Mary Kaldor and Luke Cooper explain how Britain’s defence strategy clings to a bygone world
The German sociologist, Ulrich Beck, coined the term “organised irresponsibility” to explain the way that the predominant response to risk (or threats) is shaped by past ways of doing things. The Government’s Strategic Defence Review is a good example of organised irresponsibility. It claims to make the UK “war-ready” in Keir Starmer’s Churchillian words, but on the basis of a world that no longer exists: one where the United States was previously a reliable partner of Britain and the European Union and would come to Europe’s defence were it threatened by Putin’s Russia.
There is little evidence to support this assumption – and many reasons to think the opposite: that the politics of “America First” and the new age of turmoil it has brought to domestic American politics means that the UK should now prioritise its security relationship with Europe.
Acknowledging the Russian threat – and its broader context
The SDR identifies Russia as a critical security threat – and rightly so. Russia is a military threat not only to Ukraine but also to what are known as the “frontline states” – the states bordering Russia, especially those states that were formerly part of the Soviet Union. And yes, Britain needs to be able to offer military support to those states that are threatened militarily by Russia. But Russia’s threat is not simply as a military actor and autocratic regime.
There is a wider global threat to democracy coming from the far right. The Russian regime and indeed the Trump administration both have to be considered in this context and recognised squarely as threats to British democracy. Some people talk about being in the middle of World War III, and perhaps this is a good description of the present, but if so, it is not a war being waged on past models. It is about spreading chaos and instability so as to create a situation favourable for the rising wave of authoritarianism. The SDR does pay attention to cybersecurity, which is certainly important. But what are known as hybrid threats are more than just cyber attacks or even acts of sabotage like the Novichok attacks in Salisbury. Particularly important is the spread of misinformation or the cynical weaponisation of refugees on the Polish border, and support for far-right groups, deliberately designed to undermine trust and integrity. The Russian regime calls these tactics “political technology”, the active use of propaganda, information suppression and disinformation to influence politics at home and abroad. JD Vance, in his speech to the Munich Security Conference, where he attacked the lack of freedom in European states because of diversity, and he openly supported the AfD in Germany, was from the same playbook. Just as the JD Vance speech echoed Putinism, Trump and his MAGA movement have platformed extreme entities, from Tommy Robinson to Britain First.
Not a sovereign policy: increased dependency on the United States in the age of Trump
We are in a new era of insecurity, marked by disinformation, political destabilisation, and democratic backsliding. Presented with this fact few in the UK Government would surely deny it in private. But they propose no strategy to address it. Indeed, it is in the face of such real and credible threats to British democracy that the SDR is manifestly an exercise in “organised irresponsibility”. It proposes no measures to move towards an independent European defence system but ties us ever more closely to the United States.
The SDR envisages that we will become more dependent on the purchase of US weapons and technology. In a breathtaking formulation, it lauds the “enormous potential for expanding industrial and technological collaboration with the US”. In a subsequent Guardian article on the SDR, Fiona Hill, one of the three of SDR architects, framed the policy as a tentative step towards greater independence from the United States. But it requires a highly creative reading of the text to see it in these terms. The SDR only goes as far as making the anodyne statement that “the UK’s longstanding assumptions about global power balances and structures are no longer certain”.
In particular, the SDR proposes expanding the number of UK nuclear weapons, building more submarines armed with US-bought missiles, as well as proposing the purchase of additional American bombers armed with tactical nuclear weapons. Leaving aside the cost, which could amount to as much as 30-40% of the defence budget, such additions would violate Article VI of the Non-Proliferation Treaty and further legitimise these terrifying weapons in a world of instability and crazy leaders. Seen in the context where Russia represents a real and present “conventional threat” to Europe, choosing to invest such sums in nuclear weapons rather than conventional defence is surely irresponsible.
Unfunded commitments, a lack of prioritisation and the glaring omission of conflict
In truth, the SDR is also full of unfunded commitments. Rather than prioritise strategically the SDR proposes to do everything the UK did in the past. This includes building or buying expensive weapons platforms (carriers, tanks and aircraft) that have been shown to be extremely vulnerable in Ukraine, maintaining the content if not the language of the so-called “pivot to the Indo-Pacific”, in particular a focus on the AUKUS deal with the US and Australia, as well as maintaining existing military bases from the South Atlantic to the Pacific, plus a whole range of new technologies (drones, AI, robotics, space technology and so on). Given the UK is operating with limited resources it should focus on where it can make a difference and where the threat to UK security is greatest. This would point in the direction of a focused priority on supporting Ukraine and the “frontlines states”, while redoubling UK efforts regarding global conflict resolution and prevention. Addressing these pressing needs seriously would mean pivoting away from the Indo-Pacific. It would also mean an emphasis on defensive conventional weapons such as drones and missiles, and on manpower. Oddly, while the UK Government has been attempting to re-set its economic relationship with China, it has largely retained the defence posture of the last government’s hawkish stance on Beijing.
While the UK role in countering ISIS and the Houthis is mentioned, astonishingly, there is no discussion of Palestine, Syria or Yemen in the Middle East section, beyond a capability to airlift humanitarian aid to Gaza. The wars in Sudan, Somalia, the DRC, or Myanmar are supposedly just not relevant. Conflict stabilisation, something the UK has pioneered, seems to have been abandoned. Foreign aid, as we know, has been slashed to pay for increased defence spending, and evidently, peacekeeping missions by their omission will seemingly no longer be considered part of the role of the British Armed Forces. Not only are these conflicts human tragedies about which we should be concerned, but it is not possible to insulate ourselves from what is happening. We experience these conflicts through migration flows, the spread of transnational crime, as well as extremist ideologies.
Welfare is critical to resilience
By failing to raise taxes to address these needs, defence spending is now directly competing with investment in welfare, public services and infrastructure. These are all areas desperately in need of funding. If we are serious about countering the rightwards trend in this country we need to address the frustration of those who have faced years of austerity, and develop resilience to malign interventions by hostile states. The government claims that the defence budget will promote growth but defence is always less efficient in doing so than civilian spending because it does not contribute to the productive base of the economy. As there is no proposal to loosen the fiscal constraints on spending, defence will compete with other sectors that would be more conducive to growth.
The SDR is stuck in an imaginary past at a time when we face real and dangerous threats. Some of these require military spending but they also require working with like-minded democratic states on a much more holistic social, legal and political response. Not to do so is organised irresponsibility.
