Written evidence from the Oxford Research
Group
1.0 SUMMARY:
1.1 The Strategic Defence and Security Review
(SDSR) provides a very important avenue for building on the sentiments
expressed in a number of important government defence documents
in recent years that are beginning to recognise the urgent need
to move away from old ways of thinking about security and towards
a more holistic and preventive approach that is aimed not at reacting
to the symptoms of global insecurity but instead at addressing
their root causes.
1.2 The last SDR, twelve years ago, did not anticipate
the rise in importance of asymmetric threats and hybrid warfare
(a combination of traditional warfare mixed with terrorism and
insurgency) for UK defence policy. It also failed to take the
opportunity to take stock of the failure of the current security
paradigm to address current threats primarily through the use
of military force nor the growing dangers posed by what might
be described as "non-traditional" sources of threat
to the UK's national security.
1.3 As the global security environment continues
to be characterised by an ever increasing level of complexity,
it is more important than ever that the decisions made in relation
to procurement, personnel and force structure are designed to
meet future threats and are aligned with the UK's long-term foreign
policy goals. This means that the no matter how pressing the short-term
financial crises are, long-term defence and security policies
should not be set without a comprehensive analysis of the threats
that the UK is most likely to face over the coming years and what
sort of civilian and armed forces we will need to address not
just the symptoms but the root causes of these threats.
1.4 Such an approach would prioritise addressing
the underlying drivers of insecurity and conflict, which, while
being largely global in nature, directly threaten the UK's national
interests. Oxford Research Group identifies these drivers as climate
change, increasing competition for resources, a dangerously widening
gap between the rich "minority world" and the poor and
marginalised "majority world", and the ever increasing
spread of deadly technology.
1.5 Given the scale of the threats that are being
driven by the interconnected trends of environmental stresses,
population growth and a growing gap between the rich Global North
and marginalised Global South, recalibrating British defence policy
has become a central challenge for this government. This means
striking the right balance in the SDSR between bringing the defence
budget under control in the short-term and preparing for a new
and complex global security environment.
1.6 The comprehensive spending review currently
underway should be treated as a linked but ultimately limited
process and should be led by (not lead) UK defence strategy. This
means that no major procurement project should be "given
a green light" until the National Security Strategy is agreed
and released into the public domain. Procurement decisions must
follow from a clear defence and security strategy not the other
way around.
1.7 There are a number of options open to the
government in relation to the decision on Trident that have been
set out very clearly in a number of recent research papers. These
options should be debated openly and—despite the fact that
the decision has been officially excluded from the SDSR—some
indication of the strategic rationale behind the decision should
be included in the defence white paper and National Security Strategy.
Importantly, the defence decision on Trident must be closely aligned
with the foreign policy goals in relation to nuclear disarmament
and non-proliferation.
2.0 INTRODUCTION:
2.1 Oxford Research Group welcomes the timely
Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR) initiated by the
current government. Oxford Research Group is an independent London-based
non-party organisation and think tank, which seeks to bring about
positive change on issues of national and international security.
2.2 While Oxford Research Group does not argue
against the maintenance of defence forces per se, it places much
more emphasis on long-term conflict-prevention. It argues that
the more substantive problems that will be faced in the coming
decades stem from a dangerous combination of severe environmental
constraints, especially climate change and energy shortages, and
an increasingly divided world community in which the benefits
of globalised economic growth have been excessively concentrated
in about one-fifth of the global population. In such circumstances
there is the very strong risk of societal breakdown as well as
desperate responses from within the majority of the world's people
who are marginalised and will be under increasing environmental
constraints. There is the further risk that the main emphasis
for security policies will be on suppressing such actions and
maintaining the status quo, rather than responding to the underlying
drivers of insecurity.
2.3 The SDSR provides a very important avenue
for building on the sentiments expressed in a number of important
government defence documents in recent years that are beginning
to recognise the urgent need to move away from old ways of thinking
about security and towards a more holistic and preventive approach
that is aimed not at reacting to the symptoms of global insecurity
but instead at addressing their root causes. This approach has
come to be known as a "sustainable security" approach.
