Thursday 18 July 2024

Knowing your branches from your roots

 

One of the new UK Government’s first acts has been to set up a comprehensive defence review, billed as a ‘root and branch’ review. A periodic look at what the UK’s defence needs are and how they might best be met is never a bad idea, but this one doesn’t look as open-minded as the billing suggests. According to the BBC, “The review will be overseen by Defence Secretary John Healey and headed by former Nato Secretary General Lord Robertson along with former US presidential advisor Fiona Hill and former Joint Force Commander Gen Sir Richard Barrons”.

None of these strike me as being particularly open-minded about possible alternative approaches. They all seem to already *know* what the risks are and what needs to be done about them, leaving me wondering what exactly a process taking the best part of twelve months is going to do, other than add a few details. As Starmer said in announcing the review, “We will make sure our hollowed out armed forces are bolstered and respected, that defence spending is responsibly increased” – meaning that the outcome is already largely determined, and it will involve a significant diversion of scarce resources into additional military expenditure. The only question is how that expenditure is divvied up between personnel, tanks, planes and ships.

In essence, it’s about responding to the risks they have identified by threatening those perceived to pose them. But a truly ‘root and branch’ review would also be asking about the causes of those risks and what might be done through negotiation and diplomacy to reduce them. The possibility that a military build-up might actually increase risk rather than reduce it is not one which any of those involved seem particularly disposed to consider. Starmer may be named after one of Labour’s pacifist giants, but he doesn’t share much, if anything, of the man’s philosophy.

1 comment:

Spirit of BME said...

Root and branch review is straight out of ‘Yes, Minister’ , they know the answers ,but need cover to implement them.
Defence is locked into the last intensive review completed in 2021. The next twenty years the navy will be built around two carriers ( already redundant) and the air force based on an expensive purchase of US aircraft ;all would be too expensive to cancel.
So, a much cheaper version of the report that I can provide for free is that we will (again) withdraw from ‘East of Suez’ and allow the Empires interests to be looked after in the Pacific by Australia and New Zealand. Strangely the AUKUS submarine deal was signed over a year ago and will fit that script down to the last dot.