Reader TTS

The first instalment of the Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development & Foreign Policy is published today. _Global Britain in a Competitive Age_ gives the big picture and the

second instalment, due on 22 March, will follow up with the small print and the numbers. But, given the amount that has been trailed already, a pretty clear picture of the whole begins to

emerge. Take the three traditional warfare ingredients of land, sea and air, season with a little space, cyber, artificial intelligence and nuclear modernisation, according to the

instructions contained in the _Integrated Operational Concept_ (published last September), add a pinch of Fusion Doctrine and there is an oven-ready solution to the times in which we live. 

The price of transformation is likely to be a hit to both the Army and Royal Air Force, while the Royal Navy prospers relatively under a national strategy that is now substantially maritime.

The role of Nato is re-asserted, but, in a nod to the Global Britain of the title, the importance of the emerging Indo-Pacific theatre is also highlighted. So much for the headlines, but

let’s dig a little deeper.  The army currently weighs in at a trained strength of 76,348 and the smart money is on a reduction to around 73,000 men and women, to be announced in a few days’

time. It has been long advertised and is justified on the basis that numbers can be traded for technology in the brave new world of integrated operations. The compound outcome will be

greater capability. All military capability is about the relationship between the man or woman and their equipment. Traditionally, in the more technologically dependent air and maritime

environments, the equipment has been manned, while in the essentially human environment of land operations, the man has been equipped. That’s about to change, with consequences that are both

deliberate and unintended. The deliberate consequence is to bring the British army to a level of technological sophistication that meets a bare minimum required to survive and operate on a

contemporary battlefield at the highest intensity. We are playing catch up because this most recent military generation has been captured by the wars of 9/11, which were dominated by the

intensely human warfare discipline of counter insurgency, where the people provide the operating environment, the target and the prize. Others have been less distracted: both China and

Russia have completed conventional modernisation plans that have exponentially increased the volume, accuracy and lethality of both kinetic and cyber bombardment, controlled by highly

networked small groups where corporals will now deploy the firepower previously available to generals. They have redefined the highest level of conventional engagement as a less human, more

remote, more autonomous and more deadly environment. If we are to have any claim to operate on this battlefield, we will have to adjust accordingly, and, to that extent, the provisions of

the review make eminent sense: it’s time to man the army’s equipment. But that comes at the price of an apparently unintended consequence, which is less a matter of strategic policy than

simply doing the sums. You don’t get much change out of 73,000 when you have to populate a training machine, meet inalienable national and alliance commitments, hold back a national reserve

against strategic contingency and carry a large undeployable population (as recently as 2015, a barely credible 50,130 members of the armed forces were medically downgraded, the majority in

the army).  As a result, the simple mass that was required to send 45,000 soldiers to invade Iraq in 2003 or sustain a brigade strength presence in Afghanistan will no longer be available.

We may still be capable of one-shot operations and might mitigate our deficiencies by the smart use of reserves and alliance arrangements, but the simple fact is that we are consigning the

protracted and manpower-intensive operations we have fought since 2001 to history. The review passes lightly over this point and we are therefore left with the unsatisfactory sense that

(with apologies to George Dangerfield) The Strange Death of Liberal Intervention is less a matter of sentient strategic choice than a stroke of the bean counter’s pen. And it gets worse. Not

only have our competitors refined their capabilities at the sharpest end of military operations, but they’ve kept their hands in at the artisan end too. The whole idea of Hybrid Warfare is

to maintain a capability to operate above and below a notional threshold. Below the threshold, operations are constant, insidious, ambivalent, often unattributable and frequently based on

human agency, using information, influence and coercion as much as physical force. Above the threshold, operations are episodic, become the province of declared state actors and take on a

more conventional military form. The knack is to operate with equal facility above and below the line, escalating and de-escalating in non-linear form in a way that maintains the initiative

against less deft opponents. These are techniques that both China and Russia have mastered. Our dilemma is that counter-insurgency has drawn us into operations below the line — in Basra, for

example, engaged in Iraq but in conflict with Iran — at the cost of capability above it. While we now seek to address that, the danger becomes that we are spread too thin to cover all the

bases, and, rather than maintain the ambidextrous ability to operate throughout the continuum from competition to conflict, we become stuck within a limited range – and therefore still a

step behind the opposition. The irony is that in a review defined by the idea of competition, we are circumscribing our capacity to compete. With Russia identified as the most proximate

threat, the restated commitment to Nato is both entirely predictable and necessary. It also reinforces two wider strategic aims: nailing America to the security of Europe and delaying the

prospect of a European army. In one sense, the European tradition of balance of power politics — where nations joined alliances to prevent any single power becoming dominant — ended on April

