Written evidence from Oxford Research Group
1.1 Oxford Research Group (ORG) is a UK-based charity that provides information, analysis, methodology, policy advice and mediation in order to promote a more sustainable approach to global security. ORG currently runs or hosts programmes working on: sustainable security and alternatives to militarisation; the implications of ‘remote control’ warfare; casualty recording; and mediation of several conflicts in the Middle East. ORG has previously provided written evidence to the Committee on its 2010, 2011 and 2013 inquiries into the Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR) and National Security Strategy.
1.2 This submission will focus on three issues of relevance to the plans for Future Force 2020, as raised by the Committee:
These issues will determine the context in which Future Force 2020 is implemented and operates and provide an important linkage to the National Security Strategy revision and SDSR due in 2015. .
2.1 Future Force 2020 needs to be seen in the context of an extremely challenging and dynamic global geopolitical situation for the UK, which the 2015 National Security Risk Assessment exercise will need to update radically from 2010. As seen in Mali, Syria, Iraq and Libya since 2012, contemporary security challenges are increasingly transnational, ideological and asymmetric and impossible to defeat with conventional military force alone. Yet they are by no means unforeseeable. They require a comprehensive, whole-of-government approach, both in emphasising conflict prevention and where the use of military force is contemplated as a last resort.
2.2 The most severe security challenges the UK currently faces at home and abroad are directly related to its previous use of force in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, as well as its support for US, Israeli and French operations elsewhere in mainly Muslim countries. What structure the British Armed Forces have in future is less relevant to UK security than the political propensity to project them as intervention forces in situations that do not obviously uphold UK security interests. This is especially pertinent given widespread international perceptions that the UK has a neo-colonial agenda or a desire to divide and rule the Islamic world. Regime change operations in Iraq and Libya are illustrative of the potential for this ‘blowback’.
2.3 The UK’s investment in nuclear ‘deterrence’ has been of no consequence in confronting non-state adversaries, such as Al-Qaida affiliates or the Islamic State, since there is no credible possibility that the UK will use such weapons against non-state enemies or in any scenario short of a nuclear attack on core UK territory. It has also had no impact on Russia’s willingness to use its military forces in Ukraine and Georgia. While nuclear weapons may play a role in deterring Russian conventional forces action against NATO member states, Russia’s new emphasis on ‘ambiguous warfare’ techniques flout received wisdom on strategic deterrence. As seen in the Falkland Islands in 1982, nuclear capability was ineffective in deterring military action against UK overseas territories.
2.4 The terminology used by Future Force 2020 to describe military interventions is problematic. There is no such thing as a ‘simple’ military intervention. All military interventions are necessarily ‘complex’ and this is all the more true when state force is used against non-state actors that seek to use asymmetric force or terrorist propaganda. Interventions like Operation Ellamy (Libya, 2011) that are viewed as a simple application of force are unlikely to take a strategic view of stabilisation and disengagement options and necessarily have unclear UK objectives. The ‘non-enduring’ label is also unrealistic for many of the conflicts in which the UK may become involved in the next decade, as evidenced by recent difficulties in disengaging UK and NATO forces after interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Mali, as well as the enduring or frozen conflicts in former British-administered territories: Kashmir, Israel/Palestine, Cyprus, Yemen and Somalia.
2.5 The concentration of current and likely near-term armed threats to UK security in North Africa and the Middle East makes it increasingly unrealistic that the UK can or should attempt to maintain a credible military presence outside of NATO’s Europe, North Atlantic and Mediterranean treaty area. Indeed, attempts to maintain, reinforce or project British naval and air forces back into areas of ‘traditional’ UK influence are likely to aggravate negative perceptions of the UK in many countries without exerting sufficient or sustained resources to alter local security realities. There may be exceptions to this, including Sierra Leona and the Eastern Caribbean, but such experiences are unlikely to be generalizable elsewhere.
3.1 While the crisis in Ukraine is likely to lead many EU allies to increase military spending over the next years, the UK is likely remain an outlier in terms of its high spending as a percentage of GDP, both within the EU and all comparable democracies. Future Force 2020 envisages reductions in the scale of the armed forces without substantially rethinking the necessity for the UK to act as a global-reach, full spectrum military power in an era in which the UK’s relative power and influence are, and will continue to be, much reduced. Concentration on security roles more realistic for a country that contributes 3.4% (and falling) of world GDP and greater emphasis on partnerships, including UN and EU operations, would facilitate spending reductions and prevent over-extension of necessarily limited capabilities. Priorities for promoting security within a context of relative decline should be defined by the next SDSR.
