Banging On About Defence

I have read a few of Max Hastings’ books and quite enjoyed them but his Europhile politics leave me cold.  Equally, his views on defence in general and air power in particular bear unmistakable prejudice.  However, in a short diary piece yesterday, he was gloomily on the money over the prospects for the forthcoming defence review.  Ever since 1966, he notes, “we have been served grandiloquent rhetoric and smoke-and-mirrors accountancy, designed to maintain the fiction that we can “punch above our weight” while slashing soldiers rations.” (Sailors and Airmen’s rations, it seems, would be fair game).  Depressingly, he goes on, “politicians know that they risk no electoral penalty because voters care only about the Household Division; the RAF’s Battle of Britain memorial flight; sufficient Scottish soldiers to perform at the Edinburgh Tattoo; and the SAS.”  Perhaps a better air example would have been the RAF Aerobatic Team, the Red Arrows, but this is Mr Hastings piece, although we get the drift.  However, few could argue with his conclusion that, “the latest review will be another charade, of which the victims are not Britain’s foes, but instead our real defence needs.”  Quite so, as I have said before.

It is an inconvenient non sequitur, grandly virtue-signalled by those who should know better, that the UK will fulfil its defence obligations if only it should spend 2% of its GDP thereon.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  Firstly, 2% is probably an entirely arbitrary figure dreamed up at NATO HQ to fulfil some historical goal or communique.  It is a political declaration most likely based upon what, despite their vulnerability, even the Belgians might grudgingly stump up to insure against being trampled over again. It has nothing to do with what we need to do the job. Historically we spent a lot more of our GDP on defence before being seduced into cashing in the peace dividend (several times over).  Secondly, we don’t actually spend all that money on people and kit and a significant percentage is made up through creative accounting, pensions, for example, to please the bean-counters.  Finally, and most significantly, the threat has not diminished since the peace dividend was cashed in.  Far from it and the diversity of things that could harm us is, if anything, is more concerning than the relative stability of the Cold War confrontation.  Why should we feel, now, that 2% should be enough?

The problem is that our defence expenditure does not seem to be linked to what our foreign policy, such as it is articulated, might require us to undertake.  The arbitrary 2% may or may not be enough – take your pick and take your chance!  Incongruously, Conservative governments have not been very good at providing what the armed forces need, often quite the contrary.  Fortunately, when stretched, the armed forces have been able to “punch above their weight” but that convenience wore thin long ago.  Nowadays, we are told, we cannot even field and support a fighting Division – a parsimonious bottom line of Cameron’s defence butchery.  This is a truly a truly pathetic condition for a nuclear capable member of the Security Council and so-called principle ally to the USA for coalition operations, to find ourselves.  It really is simple: if we cannot afford the defences necessary to uphold our foreign policy then we need to change our foreign policy accordingly.  It is not a chicken and egg – the job of Government is to define the policy.  Then Government has the inescapable responsibility give the armed forces the tools they need and trust them to finish the job.

So, as the skirmishing of the new defence review begins let us hope, at the outset, that the terms of reference will indeed link defence posture to policy.  When it suits, governments can make grand commitments: climate change, overseas aid spending and pensions triple lock, for example.  So talking of locks, why cannot we lock our defence posture to our foreign policy?  If it is politically convenient to make grand gestures on becoming carbon neutral surely, as the first duty of government, we can expect them to make a similar, but meaningful, long-term pledge on our future security?