Danger ahead: time to depoliticise defence | thearticle

Defence is back. The world is about to get very much tougher. We now have two land wars in our neighbourhood and near neighbourhood that have the potential to broaden and deepen in ways not

seen since 1945. Join the dots of President Biden’s wartime aid request to Congress for Israel and Ukraine, and the warnings of General David Petraeus, Professor Niall Ferguson, Roger Boyes

and others. The West, the US and NATO are facing wars or the potential for conflict on an unprecedented four fronts – Ukraine, Middle East, Iran, North Korea – with Russia, China, and no

shortage of others too, welcoming the opportunity to seize their opportunities. Our collective Western values, democracies and peace are under serious attack, and these threats are growing

exponentially. We could find ourselves warfighting at scale in high-intensity confrontation, and at enduring scale, at very short notice. The average engaged citizen and voter knows this.

But they would be shocked to the core to know how badly we are prepared to do it. Thirty years of defence decline, and distraction from peer-on-peer warfighting capabilities and sustainment,

must now be reversed as fast as possible. This demands national unity of purpose, and de-politicising the entire defence and security process, control, and procurement cultures. We have to

re-imagine, re-arm, and rebuild to Tier 1 (NATO standard, ready to fight now) level fast. This is an inescapable conclusion to be drawn from the world as it is and the direction it is

heading. We cannot wait for the general election, nor carry on with business more or less as usual. In the national interest, Prime Minister Sunak and Opposition Leader Starmer need to

jointly agree how we do all this. They should then get Parliament to authorise the new ways and means with the resources necessary to provide long-term coherence and clarity of priorities.

Akin to the late 1930s, the whole supporting infrastructure of national defence and security needs to go into wartime-ready mode. We have failed and continue to fail the Sun Tsu test: we

know neither our enemies nor ourselves nearly as well as we need to. Our national-level neglect and failure to prepare for power-on-power war and in extremis confrontation risks matching the

strategic failure just experienced in Israel – generally regarded to be one of the most prepared nations in the world. The rage of the families of our troops killed in Iraq and Afghanistan

because they were sent into action in the wrong conflict vehicles and without state-of-the-art personal protection would be nothing compared to the situation in a potential war today or

tomorrow. This is a remarkably stupid time to have run down the British Army to its smallest level in over 150 years. General Sir Richard Barrons has said that “it will take between five and

ten years to get it fit for purpose again”. The scale and impact of the Army’s decline was most tellingly summarised earlier this year by a senior US Commander (commonly believed to be

SACEUR). He is reported to have told the Defence Secretary that the British Army was not considered Tier 1 (NATO standard, ready to fight now) and was barely Tier 2 (NATO standard, ready to

fight in months or years). Whilst it is what potential foes think that matters most, when your best friend tells you the brutal truth, adding that you are graded behind the French Army to

boot, we should have taken immediate steps to rectify this before history repeats itself with catastrophic consequences. We have not. Ben Wallace, the last Defence Secretary, warned of

looming war, wearily reflecting that the Army was 20-plus years behind the Royal Navy and Royal Air Force. He finally chose to depart early, probably because he was unable to secure the

uplift in defence spending that nearly every other serious military nation, bar the UK, has provided. The average citizen and voter would be aghast to learn that regular army personnel today

number well under one third of Tesco employees. Even including the reserve, the Army is smaller than our combined 40-plus police forces. In addition to serious war fighting – looking more

possible again by the month – the Army is the nation’s “go to” 5th emergency service and reserve of trained and disciplined manpower, tasked to be ready to support any of our communities,

public services such as the NHS, or police and civil authorities under severe stress. The Army is one of, if not _the_ most indispensable organisations of our nation. Yet under-loved,

under-resourced, and un-cared for by Whitehall, it continues to experience a persistent problem of under-recruiting and poor retention. This is hardly surprising. Connect all this to the

view of another senior US general, who said recently that in a high intensity war the British Army would run out of certain types of munitions within a few days. That was before we sent

quantities of our war stocks to Ukraine. It is impossible not to conclude that the often-cited mantra that defence and security are the primary duty of government is not borne out by the

evidence of the last 30 years. Enormous, indeed unacceptable, risks have been taken. So how do we turn this most serious of situations around? What should Rishi Sunak and Sir Keir Starmer –

together — do now? How can Whitehall regain the confidence of the nation and our young people, many of whom they could be sending out in harm’s way in the next few years? First, the PM and

the Labour leader should reassure the nation by agreeing to put our defence and security into national unity, de-politicised and much longer-term mode. Start to prepare the legislation and

agree the headline uplift in GDP spending to be allocated – not just to the armed forces, but to the other components of our national security, including national critical infrastructures,

research, security industries and civil defence. Second, they should appoint a small 3-4 person high-level group to carry out a “red team” inspection of Whitehall’s readiness for serious war

fighting and shocks of the type we can now all imagine challenging us at very short notice — or perhaps none at all. Headed by a widely experienced and respected figure, such as William

