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The Conservative Vision for Defence
What we are defending: Sovereignty, the National Interest and the Realm
The Rt. Hon Michael Ancram QC MP
Shadow Secretary of State for Defence
5th October 2005 - The Spanish Hall Winter Gardens, Blackpool
There is an understandable tendency in defence debates or talks to concentrate on the specific, the detailed and the immediate at the expense of the broader canvas. We have a habit almost of discussing capabilities and future procurements in isolation from the wider concept of why we need Defence. Too often we spend time examining the pixels and forget the whole photograph. Today I want to somewhat widen the traditional scope of such talks at Conference to ask – and hopefully answer – the question as to what as Conservatives we seek to defend and why.
I will therefore range somewhat widely and I will trespass on the realms of Foreign Affairs. But then war is diplomacy pursued by other means, and the national interest which must be at the heart of our defence must also be at the heart of our foreign policy. Defence and foreign affairs are twins joined at the hip – or at least so they should be. I therefore make no excuse for approaching this talk in that light.
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During the Cold War our security environment had the appearance of predictability. We knew our adversary, his aims and his capabilities. Mutually Assured Destruction created an eerie but enduring equilibrium. We were thus able to understand the threat and to develop what proved to be an effective strategy to deter and ultimately to defeat it.
We are often told that the change in the nature of the threat occurred on September 11th 2001 – ‘the day that the world changed’. In fact that change came much earlier with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the ending of the Cold War.
And in fact, even before that horrific massacre of 9/11, fundamentalist terrorism had been present for some time. It affected not only us in the West but those living in the Middle East, Africa and Asia. It was just that the intensity of the Cold War disguised the immediacy of that fundamentalist terrorist threat – except ironically to the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. As a result, we in the West were slow to react. We were too slow to understand that what appeared a distant happening would come back to bite us at home. That one day it would turn upside down our daily lives.
The enfranchised terrorism of the Al Quaeda type does not recognise borders. In a particularly chilling development, we in Britain this summer have seen citizens of our own country, born and bred in our neighbourhoods, with our rights to vote and to free speech, become fundamentalist terrorists - allying themselves with forces that aim to destroy the very fabric of the society within which they were raised.
This and the sheer number and breadth of terrorist attacks have chillingly indicated a further development. Al Qaeda the shadowy disciplined network has become Al Qaedism by mutating into an even more ephemeral and non-molecular worldwide political movement, with growing numbers of followers eager to adopt its methods and advance its aims.
These new terrorists share the theme of either reflecting the aims of al Qaeda or professing some sympathy with radical Islamic fundamentalism. Those inspired by Al Qaeda are every bit as dangerous as Usama bin Laden’s other organised terrorist cells such as al Zaqawi’s in Iraq, because they create a sporadic, spontaneous, and almost unpredictable outbreak of violence that is often totally decentralized and untraceable. They are al Qaedistic, demonstrating terrifying symptoms of "al Qaedism." In the true Greek meaning of the suffix "-istic" they simulate and empathise with the real thing.
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While this is the most immediate area of challenge and threat to our security and national interest there are already and will be others. We have to be ready to meet them all. In order to do so we need resolutely to shape our foreign policy so it is clearly prioritised, governed by our national interest and most importantly supported by a military doctrine and capability strong enough to sustain it.
How do we define the British national interest? We believe in democracy, in human rights, in capitalism and in the Rule of Law. Essentially we believe in freedom. These were the values which won the Cold War. These are the values, which if we are to build the world we want to see, we must continue to promote. It is in our national interest to do so.
I hold that the British national interest is based on six pillars; the protection of the citizen, the defence of the realm, the pre-emption of threats, the forestalling of crises, the defence of key resources and the promotion of trade.
How do we protect them? Pre-emption has been seen by some as a controversial doctrine. Yet given the new challenges we had to face, a pre-emptive policy to tackle such unpredictable threats before they are realised may well become a rule rather than an exception. I should stress however that pre-emption is not solely a military option. There can be economic and political and diplomatic pre-emption. Sometime it is a mixture of them all that is required
The Cold War doctrine of containment and deterrence, which was inherent in the concept of opposing blocs, worked well within that concept and there are still situations within which it can and will have relevance again. I believe that Iran is one.
