To say that previous defence reviews have suffered the fate of being overtaken by reality is, perhaps, a little unfair. For all that they are roadmaps to the future funding and composition of the Armed Forces, and of the strategic vision of the world underlying this reshuffling of the British state’s hard power, they are also acts of political messaging — very public statements of intent to allies, rivals, and domestic audiences alike. The Johnson government’s much-vaunted Indo-Pacific Tilt, for example, was inseparable from the domestic battle over Brexit: that its purpose was never fully explained, and that it never really manifested in the real world, mattered less in the end than its political function. Something similar can be said about the Labour government’s long-awaited (and, on the day, chaotically released) Strategic Defence Review, or SDR, published yesterday.
For a 35,000 word document, it is markedly thin on detail, which will, we assume, be released in dribs and drabs over the coming months. Its funding commitments are vague and aspirational, and are already subject to the perennial Whitehall dispute over whether Britain’s defence spending is an adequate proportion of the country’s GDP. Yet as a realistic appraisal of a dangerous world, and of Britain’s role within it, it is not a bad document. Through the “collapse of the post-Second World War consensus”, it observes (meaning, in reality, the post-Cold War consensus) “the certainties of the international order we have accepted for so long are now being questioned — and not only by authoritarians” — a nod to Britain’s mercurial imperial patron, whose dubious commitment to Europe’s security is a prospect too alarming to be addressed frankly. “More broadly,” it cautions, “the West’s long-held military advantage is being eroded as other countries modernise and expand their armed forces at speed, while the United States’ (US) security priorities are changing.”
“It is a classic ‘must do better’ teacher’s comment in a school report.”
In advance of the document’s publication, I expressed concern that its convenor, former Nato Secretary-General Lord Robertson’s fanciful declarations that the Ukraine War had proved America’s unshakeable commitment to the Atlantic alliance boded ill for the SDR’s correspondence with reality. As it transpires, the document is more subtle than we may have expected. Declaring, once again, Britain’s Nato first strategic worldview (and politically, it can hardly declare otherwise), the SDR is more notable for its observation that “‘NATO First’ does not mean ‘NATO only’.” The UK, it says, should build stronger bilateral and minilateral partnerships, particularly with France, but also Germany, Poland, and Norway creating what it describes as “strategic depth, strengthening the Alliance and stability in the Euro-Atlantic”. As such, these partnerships are to be a supplement rather than a replacement for Nato structures. Yet such an approach can also be read as vindication of the influential (within the Trump administration) defence analyst Sumantra Maitra’s prediction of de facto “mini-ententes” developing within Nato, even as the alliance remains in existence de jure.
The Indo-Pacific Tilt, long a source of ecstatic fantasising within the British defence commentariat, has, rightly, been demoted to an afterthought, without being formally dropped. The ongoing war in Europe has returned Pacific affairs to its rightful subordinate role in British defence, and a commitment to be shared with European allies (notably, not pledging interoperability with the United States), as and when the occasion demands — it is a long way from the underfunded, over-promised boosterism of the Johnsonian Tilt. As the SDR notes, “Military deployments beyond the Euro-Atlantic should be used to retain deeper and broader ‘match fitness’ of the Armed Forces” with caution being taken to ensure these deployments do not prevent it from returning at speed to the Euro-Atlantic if necessary — its core function.
The SDR’s firm refocusing of British defence to “the Euro-Atlantic” region is to be welcomed, particularly its emphasis on Britain’s maritime responsibilities to the Nato alliance. Indeed, tucked away in a section on climate change, comes the important observation that that the Arctic and High North are likely to be ‘ice-free each summer by 2040. This, then, will create a new site for competition within our “wider neighbourhood”. It has long been a critique levelled by the security circle around Trump (though something of a minority view in British defence commentary,) that Britain has neglected its core Nato role of defending the seas around our home islands in favour of scattershot and distracting deployments elsewhere. This SDR firmly and sensibly recentres our near abroad as the primary focus of British defence. With a defence press, reflecting inter-service rivalries, inclined to view such documents as creating winners and losers among the services, it is fair to say that the Royal Navy is thus the “winner” of the SDR. The sections on the Navy possess the most fleshed-out proposals on modernisation, with a strong emphasis on Atlantic Bastion: “the Royal Navy’s plan to secure the North Atlantic for the UK and NATO against the persistent and growing underwater threat from a modernising Russian submarine force.”
