Defence: the presumption of war

By Richard North - April 26, 2024

With the opportunity to question strategic defence assumptions having been missed by the MP collective in the Commons – not that it would have made much difference given the low quality of the denizens – we are left with an increasingly unchallenged narrative that the nation is on the countdown to war.

If, within the coming decade – or even in the next couple of years – the martial drumbeat becomes irresistible and the government of the day actually puts the nation on a war footing, historians might want to look to this current period for clues as to when the rot started.

To judge from the media headlines since Sunak’s spending announcement on Tuesday, those historians might even judge this week to have been the turning point, when the idea of mass slaughter through state-to-state conflict suddenly became, if not fashionable, an acceptable subject for discussion.

For the moment, though, the domain seems to be largely populated by defence specialists, high-ranking military, defence contractors and the like, plus those politicians who are directly responsible for defence matters – which includes a number of heads of state and governments.

In the field of nerdery, we have commentators such as Tom Sharpe, a former Royal Navy officer and one-time frigate captain and air warfare specialist, writing in the Telegraph under the headline: “Britain is getting ready for war. It’s time to cram our ships with American weapons”.

It is the first part of the headline that jars: “Britain is getting ready for war”, even though one is fully conscious of the aphorism, “Si vis pacem, para bellum”.

Despite the obvious sense of this expression, adapted from the writings of Roman author, Publius Flavus, there is a certain comfort to be had in maintaining defence forces which are so small and lightly equipped that it is not physically possible for our politicians to drag us into any passing war that takes their fancy.

On the other hand, if there is a truly belligerent power out there, which is intent on attacking us or our closest allies upon whom we depend, then the thought of being unprepared invites comparisons with the fielding of the 1939 British Expeditionary Force (BEF), with consequences that hardly bear thinking of.

It is a matter of common sense, therefore – one might think – that we should be prepared for war, although there are two complicating factors which make that idea rather more difficult than might be imagined.

The first of these complications is the most obvious one, the question of who we are proposing to go to war with – bearing in mind that an aggressor might make that choice for us.

Currently on the shortlist are three countries, Russian, China and Iran – not necessarily in that order. Sadly, there is no intention to bomb Paris, although it may come down to that if the treacherous Frogs don’t sort out the invasion of the dinghy sailors.

The second of these complications are the joint question questions of how and where we might fight our putative enemies, the resolution of those questions largely determining the size and nature of the forces we need to deploy.

Obviously, if we intend to join in a grand continental alliance, fighting off the Russian hoards as they come swarming over the borders of Latvia, Lithuania and even Poland, then the order of battle will be very different to that which we would need should we take a more passive stance, and decide to fight the enemy in Churchillian style, “on the beaches”, should it decide to invade us.

Basically here, this would amount to maintaining a strong and effective navy, defence air systems, including fighters and missiles, and a garrison army which would major on fixed defences rather than a high level of operational mobility.

Bluntly, though, it is hard to imagine any circumstances when our troops, peering out of their bunkers one morning, would see a Russian invasion fleet lined up on the horizon, so the presumption tends towards equipping a Cold War-style BAOR army, ready to be engaged in battles of mass manoeuvre on the continent.

The trouble with that presumption, though, is that the experience and technological developments of the Ukraine war probably make this traditional type of warfare obsolete, even if that is not fully recognised by the growing cohorts of military “experts”.

There is a real danger, therefore, that we fall into the predictable trap of planning for the last war, only to find that once our forces meet a real enemy, they are outclassed and unable to cope.

And while it is certainly true that Ukraine gives some clues as to the shape of future warfare, there is no firm idea – and certainly no consensus – as to what a battlefield might look like in a few years’ time. With the best will in the world, we might end up equipping ourselves for the wrong kind of war – to great expense and no particular advantage.

On the other hand, if we are to listen to Belarus president Lukashenko, as reported in The Times, we may be dealing with a nuclear stand-off as tensions increase, with the real possibility of a nuclear apocalypse.

If that is the most likely prospect, then one could argue that expenditure on conventional forces, beyond a basic minimum, might be a waste of money. We should, in such circumstances, be ensuring that our fleet of ballistic missile submarines is fully operational and capable of firing missiles that actually work.

There are those of course, such as president Biden, who seem to believe that spraying defence dollars around the world in a somewhat indiscriminate fashion, “will make the world safer”.

This, though, does not allow for the view that tighter control over the supply of weaponry, with a greater accent on securing a cessation of hostilities – especially in Ukraine – might be a better option. As it stands, a flow of weapons which is insufficient in quantity and quality to force a resolution might serve only to prolong the fighting and reinforce global instability.

For all that, despite the notable increase in warmongering, Con Coughlin in the Telegraph raises the thorny issue of manpower shortages. Not only have there been drastic cutbacks in personnel establishments, though, there are serious shortfalls in recruitment.

Some of that may be related to incompetence in the recruitment process, with the latest report warning us of another crisis, where less than 12 percent of applicants to join reserves have recruited, with 800,000 having voluntarily withdrawn their applications in the past decade, after processing delays in the contracted-out service.

Yet these data may conceal a more fundamental problem, revealed in a YouGov survey which told us that large numbers of conscription-age Britons would refuse to serve, if called up – even if the UK were under imminent threat of invasion.

The most common reason given for the unwillingness to fight was the perception that the beneficiaries would only be the rich and powerful – who were seen as profiteers or otherwise unfairly able to avoid the consequences of conflict themselves.

Historians of the WWII period will know that that was a significant factor in that war, where a generation who had experienced the carnage of WWI were embittered by what they saw as the profiteering of the armaments manufactures.

There is a hint of this dynamic in another Telegraph piece which has a group or arms manufacturers arguing that buying foreign defence equipment will put our national security at risk, as they call for Sunak’s extra funds to be spent in the UK.

Again, there is some sense in this, but it doesn’t help the perception that war is a money-making racket which benefits only the corporates, while it is the ordinary pleb who has to go out and die.

But there is also a feeling abroad in certain quarters that Britain, overwhelmed with mass immigration, is no longer a country worth fighting for, especially as some immigrant communities are perceived as reluctant to pull their weight.

On that basis, much of the bellicose talk or preparing for war may be missing the point. Since WWII, we have progressively cultivated an anti-militaristic culture where, if the politicians issued a call to arms, they would be ignored.

Without that national commitment, Sunak and his successors might find that arming Britain is a waste of time, if we end up all dressed up with no-one prepared to use the “toys”.

This presumption, therefore, that we are gearing up for war needs to be challenged. The case has not been made for our direct involvement in another conflict and the politicians are on dangerous ground if they assume they have the backing of the nation for another foreign adventure.