3.0 THE MOVE
FROM THE
1998 SDR TO THE
2010 SDSR: FROM CHICAGO
TO KABUL
3.1 Twelve years can be a long time in international
politics. It has certainly been a long time between strategic
defence reviews for Britain. In order to shift UK defence and
security policy on to a path where more efforts are put into prevention
rather than reaction, Oxford Research Group supports the idea
of a regular defence review (similar to that of the Quadrennial
Defense Review in the United States) as outlined in the Conservative
Party's Armed Forces Manifesto.[53]
3.2 Any major review of government policy is
a product of its time. The last review shortly preceded Prime
Minister Blair's major speech on what he termed the "Doctrine
of the International community" at the Economic Club in Chicago.[54]
The general picture was one in which UK forces would need to be
equipped for rapid expeditionary deployment. The emphasis was
on intervening abroad to save populations from genocide and mass
atrocities. Since the 1998 SDR, Britain has sent forces to the
Balkans, Sierra Leone, East Timor, Afghanistan and Iraq.
3.3 Yet for all the discussion around humanitarian
intervention and expeditionary forces, the UK security and defence
agenda since 2001 has been dominated by two major conflicts—Afghanistan
and Iraq—neither of which were fought primarily for humanitarian
reasons but instead, as leaders of both the former and current
government have put it, fought to secure Britain's "national
interest."
3.4 The 1998 SDR clearly did not anticipate the
rise in importance of asymmetric threats and hybrid warfare (a
combination of traditional warfare mixed with terrorism and insurgency)
for UK defence policy—hence the "New Chapter"
added to the SDR document in 2002. Yet the last defence review
also failed to take the opportunity to take stock of the failure
of the current security paradigm to address current threats primarily
through the use of military force nor the growing dangers posed
by what might be described as "non-traditional" sources
of threat to the UK's national security.
3.5 In the last two years of the Labour government,
some signs were evident of new thinking in UK defence policy.
The first was the National Security Strategy of March 2008, and
more recently, the Defence Green Paper[55]
published earlier this year. Following the Green Paper, the Conservative
Party, then in opposition, published its own national security
Green Paper, A Resilient Nation.
[56]
3.6 While the National Security Strategy of 2008
was published in an environment in which the war on terror, Iraq
and Afghanistan were hugely prominent, it did seek to look well
beyond the immediate circumstances:
3.7 The Cold War threat has been replaced by
a diverse but interconnected set of threats and risks, which affect
the United Kingdom directly and also have the potential to undermine
wider international stability. They include international terrorism,
weapons of mass destruction, conflicts and failed states, pandemics
and transnational crime. These and other threats and risks are
driven by a diverse and interconnected set of underlying factors,
including climate change, competition for energy, poverty and
poor governance, demographic change and globalisation.[57]
3.8 This wider approach with its recognition
of the underlying trends of climate change, marginalisation and
energy insecurity, also comes through to a more limited extent
in the both the Green Papers released earlier this year. This
development follows the experience of the last nine years of the
UK being the major partner of the US in the conflicts in Afghanistan
and Iraq as well as the wider "war on terror."
4.0 THE BRITISH
EXPERIENCE IN
AFGHANISTAN AND
IRAQ AND
THE GLOBAL
"WAR ON
TERROR"
4.1 The impact of the 9/11 attacks was grievous,
much worse than the attack on Pearl Harbour in 1941, and it is
not surprising that the Bush administration responded with the
termination of the Taliban regime and an operation to destroy
the al-Qaida movement in Afghanistan. More controversially the
"war on terror" against al-Qaida and its associates
rapidly developed into a more general confrontation with an "axis
of evil", commencing with the termination of the Saddam Hussein
regime in Iraq in early 2003. The UK was the closest ally of the
United States in both endeavours.
4.2 The expectation in the Bush administration
was that Afghanistan would make a rapid transition to a peaceful
pro-western state with good development prospects aided by long-term
coalition military support to ensure stability. Regime termination
in Iraq would be even more significant as the post-Saddam Hussein
state would develop as a model free-market liberal democracy based
on the privatisation of state assets, economic development rooted
in oil wealth and a financial sector with a minimum of regulation.
4.3 Instead, Afghanistan has evolved into a bitter
long-term insurgency which is shortly entering its tenth year
and has involved a massive increase in foreign forces, now numbering
140,000 in the context of increasing rather than decreasing violence.
