Boris Johnson’s plans for the Integrated Review, outlined in February, included an “all aspects” consideration of “the global opportunities and challenges the UK faces” to determine “how the whole of government can be structured, equipped and mobilised to meet them”. This was confirmed more recently in a Cabinet Office call for evidence. However, decision time for Integrated Review is fast approaching, and it is becoming clear that it may not have been the comprehensive examination of foreign policy, defence, security and international development it was promised to be.
Lessons from previous Defence Reviews
All defence reviews claim to have considered the totality of defence, and more recently, defence and security, policy. However, the reality is a little different. As @onUKDefence has previously discussed, the main pillars of UK defence policy – the nuclear deterrent, membership of NATO, and the close relationship with the US – have remained stubbornly unchanged under both Conservative and Labour governments for the last seventy years.
As the first truly comprehensive consideration of defence policy after the end of the Cold War, the 1998 Strategic Defence Review (SDR) had the best opportunity to be radical. But it too did not start with a clean sheet of paper. As Colin McInnes, a former special advisor to the House of Commons Defence Committee, confirmed, certain assumptions were made that went unchallenged. Specifically, he argued the SDR presupposed that Britain would continue to play a leading role in the world and its military forces would be an important element in this position; NATO would continue to be the alliance of choice and the foundation of European security; Britain would retain strong conventional forces; and Trident would be retained.
Moreover, at a military capability level, there is ample evidence that political input constrains decisions about how future force structures are developed, especially in more recent reviews. For example, the Eurofighter Typhoon programme was effectively ring-fenced in the 1998 SDR and any consideration of a significant reduction in the size of the army was kyboshed by the coalition government before the 2010 SDSR had even started.
Integrated Review’s Sacred Cows
Peter Roberts, Director of Military Science at RUSI, recognised that challenging entrenched thinking and slaughtering ‘sacred cows’ in defence and security reviews is easier said than done. The recent furore over whether or not the British Army still needs heavy armour is an excellent example, with Secretary of State for Defence Ben Wallace (Conservative MP for Wyre and Preston North) being forced to quash speculation that all Challenger II tanks will be mothballed, by saying “the idea that tanks won’t be there for the Army, upgraded and modernised, is wrong”.
But at least it appears that a debate about heavy armour has been had. Elsewhere, even though it’s almost decision time for the Integrated Review, some key policy issues have not and will not be examined. The most obvious example is the nuclear deterrent. Notwithstanding @onUKDefence’s suggestion that it may be time to at least think the unthinkable, there’s been no overt debating the government’s commitment to the Dreadnought programme.
Another significant policy area that seems to have escaped scrutiny is the pursuance of ‘Global Britain’, which, although as a concept remains considerably opaque, is still the government’s foreign policy headmark and prosperity agenda touchstone. Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab (Conservative MP for Esher and Walton) continues regularly to define the UK as a ‘force for good in the world’, a phrase first coined by the Labour Defence Secretary George Robertson in his extollation of the 1998 SDR. A more concrete example of the government’s commitment to a world role was the Defence Secretary’s recent announcement of a further £23.8 million investment in the UK’s logistics hub at Duqm port, which will triple the size of the existing base and help facilitate naval deployments to the Indian Ocean.
Conclusion
As decision time for the Integrated Review heaves into view, there is growing evidence that it may not be the all-encompassing consideration of foreign policy, defence, security and international development that many were expecting. This should not be a surprise. The government must be thinking there’s enough to worry about without rocking its own boat over commitments signed up to in a general election manifesto less than a year ago. Over the years, many of the main pillars of the UK’s defence and security policy have effectively become sleeping dogs; the easy thing for the government to do in the Integrated Review is let them lie.
