* UPDATED* LIB DEM MANIFESTO ELEMENT BELOW….
As promised, I have scanned the manifestos of the main parties (I will update this post when the Lib-Dems publish theirs tomorrow).
The two documents are similar and yet very different. Both make pledges about NATO and supporting the armed forces, but what was very noticeable was the difference in tone between the two.
The Labour manifesto included almost no new proposals. It spent its time basking in some questionable successes since 1997. The Conservative manifesto, by contrast, spent its time setting out some policy positions, and as I will note below, a notable suggestion. Of course part of this difference is accounted for because they are in very different positions – a government trying to defend a record and a mandate, and the pretenders to the crown. But even within this context, Labour’s defence manifesto is curiously without spark.
So, the two break down like this:
Labour –
They pledge a Strategic Defence Review to make the armed forces ‘fit for 21st Century challenges’. They are distinct from the Conservatives in that they pledge to use the EU as a multiplier of influence. They also make a case for emphasising the stability and security of Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Within their broad sweeps they claim that they have a ‘non-negotiable commitment to defence’, and similarly claim that they have increased defence spending by 10% since 1997 and that procurement has been a notable area of success (but the nature of the claim must mean they’re relying on UORs for this).
They pledge that they’re going to reform procurement, and reduce the numbers of civilian staff and the costs sunk into running head quarters. But the precise proposals haven’t been laid out.
There is a pledge to create, or to help to create a ‘European Peace Corps’ – and I couldn’t quite work out what the difference was between this and the Tory proposal to create a very soft version of national service.
Conservative –
The Tories have sought to link homeland security and defence more closely. They will create a National Security Council, with a National Security Advisor and a Team for Homeland Security. This would also include a Military Command unit that would help to work out how the military could contribute a ‘structured military’ response to homeland security.
The Conservatives would also have a strategic defence review (but including homeland security) and this would also be matched to foreign policy requirements – so the two parties are in agreement here. However, the Tories claim that they can reduce the MoD’s running costs by 25%, and have a system of procurement that runs to time and budget (are they going to buy off the shelf?).
The one eye-catching policy from either party is the pledge to release the spending on European defence initiatives and instead allocate it to UK forces. They also pledge to double the operational allowance and maximise rest and recuperation for the armed forces.
The foreign policy elements of the Tory manifesto are tucked neatly under the defence ones. The notable pledges here are the plan to foster a ‘special relationship’ with India, and to push for UN Security Council membership to be expanded to include Japan, India, Germany, Brazil and ‘Africa’ (although it’s not clear how ‘Africa’ selects its representative). If manifestos are about the future direction of a party (not just the immediate electoral horsetrade) it is clear that the Tories have an international agenda that runs much wider than the EU and is not limited (as the cliché would suggest) to the transatlantic alliance.
* LID DEM UPDATE*
The Lib-Dems
The Lib-Dems have actually put forward a quite sensible, and well thought out manifesto. If I sound surprised, it’s because I am. And not only is it sensible, it’s distinctive too. They pledge to conduct the same sort of defence review as the other two – but to do so with two of the protected (ring-fenced) areas missing their fences, and their rings. They “(r)ule out the like-for-like replacement of the Trident nuclear weapons system. At a cost of £100 billion over a lifetime it is unaffordable, and Britain’s security would be better served by alternatives. We support multilateral nuclear disarmament and will ensure that the UK plays a proactive role in the arms reduction talks starting later this year.” So that’s a hundred billion quid they’ve found straight off, and then they go on (not so much as a prune, rather a machete at the budget) by cancelling Eurofighter Tranche 3b – I’m not seeing many defence industry votes here… They do pledge to reinvigorate Franco-British cooperation (Saint Malo plus some might say… I never get cited on Saint Malo.. but I must have written just about the only bloody thing on it, aside from Jolyon’s piece..huff and move on) and they also are pledging large increases to service personnel salaries (bringing them into line with emergency service salaries) and massive improvements to service housing. Amusingly (so they’ve lost the defence industry vote and now the heavy shouldered vote) they’re going to strim out a layer of senior officers, and civilian MoD types…. They’ve pegged themselves to Europe (as always), but have done so in a way that I have advocated (but I’m not responsible for it, I promise) to reduce the unit cost of procurement by creating a larger demand pool, and therefore a larger supply pool across Europe. It is distinctive, very distinctive, and it’s very-pro the ordinary ‘tommy’ and their air-going and sea-faring brother. As far as I can tell from the newspaper coverage, it is yet to do them damage either.