In Iraq the country has still not achieved stability more than
seven years after regime termination and the costs of the war
have included over 100,000 civilians killed, far greater numbers
seriously injured, and four million people displaced including
around two million who have sought refuge in other countries.[58]
4.4 Although the al-Qaida movement is relatively
less active across the world, there are persistent concerns about
the potential for increased Islamist paramilitary action in Yemen,
Somalia and parts of North Africa, with even greater concerns
about internal security in Pakistan. The Chilcot Inquiry may throw
light on the decision-making process in Iraq, and this Committee
is separately enquiring into the war in Afghanistan. What one
can say at this stage is that the response to 9/11, however understandable,
has had hugely unexpected consequences and has dominated thinking
on international security in a manner that makes it less easy
to address broader global security trends.
5.0 REMIT OF
THE SDSR: IS
THE SDSR FOCUSING
ON THE
RIGHT ISSUES
IN THE
RIGHT ORDER?
5.1 The Conservative Party's National Security
Green paper, released earlier this year, rightly stated that,
5.2 The Strategic Defence and Security Review
will need to be forward-looking and face up to some very tough
decisions that have been put off for too long. Equipment programmes
cannot be based on wish-lists or the fantasy world of what we
would like to do if resources were unlimited.
5.3 ...It must meet the challenges of a turbulent
international context and help to reduce our vulnerability at
home to threats and hazards. That means calibrating our role and
our capabilities to the sort of conflicts which are most likely
to arise in the next twenty years not the last twenty.[59]
5.4 Given the changed global economic circumstances
since the last defence review, it is quite clear that one of the
most pressing tasks for the SDSR is to outline a concrete strategy
for reigning in the costs of individual procurement programmes.
Among current programmes that have hugely overrun their original
estimates, the most extreme is the replacement of the Nimrod MR2
maritime patrol and surveillance aircraft with the Nimrod MRA4.
This was due to be deployed in 2003, was subject to innumerable
delays and cost increases and will not now enter service until
2012.
5.5 Yet while this financial imperative must
remain in sharp focus, if the goal expressed in the quote above
is to be met, the SDSR will need to be more than just a reactive
cost-saving exercise. As the global security environment continues
to be characterised by an ever increasing level of complexity,
it is more important than ever that the decisions made in relation
to procurement, personnel and force structure are designed to
meet future threats and are aligned with the UK's long-term foreign
policy goals. This means that the no matter how pressing the short-term
financial crises are, long-term defence and security policies
should not be set without a comprehensive analysis of the threats
that the UK is most likely to face over the coming years and what
sort of civilian and armed forces we will need to address not
just the symptoms but the root causes of these threats.
5.6 The comprehensive spending review currently
underway should be treated as a linked but ultimately limited
process and should be led by (not lead) UK defence strategy. This
means that no major procurement project should be "given
a green light" until the National Security Strategy is agreed
and released into the public domain. Given the major constraints
which large-scale programmes such as the two new aircraft carriers
and the planned replacement of the Trident nuclear-armed submarines
put on an already stretched defence budget, ring-fencing any such
programme, to put it simply, puts the cart before the horse in
the most dramatic way. Procurement decisions must follow from
a clear defence and security strategy not the other way around.
5.7 The timing of these two major military projects
that are in the early yet crucial stages of their development
means that unless decisions about their future are genuinely up
for consideration, the possibility of engaging in a far-sighted
review is greatly diminished, if not rendered impossible.
6.0 CASE STUDY:
TRIDENT REPLACEMENT
6.1 The planned replacement of Trident is perhaps
the most dramatic example of what the Secretary of State for Defence
Liam Fox has described as "the mindset of Cold War politics."[60]
This mindset holds that the challenge of nuclear weapons proliferation
can only be adequately addressed by the UK reaffirming its commitment
to being a nuclear weapons possessor state. The level of public
discussion and debate over whether a like-for-like Trident replacement
is the most sensible choice has been shallow and limited. A clear
case for why Britain should, despite the current US-led shift
in focus towards nuclear disarmament, commit itself to retaining
the same number of nuclear weapons for decades to come has not
been adequately made.
6.2 The clearest statement of government thinking
on the issue was recently made by Dr Fox when he said that "in
an unpredictable world where we cannot see very far into the future,
where nuclear weapons will not be dis-invented, where we are seeing
wider proliferation, this Government will not take a gamble with
the country's future."[61]
Instead it would appear that the government is set to take a path
with a much more predictable outcome in relation to the spread
of nuclear weapons around the world. That predictable outcome
is that while powerful states such as Britain retain their nuclear
weapons, less powerful ones will increasingly feel that only their
end of the bargain that is struck by signing the Non-Proliferation
Treaty is being held up and will instead (either overtly or covertly)
attempt to acquire their own nuclear "deterrent." The
important point here, that does not appear to be sufficiently
appreciated by the current government's position on Trident, is
that just as the world appears "unpredictable" and "dangerous"
to the UK, so to does it seem to every other country in the world.
