“Describe the strategic, threat, and operational context for UK Defence 2024- 2050”
This is the first question in the online survey and in itself it could represent the raw data for a doctoral study on conventional security thinking. The full survey runs on for another 700 words, all of it set within predictably restricted parameters. The word order of the first question implies that you set your strategy before you do a threat assessment. In other words: Get set, Fire, Take aim. Indeed, the consultation does not extend to seeking our opinions about threats. Instead, the preamble to the survey tells us what they are. As Henry Ford may have said: you can have any colour you like, so long as it is black.
“The UK faces threats that are growing and diversifying: war in Europe; conflict in the Middle East; states across the world that are increasingly acting in ways that challenge regional and global stability as well as our values and interests; terrorist groups; hybrid attacks; and instability caused by climate change.”
Instability caused by climate change? Sure. But the box-thinking limitations of conventional “security” discourse ensure that we are not looking here in the round at what climate collapse is bringing and will bring, or what its effects will be across the globe (including within the UK’s borders), we are simply focussing on how the armed forces might be expected to respond. (And ignoring, of course, the significant carbon emission impact of war-making machinery even when not in combat.) No mention of pandemics, nuclear war, mass movements of people, decline in and erosion of democratic institutions, bio-technology gone rogue, AI, chronic and worsening inequality, racism, murderous violence against women, repressions, etc. What is common to that frightening list is that effective responses require a new level of international and transnational co-operation, not the ratcheting up of international tensions or a new arms race.
And instability – a key word in the acceptable security lexicon. One might have thought that the review helmsman George Robertson, a key member of the Blair gang that pushed us into the Second Gulf War, would by this time have had a wee thought of what that special military operation provided in the way of instability, as well as a persisting legacy of chaos. What they really mean by instability is any potential shaking of the foundations of the status quo – a status quo that guarantees for the West a continuing supply of cheap resources and labour in order to maintain our unsustainable lifestyles.
We must shift from the dangerous and limited militarised concepts towards “common security”. That term does at least allow us to recognise that our safety depends on the safety of others, including non-human nature. We are far less likely to feel and be safe in Flat 1A in the block if the folk in Flat 6B are in a pickle. The global version of this is too obvious to underline. We are almost beginning to realise that catastrophic floods in Pakistan will not leave people in the rich north and west unaffected, and that for this challenge the old, sectional and militarised recipes are utterly useless.
It is sadly not surprising that the survey does not raise the question of any prudential, legal or ethical restraints on the UK’s military activities. We recall Robin Cook’s laudable attempt to at least talk about an ethical foreign policy, and now we simply have to grieve for a tragically missed opportunity. Take just two examples screaming for genuine change.
The UK is a signatory to the Convention on Cluster Munitions and rules out the use by its armed forces of this vicious and indiscriminate weapon. But we remain willing to fight alongside other forces who use the weapon and would even call upon fire support in an operation, even when that support is likely to include cluster bombs. Shameful and sleekit as that is we are in another dimension entirely when it comes to the UK’s nuclear arsenal. Possessing nuclear weapons means nothing other than the willingness to commit a hideous atrocity, whether or not that response is in retaliation to a nuclear strike. An atrocity moreover that would bring the roof down on all of us, worldwide.
Given the UK’s almost complete subservience to the US in foreign policy and war-making, all of this is grimly predictable. We must somehow shift from the dangerous and limited militarised concepts towards “common security”. That term does at least allow us to recognise that our safety depends on the safety of others, including non-human nature. We are far less likely to feel and be safe in Flat 1A in the block if the folk in Flat 6B are in a pickle. The global version of this is too obvious to underline. We are almost beginning to realise that events like floods in Pakistan or China will not leave people in the rich north and west unaffected. The old, sectional and militarised recipes are utterly useless in this situation. The box-thinking extends to the whole governmental response, hampered as it is by the ancient departmental categories. That box sits in yet another box – the way everything is assessed from the standpoint of narrow nationalist interests, tied in as that is to the Western power bloc. When it comes to a rational response to what we are facing globally all of that takes us deep into chocolate teapot territory.
There are other territories of course. One example is the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. It is based on a realistic assessment of the nature, potential impact and actual risk of nuclear war. It recognises that total elimination of these weapons is the only safe option. As a Treaty it is working to engage with all of the world’s states to that end. So far there are 93 signatories and 70 states parties. There is a growing pattern for large financial institutions to disinvest from nuclear weapon production – a sure sign that the Treaty is moving nukes into their proper category as pariah weapons. One small step by the UK could make a big difference here. If the UK could simply say that it truly recognises the extreme danger and intends to be an observer at the next Meeting of States Parties to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons it would be a hugely significant shift, and give real hope to people across the world. The need to live and act as global citizens is greater than ever.