Not With a Bang, But a Whitepaper: How British Power Could Fall Apart

This Autumn
This article was written by a serving military officer from a NATO member state. The
views expressed in this article are his own and do not reflect the position of any
organisation or government.

Britain is not under attack, but its place in the world is under fire. The semi-official
Chinese Global Times has denigrated the United Kingdom as an old declining
empire which engages in eccentric acts it takes to hide [its] embarrassment. The
Russians are brazenly flying bombers close enough to its airspace that the Royal Air
Force has to scramble fighter aircraft to deal with them once a month, prompting
the Scottish National Party to claim that the North Sea is now defended by fishing
vessels and social media. British commentators are accusing their own government
of behaving like Belgium. Even its cherished Special Relationship with the United
States appears fragile, as it turns out that Americas heir apparent, then-Secretary
of State Hillary Clinton, was chuckling at decline and fall of the British Empire jokes
as recently as 2009. Fareed Zakaria has summed up the current consensus in
Washington: After an extraordinary 300-year run, Britain has essentially resigned as
a global power.
All is not lost, however. In the Queens Speech in which the new Conservative
government outlined their agenda in May, they promised that this years
quinquennial Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR) and the complementary
National Security Strategy (NSS) would ensure that Britain remains a leader on the
world stage. The NSS will outline Britains role in the world, while the SDSR will
provide a definitive statement about the planned strength of the British forces for
the next five years. The review is now being conducted by a small team in the
Cabinet Office, and will be published in the fall.
On its face, ensuring that Britain remains a global power should not be a
challenging task. Despite narrowly avoiding dismemberment in September, when
45% of Scots voted to leave the United Kingdom, and an impending referendum on
Britains membership in the European Union, the quantitative foundations of British
power are solid. The UK has the fifth-largest economy in the world and remains one
of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council. Militarily, it
appoints NATOs second-in-command and has the worlds fifth-largest defence
budget, nearly 40 billion in 2014. The British people, in the words of pollster
YouGov, remain instinctively internationalist and although most of them want
severe reductions in Britains bloated foreign aid budget, they also support high
military spending and continuing global engagement.

So, why is there so much cynicism about the future of British power? Part of the
problem is hopefully fleeting: the British government today has proved politically
impotent, and has sat out negotiations over Ukraine and played a diminished role in
the EU as the referendum looms. The far larger issue, however, is the one which this
SDSR is seeking to address: Britains status as a global military power, which is part
of the bedrock of its place in the world, is rapidly diminishing. This is not because
Britain has chosen to declineAlbion is simply stumbling into irrelevance. Here are
three reasons why:
The British government doesnt do strategy.
Strategy is, roughly, the process of using ways (processes) and means (material) in
order to achieve political ends. Although British politicians have never struggled to
communicate ambitious ends, the British government is awful at cohering ways and
means to achieve them. Almost no one expects the strategic reviews released in
the coming months to be very strategic at all. British commentators have been
acerbic about this. In the words of retired Major-General Jonathan Shaw: I judge
that Britain is incapable of doing a Strategic Defence and Security Review; it lacks
the culture and institutions required for the task. Most agree that this is because
strategy itself is a lost art in Britain, and has no accepted definition within the
British government.
Most informed commentators instead forecast that this review will be driven by the
dictates of Her Majestys Treasury, whose Chancellor, George Osborne, has little
sympathy for the armed forces, and which can be expected to seek significant cuts.
Since Osborne took office in 2010, promising significant reductions to overall UK
government spending, British defence spending has been cut in real terms by about
20%. In July, after significant American prodding, the government committed to
spending the equivalent of 2% of Great Britains Gross Domestic Product on defence
through 2020, an amount required of all NATO members (although most do not
meet it). This does not represent a significant shift, however, as it was only
accomplished with what Professor Malcolm Chalmers of the Royal United Services
Institute has called an accounting trick in which the definition of defence spending
was significantly expanded. Existing defence programs will still face significant cuts.
Osborne has also expanded his control over security and defence by establishing a
1.5 billion Joint Security Fund from which departments compete for funds, with the
Treasury adjudicating. Simply put, financial considerations will drive this SDSR more
than any other factor, and these will likely overwhelm strategic concerns.
To make matters worse, much of the money that is still spent on defence will in fact
further domestic political aims, rather than foreign policy ends. As Britain becomes
increasingly insular, the old adage that all politics is local is asserting itself. British
Defence Minister Michael Fallon has already promised to spare Scotland any
significant defence cuts, and that is an astrategic promise that the ascendant
Scottish National Party will force him to keep. Some politicians are also now asking
the army and navy to prioritise addressing a burgeoning domestic refugee crisis
(the police commissioner of Surrey specifically demanded Nepalese Ghurkas). Even