Therefore, if it makes strategic sense for us to retain our nuclear
weapons capability in order to hedge against future uncertainty,
then there is no reason to expect other states not to make similar
calculations.
6.3 There are a number of options open to the
government in relation to the decision on Trident that have been
set out very clearly in a number of recent research papers.[62]
These options should be debated openly and—despite the fact
that the decision has been officially excluded from the SDSR—some
indication of the strategic rationale behind the decision should
be included in the defence white paper and National Security Strategy.
Importantly, the defence decision on Trident must be closely aligned
with the foreign policy goals in relation to nuclear disarmament
and non-proliferation. It is encouraging to see the government
attempting to address one of the key drivers of nuclear proliferation—the
continued possession by a minority of states of nuclear weapons—by
joining calls for progress on the goal of nuclear disarmament.
But this important foreign policy goal will be severely undermined
by defence policy if a blanket decision on Trident replacement
is taken regardless of the outcome of the SDSR.
6.4 If procurement programmes such as Trident
are not properly reviewed, the whole tenor of the defence posture
will be one of maintaining control in a fragile and uncertain
world, rather than addressing the underlying trends likely to
result in that fragility and uncertainty - a matter of keeping
the lid on problems or "liddism" as it has been termed.
7.0 GLOBAL THREATS
AND THE
NATIONAL INTEREST
7.1 Striking the balance between responding to
immediate and short-term threats and positioning the country to
meet the threats of the future is always a challenging task. The
conflict in Afghanistan has become the central focus of British
defence and security efforts over the last few years and is likely
to remain so over the short-term.
7.2 It is clear that the inter-linked threats
of international terrorism, organised crime and insurgent attacks
on British forces abroad require the immediate attention of British
policymakers and strategists today. In particular, the development
of the phenomenon of what is now termed "hybrid warfare"
(a potent mix of traditional conflict, terrorism and insurgency)
presents an enormous challenge to the Armed Forces and civilian
defence planners—a challenge that demands new thinking and
honest reflection as to the appropriateness of current security
paradigms based on traditional ideas about the use of force. The
spread of deadly technology, in particular the materials and knowledge
used to produce nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction,
also constitutes a clear danger to British citizens both here
and abroad.
7.3 Yet if countering such threats is to be the
guiding objective of British defence and security policy, then
a concerted effort to refocus efforts away from simply responding
to today's crises and towards addressing the underlying trends
which produce these threats over the long-term must be made a
top priority. The SDSR provides a crucial opportunity to think
through ways of undertaking such a refocus in all areas of defence
and security policy.
7.4 Terrorism and violent radicalisation more
generally, will only be effectively countered by targeting the
conditions that allow for extremist groups to prosper. This does
not mean making simple correlations between conditions of poverty
and the use of terror as a political instrument, but it does mean
taking seriously the marginalisation of large swathes of the population
in key areas of the "Global South." The ideology of
the Al-Qaeda movement is nothing without the individuals willing
to carry out terror attacks in the movement's name. Such individuals
are a product of social and political circumstances where violence
and intimidation appears to hold greater promise of achieving
their ends than dialogue and peaceful participation in political
and social life.
7.5 The spread of nuclear, chemical and biological
weapons as well as the spread of advanced military technology
(such as armed unmanned aerial vehicles) will continue to threaten
British interests until global efforts towards disarmament and—equally
as important—trust building between states is given top
priority in the foreign policies of the great powers. Therefore,
this foreign policy imperative is also a clear defence and security
imperative for Britain. The combined expertise and international
standing of the British foreign policy and defence communities
should be brought to bear on the pressing task of strengthening
the beleaguered nuclear non-proliferation regime and adding weight,
through concrete action, to the renewed push towards global nuclear
disarmament being spearheaded by the Obama administration in the
United States.
7.6 Yet while immediate threats will always take
first priority for decision makers, the SDSR process should be
seized as an opportunity to instil a culture of holistic and preventive
policymaking in the defence and security realm. This policymaking
culture must be informed by analysis that explores the most likely
underlying drivers of insecurity that will threaten the UK over
the long-term.
