Or at least the MoD does. On the day that Kim Howells proposes a different strategic direction for the UK, it’s perhaps worth revisiting the MoD’s request for strategic insight from all interested parties. If you want to shape the forthcoming defence green paper, you can post your thoughts here.
Incidentally, Howells’ rethink is good fodder for aficionados of bureaucratic politics theories. Does where you stand really depend on where you sit? Howells went from the FCO to chairing the Intelligence and Security Committee. Could that have had any impact on his parallel shift from advocating nation-building to backing counter-terrorism as the best response to AQ?
Tags: bureaucratic politics, Defence Green Paper, Kim Howells, Ministry of Defence, Strategy, UK military
Thursday, 5, November, 2009 at 1:58 am |
Regrettably I missed Mr. Devine’s riposte when it originally appeared so I am reticent to comment now as is may be considered somewhat stale. I am impelled to comment on one point he made. When commenting on Defence, he said:
“I think we also need to remind ourselves of the important role of influence – or, as you prefer, presence, deterrence or reassurance – in delivering UK security – including in the context of global norms and the global commons. Again, we have work underway looking at that. ”
Since he says work continues on this, I hope the UK does not make the same errors the US has with respect to “influence” roles of the military. I am especially alarmed whenever I hear any policy maker talk about “presence” as a military mission.
IMHO, President Reagan made a huge and for me unforgettable (if not unforgivable) mistake when he allowed his national security team, largely at the urging of the State Department, to agree to deploy US forces in Lebanon with a “mission” of “presence.” The result (facilitated IMHO by tactical errors in not changing security measures to match the escalating threat and moral courage failures of the military leadership on scene in allowing troops to be placed in such a precarious position) was the barracks bombing that introduced (together with the embassy bombing shortly before) the notion of suicide bombers and oxygen enhanced explosives.
While there is something to be said I suppose for “influence” operations in the abstract, it is far to easy for the military to be co-opted into “missions” for which they are neither trained, equipped or otherwise appropriate. Special care is required any time these “missions” are attempted but IMHO it is folly to employ them in situations where the threat is comprised of ideologically driven groups who are very unlikely to be intimidated or even impressed by such posturing even if it does appeal to the politicians and diplomats.
Thursday, 5, November, 2009 at 2:51 am |
It is interesting, to say the least, that the head of what some hoped might be an ‘oversight’ body for the intelligence community, is acting instead as an advocate for it!
Paul
Thursday, 5, November, 2009 at 5:01 am |
I suppose yet another attribute of the bureaucratic organism.
Thursday, 5, November, 2009 at 8:57 am |
It would need a new set of questions to re-start this debate. A set of questions that gave some hope that we are not going to be driven by the same series of inherited sunk-cost arguments, moralizing generalizations, and tired strategic paradigms that characterized the last approach.
Thursday, 5, November, 2009 at 9:03 am |
Fingers crossed they’re coming up with some. In the meantime – I assume they’re still keen KoW fans, and why not? As for stale, a couple of weeks is a long time in the blogosphere, but perhaps looms less large in grand strategic terms.
If they can’t, can we come up with with the right questions? Perhaps we could start by improving on ‘Better Britain, Better World’?
Thursday, 5, November, 2009 at 10:56 am |
It’s not really our job. However can I suggest that some rational and reasonable future scenarios might prompt useful starting points (realizing that what I see as ‘rational’ and ‘reasonable’ won’t be to everybody’s taste). Thus the main question surely is:
What and where are the UK’s vital strategic interests, without obtaining the security of which the safety of the state itself as a sovereign entity is imperilled? (For me personally as you are all probably by now aware, the answer begins and ends with the letter ‘e’, but that needn’t be a given…)
‘Reasonable’ problem statements might be:
How will the UK’s security posture be altered by Iran, North Korea, Japan, Turkey, Egypt and Saudi Arabia all weaponizing their nuclear capabilities? (No point sticking our fingers in our ears and going ‘la la la’ about this one).
How will England’s security posture be changed by the breakup of the UK and the emergence of an independent Scotland and united Ireland, or a more federal governmental system? (Just posing the question…)
How will the UK respond to the eruption of a major civil war in Iraq between Arabs, Shi’a and Kurds, or to the collapse of the Afghan state building project in 2012?
How will the UK respond in terms of its strategic alliances when NATO becomes widely discredited in the expeditionary context by the Afghan debacle?
How will the UK reshape itself to deal with the next economic weapon of mass destruction that comes along out of Wall Street/Beijing/Berlin?
Not all of these scenarios will necessarily happen in the next ten years, but it would be extraordinary if none of them did, in some (either extreme or moderated) form or other. They also pose a more direct set of problem statements than DCDC talk about ‘resource wars’, or generalisations about global warming or being a ‘force for good’in Africa etc. For that reason I myself find them useful, both because they’re conceivable, and because (to me) their sheer scale imposes more modest sets of expectations.
Saturday, 7, November, 2009 at 8:57 pm |
My I add where will the UK stand in the event of a Cold War between India and China; and the plan for influence over China, India and Pakistan in the next 10 years. Not “situating the estimate” but we may need some type of presence in the South China Sea and the Straits of Malacca and a need/wish to counter balance the SCO.
Secondly we have the knotty little issue of Pakistan, the Taliban and the Nukes. We need a plan for that as well.
Comes back to the same point again and again. What does the UK Govt want the MoD to do and are they prepared to pay for it?