1998 to 2020 is a long time in national security | thearticle

The Integrated Review of security, defence, development and foreign policy commissioned by the December Queen’s Speech was well underway when the Coronavirus struck. Now, as with so much of

public life, it looks likely that it will be suspended and completed next year. The Queen, and later the Prime Minister, promised _the deepest review since the end of the Cold War, _but

perhaps that was an understatement. We would need to measure in centuries, not decades, the last time that British national policies were fundamentally unilateral and free of the collective

responsibilities imposed by the EU and, before that, empire. A point neatly illustrated by the constant evocation of the buccaneering spirit of the first Elizabethan Age by the more

rhetorically minded Brexiteers. Clearly, there’s a lot riding on the process, and Covid-19 — which has shown gaps in national resilience, illustrated the value of military assistance at home

and re-ordered the public finances — has complicated matters even further. It all seems a long way away from the 1998 review which could rhapsodise about Britain as a _Force for Good _in

the world and set the scene for Tony Blair’s Chicago speech a year later. In that speech, Blair laid out the moral and intellectual case for global intervention by an activist West. How much

has changed in the intervening years? A lot has changed, including the loss of the West’s strategic confidence on the back of failure in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. What might have been a

decisive intervention in Syria was sub-contracted to Russia and prosecuted with a ruthless singularity which left state building to the locals and the protection of human rights to others. A

symptom of the failure of confidence is the distance now between Washington and any other Western capital, including London. This is certainly a characteristic of Trump’s strategic

solipsism, but a successor Democrat president is also likely to have their eyes on the Pacific Basin rather than the petty squabbles of Europe, as the future shape of Nato may testify. For

the enthusiast, the sunlight uplands of Brexit Britain offer the opportunity to re-define our role in the world, but, beyond a few ritual platitudes, no department of state, Cabinet rank

minister, academic department or broadsheet newspaper has offered a definitive view of what that might look like. There have been a few distractions and the Integrated Review still offers

the chance of getting this right and it must be taken, otherwise what was that endless process all about? In terms of threat, the picture is both more complicated and more dangerous. The

Good Friday Agreement formed part of the 1998 euphoria and Irish Republican terrorism has been replaced by the much more implacable and unbiddable jihadist form. There is no immediate sign

of this threat reducing, and, it has provoked a nascent response from right wing extremists which at the moment is more posture than reality but serves to muddy the waters further.

Internationally, Russia has rearmed, found a strident voice and a muscular role in the Middle East but it is more likely to be an irritant than a determinant in global affairs. By contrast,

China has the most integrated national strategy in the world today, combining military, political, economic, cultural and ideological strands derived in part from Confucian tradition and in

part from contemporary fusion doctrine. The relationship with China poses an exquisite challenge for national statecraft requiring resolution in the face of intimidation or subterfuge allied

with co-operation in response to global issues like climate change; Foreign Office sinologists will earn their pay over coming years. Both countries are leading practitioners of _Grey

Warfare, _the use of every instrument of national power short of physical force. Cyber operations, economic entryism, intellectual property theft, espionage and the selective use of

surrogates, all underwritten by sophisticated information operations, creates an ambivalent and insidious threat that has none of the clarity of conventional military operations but much of

the risk and is the new normal strategic challenge. Finally, there’s the money. Even though productivity levels have remained disappointing after the 2008 Financial Crisis and debt levels

historically high, the incoming Conservative administration looked set to invest in defence just a few short months ago. Now, even the most perfectly formed V-shaped recovery will only set

the scene for a ferocious competition in future Comprehensive Spending Reviews and defence will find itself well down a queue led by the NHS, national resilience and the fiscal stimuli to

lead economic growth. So how do the luckless authors of the Integrated Review have any chance of squaring this seemingly intractable circle of bigger challenges and slimmer resources? One

way may be to view the world as a series of concentric circles, centred on the United Kingdom, and seen through the lens of cold eyed strategic self-interest. All the factors listed above

point to an increased threat to the metropolitan homeland and some of the more obvious national vulnerabilities within this first circle need to be fixed immediately. The quantum increase in

global, and particularly Russian, missile technology means that national air defence systems require long overdue improvement. In addition, it’s no use claiming an invulnerable nuclear

deterrent if improvements in both anti-submarine warfare and the stealth capabilities of all forms of submersibles means that our nuclear armed submarines can be compromised before gaining

the oceanic space of the Atlantic. And that’s before we maintain and improve our defences in the constantly escalating global cyber wars. On a more prosaic level, both the flooding and

pandemic emergencies have shown the value of military expertise and manpower to the civil power and national resilience — the Cinderella of national security policy — can only increase in

importance. A trend compounded by the requirement to monitor coastal waters to protect fish stocks and limit illegal immigration. This, of course, immediately blurs the boundary between

constabulary and military operations but that’s going to be a recurring issue in the brave new world of homeland defence. The second circle covers the defence of continental Europe and this

is where we need to box clever. The United Kingdom has traditionally made a contribution to both Nato’s in place, pre-positioned forces — typically in Germany — and the more mobile and

deployable forces required on the flanks of the alliance. We can no longer afford to do both and our priority must lie with deployable force. This coincides with a significant increase in

German defence spending and a growing political acceptance that Germany has inalienable responsibilities for its own defence, despite the burden of history. Deployable forces earmarked for

Nato would also be available for occasional and highly selective operations within the third circle, comprising the rest of the world. One of the more demanding requirements of the

Integrated Review will be to establish the criteria for deployment and the weight of effort within the third circle to sustain operations that might be in support of allies or act as a

signature Brexit Britain flourish. Either way, they will only occur after the most rigorous scrutiny. This prospectus is barely recognisable from the ambitious, perhaps hubristic, style of

1998. One a manifesto for global reach and responsibility the other a consolidation on the home base, but both are tracts for their own particular times.