Hague,  it might include defence and security experts of the calibre and reputation of Generals Sir Rupert Smith or Sir Gordon Messenger. Third, they should instruct the armed forces, and

every security organisation and sector, to appoint similar “red” inspection teams to go over current top teams’ plans and preparations and make their own recommendations. Team leaders, for

example for the Army and Navy, should be of the calibre of Generals Sir Richard Barrons and Sir Robert Fry. The one big lesson of the last 30 years is that the senior squad in Whitehall

frequently do not make the right decisions and do not learn from their mistakes. How many of the Chilcot Inquiry recommendations have been learned? Sunak and Starmer desperately need these

red teams to balance the insider-produced latest recommendations and priorities in order to radically improve our decision-making. It is not just Whitehall that is to blame for the woes in

defence. The single services to varying degrees still suffer from backward-leaning organisations, tribalism, and toxic cultures. Taking the Army as an example, it needs the biggest

revolution ever in peacetime because as a nation we no longer have the mass and sustainability to adjust on the hoof in time of major war. This root and branch reform needs to be the 21st

equivalent of the Cardwell and Haldane structural reforms and Field Marshal Nigel Bagnall’s conceptual reforms of previous centuries. Such reforms must be combined with Elon Musk level

technological innovation, keeping us ahead with AI, space and digital developments — the biggest change for 150 years. Only cultural changes will protect the fundamental characteristics of

the British Army, learned over centuries. It was said in World War I that “war is too serious to be left to the generals”. Now in the 21st century, following thirty years of bad decision

making, we might conclude that in a nuclear, AI, cyber world that warmaking is no longer safe in the hands of Whitehall bureaucrats and the short-term political cycles of Westminster. Is it,

therefore, not time for a defence and security equivalent of the Office of Budget Responsibility (OBR)? An arms-length, independent council to include former PMs, defence secretaries,

national security advisers and chiefs of staff with the clout to challenge a one-term single party Prime Minister or Chancellor. The Government is our servant and subject to the rule of law,

enforced by the courts and the police. In the nuclear/AI/cyber age, our defence and security need some protection from overmighty short-term governments. Another lesson of the last thirty

years is that the spreadsheet and its minders have wielded excessive power, repeating the mistakes of the 1930s. Defence and security need strict financial control, of course. But the

British historical norm is that our military disasters tend to be borne of inadequate timely resourcing – not an excess of it. Our inter-service rivalry has distorted our procurement and

consequently our capability. Too often our politicians have not had the background or understanding to challenge this. They have de-faulted to saving some of the big-ticket items to the

detriment of our overall capability, and logistical sustainability, in particular. It is time for a new, apolitical and genuinely independent and knowledgeable body that advises ministers on

procurement and posture over a thirty-year timeframe. We should look at Japanese, Danish, and others’ better models and bespoke our own. As a former soldier I have inevitably referred more

to the Army than the other two services, on the basis of personal knowledge. However, I should make it clear that I do subscribe to the very long-term overall British defence view that as an

island nation we should recognise that it is not the Army that has the highest call on limited defence and security resources.  We do not need to match our peers among large European

continental armies.  What we do need is a Tier 1, state of the art, medium-size army that is more agile, versatile, and quickly expandable than most other armies. We should play to our niche

strengths and bring to NATO army capabilities that are in short supply, rather than just a smaller version of European main forces. And as Churchill said, we need “a superiority in weapons

as well as discipline”, which means we must overmatch our foes in 21st century domains. We are, almost certainly, at an historical inflection point. Until recently defence and security

barely registered on political and election top agendas. They are now so important that they need to be de-politicised, prioritised, managed, and funded in national unity mode and at pace.

_Nigel Hall is a former 1* army officer who spent 2 tours in the MOD central staff directorate responsible for the size and shape and resource allocation of the Army. He commanded 1st

Battalion The Duke of Wellington’s Regiment, and served in senior policy adviser roles in the UK missions to NATO and the United Nations._ A MESSAGE FROM THEARTICLE _We are the only

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