8.0 ANALYSING
THE LONG-TERM
TRENDS IN
GLOBAL SECURITY
8.1 There remains a fundamental dilemma at the
heart of the UK government's approach to national security two
decades after the end of the Cold War and nine years into the
"war on terror". The current approach continues to prioritise
military threats and largely military solutions (centred on a
nexus of WMD, "rogue" and failing states and international
terrorism) and a relatively narrow understanding of "national
interests". However, there is powerful evidence that long-term
UK security interests are best served by institutionalising a
"sustainable security" framework at the heart of the
UK's national security apparatus that explicitly accepts the complex,
interdependent and holistic nature of security and insecurity
in a globalised and uncertain world.[63]
8.2 Such an approach would prioritise addressing
the underlying drivers of insecurity and conflict, which, while
being largely global in nature, directly threaten the UK's national
interests. Oxford Research Group identifies these drivers as climate
change, increasing competition for resources, a dangerously widening
gap between the rich "minority world" and the poor and
marginalised "majority world", and the ever increasing
spread of deadly technology. Whilst there has certainly been acknowledgement
of these drivers - the Conservative Party's recent Green Paper
mentioned climate change, competition for certain resources, and
poor governance as risk multipliers that can exacerbate tension
and conflict[64]
- at present insufficient emphasis is being placed on the importance
of identifying and addressing these underlying drivers.
8.3 Global militarisation and nuclear weapons
proliferation, and a reactionary approach to international conflict,
will perpetuate the currently unstable and insecure global security
environment. With the possession of large militaries and nuclear
weapon status increasingly regarded as a guarantor of national
security, states will continue to drive the process of militarisation
for reasons of national interest, consequently perpetuating global
insecurity. Post-Cold War nuclear developments have involved the
modernisation and proliferation of nuclear systems, with an increasing
risk of limited nuclear-weapons use in warfare—breaking
a threshold that has held for sixty years and seriously undermining
multilateral attempts at disarmament. These dangerous trends will
be exacerbated by developments in ballistic missile defence, chemical
and biological weapons, long-range conventional missile systems
and a race towards the weaponisation of space. This reactionary,
military approach to security, referred to as the control paradigm,
responds only to the outbreak of conflict without targeting the
causes of such insecurity.
8.4 Climate change, through the mass displacement
of people (both within and across states) and increased resource
scarcity, will likely lead to civil unrest and inter-communal
violence affecting all states, including Britain.
8.5 In the environmentally constrained but more
populous world that can be expected over the course of this century,
increased competition for decreasing levels of key resources such
as oil, gas, water, and food, already a cause of civil unrest
and insecurity, may increasingly trigger intra- and inter-state
violence with direct impacts not only on Britain's interests abroad
but also on its population and economy. Demand for these resources
is already beyond that which can be sustained at current levels.
Once population growth and the effects of climate change are factored
in, it is clear that greater competition for such resources should
be expected, both within and between countries, potentially leading
in extreme cases to conflict.
8.6 Similarly, marginalisation of the majority
world working in tandem with poor governance may increase insurgencies,
unregulated migration, political oppression and exclusion, and
political and social violence. A complex interplay of discrimination,
global poverty, inequality and deepening socio-economic divisions,
together make for key elements of global insecurity. Globally,
the rich-poor divide is actually growing, with a very heavy concentration
of growth in relatively few parts of the world, and poverty getting
much worse in many other regions.[65]
The "majority world" of Asia, Africa and Latin America
feel the strongest effects of relative marginalisation as a result
of global elites, concentrated in North America and Europe, striving
to maintain political, cultural, economic and military global
dominance.
8.7 All of these drivers will likely perpetuate
state failure, well regarded as contributing to increased terrorist
activity, crime, and the regional spread of instability into territories
of interest. Thus, these trends that are primarily global in nature
and origin constitute a complex combination of global insecurity
drivers with real effects on British interests and national security.
9.0 HOW HAS
THE UK RESPONDED
TO GLOBAL
SECURITY THREATS
SINCE THE
1998 SDR?
9.1 As this note has earlier discussed, there
has been a clear move towards recognising the significance of
global threats, as evidenced by the National Security Strategy
of 2008, the Labour and Conservative Green Papers and the establishment
of a National Security Council. On issues such as socio-economic
divisions and environmental constraints there has also been substantial
movement. The UK has a cross-party consensus on the need to move
towards the UN 0.7% of GNP target for development assistance which
has already involved a substantial increase in the development
assistance budget. On climate change there has been a process
of lowering the carbon emission targets, focusing on an 80% reduction
by 2050.
