1.Russia’s illegal and unprovoked invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 marked a turning point for European security. It raised serious concerns about Russian intentions for other parts of Europe and directly led to Sweden and Finland eschewing their historically neutral status in favour of the protective umbrella of NATO membership. Yet we are also starting to see a geopolitical shift, with China, Iran and North Korea providing support to Russia, thus raising the prospect of increased collaboration between countries who are in competition with or outright hostile towards the international order and the West.
2.It is not difficult to see why some analysts are warning that the international security landscape is becoming increasingly volatile and that the world has entered an era of instability.1 The protracted war in Ukraine and proliferation of other international crises—Hamas’ terrorist attack on Israel and the war in Gaza (which could yet spill over into a wider regional conflict); China’s assertive behaviour in the South China Sea; or the succession of military coups in the Sahel, to name but a few—mean there is an increased sense of global insecurity.
3.The deteriorating European and global security environment has significant implications for UK Defence. This report will set out how some post-Cold War assumptions about the character of modern warfare are no longer valid, and therefore priorities need to be re-set, while balancing competing pressures and limited resources.
4.The former Prime Minister, the Rt Hon Rishi Sunak MP, had announced earlier this year that the UK would increase its defence spending to 2.5% of GDP by 2030 (up from an estimated 2.3% in 2023).2 Some have argued that even an increase to 2.5% may not be enough to meet future defence needs.3 The new Government has—as of yet—not given a timetable for matching the previous Government’s commitment on defence spending. It has promised, however, to spend 2.5% “as soon as we can” and commissioned a Strategic Defence Review on 16 July,4 overseen by the Defence Secretary but run by external reviewers, to “assess the threats we face and the capabilities needed to address them”.5 The Government has said the Review would publish its findings in the first half of next year.6
5.This report, as usual, provides conclusions and recommendations for the Government to respond to within two months. We are additionally submitting this report to the Strategic Defence Review for consideration by the external reviewers. We welcome that the new Government has moved swiftly to launch its Strategic Defence Review.
6.Given the deteriorating global threat environment, the Government cannot afford to delay setting defence priorities and articulating how much money will be available to UK Defence. The Government should ensure that the Review is completed to schedule, and implement its findings promptly. We call on the Government to keep the Committee updated on the Review’s progress and subsequent implementation.
7.As highlighted in our 2023 report, ‘UK defence policy: from aspiration to reality?’, Government policy documents often fail to clearly articulate the Government’s priorities and the hard choices that need to be made in the face of competing pressures on limited resources. We call on the new Government to ensure that its response to the Strategic Defence Review provides a clear sense of the Government’s priorities for UK Defence and how it plans to turn aspirations into practice.
8.The new Government has yet to set the levels of future defence spending, pending the outcome of the review. It remains to be seen if 2.5% of GDP represents a suitable increase in defence spending, and we note that any increase should be seen in the context of decades-long defence cuts and recent inflationary pressures on the defence budget. Unless significant efficiencies are found, laser-sharp priorities are set and hard trade-offs are made, an increase to 2.5% of GDP may not be enough to meet the UK’s growing defence needs.
9.We also acknowledge that some of the recommendations in this report will have cost implications. While there will be other pressing demands on the UK Budget, the new Government should nonetheless give careful and swift consideration to our recommendations.
10.Our report focuses on the lessons emerging from the war in Ukraine that are relevant to the UK context and which should feed into the Strategic Defence Review commissioned by the new Government. Chapter 2 of this report considers how the war in Ukraine has reminded us of the importance of mass, not just in terms of weapons and equipment, but also people. Chapter 3 discusses the need for improved international collaboration, particularly given the prospect of a less Europe-focused US. Chapters 4 and 5 contain more operational lessons, focusing on air and missile defence, the use of drones, and the role of space, electronic and cyberwarfare in the Ukraine conflict. They also highlight the impact of Russian attacks on Ukraine’s critical national infrastructure, and the lessons the UK should draw for homeland defence.