The sections on the Army are, by contrast, relatively vague, reflecting the land service’s functional non-existence as a serious warfighting entity. “Last recapitalised in the 1990s,” the SDR notes, “much of the Army’s capabilities—including Challenger 2 tanks, AS90 artillery, and ammunition—have rightly been gifted to Ukraine.” As we are told, “The Army must modernise the two divisions and the Corps HQ that it provides to NATO as one of the Alliance’s two Strategic Reserves Corps”. But at the moment this is just a vague aspiration rather than a fleshed-out commitment. It is not hard to detect a note of frustration in its observations that investment must be paired with drastic changes to how it is organised and equipped, and that “it should be bolder in its ambition, seeking to increase lethality ten-fold”. It is a classic “must do better” teacher’s comment in a school report.
As for the RAF, which garnered breathless weekend coverage over its alleged procurement of a tactical nuclear weapons capability, no such commitment was to be found in the document itself, save for perhaps the comment that Britain should “increase options for retaliation in response to an attack—or the threat of attack— on the UK and its allies”, and the suggestion that the service may, or may not, at some point in the future acquire the F-35A (which would enable such a capability). Overall, the section on British airpower is dominated by its focus on platforms still in development, and has rightly been characterised as “jam tomorrow” by defence analysts.
Effectively, the SDR is a clear-eyed assessment that Britain is, currently, in no position to fight a major war, while stating an ambition to move to a position of “readiness”. As it observes, the most plausible conflict now facing the country would be “high-intensity, protracted, and costly” — though it is hard to see how the Ukraine war’s lavish burning through of men and materiel justifies the assertion that “simple metrics such as the number of people and platforms deployed are outdated and inadequate”. After all, Russia’s strong negotiating position against Ukraine derives precisely from its superiority in both people and platforms. Indeed, as the SDR later notes, there has been “a hollowing out of capability due to a focus on ‘exquisite’ capabilities” and “Stockpiles are inadequate, further reduced by the important and necessary transfer of materiel to Ukraine”. Capacity and resilience, meanwhile, are lacking following years of underinvestment. Later on, though, the SDR recognises the importance of mass, pledging to reorient service personnel from back-office roles to the core business of warfighting, and indeed, to build mass through lowering medical standards for recruitment. There may be more to modern warfare than mere mass then, but it retains a quality of its own.
On materiel, similarly, the SDR introduces a strong and sustained emphasis on rebuilding industrial capacity, stating that a new Defence Readiness Bill should allow the Government powers to mobilise Reserves and industry should conflict necessitate it. Britain is not ready for war in the immediate future: yet the SDR lays out a concrete and urgent industrial roadmap to war-readiness which is, unfortunately, necessary, and this is to be unequivocally praised. As it observes, “Russia’s war economy, if sustained, will enable it to rebuild its land capabilities more quickly in the event of a ceasefire in Ukraine.” The cessation of the Ukraine war thus holds threats as well as promises for Britain, and time is of the essence.
Ignore the excited pre-publication commentary and interservice bickering, and the SDR presents a solid portrait of Britain’s current unreadiness for war and of the vital, if unglamorous work needed to amend this. There is a strong and necessary emphasis on home defence, hardening and resilience; on rebuilding industrial capacity; and a certain cutting of Britain’s defence coat to its under-equipped cloth through a recentring of Britain’s Atlantic front as its core area of responsibility.
This is fundamentally a defensive document which recognises that previous decades of misallocation and squandering of resources have left Britain on the back-foot in relation to its strategic rivals. For all that one may disagree with the current government in other matters, it is a sober and serious work: it is not too little, but we must hope that it is not too late.
