Should serving military leaders be openly political? In a provocative paper a few years ago, Hew Strachan argued that they should. Not necessarily in the party political sense, though he thinks that mightn’t be a bad idea too; but in the sense of being willing to openly engage with and critique the defence policies of the day: the ‘politics of professional self-interest [...] not of the individual, but of the profession’.
The armed forces of the United Kingdom have been hoodwinked by the model of civil-military relations propounded by Samuel Huntington in The Soldier and the State: they are professional, therefore they are apolitical.
An apolitical military is unlikely to park its tanks on the Downing Street lawn, but it is also one that is divorced from the attitudes of the wider public. Without open political advocacy, the relationship between the military and the public suffers, as important debates happen behind the scenes and without scrutiny. Strachan argued that
the services, by subscribing to a theoretical norm, have lapsed into anonymity. Public ignorance of their concerns is largely their fault.
In Clausewitzian terms, the passion for warfare originates largely in the civil population. Without the engagement of the people in the wars of the day, the armed forces and their government are in a fix.
Since he wrote that paper in 2003, things have changed somewhat. Lately there’s been an increasing willingness on the part of senior officers to publicly air their views on strategy, procurement, and a range of other issues.
This weekend, for example, Air Chief Marshal Sir Glenn Torpy, Britain’s senior airman, took to the pages of the Telegraph, to argue that the RAF should take over all fixed wing flying: ‘We have got to kill some sacred cows to make ourselves more efficient,’ he averred. The sacred cow in question is the Navy’s Fleet Air Arm.
A week earlier, it was the turn of head of the Royal Navy, Admiral Sir Jonathon Band, to argue the case for the Navy’s new aircraft carriers. ‘I am not volunteering for the second division,’ he said. ‘While Afghanistan is rightly our priority it is not the only show in town.’
His adversary here is his senior Army colleague, General Sir Richard Dannatt, Chief of the General Staff, who argued in May that the defence capabilities
we will field over the next decade are largely a legacy of decisions taken 20 years ago rather than a true reflection of what we need today. [...] At present I can only take the view that Defence is over-investing in the far future at the expense of relevance for the threats we face today and in the medium term.
And so, a three-way argument about the future of Britain’s armed forces is underway at the top of the services. This debate is increasingly playing out in public, as the service chiefs adapt their bureaucratic skills to the cut and thrust of public argument. Richard Dannatt might have been reading Strachan’s paper as he drafted his speech:
the degree of public understanding and awareness of the nature and extent of the threats we face, now and in the future, and the role of the Armed Forces in tackling those threats, is probably as low as I have known it to be – and that is not the fault of the general public.
The debate between the service chiefs has partly been a response to that lack of public understanding and engagement, coupled with two aggravating factors:
First, there has been an acute lack of political direction from the government of the day. Earlier, I posted about the Korean War dispute between President Truman and General MacArthur. One of the enduring lessons of that episode was Truman’s recognition of the need for sustained and informed civilian input in shaping strategy. In the UK, the sixth Defence Secretary in the last decade has just begun work. With a half-life of about a year, it will be a considerable achievement for him to acquire the necessary experience and influence to shape the military for the longer term.
Second, the stagnant or declining resource base available for defence spending is concentrating minds. If strategy is about choice, tough choices are coming the way of the British military. With a new national security strategy in the works, a Strategic Defence Review likely, and a general election too, we should expect more overt politicking from the armed forces than we have been used to.
Whilst attention is focused on what sort of platforms we should procure, the debate between the services might not seem that important. But the issue is far more profound – it is about the role that Britain should aspire to in world affairs, about the utility of force, and the character of war. The more heated the argument between the Chiefs gets, and the more openly politicized the military becomes, the better for all of us.
{ 2 trackbacks }
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
I seem to remember being told that the Armed Forces used to have a couple of pet think tanks, staffed by former generals and admirals, who would do the necessary lobbying, thereby allowing the military to remain apolitical.
I agree though that the quickest way to end this sort of public debating is for the people in power to make a decision, one way or the other; this is a relatively simple civ-mil relations debate, in that the debate is inter-service, rather than being between the politicians and the military. That means that any decision will please at least some soldiers.
How politicised a process is an SDR? I was only 9 last time we had one, so I dont know the details. Would it be considered improper for a government which is about to fall to commission one, for instance?
Hi Tom – certainly ex-servicemen have played a part in shaping the debate, especially, those now in the Lords. Their impact diminishes once they’ve left the services though, compared to serving chiefs.
You’re also right that there’s a large inter-service dimension to the argument – that’s the aspect I focused on in this post. But I think there are different opinions within the services too: for example, tensions between fast-jet and helicopter branches within the RAF.
I like your last point on SDRs, even if you’ve made me feel old. A couple of weeks ago, Dannatt described one as a ‘near certain prospect’, and you can bet he knows. But I suspect the timing is contingent on wider politics, because a new government would certainly want to put its own stamp on things. The same probably goes for the second iteration of the National Security Strategy.
Thank you for your answer to my question.