11.There are a couple of caveats that are worth emphasising up front:
12.Nevertheless, as we have set out throughout this report, transferable lessons are beginning to emerge for UK Defence. The one lesson to underpin all others is that deterrence is key to managing escalation and avoiding conflict in the first place. As many analysts have noted, Russia’s illegal and unprovoked invasion was a failure of conventional deterrence. The West’s collective failure to impose serious costs for Russia following Russia’s occupation of Crimea in 2014 (preceded by Russia’s invasion of Georgia in 2008), the Novichok poisoning incident in the UK in 2018, and the deployment of chemical weapons in Syria with Russia’s enabling support emboldened President Putin to launch his illegal and unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.8
13.We also heard that in the run-up to the war there was a failure, not of intelligence (which picked up Russian troop movements), but of correctly interpreting Russian intentions. Dr Peter Roberts, Senior Fellow at the Centre of Public Understanding of Defence and Security at the University of Exeter put it succinctly when he told us that “our inability to understand intent is a major flaw, and that leads us into lots of problems and lots of ill-conceived predictions and expectations”.9
14.Deterrence, to be effective, must be credible and be underpinned by accurate assumptions about what motivates an adversary. This report offers several recommendations about how deterrence could be strengthened in view of developments in Ukraine. In addition to having the latest kit or weapons, the whole defence eco-system is important. War is, in the first instance, about people—their motivations for going to war and willingness to fight. This Chapter touches on how we failed to accurately interpret Putin’s intentions in the run-up to his illegal and unprovoked invasion of Ukraine and how, in order to strengthen deterrence, we need to improve our understanding of the human aspects of war. Chapter 2 focuses on the importance of mass, including personnel, training, and weapons maintenance. Equally important is effective communication. Unless the message to the adversary is strong, leaving them without any doubts about the cost of escalation, deterrence will fail. The importance of building alliances to present a united front with strong signalling is discussed in Chapter 3.
15.President Putin has been given, until recently, free rein to control the escalation narrative by invoking the spectre of nuclear war. As Professor Michael Clarke, Visiting Professor in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London, noted:
“For two years, the Ukraine war gave Russia ‘escalation dominance’ in relation to Western and NATO reactions—setting the aggressive agenda, posing problems to which the Western powers were continually having to react”.10
16.During the initial phases of the war, President Putin’s approach was particularly successful in deterring some European countries from providing full support for Ukraine. For example, Germany (now Europe’s key provider of military aid to Kyiv) initially refused to send Leopard tanks to Ukraine, citing the risk of nuclear war as the reason for its cautious approach.11 Only a few days after Russia’s invasion, the Russian President had announced he was placing his nuclear forces on “high combat alert” and, in response to French President Macron’s idea to send NATO troops to Ukraine, noted that this would threaten “a conflict with the use of nuclear weapons”12. Throughout the war, Russia’s President has continued to rely on the threat of nuclear escalation in an attempt to divide NATO and deter Western support for Ukraine.13
17.This is not to say that Putin’s statements on the use of nuclear weapons are just empty rhetoric. According to Shashank Joshi, Defence Editor at The Economist, Russia will be more reliant on nuclear weapons for its own security in the short term because of its enduring conventional weaknesses.14 Professor Chalmers, Deputy Director General at RUSI, agreed that there could be situations in which Putin would choose to deploy nuclear weapons and that we shouldn’t view this conflict—or the possibility of war in Europe—as if it were purely conventional.15
18.Deterrence is key to avoiding future conflict. In light of the ongoing threat from Russia, and the deteriorating global security environment, there is a need to re-establish credible deterrence in the UK and across Europe. This includes both nuclear and conventional deterrence.
19.We need to re-learn some of the Cold War lessons around deterrence and escalation management and apply them to a new context.
20.Equally important is understanding the human aspects of war. There was clearly a failed assessment of Putin’s will to fight in the run-up to the invasion of Ukraine. The UK and NATO should focus on developing a better understanding of Putin’s strategy and intentions—including what influence others (like China) may have on his decision-making—while strengthening de-escalation mechanisms. This would provide for more robust deterrence, helping decision-makers distinguish between posturing and the actual risk of nuclear weapons being used, while mitigating against escalation by accident.
21.The ‘will-to-fight’ applies not only to Putin and other political leaders, but to their armed forces and their civilian populations as well. There are also other human aspects that determine the outcome of wars including, motivation, determination, memory of past victories and defeats, culture, and stamina, and all are essential elements for any consideration of deterrence, defence, and de-escalation.
