegal immigration. This, of

course, immediately blurs the boundary between constabulary and military operations but that’s going to be a recurring issue in the brave new world of homeland defence.

The second circle covers the defence of continental Europe and this is where we need to box clever. The United Kingdom has traditionally made a contribution to both Nato’s in place,

pre-positioned forces — typically in Germany — and the more mobile and deployable forces required on the flanks of the alliance. We can no longer afford to do both and our priority must lie

with deployable force. This coincides with a significant increase in German defence spending and a growing political acceptance that Germany has inalienable responsibilities for its own

defence, despite the burden of history.

Deployable forces earmarked for Nato would also be available for occasional and highly selective operations within the third circle, comprising the rest of the world. One of the more

demanding requirements of the Integrated Review will be to establish the criteria for deployment and the weight of effort within the third circle to sustain operations that might be in

support of allies or act as a signature Brexit Britain flourish. Either way, they will only occur after the most rigorous scrutiny.

This prospectus is barely recognisable from the ambitious, perhaps hubristic, style of 1998. One a manifesto for global reach and responsibility the other a consolidation on the home base,

but both are tracts for their own particular times.

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