3.2 Russia is undoubtedly a major military power but its conventional forces are still miniscule in quantity and capability in relation to NATO. NATO currently accounts for 56% of global military spending, ten times what Russia spends. While most of this is US spending, it is not a lack of military capacity in western Europe that drives Russia to act aggressively in the former Soviet Union but, rather, its fear of encirclement by a vastly superior and expansionary alliance. China, whose military spending is growing but still less than one-fifth of NATO spending and less as a share of GDP than the UK’s, is also responding to fears of containment, largely by powers external to Asia. The UK and its NATO allies therefore do not need to increase capabilities to match or catch up with Russia, China or any other state viewed as a potential adversary.
3.3 The rapid rise of middle income powers such as China, India and Indonesia, the greater assertiveness of Japan and South Korea, and the current US ‘pivot to Asia’ mean that Asia is militarising rapidly. The UK is by comparison and projective capacity a very marginal military presence anywhere east of Hormuz. Scenarios for UK military action or collective defence commitments should not assume that the UK has any unilateral ability to influence security there.
3.4 The South Atlantic is experiencing a gradual expansion of Brazilian and, to a far lesser extent, African (South African, Nigerian, Angolan) maritime ambitions and capabilities. While no state poses a significant near term threat to UK Overseas territories there, greater South American integration has enabled Argentina to rally continental opposition to the UK military presence there and to increase supply costs to the Falkland Islands. In the longer term, hostility to the UK presence there may grow as well as a likely reversal of the UK’s current military superiority.
3.5 The UK and France are likely to remain significant military actors in parts of Africa and the Caribbean for at least the next decade. However, this presence and role is likely to be increasingly contested in line with post-colonial tensions and emerging African and Caribbean security capacities. Despite a decade of organisational consolidation, the African Union still lacks logistics and strategic transport capacities to mount its own peace support operations, as seen in Mali, Somalia, and the Central African Republic. The UK should help to develop this capacity, not just providing ad hoc support in crisis situations. The International Defence Engagement Strategy should be reviewed alongside the next SDSR in order to better coordinate and prioritise such engagement with the UK’s partners in Africa.
3.6 There is no explicit commitment to UK participation in UN-led peace support operations in Future Force 2020. This should be made explicit and envisaged as a significant, proportionate UK commitment under the scenarios for multilateral intervention. That no NATO state comes close to matching the commitment to UN peacekeeping operations of many South Asian, African and Latin American states sends a powerful message about security priorities and lack of commitment to the international rule of law. The UK should at the very least match the battalion-level commitment of such European partners as Italy, France and Spain.
4.1 The SNP has said that an independent Scotland would reject the basing of Trident nuclear weapons on its territory at some point after 2016. This would make the UK’s ‘independent’ nuclear deterrent even less viable and incur huge financial and political costs in line with relocation, most likely to a more populated part of the UK. Given that the only locations credibly suggested as alternatives for Trident submarine and/or weapons basing are in Wales and Cornwall, there would be potential for further secession claims to impact UK nuclear weapons facilities.
4.2 Through its proximity to and control of shipping, submarine and air lanes connecting the Arctic, North Atlantic and North Sea, Scotland is central to UK and NATO strategic defence. It is not yet clear what transitional arrangements would be in place to maintain these lines of defence between independence and Scotland fully establishing its own forces. With one of only two UK interceptor bases located in Scotland, potential relocation would incur significant costs and potential interim loss of capacity for the RAF.
4.3 Shipyards on the Clyde and Forth are currently the only facilities in the UK capable of building major surface combatants. If the UK insists on only building Royal Navy vessels in UK yards, there is likely to be a significant delay in building new ships, notably theType-26 frigates, and potentially the refitting of older types, while industrial capacity is built or transferred to English or Northern Irish yards.
4.4 In the event of Scotland becoming independent it is not clear what the impact of the loss of 9.9% of UK Government revenues (2011-12 figures) would be on defence spending and the sustainability of Future Force 2020. If Residual UK defence spending were to reduce proportionately, given fixed costs, there would have to be a more than 10% reduction in planned force size capabilities. If the force size and capabilities foreseen under Future Force 2020 were to be maintained by the Residual UK under the same costs, it is likely that UK defence spending would need to rise as a proportion of GDP from about 2.4% to 2.7%, further distancing the UK from its European peers and other democracies.
September 2014
Oxford Research Group is an independent non-governmental organisation and registered charity, which works to promote a more sustainable approach to global security. ORG has been building trust between policy-makers, academics, the military and civil society since 1982. ORG and its internationally recognised consultants combine detailed knowledge of security issues, together with an understanding of political decision-making, and many years of expertise in facilitating constructive dialogue. More information can be found at: www.oxfordresearchgroup.org.uk
This submission was written for ORG by Richard Reeve, Director of the Sustainable Security Programme, with the assistance of Zoë Pelter of the Sustainable Security Programme.
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