22.We launched our inquiry on 28 February 2024 to examine the implications of the war in Ukraine for UK Defence.
23.At the outset, Professor Michael Clarke helped to set our inquiry into context with a private briefing. We subsequently received 17 written evidence submissions and held six oral evidence sessions with a total of 13 witnesses from academia, think tanks, government and the private sector, providing a range of perspectives. As a result of the dissolution of Parliament ahead of the general election we had to place our inquiry on hold for several weeks. In the interests of publishing this report in good time to enable its findings to be submitted to the Strategic Defence Review, we exceptionally decided not to schedule an oral evidence session with a Minister of State for Defence.
24.We are very grateful to all who contributed.
1 International Institute for Strategic Studies, Press release: The Military Balance 2024 spotlights an era of global insecurity on 29 July 2024 https://www.iiss.org/press/2024/02/the-military-balance-2024-press-release/ [accessed 16 September 2024]
2 Prime Minister’s Office, Press release: PM announces “turning point” in European Security as UK set to increase defence spending to 2.5% by 2030 on 23 April 2024: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/pm-announces-turning-point-in-european-security-as-uk-set-to-increase-defence-spending-to-25-by-2030 [accessed 16 September 2024]. For historic spending figures, see: House of Commons Library, UK defence spending, Research Briefing, CBP-8175, May 2024.
3 ‘“UK military unprepared for conflict of any scale”, warns ex-defence official’, The Financial Times (1 July 2024): available at https://www.ft.com/content/8251f12b-0296–47f0-a774-3b7c99b9e53d [accessed 16 September 2024]
4 Ministry of Defence and the Rt Hon John Healey MP, Press release: New era for defence: government launches root and branch review of UK Armed Forces on 16 July 2024: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/government-launches-root-and-branch-review-of-uk-armed-forces [accessed 16 September 2024]
5 Labour Party, Labour’s manifesto (13 June 2024): https://labour.org.uk/change/britain-reconnected/ [accessed 16 September 2024]
6 Ministry of Defence and the Rt Hon John Healey MP, Press release: New era for defence: government launches root and branch review of UK Armed Forces on 16 July 2024: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/government-launches-root-and-branch-review-of-uk-armed-forces [accessed 16 September 2024]
8 Written evidence from Professor Michael Clarke (IUD0014). See also: Wilson Center, ‘West Fails to Learn from Crimea’s Ten-Year Occupation’ (27 February 2024): https://www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/west-fails-learn-crimeas-ten-year-occupation [accessed 16 September 2024]; Atlantic Council, ‘Putin’s unfinished Crimean crime set the stage for Russia’s 2022 invasion’ (22 February 2024): https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/putins-unpunished-crimean-crime-set-the-stage-for-russias-2022-invasion/ [accessed 16 September 2024].
11 Politico, ‘Olaf Scholz cites risk of nuclear war in refusal to send tanks to Ukraine’ (22 April 2022): https://www.politico.eu/article/germany-chancellor-olaf-scholz-nuclear-war-tanks-heavy-weapons-ukraine-russia-invasion/ [accessed 16 September 2024]
12 Reuters, ‘Putin warns West of risk of nuclear war, says Moscow can strike Western targets’ (29 February 2024): https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/putin-warns-west-risk-nuclear-war-says-moscow-can-strike-western-targets-2024–02-29/ [accessed 16 September 2024]
13 As recently as May of this year, Putin ordered his military to practice the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons and has been vocal about developing Russia’s nuclear arsenal and potentially revising the country’s nuclear doctrine. See, for example: Reuters, ‘Russia is revising its nuclear doctrine, Kremlin says’ (24 June 2024): https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/putin-says-west-will-be-fighting-directly-with-russia-if-it-lets-kyiv-use-long-2024–09-12/ [accessed 16 September 2024] and Reuters, ‘Why is Russia holding nuclear drills and should the West be worried?’ (15 May 2024): https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/why-is-russia-holding-nuclear-exercises-what-watch-2024–05-15/ [accessed 16 September 2024].