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GS (UK/US)
9: Written evidence from Professor Malcolm Chalmers,
Royal
United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies (RUSI)[1]
Defence and
British Influence
1. The purpose of this note is to offer some
thoughts on the UK/US military relationship, together with pointers towards
areas in which policy might be developed.
2. The relationship with the US will remain central to UK foreign policy for the
foreseeable future. As the world's largest economy, and its largest military
power by a significant margin, the US's support is critical for the
achievement of the UK Government's main international objectives. In most areas
of policy, most of the time, the UK and US hold similar positions.
But they do not always do so. The two countries will continue to take divergent
approaches on some issues, whether because of fundamental differences in
national interests and priorities, because of the constraints that national
resources or constitutions place on their ability to act, or simply because of
differences in political judgements.
3. The defence relationship between the UK and the US is a central part of this wider
relationship, and has its own particular features. Despite the withdrawal from
Empire, the UK
has continued to give a significantly higher priority to defence spending than
its NATO European allies. This additional investment is commonly justified by
the closer relationship with the US
that, it is argued, the UK
gets in return.
4. One of the key distinguishing features of the
UK's
contemporary defence policy is that its military capabilities - and indeed those
of most NATO member states - are now primarily designed to be used as
contributions to collective operations, rather than in defence of uniquely
national interests. Thus, for most of the
more challenging types of operations, the UK
only envisages committing its armed forces to operations if the US is
also doing so. For example, despite claims that the operations in Afghanistan and Iraq
over the last decade were vital to the UK's
national interests, there was never any question of it being involved in these
operations without US
military commitment. Nor, despite the government's insistence on the threat
that a Taliban-led Afghanistan
would pose to the UK, is
there now any realistic possibility that the UK
would retain its armed forces in that country were the US to leave.
5. The Government's commitment to maintaining a
position as the US's leading
ally (previously in Iraq,
and now in Afghanistan)
has been a driving force in recent decisions to commit forces to major
operations. It has also been a key driver in debates on how geographical
responsibilities in theatres of operations have been shared, and on the extent
to which the UK
armed forces have been given operational autonomy over their area of responsibility.
Each of the UK's armed services have sought to maintain a high level of
inter-operability, as well as something close to qualitative parity, with their
US counterparts, a goal made all the more difficult by rapid technological
change. None of this is cheap. As the time for a new UK Defence Review
approaches, there is bound to be renewed scrutiny of whether the UK is getting an adequate return (in terms of
influence on the US)
in return for its defence efforts, and what this means for future defence
priorities.
6. The UK remains one of the world's
leading middle powers on a range of comparative measures, including GDP,
development aid spending, and military capability. The diplomatic clout from
its permanent seat on the UNSC should not be underestimated; and it has an
important role (comparable to those of France,
Germany or Japan) in shaping international
policy across a wide range of issue areas, from financial reform to climate
change to non-proliferation. It needs to
be realistic about the extent to which it can shape US
defence policy, given a defence budget that is only a ninth of that of the US.
Yet the single superpower does attach political value to having allies,
especially when (like the UK)
they can bring some significant military and diplomatic capacity to the table.
7. In the light of recent experience in Iraq and Afghanistan,
together with the forthcoming Defence Review, there is a strong case for a
thorough review of how the UK
can maximise the national political and security benefits that it obtains from
its defence investments. There is still
a common tendency to articulate the need for the UK to spend more on defence in
terms of national honour and a generic need to maintain a strong role in the
world. This is often underpinned by an assumption that the UK must accept the burden imposed
by the altruistic and internationalist nature of its foreign policy, which (it
is argued) contrasts with the more self-interested policies of other major
powers. Considerations of honour and responsibility indeed do have a place in
foreign policy. Yet there is a danger that, if not anchored in a clear calculus
of national benefits and interests, these sentiments can lead to policy
approaches of doubtful utility and unacceptable costs.
8. Although public support for the armed forces
appears stronger than ever, levels of public support for the operations that
they are being asked to conduct (in Iraq
and now Afghanistan)
have fallen to worryingly low levels. If
that support is to be rebuilt, the Government will need to do more to
reconstruct a clear linkage between UK national interests and the deployment of
its armed forces on what are widely seen to be US-led 'wars of choice'.
9. So how should the UK shape its approach to
US-led interventions so as to more clearly pursue its own interests, while
accepting that those interests are normally still best pursued in an alliance
setting?
10. First, where particular UK interests are at stake (e.g. terrorist
threats to the UK from Pakistan),
it should use the influence that it acquires through its military contributions
to argue for US and alliance support for those interests.
11. Second, it should recognise that the point at
which it can exert the greatest influence on the US (or other allies contemplating
military action) is either when decisions to take military action are about to
be taken, or when commitments to provide forces (or reinforcements) are being
made. If the UK
has reservations about how military operations may be conducted, or whether
they should be conducted at all, it needs to be willing to link its commitments
to a satisfactory resolution of its concerns. Sometimes, it needs to be willing
to say no.
12. Third, it should recognise that, when the US is
fully engaged and determined to take military action, the views of allies are unlikely
to count for much in its decision-making calculus. This was probably the case
in Iraq
in 2002-2003. By contrast, the UK
is more likely to have some influence in situations where the US, for whatever reason, is less
willing to commit itself wholeheartedly to an operation. For example, when the UK was the leading ISAF power on the ground in Helmand in 2006-2008, it had a commensurate share in
shaping policy in that province. Once the US
began to deploy large forces to the province in 2009, however, the UK's ability to set the ISAF agenda in Helmand,
and indeed in southern Afghanistan
as a whole, began to decline. One lesson from this is that the UK can often be more influential if it pursues
an approach that is complementary to that of the US, rather than simply mirroring
whatever current US priorities might be.
13. Other recent examples of the benefits of a
'complementary' defence posture (as distinct from a 'supplementary' one) were
(a) the UK's national intervention in Sierra Leone, when no other NATO member
state would have been willing to take on such a commitment; (b) the UK's
championing of the possible use of ground forces in Kosovo in 1999, at a time
when President Clinton was reluctant to do so. In both cases, it was the UK's
willingness to take a lead in military action, or to plan for unilateral action,
that was the key to its ability to help shape the strategic environment.
14. Finally, the government should focus defence
investment in areas of national comparative advantage, where the gap in
capabilities between the UK
and US is less than that in overall military capability, and where a second
centre of operational capability can accordingly bring greater influence.
Capabilities in which the UK
still claims to be relatively well-placed include special forces and
intelligence services. Some might add a governmental aid machinery that is
(compared with USAID) relatively well-geared to working directly with local
governments. Comparative advantages can
often vanish remarkably quickly, given the US's ability to innovate and its
massively greater resources. With the recent surge of doctrinal innovation in
the US military, for
example, the UK has now largely
lost the comparative advantage in counter-insurgency that it had developed in Northern Ireland.
In the coming period of defence austerity, it will be particularly important to
be able to prioritise those areas where comparative advantage can be sustained,
where necessary at the expense of those areas where this is not feasible.
25 September 2009
[1] Malcolm Chalmers is
Professorial Fellow in British Security Policy at the Royal United Services
Institute for Defence and Security Studies (RUSI). He is also Visiting
Professor in Defence and Security Policy at Kings College London. He is a
member of the Defence Secretary's Defence Advisory Forum. This paper develops
some ideas that were discussed in Malcolm Chalmers, 'A Force for Influence?
Making British Defence Effective', RUSI
Journal, 153, 6, December 2008, pp. 20-27.
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