when Britain tries to think globally, it seems only capable of acting locally. Although
Prime Minister Cameron has labelled the Islamic State an existential threat to
Britain, the UKs contribution to fighting them in the Middle East has been tiny, and
Cameron has instead focused on countering extremism within the British isles. This
is not how a world power actsbut without the ability to do strategy, we should
expect no better.
Britains huge defence budget has a huge value-for-money problem
which puts Britains military capabilities at risk.
Britain gets less value than it should out of its defence spending, and as long as this
remains the case, the SDSR can do very little to help staunch the decline of Britains
military might.The British armed forces today are peerless in only one area:
inefficiency. In 2012, for example, Britain had basically the same military mass as
French, but spent about 25% more to sustain them, only in part because the French
are more willing than the British to plan to rely on allies for logistical assistance for
sustained operations.
Comparing the UK and the US is even more illuminating, as the UK military desires
global reach and thus seeks similar capabilities to the US. Britain spent about $54
billion on defence in 2014, whereas America spent about $578 billion. America,
however, got much more bang for its buck. On land, the US maintains about 2,400
M1-series Main Battle Tanks in its Army, most of which are new models purchased
since 2010, and another 400 or so in its Marine Corps (the International Institute for
Strategic Studies says the US has 2,785 MBTs in total). The UK, meanwhile, has only
227 aging Challenger 2 MBTs in service, which have the most outdated main gun in
NATO and vintage optics. At sea, the US Navy has 273 warships afloat, while the
Royal Navy is barely treading water with 19. In the air, the US Air Force and Navy
have about 14,000 combat-ready aircraft, while the Royal Air Force has a mere 700.
To sum up: the US spends about 11 times as much as the UK on defence, but for
this amount it gets 12 times as many tanks, 14 times as many ships (it will probably
be 16 times as many by the end of the decade) and 20 times as many planes.
This comparison inevitably admittedly papers over some important differences. The
British defence budget, for example, has had to deal with higher inflation since
2008, can take advantage of fewer economies of scale, and, despite its tendency to
emulate American capabilities, has somewhat different strategic imperatives, such
as the need to maintain a stable of 485 horses for ceremonial duties. But it also
hides the fact that British military equipment is generally older and less versatile
than American gear. Fundamentally, it highlights Britains numerical and managerial
problems: even if Britain had a strategic narrative for what its armed forces should
do, it no longer has the tanks, planes and ships to act like a global power.
The most apparent cause of the value-for-money problem is the gross
mismanagement of the British defence budget. According to the Gray report, by
2009 the defence equipment budget had become severely overheated, with too
many types of equipment being ordered for too large a range of tasks at too high a
specification based on too little strategic thought, if any. The cuts imposed after the

