In a recent post, I compared Britain’s military stance with that of Ireland, the nation which shares our geographic location but has a radically different posture. Ireland has no history as an imperial power, so it doesn’t carry the mindset of a superpower, that of seeking to be either feared or respected around the world for having a full-spectrum aggressive military capability. Ireland recognises, from a long and painful history, that the only real military threats to its homeland have come from the UK, and seeks to maintain its security through having a non-hostile relationship with the UK. Otherwise it is non-aligned. In that position, it feels – and is – secure. There is no state which wants to invade, conquer or occupy Ireland, and hence no need to maintain the armed forces to prevent such a thing.
If we thought about it, we would realise that the same applies to us. But we don’t, because we have a mental block about it. The UK used to be a dominant world power. From Waterloo to 1914, we had an unchallenged navy, and could exploit vast global resources. Britain saw itself as a benevolent power, bringing civilisation to backward people, and so assumed the right to rule a quarter of the world. Despite the decline of the British Empire, and its effective replacement by a US empire, we haven’t made the necessary mental adjustment, and still regard ourselves as needing long range, full spectrum, aggressive military power with which to show the world that we still matter, that we can still assert ourselves wherever we want, that we regard ourselves as a force for good, and can still act as the world’s policeman.
As a result, we still seek to cling to global influence through aggressive military capabilities. Those capabilities have ended up being completely dominated by two white-elephant systems: the Trident nuclear missile system, and the Navy’s twin aircraft carriers. These are the physical manifestations of our aspiration to maintain the image and status of a superpower, and have come at the expense of genuinely defensive military capabilities.
Other former imperial powers don’t do this. Recent imperial powers such as Spain, or Ottoman Turkey, both of which had far-flung empires of significant scale and duration, expect no special status to carry forward to the present day. So, why do we, alone, go on pretending?
There is a third plank of our delusion; we call it the “special relationship”. Britain thinks that it remains relevant because we have the ear of, and can influence, the current big beast, the USA. Since 1945, Britain’s foreign policy has amounted to little more than seeking to be America’s most important and reliable ally, despite all the evidence that this is a one-way street. So, we’ve tailed along in America’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, sending our inadequate Army to take some minor role, the more to maintain our posture of being “good at war” and having a first rate Army, and overlooking the fact of its poor performance in both conflicts. The truth is, though, that our Army is now small, under-equipped, and would be unable to sustain prolonged conventional war fighting at any large scale. It is barely even useful in a supporting role for US forces.
If our Army is only effective as a junior partner of the US, the two great white elephants are even more dependent. The carriers reflect delusions about our global importance, most obvious when Boris Johnson was Prime Minister and blowed hard about “Global Britain” and its grandiose ambitions to cruise the Pacific. Our carrier-based Navy is a design cut-and-pasted from the US Navy, which centres on 11 carrier battle groups; but because we do everything on the cheap, our carriers have insufficient destroyers, air defence, submarine defence, support vessels, sailors, and most notoriously, aircraft. Designed to carry the American made F-35 (to the exclusion of other aircraft types), the ships became a laughing stock for patrolling with less than a quarter of the intended complement of planes (as well as for their constant breakdowns and technical issues). The Navy remains unable to operate or adequately defend its two centrepiece vessels independently, adding operational failure to the more fundamental problem that aircraft carriers are outdated and vulnerable to the new generation of missiles. They would be militarily ineffective against a first-rate opponent (such as Russia or China), indeed would probably be sunk on day one of any such war.
Which leaves the other white elephant, so often described as the “independent deterrent” that these words usually substitute for “Trident” or “strategic nuclear missiles”. Trident is an American-supplied missile reliant on US goodwill and support. While the official narrative might have you believe that Vladimir Putin dare not so much as pick his nose for fear of Britain’s terrifying vengeance, in fact there isn’t the slightest evidence that anyone has ever been deterred from doing anything by the existence of Trident, least of all Russia. It is very widely acknowledged to exist only as part of our posing as a great power.
To summarise, Britain’s entire military posture exists, not to defend the UK from any specific military threat, but to maintain our pathetic aspiration to the legacy status of a superpower. Given that we can’t afford a truly independent, long range, full-spectrum military capability, we have these expensive symbols which rely on US support. To keep this support, we humiliate ourselves by following the US into whatever wars of choice it takes part in, whether that means supporting Israel’s genocidal campaign or attacking countries which have done us no harm.
Our “defence” budget is actually spent on PR; it’s a kind of national vanity project. It has very little to do with actual defence of the British Isles against the real threats which do exist.
Suppose, for a minute, that we stopped caring about our image and our legacy great-power status. Suppose we were content to be (as the rest of the world knows us to be), a middle-ranking advanced economy, rather like our near neighbours, with no need or desire to patrol the Pacific ocean. Suppose our defensive efforts were actually focused on the defence of our homeland from real threats (which, fortunately, are relatively small), while (to a much lesser extent) making a modest contribution to the security of our region – but not stretching the definition of “our region” to the gates of Moscow. Suppose we were to forego the aggressive status symbols which cost so much, and equip ourselves instead with modern defensive capabilities. Suppose that, instead of relying so heavily on military power for our security, we maintained non-hostile relationships with other countries, based on a co-operative, multilateral approach? Why, then we could afford decent services and infrastructure at home; it would be a country worth defending. Like Ireland, or Switzerland.
The nukes-and-Nato approach to our security is a busted flush which reflects only a militarist mindset. The pledge to raise “defence” spending to 5% of GDP represents a more-than-doubling of the current 2.3%; it is an absurd figure with no grounding in any argument or calculation which can be examined, checked or challenged, but is just an arbitrary number which will feed the rapacious and profoundly corrupt arms industry while beggaring a country with a stagnant economy and crumbling public services. There is no proportionality to the actual threat; no amount is enough. There may be those who would argue for spending 10% of GDP. It would be equally groundless: security does not derive from spending (nor, of course, can we afford it; if this target is ever met, it will only be through large-scale reclassification of other spending as “defence”).
The worst thing is, by relying on the muscular approach to national security, we have been led into participation in a number of unnecessary wars, and usually, on the wrong side. If we have to be involved in the Middle East, for example, we should be doing so in defence of the Palestinians, not helping in their slaughter. By opting for militarism, we have become the bad guys. Because we have this vast expenditure, we conjure up threats to justify that spending. By taking part in stupid wars, we create enemies, making ourselves less secure. A better foreign policy would set out to create friends; we would then be more secure.
Spending money on defence is sold to us as a kind of insurance to protect ourselves against a risk. Yet no proper calculation of this risk is carried out. We are simply told to spend 5% of our economy on this protection. There’s a word for this kind of “insurance”: it’s a racket. Nice country you’ve got there; wouldn’t it be a shame if anything happened to it.
The recent defence review is a classic example of a document whose contents and conclusions were determined in advance, and a panel then selected who could be relied on to write what was wanted. An Army officer, a former head of NATO, and a foreign policy hawk who has spent ten years peddling her bizarre fantasy that we are “at war with Russia”. Were they ever going to consider for a split second that our security might be improved if we were less warlike? Of course not.
I see no chance that Britain will change its mindset any time soon. The uniparty and the corporate and billionaire-owned media relentlessly promote the warlike narratives. The charade will go on; we will cling to status symbols we can’t afford, strutting around the world looking increasingly ridiculous, and running the economy down by burdening it with military costs it cannot bear, until it collapses under the weight. That is a threat to our country, far more likely than any invasion.
Notes from Interesting Times 