9.2 These are welcome developments, even if the
carbon reduction target is far too modest, but there are two more
general issues of concern. One is that while security thinking
has moved in the direction of recognising the nature of global
challenges, it is still focused primarily on keeping the UK secure
through the availability military forces in an anticipated era
of global fragility rather than putting the main focus on countering
that fragility before it becomes a dominant global problem.
9.3 The second is that there remains a lack of
integrated thinking and policy formulation, especially in relation
to longer-term issues. While there is some cross-departmental
engagement, and the Cabinet Office provides some central oversight,
these simply do not match up to the problems being faced. In this
respect the National Security Council could be singularly important
in crossing the departmental boundaries, but the risk is that
it exists with an understanding of security which is too narrow.
10.0 HOW SHOULD
THE UK POSITION
ITSELF AS
A GLOBAL
ACTOR IN
THE COMING
DECADES?
10.1 In today's truly "globalised"
world there exists, for all states, a strong link between international,
regional, and national security. The drivers of insecurity identified
above will be truly global in nature, ignoring borders, and will
have the potential to contribute directly to further weakening
already unstable states and regions, the acceleration of state
failure, and the regional spread of instability. It is therefore
in Britain's national interest to seek to stabilise not only those
regions and states where its interests are most prominent, but
also wherever conflict is likely to arise.
10.2 To best counter the effects of these drivers
of insecurity, Britain should strive for international leadership
by gaining universal support for the prevention of conflict through
anticipatory, forward planning, rather than reactionary policy.
The 2002 SDR "New Chapter" recognised this principle
when it stated that "Countering terrorism is usually a long
term business requiring the roots and causes to be addressed as
well as the symptoms. The Government is well placed to help less
capable states build a society in which terrorism is less likely
to emerge"[66]
Pursuing increased levels of soft power, the ability to influence
non-coercively through effective diplomacy, and continuing the
effective partnership-building within, and promotion of, international
and regional institutions, will aid this pivotal role for Britain,
as will the strengthening of its unique position as a bridge between
Washington and Europe, and the perpetuation of its role as a moral
authority that promotes global justice, democracy, transparency
and equity.
10.3 Britain's defence policy should include
an increased focus on anticipatory approaches to conflict, which
target the causes, and not the symptoms, of insecurity. Addressing
the underlying drivers of insecurity would involve Britain taking
a leading international role in promoting key policies in a number
of different sectors, all of which link directly to securing Britain's
national interests. These include: sustainable energy systems
and a decreased reliance on fossil fuel energy sources; equity-based
reform of the aid, trade, and debt relief systems; firm steps
towards nuclear disarmament and tighter control of the trade in
small arms; and increasingly multilateral approaches to conflict
and insecurity prediction and prevention. At the national level,
Britain should encourage the participation of expert civil society
actors (NGOs, think tanks, academics) in thinking through the
needed changes in defence and foreign policy, and a coherent,
cross-departmental policy-making process with the NSC overseeing
an anticipatory, agile and holistic approach to an increasingly
complex global security environment.
10.4 Dr Fox has recently spoken of the need for
"updating our concepts, as well as our capabilities"
in order to ensure a "stable international order and security
of the global commons."[67]
Oxford Research Group strongly supports this position and would
encourage bringing "sustainable security" thinking into
the heart of UK foreign and defence policy. The beginnings of
a new way of responding to global security threats can be seen
in recent defence green papers and forecasting documents. The
pressing task now is to move beyond this conceptual change and
begin to operationalise these ideas and build concrete policy
options for a move towards sustainable security. Ideas around
adaptability, mitigation, prevention and "upstream investment"
need to be coherently built into current planning in order to
bring about the most effective use of government "levers
of action" in the coming years.
11.0 OPERATIONALIZING
A "SUSTAINABLE
SECURITY" APPROACH
11.1 The main lesson of the last nine years of
the "war on terror" is plain: the current security paradigm,
based on the notion of controlling the symptoms of insecurity
primarily through the application of military force, has not worked.
11.2 The assumptions that the status quo can
be maintained, that the marginalised "majority world"
can remain in this position, that environmental limits can be
ignored in favour of unsustainable consumption and that dissent
can be "managed" via ever-more powerful and precise
military technology are false ones.