2010 SDSR nearly broke the overheated system. Between 2010 and 2015,
according to Ben Barry of the IISS, the 8% budget cut resulted in the evisceration of
20 to 30% of the UKs conventional military capabilities. Mismanagement, then, had
a much larger impact than the cuts themselves. The most embarrassing foible was
the appearance of a still-mysterious 38 billion black hole of unfunded
requirements in the defence equipment budget in 2011. It had to be filled with
massive cuts from the rest of the defence budget.
There are also much deeper problems in the British defence acquisitions
establishment. A 2013 MoD white paper argued that its key failings were
mismanagement by an institutionally weak Defence Equipment and Support (DE&S)
activity and poor oversight of single-source contracts. In June, a report published by
the think tank Civitas argued that the more fundamental problems are the British
tendency to seek the illusion of military power rather than real strength (more on
that below), over-engineering of defence equipment leading to runaway defence
inflation, and outright abuse of single-source contracts by mighty prime contractors
(the most powerful of which, BAE Systems, accounts for .5% of UK GDP and 1% of
all UK exports). The MoD, while aggressively denying some aspects of the problem,
has engaged in a handful of reforms. It has sought to fix its financial management
practices with the Levene reforms since 2011 and was empowered to improve or
replace DE&S and revamp its single source contracting practices by the Defence
Reform Act of 2014, prompting Armed Forces Minister Penny Mordaunt to claim
British defence spending in no longer a basket case. However, this has clearly not
been enough--according to the Financial Times, another black hole is already
gaping.
The SDSR provides the British government with an opportunity to start down the
path to more efficient defence spending. Unfortunately, there are no signs the
government will take it, as the Treasury remains remarkably unconcerned with the
value-for-money problem, instead prioritizing keeping spending down at irrational
cost. To really promote efficiency, the SDSR team would have to address the key
question as to what volume of investment in security will generate the highest
overall value to the UK, in the words of the Civitas report, and have the freedom to
cut inefficient and expand useful programs within the defence budget. As it stands,
it has neither power. As the chair of the House of Commons Defence Committee,
Julian Lewis, has noted, the government has already released its budget statement,
so the SDSR will play no role in determining the size of the defence budget
arguably the most profound strategic question the UK must address. Even as it tries
to prioritize cuts to promote efficiency, moreover, the SDSR team will be hamstrung,
as the Prime Minister, the Conservative Party and other officials made numerous
promises to preserve specific capabilities while running for reelection earlier this
year. In the analysis of Professor Michael Clark of RUSI, Cameron declared 80% of
the defence budget off-limits on the campaign trail. Under such conditions, the
SDSR may as well be an exercise in throwing money away.
Britains leaders remain reluctant to provide significant forces to support
globally important missions, putting Britains leadership role in NATO at
risk.

Britain is a minor player in global military operations today. To wage what Prime
Minister Cameron hyperbolically labelled the struggle of our generation against IS,
the UK has deployed a grand total of eight 1980s-vintage Tornado jets, which are
only allowed to strike targets in Iraq. As a February report by the Defence
Committee noted, this is a smaller force than those deployed by Australia,
Germany, Spain and Italy. To ward off Russia, the UK has sent four Typhoons to help
defend the Baltic, roughly in line with what other NATO states have sent, and
artificially inflated its role in NATO by providing 1,000 staff officers and enablers to
lead NATOs new high-readiness task force. However, its land forces sat out two
major NATO exercises in June, leaving allies wondering: where has the British Army
gone?
The Chief of the General Staff, General Sir Nick Carter, is probably wondering the
same thing. The Army he leads is a shrinking force, and it is currently has 4,000
fewer soldiers than it should. As part of the Future Force 2020 plan which the SDSR
is likely to re-affirm, it will form up as a force of 82,000 regulars and 30,000 trained
reservists in the next five years. This will supposedly provide a deterrent with a
division-sized reaction force, as well as an adaptable force which will lead
defence engagement efforts overseas. Unfortunately, the link to the British Armys
strategic narrative, which is supposed to justify this structure, is broken, both
digitally and figuratively. Efforts to fully integrate reservists into the regular force
have gone poorly. The idea that Britains lumbering armoured force will be a
deterrent is laughable, and the United States is already preparing for the British
reaction force to be significantly smaller than the promised armoured division. The
British seem to be as well: the Guards Brigade is about to head to Texas to practice
operating under American divisional command.
The British Army has also utterly failed to sell its unique value to the nation, and has
in fact undercut its own role at a time when the British public is unsure about the
value of its armed forces. Instead of emphasizing the need to hold and control
territory by killing people and breaking thingsits unique capability, called
landpower in the rest of NATOit has instead established and lauded 77 Brigade,
which is responsible for the delivery of all non-lethal and non-military effects.
General Carter constantly bangs on that ends, ways and means are not enough.
That may be true, but without them, the British military may prove to be whats no
longer enough.
The Royal Navy, meanwhile, is on the verge of sinking. It continues to desperately
cling to the fantasy that it has strategically significant global reach, and plans to
deploy two new aircraft carries by the end of this decade and three new Trident
nuclear missile-launching submarines in the 2030s in pursuit of this end. However,
as a US Army War College-sponsored analysis recently noted, the massive costs of
these projects have prevented maintenance of even enough escorts for both
carriers, and in the future, a declining number of surface combatants will bedevil its
ability to remain globally postured and will contribute to naval missions of a more
constabulary nature. Like the Army, the Royal Navy is bad at selling itself. In the
words of the campaign to Save the Royal Navy, the public is largely unaware of
what the Navy does for them.