6, 1917, when America entered the First World War. It did so because Germany had become simply too strong to be contained by other European powers — a role that the USSR would reprise,

briefly, later.  Today’s Russia is incapable of hegemonic ambition, America is distracted by the Western Pacific and some Nato members continue to short-change US leadership. But the “if it

ain’t broke, don’t fix it” case for a North Atlantic balance of power within a globalised context remains compelling. The fact that it retains a strong Anglo-Saxon axis is a useful bonus for

an independent British foreign policy. Strategic autonomy may be a matter of European manifest destiny as far as Emmanuel Macron is concerned, but, seen from London, it has both

geopolitical and security drawbacks. In geopolitical terms, it would consolidate the political identity and military heft of an economic bloc we have chosen to distance ourselves from, while

in security terms in comes with manifold risks. If Europeans won’t pay their Nato dues, why would they pay for EUROFOR? If they did, Germany would become the third biggest defence spender

in the world; might that wake a few ghosts? Crucially dependent on Russian supplies of energy, could Germany trade, say, some Estonian sovereignty in order to keep the lights on? With

conventional capability in the hands of Berlin and nuclear capability run from Paris, how could the command and control dilemma be more exquisite, or dangerous? The list could go on, but the

point is that Nato remains front and centre of British strategic policy — perhaps more now in political than in security terms — and it will be some time before we can slip the surly bonds

of European defence.  The nod in the direction of the Indo-Pacific theatre, however, has the feel of new strategic territory. A flirtation with the nations of the Quadrilateral Security

Dialogue (the Quad to its friends) of India, Japan, Australia and the USA brings clear defence opportunities, but also has free trade deals written all over it. Is the alacrity with which

Japan recently signed on the dotted line about trade — or recruiting an ally against Chinese expansion? It’s about both, and the area where economic, security and diplomatic interests

conjoin is where national strategy is made. Throw in separate flirtations with the Trans-Pacific Partnership and ASEAN and “Global Britain” begins to take on some meaning.  This eastern

adventure will be sealed by a naval task group deployment led by HMS _Queen Elizabeth_ later this year, but beneath the cocktail parties in Mumbai and Singapore will lie real strategic

purpose. For as long as China is dependent upon fossil energy to sustain the industrial phase of its economic development, it will rely upon long and exposed sea lines of communication from

the Middle East — which the Belt and Road initiative will not mitigate for a generation. The Chinese are acutely aware of this vulnerability, as the list of naval bases and port facilities

from Djibouti to Hambantota (in Sri Lanka) and the increasing Indian Ocean presence of their navy — now the largest in the world — both testify. Taken against this background, Quad (or

perhaps, with the inclusion of Britain, Quint) maritime and air forces using bases in India and Diego Garcia could imply the same sort of strategic leverage over parts of the Indian Ocean as

China currently exercises over its own adjacent waters. A risky game with high stakes at the dangerous end of competition, but recognisable as strategy. In a time of financial incontinence,

the £16.5 billion pledged to defence modernisation is lost in the noise. Yet by historic standards it is a substantial investment and the policy rationalisation that now accompanies it is

an appropriate and serious attempt to create a strategic framework for 21st century, post-Brexit, post-Covid Britain. That said, and beneath the headlines, there remains some confusion about

what competition means: some things that never change and some things that do.  A MESSAGE FROM THEARTICLE _We are the only publication that’s committed to covering every angle. We have an

important contribution to make, one that’s needed now more than ever, and we need your help to continue publishing throughout the pandemic. So please, make a donation._