At Conference Nick Clegg mentioned that the only European powers with any worthwhile military capability are Britain and France. Apart from the fact that we are just one more round of defence cuts away from that not being true in Britain’s case, it is also a very WESTERN European world-view. It is true that so far as expeditionary warfare is concerned, only Britain and France have any great capability to send troops to the far corners of the globe, but it is not just expeditionary warfare that matters in this world.
The House of Commons Defence Committee published its 10th report last week (“Re-thinking defence to meet new threats”) and it stressed the threat posed by Russia. The light-to-medium-weight forces that Britain and France might send to another Mali or Afghanistan would count for little in a major conflict in Eastern Europe.
However, despite stressing the threat from the east, the Defence Committee did not give either Poland or Germany so much as a mention; they seem also to see the world through exclusively western European eyes.
I was at a conference earlier this year listening to an officer in the Polish Army describe how his country is boosting its defence spending (min 1.95% of GDP by law!), upgrading its Main Battle Tanks (German-made Leopards, already among the world’s best), buying new self-propelled artillery and building a new fleet of infantry combat vehicles in a seven-year program. The Polish Army is the biggest army in the EU, and the German Army is not much smaller. The Poles have ten armoured and mechanised brigades, the Germans six, France four (or two, depending on definitions) and Britain three (and I bet the Army would be hard-pressed to get all three ready to go at the same time). The Poles have a hot war going on to the south, in the Ukraine and a cold war going on to the north of them in the Baltic.
It is time British politicians took the situation in eastern Europe seriously in military terms, sanctions might not be enough, it really might turn nasty and weakness on NATOs part will make things worse.
The view of the world from Warsaw is, I am sure, very different from the view from Westminster, for all that we are part of the same continent. The witnesses who gave evidence to the Defence Committee were all British. The committee might spread its net a bit wider next time.
* Steve Coltman is parliamentary spokesperson for Loughborough and an Executive member of the Association of Liberal Democrat Engineers and Scientists although he writing here in a personal capacity.
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19 Comments
Excellent, think you Steve.
Maintaining a world wide capability to project power particularly with heavy forces will cost money.
Of course, Germany does have a substantial military – but it is very reluctant to commit it to extra-territorial combat operations. Poland’s strength in ground forces is not matched, as noted, by its ability to deploy outside the immediate region. Both Britain and France currently (mostly, sort of) retain the capacity to do all kinds of different things, such as carrier aviation, amphibious warfare and so on. It’s the spectrum of capacities and the ambition to use them on a global stage that set them apart, not just raw numbers of troops.
Thanks for the post, I quite agree.
Reading Buzan we might ask whether a Great Power can be defined in the 21st century as a Regional Power that is also a Middle Power? Or, is it only the necessary precondition for what may later become recognised (internally and externally) as a Great Power? Explanation – being a Regional Power without any opposing regional pole allows the freedom to magnify the projected effect of a Middle-Power into that of Great Power…… Example – By solving its strategic problem with Pakistan India would de-facto become a Great Power rather than merely a Regional/Middle Power.
Which is the long way round of saying; if britain does not remain a great power with great responsibility to act for the betterment of mankind…. who is?
Good, interesting post Steve. We (the British in general, Liberal Democrats not excluded) do seem to have become pretty inward looking in recent years.
Why would a small country like the UK which is a tiny Island need the same military set up as countries that have land borders? We do not have the prospect of tanks trundling across the North Sea, the Atlantic or the English Channel? We have Modern destroyers that pack a punch five times greater than the previous generation of destroyer, they can cope with multiple inbounds the size of tennis balls travelling at multiples of the speed of sound. Our modern warships require far far fewer numbers to operate than older generation ships, the new aircraft carriers will require less than 25% of the numbers needed by US carriers, we have a large fleet of unmanned drones which by definition are unmanned, we are working on a generation of unmanned autonomous aerial combat vehicles which amazingly don’t need humans. Our threats are not Poland’s threats so comparing military forces that do not much more than massage unemployment numbers with ours in bonkers & you must be aware the Germans were reduced to carrying out exercises with broom handles as they didn’t have enough equipment for all their soldiers & today we hear they have a problem with the guns they do have not shooting straight!
A very interesting article. Poland did contribute troops to conflicts both in Iraq and Afghanistan. In terms of population, it and Spain and not too far behind the biggest 5 countries in the EU. They have many centuries of experience of encroachment, invasion and occupation by their neighbours, which is a good reason for maintaining large and modern conventional forces.
Nick Clegg’s comment probably reflects a view held by too many of our compatriots, that the UK’s military status is linked with possessing nuclear weapons and a close relationship with the US. I doubt whether this is realistic. In terms of post-1945 strategy nuclear weapons seem to be almost a distraction from providing the sort of defence capability we do use.
We should look at privatising the armed forces in order to reduce costs and make them more competitive. They swallow up huge amounts of money for little gain these days. Blackwater or G4S would do a better job, and during peaceful periods they can work on behalf of corporations to protect their assets in difficult areas, rather than be paid loads by the state to sit about.
