Allan Massie: Neglecting defence is dangerous

The financial demands of the Treasury should not determine what we can afford to protect national security, writes Allan Massie
Anti-Trident protesters demonstrate outside the Scottish Parliament. Picture Getty ImagesAnti-Trident protesters demonstrate outside the Scottish Parliament. Picture Getty Images
Anti-Trident protesters demonstrate outside the Scottish Parliament. Picture Getty Images

There are no votes in defence, it is said, and so almost nobody is talking about the subject in the run-up to the general election. Unfortunately the assumption is probably justified. Promising to spend more on defence, even if only to keep our promise to spend the 2 per cent of GDP on which Nato members are (officially) agreed, won’t, it seems, win any votes.

For one thing, it’s generally agreed that after the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, neither glorious, the country has no appetite for comparable military intervention in troubled places. So our contribution to the war against Islamic State is minimal, and we are apparently far more concerned with the problem of British-born radicalised jihadists than with defeating IS, even though the problem of these deluded young people is quite a small one. But it’s manageable and it’s a distraction. So that’s fine.

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If there are no votes in defence, then, sadly, it seems that there are few to be lost by neglecting defence and by cutting the size and capability of our armed forces. Of course you can make a case for doing so. First, it’s a time of austerity and the Ministry of Defence must take its share of cuts in public expenditure. Second, despite Russia’s intervention in Ukraine, there is arguably no likelihood of Britain being involved in military action in Europe, either as a member of Nato or of the European Union.

Trident submarines still give Britain some influence in world affairs. Picture: AFPTrident submarines still give Britain some influence in world affairs. Picture: AFP
Trident submarines still give Britain some influence in world affairs. Picture: AFP

And yet and yet. There are, historically, three great departments of state: the Treasury, the Foreign Office and the Ministry of Defence, itself formed by the amalgamation of the Admiralty, War Office and Air Ministry. (It’s worth remembering that, in the 1950s, each of the three services had its own minister in the Cabinet.)

The Foreign Office and the MoD have a common interest: the safeguarding and advancement of the UK’s place in the world. They are necessarily often at odds with the Treasury, but today are also subservient to it. Foreign and defence policy are determined less than by what is needed than by what the Treasury decrees may be afforded.

This is neither desirable nor healthy, and one consequence, spelled out this week by General Sir Pater Wall, former chief of the general staff, is that we have less capability in an unforeseen crisis and our political choices are consequently constrained. The dominance of the Treasury is severely restrictive, and may well endanger national security.

Over everything looms a dark shadow: the huge cost to be incurred sometime in the next ten years for the replacement of the Trident submarines, our nuclear deterrent.

The Treasury agrees to bear this cost only if other defence costs and projects are pared to the bone. For many of course it is not only the cost of replacing Trident which is intolerable; our retention of nuclear weapons is an obscenity.

For others it’s only an absurdity. We will spend vast sums on weapons which can never be used. Nobody in his right mind can contemplate the reality of a nuclear war, and the danger of nuclear proliferation is greater than it has ever been.

Shouldn’t we, they say, set an example by giving up our nuclear weapons?

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For those of us who lived through the Cold War, it’s a familiar argument. I know of people who say they lived in constant fear of annihilation in a nuclear war. I never felt like that.

There were of course dangers, but at the last moment sanity always prevailed. The reality of MAD – Mutual Assured Destruction – preserved the peace. It often sounded crazy, but MAD worked. It still seems to do so.

Of course MAD would be no less effective if the United Kingdom set an example by giving up its nuclear armament. The argument against doing so was most forcibly put by Aneurin Bevan when he was Labour’s shadow foreign secretary.

Nobody would have called Bevan a warmonger but when he told the Labour Party conference that unilateral nuclear disarmament would send a British foreign secretary – even a Labour one – “naked into the conference chamber”, he made the case that it was only our status as a nuclear power that gave us influence in world affairs.

That influence may have since been diminished. We are even less entitled to think of ourselves as a Great Power than we were when Bevan contemplated the prospect of a British foreign secretary shorn of all influence, no longer in a position to deter hostile powers or act as a restraining force on friendly ones. Nevertheless it would be rash and foolish to dismiss his argument out of hand.

Inasmuch as the possession of nuclear weapons serves as a deterrent, it not only safeguards our security but also gives us some influence on global politics. It is difficult to imagine any British prime minister surrendering this position.

Yet if the cost of a Trident replacement leads the Treasury to insist on further and deeper cuts in defence spending, the consequences may be incalculable, for predicting the future is very difficult. (Who, 15 years ago, would have foreseen anything like IS?) But one thing is sure. Neglecting defence today is as hazardous, and therefore as irresponsible, as it has always been.

We still have to guard against the dangers that we can recognise, and provide for those that we can scarcely even guess at.

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Protecting national security is the first and most important duty of any government, and what is necessary for that should not be determined by the Treasury’s view of what can be afforded. A strong prime minister should listen to the views of the Foreign Office and the needs of the Ministry of Defence – and tell the Treasury to provide the goods. Other cuts in public spending may be painful, but they are not dangerous. Cuts in defence spending, such as are now under way and planned for the future, are the height of irresponsibility.

They show a prime minister who is subservient to the Treasury, instead of being its master – he is still, is he not, officially First Lord of the Treasury? And if the electorate is indifferent to our much-reduced defence capability, this is a sign of decadence.

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