11.3 Given the scale of the threats that are
being driven by the interconnected trends of environmental stresses,
population growth and a growing gap between the rich Global North
and marginalised Global South, recalibrating British defence policy
has become a central challenge for this government. This means
striking the right balance in the SDSR between bringing the defence
budget under control in the short-term and preparing for a new
and complex global security environment.
11.4 Addressing the root causes of insecurity
requires the very close coordination of policies and objectives
that are often divided between departments (MoD, FCO, DFID, DECC
etc.). The creation of the National Security Council is a very
welcome development as it is geared towards such close collaboration
and coordination but it must not remain the only effort in this
area. The example of the contradiction between the foreign policy
objective of nuclear disarmament and the defence policy of a like-for-like
replacement of Trident is but one area where departments must
coordinate their actions in a way that fully appreciates the effect
of short-term decisions on long-term policy objectives. As outlined
above, trade and aid policies relate directly to long-term British
security interests as do climate and energy policies.
12.0 BUILDING
A MORE
ANTICIPATORY AND
PREVENTIVE FOREIGN
AND DEFENCE
POLICY: DOING
MORE WITH
LESS
12.1 The overarching goal for the SDSR's spending
review components must be to find ways of investing in the knowledge,
skills and hardware that will allow the government to address
the underlying drivers of insecurity rather than respond to their
symptoms in costly, drawn-out conflicts. Whilst difficult under
current financial pressures, such investments will ultimately
enhance the effectiveness of the government's "levers of
action"—in all areas—and thereby save money and
even lives in the decades to come.
12.2 The cost effectiveness—if measured in
years and decades not electoral cycles—of investing in prevention
rather than reaction needs to be clearly articulated and explained
to the British public. So too do the links between socio-economic,
environmental and energy concerns and threats to the UK's national
security need to be far more widely appreciated amongst both political
elites and the public at large. This can be done and the SDSR,
which after all has been wisely termed a strategic "security"
as well as "defence" review by the government, presents
a perfect opportunity for doing so.
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ORG has been building trust between policy-makers, academics,
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6 September 2010
53 Conservative Party, Armed Forces Manifesto 2010:
A New Covenant for our Armed Forces and their Families, April
2010, p. 7. Back
54
Tony Blair, "Doctrine of the International community",
Economic Club, Chicago, 24 April 1999. Back
55
Ministry of Defence, Adaptability and Partnership: Issues for
the Strategic Defence Review, February 2010. Back
56
Conservative Party, A Resilient Nation, January 2010. Back
57
Cabinet Office, The National Security Strategy of the United
Kingdom: Security in an interdependent world, March 2008,
p. 3. Back
58
For casualty figures see Iraq Body count: http://www.iraqbodycount.org/
and for refugee and IDP figures see UNHCR Briefing Note, "UNHCR
Iraq Appeal Seeks $261 Million for 2008", 8 January 2008:
http://www.unhcr.org/print/478357184.html Back
59
Conservative Party, A Resilient Nation, pp.4-5. Back
60
Liam Fox, "Deterrence in the 21st Century",
speech at Chatham House, London, 13 July 2010. Back
61
Liam Fox, "Deterrence in the 21st Century." Back
62
Malcolm Chalmers, "Continuous At-Sea Deterrence: Costs and
Alternatives", RUSI Briefing Note, July 2010; Nick
Ritchie, Continuity / Change: Rethinking Options for Trident
Replacement, Department of Peace Studies, University of Bradford,
June 2010; Nick Ritchie and Paul Ingram, "A Progressive Nuclear
Policy: Rethinking Continuous-at-Sea Deterrence", RUSI
Journal, Vol. 155, No.2, April 2010, pp. 40-45. Back
63
See Chris Abbott, Paul Rogers and John Sloboda, Global Responses
to Global Threats: Sustainable Security for the 21st Century,
Oxford Research Group, June 2006. For an example of the same principle
being applied to the current defence situation in the United States
see John Norris and Andrew Sweet, Less is More: Sensible Defense
Cuts to Boost Sustainable Security, Center for American Progress,
8 June 2010. Back
64
Conservative Party, A Resilient Nation, p6. Back
65
UNDP Human Development Report 2009, Overcoming Barriers: Human
mobility and development, New York, UNDP, p.35. Back
66
Ministry of Defence, The Strategic Defence Review: A New Chapter,
July 2002, p. 10. Back
67
Liam Fox, "Deterrence in the 21st Century." Back
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