Verdict:
Still within a non-partisan frame… the underlying premises of both manifestos are strikingly similar. The Tories have done a lot more work in thinking about theirs and the switch of European funding is an interesting proposal (other EU nations pull short on EU projects… the down-side is that it would degrade our position within the EU.. and is it possible for us to short-change as the pre-eminent military power in the EU?) and the plans to create special relationships with emerging powers is similarly encouraging. The Labour manifesto is disappointing for the paucity of new ideas within it, and the over-reliance on successes that I think are – at best- contested.
What is clear from both – however – is that defence is not considered a make or break issue for either party and that their attentions are elsewhere.
The introduction of the Lib-Dem manifesto to the party does introduce variety and distinctiveness. They have gone for a radical approach of not ring fencing any of the sacred cows, and instead focussing on the individual ‘tommy’. This shows, I think, that they believe we’ll be involved in peacekeeping operations for the foreseeable. There is, at least, some choice now across the main parties.
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It should be rather amusing if they do try to push for those new seats for the U.N, I doubt the other P-5 will be that enthusiastic, particularly if they intend to make them permanent members with veto power.
‘the Tories claim that they can reduce the MoD’s running costs by 25%, and have a system of procurement that runs to time and budget’.
Ha, ha!!!
Paul
There are three very easy ways to make UK Defence procurement work;
1) Ensure the MOD are not a part of it. Look up the word ‘useless’ in the dictionary. It should say ‘MOD’.
2) Ensure the military are not a part of it. When it comes to business, they’re as bad as the MOD, if not worse. Industry gets given a gold plated opportunity to make billions from locked down contracts because some Officer with no clue and even less interest gets given the keys to a big project. He doesn’t care, he has his eyes on his next ‘proper’ job.
3) Stop buying military equipment. It’s too complex, takes too long to design and build and, as a result, is unaffordable and unwieldy (because we can’t afford to lose any of it)
There. Simple.
Ah, hang on…
‘Stop buying military equipment’. You’re going to have to qualify that statement. If you mean stop buying vehicles, armor, computers, or munitions from military contractors then the civilian market simply doesn’t make equipment resilient enough. If you mean more complex technologies like missiles or aircraft I have to ask how the U.K expects to fight conventional wars?
“I have to ask how the U.K expects to fight conventional wars?”
What conventional wars?
Well, we have fought three against states in the last twenty years, four in the last thirty. That’s not much of a basis for ruling them out entirely in future.
Fair point, Ken. But then which of these conventional wars which we have faced do you reckon Montgomery, Patton or Zhukov would have bothered putting on his resume? And which resulted in the end in a clean victory in the sense of take your army and go home? Are we thinking about the same ones? Falklands, Iraq, Kosovo and Iraq again? It’s Falklands which is the outlier here in its conventionality. Even the recent Russo-Georgia War had decided notes of hybridity. I am sure we will have to take on conventional forces in future; I am equally sure that the hard part of bringing these martial endeavours to a desirable resolution means that the bit that happens afterward will be longer and more difficult.
Wars might be more ‘hybrid’ but a vital role of any military force is to guarantee the security of its state. I don’t propose major spending on more armored vehicles or expanding the size of the army, but for the U.K I would assume that means assuring sea and air superiority much like the U.S.
What if I suggested that most wars are hybrid (even that titanic conventional clash, WW2, involved hybrid approaches stretching from nuclear weapons at one end, to extensive information operations at the other) – they’re always asymmetric too, for that matter.
And what about the idea that victory is often not ‘clean’: indeed in limited wars (that is, most wars where you don’t aspire to plow Carthage back into the sand) it is a negotiation. The aim of fighting is to hold most of the cards in the negotiation that follows – or, in fact, the fighting is part of the negotiation itself.
