HC 1090 Towards the next Defence and Security Review

Written evidence from Lord Hennessy of Nympsfield, FBA, Attlee Professor of Contemporary British History, Queen Mary, University Of London

‘In the cycle in which we travel we can only see a fraction of the curve.’

John Buchan, 1940

WHERE THE CURVES HAVE DEPOSITED US

The UK belongs to more international organisations than any other country. We are party to 14,000 treaties of various kinds and magnitudes. We have been an avowed nuclear weapons state since 1952, the third (after the USA and Russia) to achieve that status. We are a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. We are one of three states with global intelligence reach (the other two are the United States and Russia- with China coming up fast) thanks to the 1946 US-UK Communications Agreement. The UK possesses other special capabilities: for example, we are one of a small number of countries that is a top-of-the-range ‘submarine nation’, capable of building SSNs and SSBNs.

THE PROSPECTS FOR ASPIRATIONAL DISARMAMENT

Aspirational disarmament is particularly tough for a country that was a world superpower until 1918, a very considerable imperial power until 1947 and determined to remain a great power at least of the second rank thereafter with all the vicissitudes and stresses between capacities and resources that continuing appetite has induced since losing a third of our wealth between 1939 and 1945-hence the eleven post-War defence reviews beginning with the Harwood Review of 1949. Perhaps aspirational disarmament on a substantial scale is undesirable (in my view it is) but the reverse is a truly stretching prospect.

Now we are to have a regular drumbeat of quinquennial Strategic Defence and Security reviews and National Security Strategies overseen by a National Security Council (a 2010 innovation that has already the feel of a permanent fixture). It might be valuable for Government, Parliament and the public if the style, pitch and range of future SDSRs and NSSs were attuned to the hand that history has dealt us, current realities and future threats and possibilities facing our nation, embracing all the Departments, Ministries, Secret Services and the instruments of soft power that have an input into the NSC’s deliberations and processes. If such an approach were thought desirable, the House of Commons Defence Committee might like to apply half a dozen tests to not just the Ministry of Defence but the span of Departments, agencies and institutions whose thoughts and fears will flow into the making of the 2015 SDSR and NSS

THE SIX TESTS

1. The UK needs a long, deep, illusion-free look at its appetite to remain a significant player in the world given its size, wealth, population, economic and technical capacities. To declare as the Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister did in the Foreword to the 2010 NSS that ‘The National Security Council has reached a clear conclusion that Britain’s National Interest requires us to reject any notion of the shrinkage of our influence’ will not do in 2015 as it was an example, in Carl Sagan’s phrase, of politicians confusing hopes and facts. The Committee would do the country a great service if it persuaded HMG in 2015 to open the NSS or the SDSR with a think-piece on what our country can expect to do and, equally important, not do, in pursuit of global influence and acting as a force for good in the world. Regular application of the Sagan test would also be highly beneficial. Crucial too is substantial effort to write these documents in such a way that the thoughts and analyses will resonate with Parliament and the public and to increase the chances that at least some passages will cling to the Velcro of collective memory.

2. To buttress the analysis of Test One, HMG should set out what it regards as the foreseeable permanent demands or musts of UK defence policy. My list would be: air defence of the UK; home defence of the UK; nuclear deterrent: security of the Eastern Atlantic; NATO commitments; plus the duties owed to the Falkland Islands and Gibraltar.

3. The sustenance of top-flight diplomatic, intelligence and security services and a leanly functional and effective Ministry of Defence with solid, candid, relationships between civil servants, the military and defence scientists producing an MoD that commands high levels of respect in No 10, the Cabinet Office and the Treasury. It might also be an advantage if the Committee looked at how the National Security Council has bedded in.

4. The effective fusion of hard and soft power in the shape of the BBC Overseas Service, the British Council and the universities.

5. The capacity of the Armed Forces when required to bring aid to the civil power and the civil ministries within the UK.

6. The sustenance of capabilities for unanticipated interventions, mainly abroad, but with a set of tough and realistic tests to distinguish between ‘musts’ and ‘wouldn’t it be nice to’s’.

Suffusing Tests One to Six must be an historical awareness that the very best in previous governing and serving generations have pitted their grey cells against a range of intractables; that defence review settlements tend not to be funded adequately over the years that follow; they can be rapidly overtaken by events, threats and sometimes technologies. All these factors are good for the humility but not the serenity of those who have to conduct SDSRs and NSSs, who deserve sympathy as well as scrutiny.

June 2013