We live in a dangerous world. With an increasingly unstable climate putting crops at risk and driving people across borders it is not likely to get safer anytime soon.
President Putin remains determined to create his vision of a gloriously expanded ‘Mother Russia’. The Middle East is in turmoil. The rise of China is generating fresh concerns. Terrorism remains a serious threat. So, it is not entirely surprising that voices are calling for Britain to spend a higher proportion of its collective resources on defence.
Defence spending – what do we actually need?
But before we reach for the cheque book and start spending a great deal of money, it might be wise to pause and consider what we actually need to spend it on and, just as importantly, what would be a serious waste of resources that are much needed elsewhere.
If Putin’s horrible war in Ukraine has taught us anything about military strategy it is surely that future wars are not going to resemble past ones. Many of the most expensive forms of military hardware have proved almost useless in modern combat.
Consider, for example, the situation of the Russian Black Sea fleet. Putin spent a great deal of the Russian people’s money assembling this force and clearly expected it to make a big difference in any war. Instead, it has been largely restricted to sheltering from danger because relatively cheap underwater drones have cut through its defences and damaged vessels.
What is the point in the UK government buying very expensive aircraft carriers if they prove similarly vulnerable to attack from drones and can’t be safely taken close to a conflict zone?
Flexibility in a world where drones outwit vanity weapons
It is often said that generals try to fight the last war until the realities on the ground teach them that new technologies require new tactics. Right now the advantage seems to lie with the army that can back their forces with the most drones.
It is possible to make a very good case for Britain needing larger numbers of flexibly equipped troops who have the ability to shoot down drones and are well trained in how to use large numbers of their own. It is a lot less obvious what our country would gain from spending enormous sums of money on more nuclear submarines. Their existence did nothing to prevent Putin invading Ukraine. The need there was for troops on the ground and the ability to resupply them effectively.
The production, testing, and storage of Britain’s nuclear weapon stocks consumes an exceptionally large proportion of our military budget without being of much practical value when it comes to real conflicts. By contrast our country is so lightly supplied with shore patrol vessels that we struggle to prevent people smugglers from sending vulnerable people to our shores and can barely pose a threat to foreign trawlers wishing to hoover up large amounts of fish from our seas.
Put simply we have equipped our country with all or nothing nuclear weapons which haven’t proved a very good deterrent whilst failing to provide ourselves with adequate numbers of well-trained, well-paid and well-equipped troops who can be used in the situations we are actually encountering.
The opportunity cost of nuclear weapons
If we carry on spending billions on maintenance and upgrades to nuclear weapons that are more symbolic than effective then it is most unlikely that we will ever have sufficient funds to deal with real world challenges like Syria, the Red Sea or Ukraine. Before we start diverting resources away from the NHS to hit arbitrary targets like 2.5% of our GDP, we need to take a long hard look at how much of that military spending is wasteful and how poorly our conventional forces are being resourced. There is a much better case for spending money on detecting and preventing terrorism or cyber-attack than £31bn on four submarines.
The need for flexibility doesn’t just extend to weaponry. It extends to tactics and to political judgements.
Recent wars didn’t make us safer – can we trust our decision-makers?
Too many British politicians have proved very good at sending troops into harm’s way without being clear about what they are there to do and without any exit strategy. Did the decision to invade Iraq result in a justifiable increase of peace and security in the region? Did the intervention in Afghanistan result in long-term gains or come with a heavy price and end up making things worse?
Even if you are callous enough to ignore the moral concerns, have the actions and statements of the British government over the destruction of lives, homes and hospitals in Gaza helped to enhance the safety of British people or have they exposed us to more risk of domestic terrorism, not less?
Instead of rushing to promise that they will spend even more of our money on ill-thought-out ideas, it might be better if our politicians spent a little more time on forward planning and a lot more care over who we supply weapons to. If our politicians insist on positioning Britain in isolation from the majority opinion in the United Nations over critically important conflicts such as Gaza, then no amount of macho posturing over how much we are spending is going to make us safer.