However the post-Cold War world is of necessity more about pre-emption - or as the UN Commission Report described it ‘prevention’. The United States has already recognised this reality and moved from containment and deterrence towards a policy of pre-emption. Their shift of direction was early and thus inevitably somewhat raw in concept. We can now work with the US and help shape it and refine it.
We need to work together. The threat posed to international stability by terrorism cannot be combated unilaterally. We have no option but to be fully and deeply involved. We have a direct and immediate interest in the outcome of this fight. And it is one to which we can bring considerable experience and expertise.
Furthermore we also have obligations that stem from our permanent membership of the UN Security Council, our place as the leading European member of NATO and of the European Union, and as the current chairman of the Group of Eight, the world’s most powerful economies. All these provide us with a unique means of disseminating our ideas and influencing events, as well as promoting our national interests.
The scale of the deployments of our Armed Forces reflects these responsibilities and interests. Only last Christmas more than 50,000 British troops were serving away from their homes. We currently have troops deployed or stationed in Germany, Northern Ireland, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, FYR Macedonia, Sierra Leone, The Gulf Region, Gibraltar, Belize, Kenya, Canada, The Falkland Islands, Cyprus, Brunei and Afghanistan.
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Yet the irony is that while our forces have never been so busy, the overall size of the armed forces and indeed of many of their capabilities are in unacceptable and potentially terminal decline.
Since 1997 the numbers and equipment of our armed forces have gone into reverse. By 2008 the Navy will be down by 9000, the Army by 7000 and the RAF by 16000. Today surface ships are down by a quarter, tanks by one fifth and by 2007 the RAF will have lost 130 aircraft.
Yet according to the Government’s own analysis the level of military operations has far exceeded those envisaged by the 1998 SDR, and they expect this increased tempo of operations to be the pattern for the future.We need increased manpower, better equipment, more training and more investment in defence, not less. The Government has culpably failed to recognise this.
The most recent NAO report exposed "critical or serious weaknesses" in the ability of large sections of the Armed Forces to meet their readiness targets. At the same time the capabilities of the Royal Navy and the RAF are being further "degraded" as money is diverted to the Army for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The Government has also been responsible for a catalogue of failures in procurement. In the last year, forecast costs for major procurement projects have increased by £1.7 billion, a 4% increase, and at the same time vital projects, such as the Aircraft Carriers, and FRES have failed to materialise. How exactly can the concept of Network Enabled Capability be sustained without FRES? How can the expeditionary warfare be executed as the fundamental concept whereby military campaigns are conducted overseas, in a totally self-contained, durable, protracted, robust, aggressive and sustainable environment if we do not have Aircraft Carriers?
Losses and special payments have risen relentlessly under this Government, £116 million in 2001/02, £260 million in 2002/03 and £559 million in 2003/04; the cost may well top £1 billion in 2004/05. This wasted money could instead have been used to avoid some of the damaging cuts to the manpower capability and resources of all three services.
The squeeze on the defence budget has had a devastating impact upon training with a progressively damaging effect on fighting power and ethos. While heavy commitment to operations can offset some of these disadvantages, particularly in respect of command training, reducing activity levels for field force units that are not committed to operations is a self-inflicted wound.
Individual soldiers are less skilled than they were; training standards are too low; gunnery and field firing camps are cancelled; training between infantry, tanks, engineers and those parts of the Army that may have to co-operate and fight together rarely takes place.
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There are those who claim that numbers do not matter any more. But while the nature of war has changed, there is a constant – men and women remain the “centre-point” of our Armed Forces. The Government has failed to recognise this. The recent White Paper on defence, (Delivering Security in a Changing World - Future Capabilities) calls for a “shift away from an emphasis on numbers of platforms and of people to a new emphasis on effects and outcomes, and on the exploitation of the opportunities presented by new technologies and network enabled capability.“
The central theme of this offering is that of rebalancing and transformation. It is clearly important to use the best technology in the most useful way we can both to enhance our ability to project power and to influence events. There is also a need for rebalancing to meet the demands of the more likely operations: the Armed Forces do need to be more agile and more usable; we need to ensure that our forces are broadly specialized for fighting low-tech guerrilla wars, confronting terrorism and handling less conventional threats. Yet at the same time they must retain their traditional and irreplaceable skills in the ability to fight the high intensity battle and then revert to the peacekeeping role and for these operations we may need more rather than less people. There is a need for transformation both at home and abroad, but the balance of forces, skills and capabilities must be right.
