Britain Sets the Defence Agenda

“There are significant parts of Britain’s defence architecture that will need to be re-thought, if Britain is to prepare effectively to confront a radical age.  To do that, the British will need to do something that has traditionally eluded them.  They will need to think big about security.  ‘Strategic’ will need to mean something”.

“Little Britain?” Julian Lindley-French 2015

Power and strategy

November 20th, 2020. Power is strategy, politics is trade-offs. Yesterday’s announcement of the largest increase in British defence expenditure since the end of the Cold War sets the defence agenda for NATO and Europe’s future defence. It also lays down a challenge to other Europeans. As such, it is a masterstroke of British statecraft for it reminds other Europeans of Britain’s vital importance to their security and defence on the eve of Brexit, signals to the new Biden administration that London will invest in a twenty-first century special relationship, and warns secessionists of the power of the British state to use defence investment to thwart them.  It is also a vital injection of political capital in the strategic brand of Global Britain. Having set the ambition Prime Minister Boris Johnson must now mean what he says and deliver. The COVID-19 economic crisis is yet to bite and when it does pressures will grow to spend instead on a whole raft of demanding domestic issues, not least public sector pay. Given that, why does a hike in Britain’s armed forces make sense?

Like all crises COVID-19 will accelerate and intensify dangerous global strategic competition. The nature and scope of new military technology and the 5Ds of continuous warfare (deception, disinformation, destabilisation, disruption and coercion through implied or actual destruction) with which Britain must contend is now clearer than it was five years ago. If properly spent this investment will go a long way to promoting sound defence and credible twenty-first century deterrence through a strengthened and modernised NATO.  The strategy is thus threefold: to reinforce the defence Special Relationship with the US by creating a British Future Force able to operate to with US forces at the high end of military effect across the multi-domain future warfare of air, sea, land, cyber, space, information and knowledge; to generate the necessary military power to enable post-Brexit Britain to exert defence influence over European and other allies and partners, as well as being a public good in and of itself; by integrating high-end military force with intelligence, diplomacy and aid and development enable Britain to exert global influence and thus retain its status as a Permanent Member of the United Nations Security Council.

Defence value versus defence cost

This is the stuff of contemporary geopolitics. And, whilst the costs will be substantial, the value will be great.  Consequently, the investment will leverage a strategic value for Britain far beyond the cost of defence investment and is thus an efficient, effective and value for money way to enhance British security. This four-year defence deal will be worth ￡16.5bn ($21.8 billion), given that the annual defence budget is some ￡40bn such represents an increase of about 10%, far beyond any comparable commitment by any other major European state.  There is some quibbling over the figures. For example, the Institute for Fiscal Studies suggests there will only be ￡7bn of new money for the annual defence budget by 2025. The discrepancy is explained by the fact that existing planning envisaged the defence budget rising to ￡45bn by 2025, whilst the new plan will now see it rise to ￡52bn. Downing Street went further. “The ￡16.5 billion extra in the Ministry of Defence's budget over the next four years is the amount over and above the manifesto commitment. The Government has already pledged to increase defence spending by 0.5 per cent above inflation for every year of this parliament. On existing forecasts, this is an overall cash increase of ￡24.1 billion pounds over four years compared to last year's budget”.

Johnson said the purpose of the investment was to “end the era of retreat, transform our armed forces and bolster our global influence”. He went on, “I have taken this decision in the teeth of the pandemic because the defence of the realm must come first.”  Johnson also said, “The international situation is more perilous and more intensely competitive than at any time since the Cold War and Britain must be true to our history and stand alongside our allies.” He also said that the investment would “…unite and level up our country, pioneer new technology and defend our people and way of life”.

What new capabilities will the new investment generate?  Johnson was clear, “Since the Cold War the threat from our adversaries has been evolving. Our traditional defence and deterrence capabilities remain vital, and our Armed Forces work every day to prevent terror reaching the UK's shores. But our enemies are also operating in increasingly sophisticated ways, including cyberattacks, to further their own interests”. The aim is to make Britain’s armed forces by far the most technologically-advanced force in Europe thus affording London a powerful coalition leadership role with the British Future Force.

Britain is also going back to space. The establishment of a UK Space Command was an election manifesto commitment. Britain already possesses a Space Operations Centre at Air Command in High Wycombe. This is a deep joint force and involves personnel from the Royal Navy, British Army and the Royal Air Force and is in line (albeit far more modestly) with US Future Force planning, particularly the development of US Space Command.  The so-called ‘high frontier’ is now regarded as future war theatre for military operations.  Britain will also create a military Artificial Intelligence (AI) capability that will focus on developing intelligent drone swarms, autonomous vehicles and target recognition, with a significant part of the new investment devoted to research and technology.

The messaging

Timing is everything and the Brexit message implicit in this announcement is clear: there can be no meaningful European defence without Britain. It would be na?ve in the extreme to believe Brexit can be separated from Britain’s role in the defence of Europe. A bad Brexit deal will inevitably lead Britain to retreat from the continent, withdraw behind its nuclear deterrent, and act as a high-level strategic raider alongside the Americans. A good Brexit deal will see Britain take its proper place as a leader of European coalitions, a role London is now indicating it seeks to play. An equitable Brexit deal will thus see Britain re-commit to the defence of continental Europe and help lead the drafting of a new NATO Strategic Concept and join with France, Germany and other Europeans to rebuild the European pillar of the Alliance.