If you are referring to The Falklands, Kososvo, Iraq and Iraq PtII I would have to question your definition of conventional on three of them.
The Falklands can be considered a genuine conventional war but can Kosovo or Iraq I and II?
Kosovo seems an unlikely conventional war when taken into the context of the overall Balkan conflict (which was UN peace keeping) and that most of the fighting took place between semi regular militias and regular troops, did not involve any major set piece battles and saw sporadic fighting.
Iraq One was more a slaughter than a conventional war, after a prolonged air campaign which wiped out large amounts of the enemy the ground forces were sent in to mop up.
Iraq Two quickly quickly dissolved into irregular warfare with Fedayeen units and then broke down even further after the “victory” to outright insurgency.
None of the high price and highly specialized military equipment (tanks, fighter planes etc) proved to be particular useful in Kosovo or Iraq II (in part because of what Luttwak calls the ‘Procurement Paradox’) and the in Iraq I it was overkill form the start as the Iraqi threat had been made out to be greater than it actually was.
In these three cases calling them ‘conventional’ does not describe the combat or the conflicts themselves very well. In two instances they would be better described as General Rupert Smith has done as ‘war among the people’ than conventional war.
Even the Falklands while conventional was a small scale conflict which was of short duration but even then stretched British and Argentine forces to the limit in many ways (manpower, resources and capability), showing how degraded the capability to wage ‘conventional war’ had become since its peak in WWII.
Also much of the equipment being used in Iraq and Afghanistan today could be considered ‘off the shelf’ or requiring only partial modification to be serviceable in these conflicts as they are manpower intensive far more than in MBTs, Fighter jets or Naval units which could be a potential saving for the military budget if they became the priority items.
Hmmm, well what would I define as conventional. A significant element of state-on-state fighting involving regular armed forces would do it for me. All four fit the bill on that score. Serbian DCA capabilities and regular army units make that one count; Desert Storm pitted half a million men against a conventionally aspirated army that had fought conventional war for the best part of a decade; and OIF was an invasion of a state by regular forces – the fact that it was a rout of the defending regulars doesn’t change that it was conventional conflict – conceived and executed as such by the US. The Iraqis then did what any sensible adversary should – work out their comparative advantage and exploit it.
Wars frequently change their character as they unfold – the fact that overmatched opponents, if they have time and depth, can adapt and reach for partisan warfare doesn’t detract from the conventional, state on state element in these wars.
Meanwhile, on Smith – well, that’s probably worth a post of its own. But if we see war as an essentially social institution, his pithy phrase seems less profound. The strategic air campaign against Germany certainly got amongst the people in a bid to break their will.
From the political aspect I do agree with you that they are seem like conventional wars, I suppose I am looking more at the changing character of the conflicts themselves. My angle of approach is that despite the political movements behind the wars they were fought in a manner which increasingly departs from the WWII paradigm for which most military forces are configured (large scale, major technological platforms, highly industrial style warfare). This is where I think I disagree with how we see these particular conflicts.
Adaption to circumstances yes but both Iraq and Afghanistan have placed the British (and others) in circumstances for which their initial configuration is not well suited. In fact I think the point you made about the Iraqi adaption in OIF is apt, they did but the victors didnt, or have but very slowly and with some unwillingness.
The upshot of this being is that despite the conventional intent with which these things are begun their terminus (if they have them) is less and less the conventional model (outcome decided by decisive battle) and more of something which is less decisive battle and which due to its prolonged and indecisive nature then feeds back into the political and makes it more difficult to define it in conventional terms.
As for Smith a post on him would be great. I dont agree with all of what he says but I think he like a lot of others is trying to sense the changes in the character of war (not its nature).
