From Global Britain back to European Britain

What should be the UK’s core defence priorities

Summary: I look at what U.K. defence priorities should be in light of the ongoing strategic defence review.

My conclusions?

* Bin Global Britain and focus on the most pressing risk to our security, Europe, and Russia.

* Less carriers, more drones;

* Deepen defence cooperation with Ukraine and Türkiye;

* Move to reduce dependency on the US, diversify defence relationships;

* Moon shot defence spending by confiscating Russian assets in the UK jurisdiction and use those to fund higher UK defence spending and military support for Ukraine.

The UK is in the middle of yet another Strategic Defence Review (SDR) with the aim being to release that report early this year. The timing could not be more prescient given the on-going war in Ukraine and the onset of the Trump presidency which is challenging the core principles of the Transatlatic Alliance centred on NATO which has been the mainstay of Western defence for the past seventy odd years. For the first time over that period the US security backstop to Europe, and NATO’s Article 5 mutual defence principal, is under threat/in doubt. This makes this SDR perhaps the most important such review in the near 70-odd year history of such reports.

Citing a UK House of Commons Briefing paper, see:

https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-7313/

“A defence review enables a government to present a forward-looking assessment of Britain’s strategic interests and requisite military requirements. It examines the defence and security landscape, identifies current and emerging threats and then decides how best to organise and equip the Armed Forces.”

The current SDR is being co chaired by the defence secretary, John Healy, and the former NATO secretary general, George Robertson, with other luminaries including former US NSC Europe director, Dr Fiona Hill, and General Sir Richard Barron’s.

Surprisingly, given that economics has always been central to SDRs, and bang, literally, for buck (or pound), is what these reviews are all about out, the leadership team does not include an economist.

Unfortunately SDR’s are now a regular occurrence which I think reflects a changing world, and with it changing security threats to the U.K., plus the constant economic and hence budget challenges of the UK, which inevitably means the U.K. armed forces are required to do more with less. Recent SDRs have included those undertaken in 1998, 2010, and 2015.

The track record of SDRs has not been great, reflection of the challenges noted above, but also a natural bias to look back, or prioritise current actual challenges above those in the future - it’s easier to accept the current reality than gaze into a crystal ball. There is also a natural bias in the U.K. within the rotation of the joints chiefs between services to favour pet projects of whoever ends up being head of the joint chiefs of staff - boys’ toys, perhaps best reflected now in the concentration of UK naval, and indeed defence forces, in two large, and overexpensive, aircraft carriers.

Major SDR prior failures include the Nott review of 1981 recommending a major downsizing the Royal Navy just prior to the Argentinian invasion of the Falkland Islands, and then the 1990 review which recommended major cuts in UK conventional forces just prior to the first Gulf war, again the following year.

Recent years have seen a focus on countering the threat from global terrorism, post 911 and after the rise of IS, et al. But also in a post Brexit world trying to leverage HM Armed forces to boost Global Britain, and our economic pull in the world. The first saw a move away from reliance on conventional forces of tanks and fighter aircraft to a more mobile, rapid deployment counter terrorism like force. The second, saw the U.K. increase overseas deployment of military resources to the Middle East and the Asia - naval assets back in Asia for the first time in years, UK participation in AUKUS, and those aircraft carriers above deployed to fly the flag far and wide. The extra bang for buck was literally buck as the U.K. sought to leverage its better relationship with the US, to utilise US assets to fill gaps in UK capabilities. Think here the deployment of US F35s on those same aircraft carriers, and use of US naval assets to provide more of the carrier group support facilities and defence for the QE and the POW. The reliance on naval forces fit better with the counter terrorism angle, and being seen as useful to the US, was seen in the recent deployment to the Gulf to provide a shield to Israel against missile strikes from Iran and Yemen.

The U.K. has sought to do more with HM forces, and to operate further afield through greater integration, and hence dependency on the US armed forces.

However, the war in Ukraine and now the US reorienting of priorities away from Europe and to China, has left UK defence appearing vulnerable for a number of reasons.

First, Global Britain was a nice catch phrase, but the war in Ukraine has laid bare that the number one national security risk to the U.K. is Russia, and our defence strapline should perhaps rather be “European Britain”.

Second, the naval war in the Black Sea has proven that large, expensive naval assets, like aircraft carriers, are now immensively vulnerable to relatively cheap naval drones. Ask the Russians after the sinking of the Mosckva.

Third, and our decision to invest in large, vulnerable aircraft carriers appears even more suspect when it has been at the expense of other surface ships which could provide independent air defence and anti submarine support to our own carriers. The U.K. is now only able to maintain a threadbare fleet of frigates and destroyers.

Fourth, our greater integration with US armed forces now looks to be a catastrophic error and existential vulnerability given the changing direction of politics and priorities in the US. Even our “independent” nuclear deterrent is hardly independent given our dependency on the supply of US tomahawk missiles to deploy UK nuclear warheads. The recent failure of a Trident missile test must underlined our vulnerabilities.

UK defence should now absolutely prioritise the defence of the UK, surrounding waters (critical cables and communications systems), and Europe from which the greater threat now comes from Russia.

Needs must and correspondingly we must downgrade our long range forward deployments.

Carriers are a nice to have, but don’t need military resource.

The UK needs to reduce its dependency on the US, and needs to diversify its integration where possible with our European partners, including Ukraine but also Türkiye.

Cooperation with Türkiye represents a particular opportunity given its position as the largest military in European NATO, considerable combat and intelligence expertise, and its large military industrial complex. Türkiye is able to manufacture military kit (for the U.K.) in scale, and would welcome partnership with UK military science to leverage up its own development of its military industrial complex.

The U.K. needs to fast track development of drone warfare, and partnership therein with Ukraine and Türkiye which have made huge advances in this field in recent years, seems highly prescient.

The U.K. government decision to increase defence spending to 2.5% of GDP was welcome but it was disappointing that this was only possible by drawing down our “soft power” UK aid budget. And an extra 0.3% of GDP in defence spending does not really touch the dial given the huge challenges we now face from Russia, and the costs of meeting our £3 billlion annual defence commitment to Ukraine, a possible deployment therein as part of a re-assurance force, and then the annual £3 billion cost of maintaining that independent nuclear deterrent, and the £30 billion plus cost of the new Dreadnought project.

We face massive short term defence budget needs but the U.K. fiscal is simply not in a place to cover these. How to fill the short term gap?

The most obvious short term funding possibility is to tap the GBP25 billion plus (close to 1% of UK GDP) in immobilised Russian assets in the U.K. jurisdiction. The moral case for their use is clear cut following Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine but prior to that the actual use of WMD against the U.K., on UK streets, twice with the Litvinenko and Salisbury attacks which should have been sufficient already to trigger NATO Article 5 defence. Russia has already inflicted a brutal attack on the UK, and it seems right and appropriate that we confiscate Russian assets as compensation and to help secure our future defence. These resources can be used to help to fast track the push to increase UK defence spending to 3% of GDP before the start of the next Parliament as per the current government ambition but also help fund our support to Ukraine. The legal basis for the confiscation and use of these assets has already been made by Zelikow, Zoellick and Zyskind (see below). The political basis has already been made by the G7 in its move to immobilise these assets. The practical need to now move to confiscate and spend these assets is now clear cut with the existential threat now to UK defences caused by Russian aggression and appeasement now by the Trump administration.

See Zoellick, et al case as below.

https://www.ft.com/content/7fc0334e-4c06-444d-9c90-01cb9e449f43