The strategic defence and security review and the national security strategy

Written evidence from vice Admiral Sir Jeremy Blackham and Professor Gwyn Prins

We are Vice–Admiral Sir Jeremy Blackham, former naval officer and first holder of the DCDS (Capabilities) post in MoD. Since retirement he has worked in the Defence industry, has written, lectured and taught higher defence studies. He is currently Editor of the Naval Review, is a frequent contributor to international defence journals, and is a visiting lecturer at King’s College London. From 2000-10 he was a Vice President and associate fellow of RUSI. Professor Gwyn Prins is a research professor of the London School of Economics. Formerly as a Fellow in History and University Lecturer in Politics he ran military education programmes at Cambridge. Subsequently he served as Visiting Senior Fellow of the (former) Defence Evaluation and Research Agency and in the NATO Secretary General’s Special Adviser’s Office. He has served as a foreign assessor of the US National Intelligence Council’s outlook studies. Currently he writes, lectures and teaches higher defence studies at all British senior staff colleges where he is also a curriculum adviser and at the NATO Defense College. He has conducted research and development on strategic assessment methodologies for 15 years. He is a member of CDS’s Strategy Study group.

In response to the Defence Select Committee’s call for evidence on 13th January 2011 entitled ‘The SDSR and the NSS" we wish to offer views to the Committee on the following points.

We have written publicly on all these points and therefore for convenience attach two essays which indicate context and some of the substance of what we wish to ventilate for the Committee. [1] They therefore underlie the headline points offered here.

The creation of force structures, consisting of equipments, fully trained personnel and adequate support infrastructure, is necessarily a long-term business. We are fearful that preoccupation with the closing phase of the Afghanistan operation is seriously distorting the nation’s ability to retain that essential balance for the long-term future, as well as its ability to respond to different near-term shocks.

Our particular concerns within the calling notice list are:

1) That the strategic analysis offered in the NSS and hence assumed to underlie the SDSR is flawed and incoherent. This has been concluded already by another Select Committee (the Public Administration Select Committee in its report, "Who does National Strategy?") and we endorse that finding. In particular we would emphasise three key failings:

a the assumption that in today’s environment of real world risks, correctly assessed, a meaningful distinction can be drawn between tasks and means required for ‘homeland’ defence and security and ‘other things’. It cannot be.

b the inability of the assessment methodology employed by the SDSR team which focuses principally upon ‘known unknowns’ to value, or even to notice, the essential intangible culminating product of a coherent defence capability. That product conforms to Sun Tzu’s guiding insight that whereas "to fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence...supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting." This demands a posture which project an aura of power and influence that confirms national will, which thereby leverages positively all other instruments of national power, hard or soft. The SDSR methodology is innocent of any discernable concern with what we have described elsewhere (see attachment) as the silent principles of national security. In our judgement, it therefore risks leaching those higher qualities, with the unwelcome twin effects of diminishing national ability to leverage comparative advantages and increasing temptation to enemies.

c The patent contradiction underlying the NSS and SDSR exercise. From the NSS title onwards, it claims to be centrally focussed upon uncertainty; yet the SDSR makes the enormous assumption of certainty that we can take the risk of a new Ten Year Rule. But a series of strategic shocks since the publication of the SDSR have already shaken this assumption. (By definition such shocks are all not predicted and not predictable in detail beforehand.) Because of the limitations of its chosen methodology there is no valuing in the SDSR assessment of the need for and means to provide credible conventional deterrence. There is no frank discussion of the risks of a ‘bare bones’ establishment, such as is the SDSR outcome, in such times as these. We remind the Committee that the need for defence is the one area of government policy which cannot be subject to government decision. The initiative always lies with our potential enemies.

2) Capability gaps: consequent upon this first order failure in analysis, the SDSR has accepted inappropriate capability gaps which we believe cannot stand. We are confident that they will be changed before the next defence review in 2015: they will be changed either by courageous decision and frank admission of error or they will be changed more cruelly by events, with all the risk which that implies. Amongst these gaps, most worrying are:

a loss of the capability that was to have been provided by the NIMROD MR4A

(b) loss of continuity in maritime fixed wing air operations with consequent serious risk to the ability of the nation to reconstitute a safe and coherent carrier strike capability, even if the material means to do so are eventually provided.

3) We do not contest at all the strategic importance of reducing the very large fiscal deficit. But we do submit that it is neither prudent nor realistic to install this type of strategic risk ahead of all other risks; for the nature of the world is, as the Secretary of State for Defence stated on 2 November in the House, that "...we live in a world in which our national and overseas interests are likely to be threatened in more places and by more people than at any time in the past." Furthermore, because initiative always lies with the enemy, defence is by its nature a different activity from all others of government. And in light of Dr Fox’s summary of real world risk, with which we agree, it is perverse as well as dangerous to reduce the proportion of GDP devoted to defence and security in the round at such a time of deep uncertainties, beset by so many ‘unknown unknowns’ which keep on revealing themselves as strategic shocks. We note reports that MoD remains well short of meeting its reduction targets even under SDSR. Self evidently, further reductions will increase incoherence, capability gaps and further dent morale thereby increasing country risk.

4) The Committee asks how the implementation and success of the SDSR will be measured. There are two main yardsticks. The most important is never under the control or choice of government and is whether, when events test us, we can meet those tests. The yardstick which is under government control is whether a force structure will exist after this exercise which retains three things: (a) coherence; (b) a full set of properly trained people to man it; (c) options not foreclosed for our children in ways that cannot be reversed. We fear that SDSR could fail these tests.

February 2011