I’d be interested to know how one goes about creating a ‘special relationship’ with India, or what is meant to be the particular gains to be made from it. It’s one of those ideas that seems to keep flying around, usually amongst people who seem to know very little about India or the complexities of SE Asian politics (although the near-genocide carried out in Sri Lanka recently in the name of COIN ought, one would have thought, to have served as some kind of a heads-up). India has plenty of problems/issues of its own, both internally and within it’s immediate neighbourhood. Myanmar remains a lovely place, Thailand looks like it’s about to swing into another season of violent internal unrest, and within India itself the Kashmir issue and Naxalite insurgency aren’t going away. What does the UK think it can bring to that equation, and why is it in our core national interests to get embedded there? It seems there’s a lot of loose thinking about ‘common language, shared history’ going on, and not a lot of thought about how radically the region has actually changed since 1948, or about how far out of the orbit of affairs there the UK has already drifted. Yes, we have forces in Afghanistan today, but they’re a temporary phenomenon, whilst as recently as the 1980s the Indian Army’s major arms supplier was the Soviet Union (just as Pakistan’s was the United States’). It’s not clear to me that the costs of trying to build up something ‘special’ (and there is a whole literature on the amorphousness of what a ‘special relationship’ means-see US-UK) will be matched by any concrete benefits, outside perhaps of more Indian students visiting British universities-which we’re getting already, and which is a good thing for the increasing financial dire straits of the UK educational sector.
I agree – I think it’s comfort food for nostalgic conservatives, and in essence reads as Empire/Commonwealth good; feckless Europe bad – perhaps with the added incentive that it’s easier to be in the driving seat with former colonials in need of paternalistic wisdom than with uppity Frenchmen who think they know best….
Cockeyed nostalgia, though, is unlikely to be the best basis for sound defence policy.
Nostalgic sure. But cock-eyed? I don’t think it is at all. In fact I think it is an idea that very much deserves to be pursued. Frankly I’m not that sure about India. Even if we had some special relationship there, which is possible, I don’t see particularly what the Indians would get out of it with a growing economy and a billion people. For Australia and Canada there’s quite a lot of mutual interest of a stronger partnership with UK and frankly not much scope for paternalism which I doubt we’d pretend or they’d tolerate. Personally I find the bargain this country made in ’73 to be pretty craven-and it’s not just me, between two thirds to three quarters of the country feels the same buyer’s remorse. so basically I applaud the tories attempting to think beyond the binary US-EU who should we love the best dichotomy. It’s past time to have shown some imagination about this. Beyond that I would say that we should be looking at Japan –a country with which we share a good bit of common interest and overlapping capability without actually directly competing. Turkey is a lynchpin with whom we would benefit from good relations. Poland too and though I doubt the British public will ever wear it so too is Israel.
Look, Canada’s just going to have to learn how to stand on its own two feet. We’re not coming to bail you out like we did in WW…. ah, ahem…
Well anyway.
I agree that we have in common with the Dominions a shared set of attitudes and values. Where we differ is in assessment of strategic priorities. The maritime, state-centric Australian White Paper is startlingly different from our own Green Paper. But still, I agree that such shared perspective as there is might be the basis for future strategic relationships, as it is for present ones. What we have in common with our fellow Europeans is more strategically compelling to me: similar values and attitudes, and – as significant – some common real estate.
The EU comes with considerable baggage, as you note – and as the Tories are acutely aware of. But I think we might just have to get over that stumbling block once the cuts to come bite home.
What common real estate, Ken? We are separate countries, right, with our own rules, borders, destinies? Ah, well, alas, no, not quite, apparently. And that for me, and for the bulk of the public if opinion polls are to be believed, not that we’ll be allowed to have a formal one, is a problem because in point of fact we don’t have similar values and attitudes particularly on defence and foreign policy but generally I suspect across the board. True, we inhabit roughly the same general area of the globe and we’re all I think civilized enough in our own ways not to need to go at each other hammer and tongs like we did twice in the last century in the near future–though this century has another 90 years left to run yet. But that doesn’t mean that priorities from Berlin’s perspective are the same as those from London’s or Madrid’s or Paris’s or Warsaw’s. And anyway, seriously, are you putting forward the EU as something that would help us reduce costs? You think we’ll get more defence bang for our Euro? I invite you to consider the salary of the EU Foreign Minister in relation to her presence on the world stage. That’s not a cheap shot. You are not going to find any cheap shots in Brussels. I think we should recognize the stumbling block for what it is: a rock; on the other side is a hard place; and between the two we are, or so the narrative goes. Bollocks. Of course there are differences between the assessment of strategic priorities but there are equally some quite important commonalities too. My opinion, here it is, the keystone in the arch:
http://www.canadiancricket.org/ Because if Canadians played cricket better this would be a done deal already.