The strategic message to President-elect Biden is equally clear. Britain is investing in its unique strategic skill set that unlike any other European state reaches across the multi-domains of power. As such, Britain will remain the only European ally able to project high-end military power in conjunction with offensive cyber and information warfare capabilities. As a leader of European coalitions London is also signalling to Washington its determination to balance power projection with people protection and thus ease the burdens Americans must bear for the defence of Europe. 

There is also a clear domestic message. Johnson also stated that his ambition is to restore Britain as the “foremost naval power in Europe” with the main military beneficiary the Royal Navy. This makes sense. Britain is an island and the security of sea-lines of communication (SLOC), underwater cable infrastructure and freedom of navigation are a vital British interest. Consequently, the three under construction members of the seven planned Astute-class of nuclear attack submarines (HMS Anson, HMS Agamemnon and HMS Agincourt) will now be completed quickly.

The Successor programme and the four Dreadnought-class nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines currently under construction will also be completed as planned. The six advanced Type 45 air defence destroyers will be augmented by eight advanced Type 26 anti-submarine frigates and five Type 31 general purpose frigates, plus fleet support ships to support the new Royal Navy Carrier Strike Group. Most if not all of these ships will be built in Scotland (on the Clyde) and Northern Ireland (Belfast), creating and supporting up to 10,000 COVID protected jobs in both. The message to the Scottish Nationalist Party is thus blunt: if Scotland becomes independent it will lose all access to the buying power of the British state and any last industrial capability in Scotland will thus be lost. Romantic nationalists might be willing to pay such a price. The Scottish people?

Paying the price of the COVID war

Still, there will be a cost and how will it be paid for? The cost of Britain’s war effort generated by World War One and World War Two peaked at between 175% and 250% of GDP in the years from 1914 to 1962.  With the COVID crisis the past year has seen the national debt rise from 80.8% of GDP to (probably) over 100% of GDP in 2021.  The war debt was paid for with cheap US loans which were then paid back in fifty instalments between 1950 and 2006 (somewhat longer than the planned in-life service of the two new British heavy aircraft carriers, HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales). 

The Government effectively put war debt into a box and treated it as a distinct liability separate from the rest of the national debt.  Today, Britain can also borrow cheap money and will need to adopt a similar approach to COVID debt as it did to war debt.  As such, increased defence expenditure should be seen as a function of COVID ‘war’ debt. It is also pay-back time for many of the banks that were propped up by the British taxpayer in 2008-2010 when their global (not British) debts threatened to destroy them.

There will have to be further ‘efficiencies’ sought and this will mean cuts to legacy forces.  However, such cuts need not be egregious. Much is made of the so-called ￡13bn ‘black hole’ in the defence investment budget caused by unfunded defence aspirations in the 2010 and 2015 defence reviews.  In fact, the real shortfall is ￡6bn and only over ten years. The figure of ￡13bn would only be pertinent if the gap between aspiration and funding had continued to grow.  With this injection of capital that gap will now be closed. It will also enable the British armed forces to escape from another trap: the enforced use of legacy equipment for want of anything else. One lesson from the tragic war in Nagorno-Karabakh is that faced with a new triad of even limited numbers of cyber, drones and precision strike munitions legacy formations are rapidly defeated.

Reform of the defence procurement system will also need to continue. Thankfully, there are precedents for innovation that must be built upon.  For example, the Aircraft Carrier Alliance that built the two new aircraft carriers exploited the entire national industrial base and multiple supply chains far beyond the traditional defence industrial sector. Much of the emerging and disruptive technology entering the battlespace comes from the civil sector.  A new strategic public-private partnership is needed to foster the necessary relationships with ‘tech’.

Distinction will also need to be made between defence investment and wider national security investment. The planned co-operation between the signals intelligence capabilities of GCHQ and the MoD to create the planned National Cyber Force will merge the AI, information and digital domains and must thus be seen as a national contingency and funded as such.  Britain devotes some 7% of its $3 trillion economy to all aspects of national security, stability (policing) and defence.  The new force will have defence, counter-terrorism and counter-crime applications and should thus be funded as a national contingency.   

Power, politics and strategic literacy

The central theme of my 2015 book Little Britain? was that Britain’s political and strategic elite had lost the capacity to think geopolitically, were strategically illiterate and Britain’s defence was paying the price for it.  The book argued that Britain’s leaders lacked the political courage and the strategic foresight to make intelligent decisions about foreign, security and defence policy and the effective statecraft Britain so desperately needed.  This decision suggests Prime Minister Johnson and his administration do understand the first duty of the state is the defence of the realm and that any such defence is relative to the threats Britain faces. Whatever other pressures Britain faces British leaders must first and foremost secure and defend British citizens.  For over ten years Britain has only recognised as much threat as HM Treasury believed it could afford. This announcement suggests Britain is finally beginning to recognise threat for what it is.

This announcement is a good start, but it must now be delivered. By the way, Prime Minister, if you want a detailed strategy to justify the funding please read my forthcoming 2021 book Future War and the Defence of Europe (Oxford University Press for the English language version and Franckh Kosmos for the German language edition).

Julian Lindley-French