The Royal Air Force may be faring the worst of the three services. The Tornado
squadron that is bombing IS was scheduled to disband in March, but got a new lease
on life because, according to General Sir Nicholas Houghton, the Chief of Britains
Defence Staff, the UK has reached the very limit of fast jet availability and
capacityby deploying only a dozen planes on actual operations. This is because
only eighteen RAF Tornados are fully combat-ready. Although the British air base at
Arkotiri has been a great asset to the broader Western campaign, the simple fact is
that the RAF lacks the capability to play a serious role.
British politicians have proven artful at hiding these problems while exaggerating
Britains contributions. Cameron has dismissed accusations of British strategic
shrinkage as nonsense, while Fallon has insisted that Britains global reach is as
extensive as ever and that no other country is Europe is playing such a strong
global role. Meanwhile, he emphasized niche capabilities which make Britain look
unique and important, if not exactly powerful. The US has also helped Britain look
good, with President Obama calling the UK Americas best partner and US
Secretary of Defence Ash Carter saying that the UK has the ability to act
independently, to be a force of its own in the world.
Although some of these claims are factually true, the rhetoric is still dangerous, as
the real, long run decline in British military capabilities is continuing unabated. In
the words of Abraham Lincoln, you cant fool all of the people all of the time. Even
if Britain has achieved a politically acceptable force level that appeases its
American allies despite its strategic and managerial deficits, the current British
approach to international affairs is a plan for costly decline. The greatest significant
near-term risk is that Britains relationship with NATO will far apart. Ever since the
UK abandoned NATOs Operation Resolute Support in Afghanistan and left Italy,
Turkey, Germany and the US to pick up the slack, NATO staffers have been
extremely suspicious of the UKs dedication to the organization. They are not fooled
by Britains contributions of staff officers and support troops, which only serve to
mask its minimal contributions of combat power. A growing number of them would
like to see the second-in-command slot at NATO become a rotating position that
rewards significant troop contributors, rather than an eternal reward to Great Britain
for fighting WWII.
They are unlikely to make that happen this fall, but in the long run, unless Britain
makes serious changes to the way it does business, it is almost inevitable. This fact
should provide an important inflection point for British defence thinkers as they
ponder the ongoing SDSR. Although a new strategic narrative alone will do nothing
to address the severe strategic and managerial deficits which have left Britain so
feeble, it might help guide Britain in the right direction. Above all, a renewed
dedication to NATO is essential, as is a renewed dedication to real strategic thought
and efficiency within the British government which can underpin it in the long run.
Unfortunately, almost no one expects this out the ongoing NSS and SDSR effort.
PS21 is a non-national, non-ideological, non-partisan organization. All views
expressed are the authors own.