The integrated review wasn’t integrated

By Pete North - March 23, 2021

The media will concern itself more with the cuts to the armed forces. The Times says “Cuts leave armed forces ‘too small to be credible’”. I don’t think that’s at all true. Of the two largest geopolitical threats, forces running at two and three times the size are going to be inadequate even working with our allies.

Though size is a factor, what counts is how effectively we can raise a larger army from reserves and whether we have the necessary logistics and training. Arguably by creating a multidisciplinary force our standing army can then become the pool for leadership and training of new recruits in the event of war, much like we did in WW2.

If anything leaves us lacking credibility, it is the lack of coherence. We know we have to have a defence capability but we have to be geared for overseas operations and we have to know what we are doing and why.

In the good old days we knew who the enemy was, where the battles would be fought and what the material threat would be. Defence planning was easier then. You built up a force capable of stopping the bad guy, you maintained it and trained for the unthinkable. But we’re not in that world anymore.

If, for example, Russia was to set about reclaiming the Soviet Union, it would do so over the long term, one incursion at a time, much like it did with Ukraine, banking on the inability and unwillingness of NATO and the EU to lift a solitary finger. If that’s how it’s going to be (highly unlikely), it’s more Germany’s problem and the EU’s diplomatic problem. Rehashing the cold war makes no sense.

But since we don’t have a clearly defined enemy we instead have a vague military blob designed to shape itself accordingly as the threats emerge. There is, therefore, no specialisation and the organisation of the forces reflects that incoherence. If you want coherent forces, they need a coherent mission. We need to ask and answer the question of what their overseas function is.

One thing our forces are not good at is pivoting their attentions. In 1982 our entire military machine was geared to war in Europe. It was not prepared for the Falklands and for all our massive military capabilities, the entire campaing rested on a handful of Harriers and a fleet cobbled together in a hurry – without airborne early warning and without adequate air defence. Though that war was won, it came at the cost of several ships. Argentine gave the Royal Navy a bloody nose and to this day it’s a national embarrassment.

Since then, it had become the benchmark of national capability. Could we do it again if we needed to? Could we, at scale, mount an urgent amphibious operation? The Falklands has left a scar on the national defence psyche. There is no doubt now that a fully operational QE carrier with all the toys could make very short work of re-taking the Falklands, but it would never be necessary to do so so long as we maintain a minimum military presence.

Having allowed ourselves to be influenced by our Falklands neurosis, we’re now just about capable of meeting the benchmark (perhaps lacking amphibious assault capacity) while also being able to “project power” (for what that’s worth), but not actually capable of doing much else.

The forthcoming reorganisation of the Army in part feeds into this neurosis by making it a high mobility elite force deployable at short notice, for short term operations, and in most cases, relatively safe operating conditions. What we don’t have is the capability to use our armed forces as an arm of our overseas policy long term.

Insofar as we have a foreign policy, it is notionally summed up as “global Britain”, whereupon one might imagine we’d want to invest for trade. That then points to secondary missions such as peacekeeping, also with a view to preventing mass displacement (being that immigration control is a function of national defence) – which therefore suggests establishing a long term presence, where the amphibious assault capability is not especially required. It’s nice to have, but not likely to be used. We’re no longer in the business of storming beaches.

If the foreign policy is therefore to stabilise and improve, our forces have to work in conjunction with aid and development, which the UK is presently rowing back on. Global Britain is all talk. Thus, without a commitment to a foreign policy and a national mission, our defence planning is left to prepare for all eventualities and plan for vague hypotheticals which it could never usefully influence the outcome of anyway.

The consequence of this is a military estate with a diverse array of toys in insufficient numbers, from which generals will have to forage an operational force when or if they decide they have to do something. It then lacks the structure, training and discipline and inevitably fails.

As we demonstrated in Iraq and Afghanistan, we can’t rely on dual-use forces to switch from conventional near-peer to counter insurgency at a drop of a hat. A conventional, mobile force requires a lot of training to fight effectively as an integrated all-arms unit, and the demands of COIN/small wars disrupts the training programme. We end up with forces which are not much good at anything.

We therefore have to make a political choice. We have to optimise for a foreign policy or resign ourselves to a force for home defence and not much else. The latter is a respectable choice being that it’s fine for other midranking European economies, channelling their broader defence through NATO, but if Britain wants to remain an influential global player then we have to find an overseas purpose.

For a time with Iraq and Afghanistan we had such a purpose. The only problem is, our forces weren’t equipped, trained or optimised for it, we weren’t very good at at, and the worse we did, the more unpopular those wars were. But arguably, has we restructured specifically for COIN, abandoning fanciful amphibious capabilities and conventional battle orders, we might still be there and actually getting somewhere with it.

In the case of Africa, there are several areas where effective counter insurgency operations could help stabilise emerging economies, preventing mass internal displacements and subsequent famines, and having such a presence, in conjunction with an aid and development policy, could contribute to our trade growth ambitions.

Essentially, if Britain had a credible vision and a foreign policy to speak of, the order of battle would largely suggest itself and we could organise our forces accordingly. For as long as we remain without a mission, our forces will remain an incoherent military blob we throw vast sums of money at for indeterminate returns.

As I’ve argued elsewhere, Britain’s defence malaise is merely symptomatic of a nation that has largely lost its self-confidence, lacks leadership and no longer sees itself as a force for good in the world. Our two failed wars have done a lot of damage to the national morale – which is in part a consequence of a refusal to gear our forces to the long term mission. Generals didn’t want to give up their high tech expensive toys for MRAPS and trucks – and it cost us in lives and credibility.

In essence, the disarray in military procurement is a consequence of a failure to commit to a long term international strategy. We instead keep it value to keep our options open – but that means accomplishing nothing and being unable to affect anythign when it matters. Until the nation rediscovers its sense of purpose, we can’t expect any better from our armed forces.