@Stimpson
Maybe we should privatise the government while we’re at it. All this voting business is very inefficient, no? Why not just have a multinational collect taxes and pay them to its shareholders?
There is no reason why a multinational couldnt collect tax on behalf of the government, in fact it would be more efficient.
People should have the right to vote, but parties should be responsible in their policies and promote the benefits of globalisation and privatisation. In any case if the hard left or nationalist parties do gain power, the voters would soon vote them out once they see what damage they cause.
@Stimpson- your position is worse than libertarianism. At least in the libertarian society I don’t have to pay taxes, so I have some compensation for the total absence of public services. But in your vision, I still have to pay taxes, which go straight to shareholders, and there are still no public services…
@ Joe Thorpe – “Why would a small country like the UK which is a tiny Island need the same military set up as countries that have land borders?”
Categorically, absolutely, and without doubt we do not have the same military set up as our continental partners.
Being an island nation with a stable liberal democracy and a friendly backyard allows us to configure our armed forced for power projection rather than territorial defence.
This composition of high-end power projection assets makes us the only nation besides the US which is capable of initiating, entering, supplying and concluding a theatre level hot war at the far end of the earth.
It is not divisions of tanks and infantry that permit this, rather it is a deep logistic train in all three services, a deployable divisional HQ(ARRC), and assets such as amphibs and carriers.
This is appropriate for power-projection around the world, but not for defending the Fulda Gap from the fifth soviet shock army!
The big objection to rebuilding what would be the British Army of the Rhine is that it parks a bigger portion of the defence budget in a static position with an extremely limited utility, at the expense of our contingent capability to intervene further afield, and to a scale that will give HMG a significant input on the outcome.
RAF, RFA, and the carrier/amphib group allows HMG to intervene anywhere it damn well pleases, including the falklands, so in broad strokes the less spent on static defence vis-a-vis contingent intervention, the better as far as HMG is concerned.
To return to Buzan above, the best description of a Britain that i can devise is a Middle Power (in reach & scale) that is also a Regional Power (without an opposing regional pole), and I don’t see the point of our attempting to hobble our ability to act around the world by tieing down Her Majesty’s Forces in little ‘fortresses’ across europe.
To quote Lindley-French to parliament:
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201012/cmselect/cmdfence/uc761-vi/uc76101.htm
”Professor Lindley-French: This is where I become positive, which will surprise you. There is a very great danger that by default, if we hold our nerve, we could end up with quite a sound defence strategy. There will be two carriers, strategic mobility, Astutes-not enough, but in time you could build more over 20, 30 or 40 years-Type 45s and Type 26s. It is a concept whereby there is projectability, not globally but regionally-plus.
Almost 75% of the world’s population lives less than 100 kilometres from the sea. It is a defence strategy in which, given the capabilities envisaged, no one owns land, sea or air-no single service-as a genuine jointery comes out of this. We could actually have a defence strategy worth talking about, by muddling through and from the bottom up, which has nothing to do with the NSS or the SDSR. The issue is, can we hold our nerve over that longer investment period?”
Holding our nerve over the longer investment period, how about a little financial nerve, eh? #2.0%GDP
@Joe Thorpe
Because the threats we face don’t just start and end at our borders and because threats to other countries in the region will always impact on us.
Just because there’s water between us and other countries doesn’t mean that threats to our security will always stay on the other side of it.
‘water between us and other countries’
There’s quite of lot of water barriers within the UK. Don’t forget that 300 mile long land frontier in Ulster as well.
@ Joe Thorpe : “Our threats are not Poland’s threats”. Poland and the UK are both in NATO and both in the EU, so like it or not Poland’s threats ARE our threats too. Furthermore, we are not a small country in economic terms. Out of the 200 or so countries in the UN we rank 7th or 8th, so we have a leadership role in quite a number of areas.
The light-weight forces that are suitable for expeditionary warfare are not much use in a clash of arms in eastern Europe. Heavy armour and the air-power that backs it up is the only currency that is recognised.
Re Jedibeeftrix – I don’t think we need literally to re-create the Rhine Army but it is important to have a decent armoured warfare capability. We have to have an army that can fight other armies (not just insurgents) and can’t leave the Poles unsupported, it is not just military support but the moral support as well that counts.
I have just bought Mark Urban’s book ‘The Edge’, reviewed by Max Hastings in the ST. He says the West is unilaterally disarming itself, that western politicians have pretty well given up bothering with defence. If it is an exaggeration its not far off the mark I think.
Steve Colman – we have previous when it comes to stitching up the Poles.
Fair enough, Steve.
But we have maintained three armoured regiments with three armoured infantry and three armoured recon.
BAOR it is not, but we cannot have more without deleting the strategic enablers that allow us to raise hell ™ on the other side of the world.
Seems to me like there’s a very strong case for ditching Trident and investing the savings in our conventional armed forces. The ones we actually use, and the ones that actually provide a deterrent.
Before we get too entranced by Russia, how precarious is peace in the ME?
http://lindleyfrench.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/the-fourth-gulf-war.html?m=1