America's 'new way of war’, which includes concepts like 'effects-based operations' and 'network-centric warfare’ should not cloud the fact that whilst a new technology can be a crucial asset at a tactical level it should not be confused with ensuring that our Armed Forces have sufficient manpower and equipment to carry out the tasks they will be required to fulfil on the ground.
As we have seen from the operations in Afghanistan and Iraq – most recently in Basra, intense war fighting, the conducting of peace support operations and providing humanitarian aid can all take place in the same theatre of operations, in the same province, or indeed in the same town in a very short period of time.
It is therefore essential to retain a balance of forces with a balance of capabilities that are constructed in such a way as to enable our troops to go from high intensity warfare to low level type operations sometimes within a matter of days.
The defence of our country depends on the people who serve in the Armed Forces. We ask a lot of them: ultimately we ask them to risk their lives. These demands do not stop at the front line but affect their families too. Yet those who send our Armed Forces to war, very often fail to provide the necessary support.
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As I have already indicated we cannot fight the modern threat on our own. Therefore we have no option but to be fully and deeply involved. Some ask if European and American security are really indivisible. I have no doubt of that. NATO embodies the vital partnership between Europe and North America. The Alliance is deeply rooted in the principles of democracy, individual liberty, and the rule of law. Those values, embodied in the principles of the United Nations Charter and the Washington Treaty, underlie the unique character of the transatlantic relationship. Nothing must be done to weaken that link.A crisis at NATO like that over Iraq or Darfur, or the most recent disagreement over the chain of command for the operation in Afghanistan, is a dangerous development.
We have been warning against this scenario ever since 1998 when the St. Malo Declaration along with the Helsinki and Nice Summits all laid the ground for institutionalised rivalry between the EU and NATO. The creation of an autonomous military arm outside NATO was bound to duplicate scarce and already overstretched resources. This has been accompanied by the dilution of NATO, the decoupling of North America from EU allies, and the inevitable creation of a recipe for stalemate caused by political disagreements. The inherent dangers of these are obvious and we must strive to repair them. The broader the Alliance the more effective it is. And in this the US is not an optional extra. She is key.
Our first aim must be the promotion of political and economic stability in all or any of the areas that are vital to our resource supplies. The second should be to help them defend themselves from external aggression by supplying them with arms or direct military assistance. The third must be a preparedness and ability to use sanctions – not excluding military sanctions - to dissuade or prevent states from using our need of their energy supplies or supply routes to blackmail us. In most of these cases we will have a joint national interest with other countries. Unilateral action would be unlikely but not unthinkable.
Many of our essential resources come from regions that are potentially vulnerable to domestic or regional instability. Many of our energy needs will in the future be met from either the Middle East or Central Asia. Neither region is presently stable.
As a result energy prices are highly volatile. We need to promote the stability which will guarantee the security of supply.
It would be imprudent in this context for us not to consider China’s place on the world stage and its future military power. China looms large in the strategic landscape by virtue of its size, complexity, and political sensitivities. The recent Sino-Russian military exercises are a clear signal of the evolving strategic picture in the region. We know that China is arming herself hand over fist, and indeed is assisting others to likewise. We need urgently to consider and assess why. China has a different view of the world order from those of us in the West. We can agree on terrorism. We will not agree on tyranny in Africa. And Taiwan remains a fault line in an increasingly geopolitically seismic world.
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In defence terms we must constantly look forward. We need to analyse the changing world patterns and predict the emerging tensions and threats. And then we must seek to protect ourselves against them. That is the overarching purpose of Defence. The future can be and is currently obscure. What is not obscure is the folly of cutting back on defence at this time.
The British Armed Forces have a reputation of excellence and skill at arms that is unrivalled throughout the world; indeed they are the benchmark by which all other armed forces are judged. Of all the great institutions in this country they have proved time and time again at all levels to be the most adaptable and flexible, certainly the most successful and they have never let us down.
They have continued to fulfil the tasks given to them they must therefore be given the support needed to complete their tasks to deal with the 21st century challenges they now confront on our behalf.
It is inevitable in the light of developing circumstances that our defence forces must change. What is essential is that they are not short-changed!
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