In this column’s previous critique of the Chief of the Defence Staff’s (CDS) annual ‘state of the nation’s defences’ lecture at RUSI, it found that while Admiral Sir Tony Radakin’s tour d’horizon made much sense, it was too insouciantly unworried about NATO’s readiness to meet the threat posed by Russia and its backers: principally China but also Iran and North Korea. Now that Richard Knighton – the new Chief of the Defence Staff – has taken the helm he has put in a course correction. But has he pulled the rudder too hard over?
Many commentators appeared to think so, hearing in his message that the nation’s children must be ready to “…fight for their country” if Russia attacked us, yet asking why government wasn’t actually spending on rearmament, and so finding this talk of war hyperbolic.
Is that fair on him? Probably not. As he said early on, “[he wanted to make] a more sophisticated explanation of the risks we face.” But the subsequent explanation did invoke the words of the French Chief of the Defence Staff- Fabian Mandon – who has said pretty much exactly that about being prepared to lose one’s children. And the more sophisticated explanation of the actual threat never materialised — it majored on a more general assessment of Russia’s expanding military economy, not how it would be used against us specifically — while omitting some essential events or factors that are fundamental to our national security. We also have to allow for the ‘gagging order’ that the government has placed on senior officers, so we don’t know what he was allowed to say.
While one can imagine why he may have wanted to steer around the publication of Trump’s National Security Strategy (NSS) only the week before, it does comprise the biggest upheaval to our security architecture since 1945. Odd that that gets no mention. We pay a CDS to be able to address this unfortunate fact diplomatically; to be able to acknowledge the import without inflaming the sensitive politics. Perhaps, even, to sketch a path to making something positive of it. Which this short article will now try and do…
First the sensitivities. It would be strategically illiterate to take umbrage at some of the wording and impressions given in the US NSS – as some European commentators have done – and make the situation worse through a confrontational response. But one can take it at face value, recognise that there are pressures on the USA that are greater than at the height of the Cold War (given the levers of national power available to Xi Jinping) and that while Russia has become more bellicose most of Euro-NATO has let its defences atrophy alarmingly. Indeed, US presidents have been saying this since JFK – and Kennedy’s language in private could at times be just as fruity as Trump’s.
With honourable exceptions, Euro-NATO countries had become mired in a pathology of seeking refuge in “the middle of the pack”, which had led to a mutual ratcheting down on spending on defence while preferring welfare spending levels of which American citizens can only dream. This was not sustainable even as a status quo – let alone as NATO has had to massively restock its arsenals in the light of the Ukraine war. CDS could acknowledge this as a reality and the starting point for the subsequent conversation…
…because if we are going to start largely from scratch in refilling our arsenals then we have an opportunity to make them fit for the modern technological era, and so make a step change in “how we will fight”. (This idea of a new technological era was also in ‘C’, Blaise Metreweli’s, speech delivered on the same day.)
This is a logical, and non-inflammatory way to introduce CDS’ correct analysis that we need to think more deliberately about how to invest and mobilise national capacities – our university and tech sectors, manufacturing base, overall investment in R&D, skills base, etc – in the service of national security. We have outstanding examples among our Joint Expeditionary Force partner nations (Scandanavia, the Baltic nations, The Netherlands) for whom this is just an unremarkable part of their way of life, and of their successful economies. We could find mutual benefit in working with them, which would also bolster a NATO that can no longer rely on the US to do the heavy-lifting in our own backyard.
This also leads to the second major omission in the speech: there is no mention of the recently appointed National Armaments Director (NAD). The NAD will be pivotal to delivering CDS’s war-fighting vision, to be generated by his new Military Strategic Headquarters (MSHQ, as with the NAD a John Healey innovation mandated via the labour Manifesto.) This is odd given that the NAD, Rupert Pearce, gave his first evidence to the House of Commons Defence Committee the very next day, which could have been appropriately trailed and supported. As it is, we are all in the dark over the promised but serially delayed Defence Investment Plan. In theory, under the new model it should be a product of the MSHQ’s war plans and the NAD’s commercial acumen, but, currently, looks in practice like the old-model of back-room horse-trading between the Service Chiefs.
And in introducing the JEF there could have been a reference to the example given by, for example, Finland. With a defence budget approximately one tenth of the UK’s, Finland maintains a formidable military defence against Russia within a philosophy that thoroughly delivers on NATO’s Article 3; this demands members provide, first, a sound national defence, and then, secondly, their share of collective defence. (Finland has amassed and maintained the second biggest artillery ‘park’ in Europe outside Russia – circa 700 guns – where the British Army currently only has 14 x 155mm howitzers.)
In his nod to Deborah Haynes’ podcast, ‘The Wargame’, CDS acknowledged that the UK’s ability to defend itself has been woefully neglected in the happy times after 1989, when all wars were considered to be something done overseas and as ‘discretionary’ activities. If, as CDS says, Russia now directly threatens the UK homeland, to what extent do we need to adopt Finland’s model where Layer 1 is robust national defence, Layer 2 is regional cooperation, and Layer 3 the collective deterrence and defence provided by NATO membership? What does this mean for our expeditionary ambitions, or defending forward in NATO, in a year when CDS, inter alia, was celebrating our carrier’s deployment to the South China Sea?
In bringing such arguments to life, CDS could have presented a realistic picture of the threat landscape and the Alliance capacity arranged against it. In invoking JEF/Finnish exemplars, and in promising to do procurement differently via the NAD, he could have persuaded us, and HMT, that the era of the AJAX programme was behind us and more efficient ways would be found. Because until Defence procurement is reformed, and Defence climbs above the NHS, immigration and the economy in public polling, no chancellor is going to be giving CDS significant uplifts.
And that would have brought CDS back to his starting point about the national sense of threat. To be fair to him, he did pointedly talk about deterrence and the need to prevent war, more so than he did the implications of bringing back conscription to fight one. So he could have sketched what now needs doing in any case, and arrive at one final, more upbeat observation on the US NSS.
For the US has form here that we in the UK prefer to forget. In 1945, the US banned us from the nuclear programme to which we had committed so much during WW2. But by showing we were determined and could look after ourselves the US then let us back in, preferring to have nuclear-armed Britain on its side and seeing the benefits in cooperation.
I sense that the same applies today. The way to deal with the new US NSS is to demonstrate grip and resolve in rebuilding the defences of the new age, to demonstrate that Europe can look after itself. That is likely to keep the US wanting us onside, from which we will all benefit if the alliance evolves into an even better and more balanced form that deters our foes. And that will mean we won’t be waving our sons and daughters of to the docks and the troopship. That seems a good bargain to put to the electorate. One hopes that the government will allow senior officers more leeway to make this case, otherwise when they do finally speak their suddenly grave tone will only get more ripostes of ‘hyperbole’.
Air Marshal Edward Stringer CB is a Senior Fellow at Policy Exchange and former Director-General of the Defence Academy
Image: Jannik