They’re our strategic depth, David. Think of them as Afghanistan to our Pakistan – a way of offsetting the looming Irish threat…
No? Well, okay.
I think, on the whole, that British society has a similarly post-modern attitude to security as do our European compadres. Europeans from Venus and all that. Perhaps in 2003 we still thought we were from Mars, like our American ally, but I think the last decade has shown otherwise. The EU wastes money, yes. But then, we’re rather good at that ourselves, as is the home of the F-35.
And I tend to agree with Pericles, below, on Japan – still geography matters, even in a globalized, interconnected pleasuredome of a world. Especially for a moderately endowed regional power, like us.
@Ken at 21:13 (this system doesn’t seem to allow a reply to a reply of a reply).
As it happens I’m perfectly OK with the conception of them as strategic depth. It’s all pretty fantastical but if it comes to it then sure it will be nice to have the English Channel and the rest of Europe between us and whatever Toyota Horde the future may serve up. Whatever, there’s 90 years to go in Century 21.
More immediately, I abhor the postmodern attitude to which you refer and if Britons share it (a possibility which I admit but am far from convinced) then they should get over it before reality kicks it out of them. I hate this Europeans from Venus thing. It was silly when Kagan said it and its really stupid when Europeans do. As for ‘moderately endowed regional power’, well, you know, I think this is perhaps the crux of it. This has ALWAYS been an adequate description of GB, hasn’t it? And, yet, historically not the reality. Why do you think?
Your logic, it sounds like to me, is that we’re a dwarf and should wear a dwarf’s clothing. I find this irritating, friend. Snap out of it. I didn’t immigrate to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland because I wanted a little purple passport that entitles me to go through the short queue when I fly to Ibiza (or wherever) for a pissup.
I think that getting over the ‘stumbling block’ with the EU, as you put it, could only be achieved by making great Britain basically not. I think the short term gains are dubious and the long-term consequences profound. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.
What common interest does the UK have with Japan? Not trying to be awkward, just genuinely curious and to think it through. One could bring up denying North Korea nuclear missiles of course-but North Korea isn’t about to acquire such weapons any time soon, or have the range to directly attack the UK. We don’t have Hong Kong any more. We’re not about to fight a land war with China. I’d be more inclined to defer to Pat Porter and even more to the Australian Defence White Paper on this, which seems to me to be a remarkably clear-eyed and sensible document-geography remains important. ‘Globalisation’ remains at the end of the day countries trying to maintain core spheres of influence. What common threat, in terms of time and space, is going to generate a UK-Japanese ‘special relationship’?
Yeah, common interest is probably the wrong term. I do think there are common interests, notably the close but rather conflicted relationship with the United States, and there is I think a generally common interest but what I mean is more in the sense of common profile. We are both maritime trading nations with not too many domestic resources which is our key vulnerability; we both have pretensions to a global role which most medium powers do not ( I think this is a good thing) but struggle to match capabilities with desires. Take this issue of the UK aircraft carrier which we are constantly debating. Should we build it with the French? Should we operate it jointly? What kind of planes are we going to put on it? Can we afford any of them? Should we buy the ship and wait for drones to advance enough that that’s what we’d put on it? I can’t help thinking that we’d be better off working with the Japanese on the successor to the Hyuga class ‘helicopter destroyer’–a flat deck carrier with no fixed-wing aircraft (but all that you’d need to operate one when the right circumstances/need came along). After all we sold them a navy a little more than a hundred years ago and they got good use out of it. No reason it couldn’t go the other way.
Japan might not have many immediate areas of interest with the U.K, but if the U.K somehow did manage to secure them a seat at the Council (which they’ve been seeking for a long time now) it would probably create a very friendly relationship (and also irritate several other current members of the P-5). Also, Japan’s economy is still the second-largest in the world and has some of the best tech companies.
Sorry, still reading the manifesto:
The ‘Stabilisation and Reconstruction Force’ looks like another interesting fantasy.
