- Air Marshal Edward Stringer CB, Senior Fellow at Policy Exchange and former Director-General of the Defence Academy, has contributed a timely paper on the security threats facing the UK.
- The PM should establish a ‘war cabinet’ to deal with the interrelated national security aspects of energy security as it would an existential wartime concern, the senior defence advier claims.
- Inefficiencies in defence spending and procurement mean that the UK is not getting good value from the existing defence budget.
- Greater co-operation is needed between the UK and EU is needed and the frameworks are in place for positive post-Brexit engagement with Europe.
- Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, nuclear weapons can no longer be considered purely as strategic deterrents, and the Government must consider our response accordingly.
The West should address energy security as it would in wartime – as a key government responsibility addressed with an appropriate balance between risk and threat.
This is the case made by Air Marshal Edward Stringer, Senior Fellow at Policy Exchange, in a timely paper published tomorrow. Now that it is over a year since year since the Government published its Integrated Review of Foreign, Security and Defence policy, Foreign Air Marshal Stringer looks at the challenges facing the UK in the short, medium and long term.
Air Marshal Stringer, one of the most respected voices on defence matters in the country, also calls for closer co-operation with EU partners on defence and security matters and states that the framework is in place for a positive, post-Brexit agreements.
He states that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has reminded us that nuclear weapons did not disappear at the end of the Cold War, and that nuclear powers do not just hold these weapons as an act of deterrence. They are willing to consider using them in acts of aggression and coercion. This requires us to rethink our approach to nuclear weapons and we must consider our response accordingly.
Air Marshal Stringer compares procurement in Finland and Poland to show that the UK could be getting better value for money on defense procurement, highlighting the major inefficiencies in defence spending and procurement and how the money we currently allocate more effectively.
Key sections of Air Marshal Stringer’s paper, published tomorrow, include the following:
- WAR CABINET: The importance of some structure like a war cabinet is necessary in part to signal the gravity of the circumstances, the nature of Russia’s aggression, and so the extent of necessary state intervention. As with all emergency surgery, state intervention must address the immediate threat but should also minimise any long-term harm to the patient. There will be a clamour for price-capping and other popular measures that will ease immediate anxieties. But without any price-signalling then the market won’t adapt as markets do, consumption will not be modulated appropriately across domestic and industrial sectors, with will likely lead to perverse outcomes. Incentives on the supply side will be skewed and investments will be ineptly targeted.
- ENERGY: The West should address energy security as it would in wartime – as a key government responsibility addressed with an appropriate balance between risk and threat.
- DEFENCE BUDGET: Given what Ukraine has achieved on a £4 billion defence budget, Finland’s even better resourced and exercised, whole of society war plans look very credible indeed. Its budget of £7 billion is spent very differently to ours, it buys only 21 Thousand regular serviceman, but 285 thousand well trained reservists at immediate readiness, another 900 thousand at slightly longer, and the biggest artillery force in Western Europe. In comparison, our £44 billion annual defence budget doesn’t appear to buy very much, and the ingredients don’t fuse within any actionable plans. They are a generic military solution in search of a problem.
- INFRASTRUCTURE: We are already seeing the most affected countries rebuild their infrastructure – Germany is now rapidly building liquid gas terminals at ports and actually importing gas from the UK. The Government might push for better coordination across Europe and an acceleration of this transformation of its energy infrastructure. The PM should establish a ‘war cabinet’ to deal with the interrelated national security aspects of energy security as it would an existential wartime concern.
- THREE TRACKS: Strategic considerations for the UK should revolve around three tracks. The first is ensuring Ukraine continues to prevail in its war, and Russia’s military machine is defeated and eroded. The second is working at a wartime pace and risk profile on reducing Western dependence on Russian energy. The third is an international sanctions plan for the post war phase that should look to prevent Russia regaining military power as long as Putinism – its ‘preferences’ now revealed – is still the controlling power of the state.
- CHINA: China is much more of systemic competitor and threat, across the board, than Russia. It faces headwinds of its own and its rise to supremacy is not predetermined. The democratic powers, if acting together and with sensible rebalancing of their efforts, can manage both at acceptable cost.
- UK/EU CO-OPERATION: The Ukraine conflict has changed the dynamics in European politics. Since June 2016 our relationship with European partners has primarily been seen through the lens of Brexit, and those relationships were over-shadowed by the primacy of the interaction with the nominated EU authorities. European nations were required to maintain a united front. But divisions in approach to supporting Ukraine and confronting Russia, issues with an existential thread for the Eastern and Northern Europeans, transcend that requirement. In this new era the UK’s long-term support for Ukraine, and its Defence initiatives of recent years such as the Joint Expeditionary Force (JEF), are suddenly relevant. Their salience enhanced by what many of the nations of ‘New Europe’ see as the relatively dilatory and qualified support of the ‘Old Europe’ led by Germany and France – both considered to have naively indulged Putin for too long. On the back of these enhanced Defence relationships – many of which have long-standing precedents to build on, as is the case with Estonia – a post-Brexit, positive engagement with Europe can be built.
- WAR CABINET: The importance of some structure like a war cabinet is necessary in part to signal the gravity of the circumstances, the nature of Russia’s aggression, and so the extent of necessary state intervention. As with all emergency surgery, state intervention must address the immediate threat but should also minimise any long-term harm to the patient. There will be a clamour for price-capping and other popular measures that will ease immediate anxieties. But without any price-signalling then the market won’t adapt as markets do, consumption will not be modulated appropriately across domestic and industrial sectors, with will likely lead to perverse outcomes. Incentives on the supply side will be skewed and investments will be ineptly targeted.
- UKRAINE: UK Defence has much to learn from the Ukraine War, and the manner in which a country with a defence budget one tenth of our own constructed a defence that held off the army of an assumed superpower. If, as argued, Russia emerges diminished from its war on Ukraine then we should recalculate our part in supporting NATO to deter further Russian aggression. This should result in costed war plans and adequate weapons stockpiles. An independent review of the lessons learned should be carried out to prevent selective interpretation by interested parties within UK Defence
- PRECURMENT REFORM: The Levene reforms of 2013 should be significantly reversed, and the UK needs a Military Strategic Headquarters at the apogee of the armed forces. One tasked to deliberately direct all four frontline commands towards the collective endeavour of being ready to fight and win the next war.