The Strategic and Security Defence Review seems a dim and distant memory after the year we have had. With international affairs dominating the political agenda and issues ranging from economic meltdown, depression and recession, the impact of climate change and crises caused by freak acts of nature, the Arab Spring, upcoming US and Russian elections, and the killing of Osama Bin Laden – you could be forgiven for asking what’s around the corner next. But that is the lesson we need to learn – expect the unexpected.
With the anniversary of 9/11 and considerable reflection on the way that international politics and government policies have changed over the decade, particularly considering both Stephen Twigg’s and Jim Murphy’s recent articles, now is the right time for the Labour Party to recast its foreign and defence policy.
The strategic context is ever changing, but as Clausewitz rightly reminds us war is a continuation of politics by other means – in other words the military role and that which we put it to is inevitably linked to politics and cannot be divorced from it.
It is therefore utterly hypocritical for a government to deliver a spending-driven defence review in which key elements of our military forces are stripped, sold and scrapped only then for it to decide that we will engage in wars overseas with forces too stretched or asked to perform miracles with fading and poor equipment.
To purchase an aircraft carrier without the aircraft to fly from it is the perfect example of this government’s lack of any strategy or political understanding.
To cut the army by thousands, to stand down the Harrier force, to scrap and sell our current carrier fleet, and to in effect alter the capability of our military for generations to come in a short-sighted Treasury-induced madness is a seriously flawed strategy let alone political irresponsibility.
For Cameron to also go back on the promises made regarding the military covenant reflects a disingenuous streak in current government policymaking.
We are left in the closing months of 2011 with a defence policy that will not meet our strategic responsibilities or interests.
The 1998 SDR identified correctly through a foreign and defence led review that the British military required flexibility, deployability and sustainability in a global context, where by our military could through amphibious, air and land assault provide forces to a coalition, or act independently, in support of British, but therein allied, interests.
We need carriers to deploy airpower outside of host nation support. We are lucky with regard to Libya that Italy and Cyprus are geographically close enough. In Afghanistan the situation is quite different. And unless we no longer intend to intervene in international crises, which would be highly unlikely if Libya is the latest example of a prime minster using this military tool, then we would be unwise to discount the importance of the power projection capabilities of both the Royal Air Force and Navy.
The proposed reductions in the professional full-time army in favour of an expanded territorial role raise serious questions over future strength and capability. The strength of the British army post the second world war has been its professional full-time ability. Which is not to talk down the capability of the Territorial Army, but rather to acknowledge the distinct roles of both?
The decision to ‘go light’ and to reduce our heavy military capability is also a mistake. Clausewitz again reminds of the utility of war and the fact that as a political tool it will be found in the arsenal of nation-states and used in the maintenance of the balance of power.
As China and India grow, as the US allegedly declines, and Europe continues to be divided, we must position our national interest alongside a capability to fulfil it. Lest we forget the lessons of the last century that the unexpected has a way of catching us all out.
Short-term austerity-driven cutbacks in capability cannot easily be reversed later. Yes, military procurement is broken; yes, the MoD has too much centralised power and lacks accountability, but these are not reasons to cut defence budgets, but reasons to reform with intent at bringing military spending under far more control.
The easy political answer in the current climate is to cut, and it is a copout. The right strategy is to have a strategy in the first place that befits a foreign policy-led approach, from which we can begin to determine sensible budgetary positions and equipment procurement going forward. The coalition has ceded this ground, and Labour needs a foreign policy answer that works into a defence approach of substance. That credible approach will serve to fill the very obvious strategic and political vacuum we currently see afflicting our armed forces.
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Dr Paul Harvey, is the former leader of Basingstoke and Deane borough council, and is currently deputy leader of the Labour group, and a former parliamentary candidate as well as a former lecturer at King’s College, Joint Services Command Staff College and the Defence Academy, Shrivenham.
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Defence resources must be tailored to perceived needs. Since 1979, the proportion of UK politicians with defence experience has declined dramatically as the WW2 generation have retired or passed away – it’s taken longer among the Tories, but they now have as little military experience as Labour. This ignorance makes listening to professional military leaders who can convey their needs more important than ever.
Yet political considerations have left us with less relevant Cold War legacy products – Type 45 destroyers for defence against aircraft which don’t threaten us so much but without cruise missiles, Eurofighters when we need precision strike aircraft aboard carriers, and Trident missiles with no realistically conceivable use.
Libya (like the Falklands 30 years before) has proven the versatility of effective naval aviation, whose expense is less than that of re-creating a carrier infrastructure when you’ve retired it.
Both New Labour and Cameron have failed to decide for good which way to go.