Formerly Grant
When I said we should stop buying military equipment I was………………..joking. Which is why I also said that the MOD and military should play no part in procurement, which is a bit odd if you think about it.
Anyway, never mind all that. What North Oxford wants to know is what the Lib Dems have in their manifesto – come on Rob!
@ David 22:10
You’re making me giggle. Bomber Harris (who I’ve been reading today, for my sins) wrote that the British tendency to underestimate their martial prowess drove him nuts. My paraphrase doesn’t do justice to his righteous indignation. Anyway, I’d rather that than the reverse tendency: it’s properly British.
That said, we’ve a lot to be proud of, and we will have a lot to be proud of in future, I’m sure. I guess it all depends what one means by postmodern – I don’t mean it as a shorthand for cultivating expertise in yoghurt weaving workshops. Europe, particularly but not exclusively the UK, still spends a shed-load on defence, still innovates, and can still project power. Pretty well any country would come off very badly in a conventional fight with European states.
Collectively, then, Europe comes second only to the US. Alas, collective, we are not – a shame, given our common Enlightenment heritage, but perhaps inevitable given our common Romantic heritage.
If anything. I mean to suggest by postmodern that we have a rounded conception of power as being about more than material capabilities. We also, it’s true, have an increasingly liberal attitude to war – we don’t seem desperate to serve, and we don’t want to kill. Can’t put it better than Christopher Coker does in Humane War and War in an Age of Risk.
For good and ill, that to me sums up British and European society pretty well – and railing against it won’t turn us back into High Victorian Imperialists.
PS – I’d add that I see the one of the biggest threats to Europe as still being Europe itself: which is why I’m jolly glad we’re all good postmodernists. Long may it continue, my fellow Venusian.
‘I mean to suggest by postmodern that we have a rounded conception of power as being about more than material capabilities.’
a) who doesn’t think this? and, b) can those who think that power can be based PRIMARILY upon something other than material capability please read a history book? If there was such a thing as a moral superpower then Mahatma Gandhi would have headed it 60 years ago. Didn’t happen. Ever heard of the ‘Infinite Turtle’ theory? I’ll never be as famous as Hawking but my variant on his thesis is that its scoundrels all the way down as far as history is concerned.
Our reading habits seem somewhat in alignment. I just finished reading Warren Kozak’s biography of Curtis Le May. He comes across as a more sympathetic figure than I had expected.
Who doesn’t think this? Well, on a spectrum, I’d put the Mahatma at one end, and Arthur Harris at the other, with me somewhere in between. And pretty high up on my list of who doesn’t believe this would be William Westmoreland, Tommy Franks, and the crafters of FM 3-0 from 2001, who thought that ‘the ability of Army forces to dominate land warfare also provides the ability to dominate any situation in military operations other than war’. That’s a pretty naive understanding of power, wouldn’t you say? Definitely not from Venus.
How would you test the Kagan hypothesis ? Number of negative Guardian editorials per month ?
Defence spending as a proportion of GDP would be a useful start. I don’t mean to pin my colours to Kagan’s mast – his was a pithy caricature with a kernel of truth to it in March 2003, not a timeless truth. Moreover, not every American general is Tommy Franks. Robert Cooper’s companion-piece to Kagan was a better book, for my money – and Paul Berman’s Power and the Idealists is a more sophisticated treatment of the European conception of security.
I have been lazy and not read any of them yet, but can I ask whether there was much in there about counter-terrorism questions, PREVENT, etc?
Not about PREVENT per se, but a reasonable amount about homeland security, and variously how development aid, and foreign policy would stabilise ‘dangerous areas’ abroad.
I agree about spending but I was wondering about something like a more detailed version of a social attutudes survey, maybe even a focus group of some kind . I know it’s dodgy social science but it might be interesting to see a members of the public taken through various scenarios by a military version of Frank Luntz.
We have had a go at analysing the three manifestos
http://www.thinkdefence.co.uk/tag/election-2010/
http://www.thinkdefence.co.uk/tag/labour-party/
http://www.thinkdefence.co.uk/tag/conservative/
http://www.thinkdefence.co.uk/tag/liberal-democrats/
I am not massively impressed with any of them