Throughout the last week we have hosted a discussion kicked off by the MOD Strategy Unit on UK Strategy and Defence Policy, Have Your Say. I thought the discussion which followed was a bit meandering and discursive which actually is more or less the norm for academics. A reader, Steve H., reckoned it ‘unholy and largely irrelevant… Can we start again please?’ As promised, however, the Strategy Unit has responded to the meandering and discursive/unholy and largely irrelevant (you decide) discussion. I post their response below. Before I do that, however, I’d like to draw your attention to the last sentence: ’If KoW agree, I will come back to you with another question or set of questions later this month.’
I’m very much inclined to continue this experiment; however, as KOW is a sort of quasi-democracy I’d better consult my co-bloggers. That said, if we do repeat the exercise on a different question(s) I’d just like to say that a perfectly valid response from KOW readers may well be WRONG QUESTION. I think this was the gist of Pericles’ excellent comments in the previous round. Come to think of it, this also is to be expected from academics who, in my experience and rightly, who tend by instinct and training to seek correct questions rather than correct answers.
Anyway, from here down it’s Vincent Devine talking.
Can I thank all those who have responded, both to my original post and to others’ comments. Many of these responses confirm our own thinking. Others challenge it. All are useful. Let me try and pick up on some running themes. On our broad process and approach:
- I absolutely accept that we cannot think of defence policy in a vacuum. Personally, I am clear that the Defence Green Paper – and the subsequent review – must be firmly rooted in the National Security Strategy and support the government’s wider foreign and development policies. We talk all the time to other parts of Whitehall: the ease with which we can do this is a real strength of our system. I see one possible theme of the Green Paper as the need to be even more explicit that defence is a delivery mechanism for wider government policies (security, foreign, development), but how on the other hand it cannot deliver them without contributions from other departments.
- I agree too that we can’t think of UK defence in isolation from our international partnerships. At the front end, that means that yes, we will certainly be looking closely at how others have handled or are handling their strategic reviews. We have already spoken to Australian, Canadian and Japanese colleagues. I will be visiting Paris and Brussels soon. Others in the team will be covering Washington and Berlin. At the hard end, the increasing importance of our international partnerships means we do need to ask ourselves if there are areas where we should look for “greater synergies” with key allies – though for understandable reasons many within the department are reluctant to consider role specialisation or increasing our reliance on others for key capabilities.
- And, of course, I accept the point that we have not always engaged academia well. I think many of us in the department look at the interaction between officials and academics in the US with envy. I hope the fact that the Secretary of State gave his first speech on his aims for the Green Paper in King‘s sent a message that we are keen to engage, we will be running several Green Paper seminars with academic colleagues and we will attempt through this blog to offer some transparency on our thinking.
- But I should emphasise that, on all of these points, there is a mindset challenge for many of us. Our – and I guess my – instinct is still to think of Defence as an independent department and UK Defence as an independent actor. So the reminders – and those I receive routinely from colleagues – are useful.
On the role of defence:
- I instinctively agree with those who have suggested that we have underplayed – or underinvested in – the defence contribution to soft power. One of the principal supporting studies will investigate this – looking back at what we committed to in the SDR, assessing the extent to which we delivered on that and what it achieved and offering options for future investment (or disinvestment). I won’t attempt to prejudge that work. But I do hope that we can, inter alia, find synergies with DfID’s recent, very good White Paper.
- I think we also need to remind ourselves of the important role of influence – or, as you prefer, presence, deterrence or reassurance – in delivering UK security – including in the context of global norms and the global commons. Again, we have work underway looking at that.
On the UK’s level of ambition in delivering defence capability, I would stress that there is political choice involved. A number of defence reviews/White Papers since 1945 have said this. The 1998 SDR did too. I don’t buy the argument that we retain our military capability in order to retain our seat in the UN or our influence in the EU or NATO. I think that misrepresents UN dynamics and understates the reasons for our influence in NATO and the EU. So we will need to draw out as clearly as we can: what our defence efforts deliver, how they promote UK interests and how they compare with the alternative approaches available to us.
Several other themes have caught my attention. But, in particular, I might mention the threads on strategic communications. We may want to come back to KoW on that.
Meanwhile we’re pushing ahead with the Green Paper. The main developments over the last couple of weeks, from my perspective, have been:
- A fresh look, with other parts of government, at the UK’s likely international interests, aims and ambitions in the next 10 years or so. – internal and cross-Whitehall discussion of our assessment of the “Changing Character of Conflict”. The Development, Concepts and Doctrine Centre (DCDC) are in the lead; and they have consulted widely – including with academic at King’s and elsewhere. Major General Paul Newton, who leads DCDC, will set out the headline findings at RUSI’s Conference on 14 October, so I won’t attempt to steal his thunder.
- Continuing discussions on DCDC’s Global Strategic Trends 4 (GST3 is accessible here if you are interested), which we expect to see published around the turn of the year and which will provide an important underlying analysis for the Green Paper.
- An important discussion of the resilience of the SDR analysis ten years on and the key lessons of the operations we have run since then. This was particularly useful in ensuring we have a broadly shared understanding of the baseline.
- A very useful seminar on the defence contribution to UK soft power run in conjunction with Chatham House. (We will hope to be running a similar seminar on another subject with the Centre for Defence Studies at King ‘s later in the year.)
Please keep on posting. We read what you have to say with real interest. If KoW agree, I will come back to you with another question or set of questions later this month.
Vincent Devine
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‘Meandering and discursive’ is the nature of blog comments too, I reckon. Personally, I found the comments useful. I think we decided the question was limiting – listing threats and opportunities might not be the only, or even the best way to frame a defence review.
There’s a strong emphasis in Vincent’s reply on ‘influence’ (which is surely good news for me and you, David). But that begs more questions: influence who, why and how? There’s much to say on that – but my starter would be this:
If we conceive of defence as an insurance policy against perceived risk, one way to approach defence (and the cost of the required insurance premium) is to better interpret and manage perceptions of risk. That is, to ‘influence’ how we British perceive the big, bad world. Those threats in Vincent’s opening question are perceived, not objectively measured. And in an increasingly risk averse society, where novelty can appear shocking, we might end up making skewed decisions about risk. Christopher Coker’s last book, ‘War in an Age of Risk’ has some good thoughts on this theme.
Perhaps the MoD will be in need of a few more behavioural and social psychologists? Happily, they come cheaper than Typhoons.
KP, I like the idea of little pre-emptive influencing and expectation management domestically.
I second your comment on working out precisely who we are influencing – influencing the whole of the Middle East is no good. Influencing a whole country is no good. This stuff has got to be specific or it won’t work.
Can I take the opportunity to thank Mr Devine again and for his efforts in reading many comments which may have been rather tangential to his requirements (I include mine above all).
He makes some sensible points above about the academic/defence relationship for example. However, I’d still like to take issue with a couple of things. Firstly, stressing ‘soft power’ and ‘strategic communications’ may be very a la mode but I personally find these terms nebulous, troublesome, ill-defined and without sufficient empirical (historical) support. That’s not to say that they oughtn’t be used, but that we need to be careful about using them. Moreover, they are an adjunct to, not the key role of defence.
Mr Devine’s paragraph:
“On the UK’s level of ambition in delivering defence capability, I would stress that there is political choice involved. A number of defence reviews/White Papers since 1945 have said this. The 1998 SDR did too. I don’t buy the argument that we retain our military capability in order to retain our seat in the UN or our influence in the EU or NATO. I think that misrepresents UN dynamics and understates the reasons for our influence in NATO and the EU. So we will need to draw out as clearly as we can: what our defence efforts deliver, how they promote UK interests and how they compare with the alternative approaches available to us.”
To some extent he is correct about the institutional effects of our defence policy, but thinking about it in raw terms – compare Britain to a nation with a similar size and economy e.g. Italy. Who has more influence in EU defence? More importantly, let’s remember that those institutions are only a part of the international system. Unless the point is clearly made that it is in Britain’s national interests to remain powerful within the international system, above all else, then we can make no logical case for possessing the kind of defence forces we have and ought to retain. If we fail to do so, we fall back on the highly insufficient basis of risks and threats, either evident ones now or potential ones in the future. I must say that DCDC is very confident in its assertions that some of its predictions will happen! Better to base our policy on sound understanding of what happened in the past than vague predictions about what might happen in the unknown future. Again, I disagree with Ken Payne – defence isn’t an insurance policy at the moment and nor is it really about ‘risk’. To my mind, social psycologists don’t really raise one’s status amongst world powers (nor, mind you, do Typhoons). Defence is about power.
I humbly suggest there is a practical need for a new Liddell Hart/ Douhet to emerge from the military/ academic community. Autonomy and cyberwar represent similar technological changes in the “means of conflict” to the rise of armour and airpower. I suggest that Britain suffered by being slower to take on these new realities than its opponents. Whilst any strategy needs to consider all means for global influence it also needs to consider practical adjustments before they are exposed by adversaries.