UK Strategic Defence Review 2025: L’Attaque versus Monopoly
As it has for decades, the UK is currently yawing between conceptions of defence strategy, both of which lurch to one of two extremes. There is a ‘defence first’ conception, which proceeds as if there are no constraints, resource and otherwise (political, historical, geographical). And then there is a ‘Treasury’ approach, which treats defence as if it were just another kind of expenditure. Both are wrong: in between there is, or should be, a conception of defence both as the management of the actual, tangible requirements of the present, and as the anticipation of an unknowable and possibly volatile future. This is a kind of strategy which must be constrained by economic and other factors in the present, but which must also retain its exceptional and non-standard characteristics, no matter what the economic analysis might suggest. Defence is not a simple matter of investing for future outcomes, but of investing to nullify threats that might not be fully comprehended or not yet even have revealed themselves.
This essay draws upon ideas discussed previously on Substack and in other publications, The tone of this essay is somewhat pessimistic, but not gratuitously so. Reflecting a long-standing interest in the process and outcome of defence and strategy reviews conducted in the UK since 1945, my hope is that the Strategic Defence Review of 2025 will show my pessimism to be old hat.
Introduction
It is no mawkish overstatement to say that the UK’s armed forces occupy a favourable position in society. Albeit not without their flaws and failures, the armed forces are widely considered emblematic of loyalty, integrity, courage, effectiveness and, above all, of service. And behind this admiration for the Royal Navy, British Army and Royal Air Force, and for those who serve in them, lies another source of national pride: in the stability of civil-military relations in the UK. The military historian John Keegan once described the British Army as ‘famously unpolitical’ while Ewen Broadbent, formerly a senior official in the Ministry of Defence, suggested that ‘In the United Kingdom, political control over the armed forces was established as a principle some centuries ago and, unusually even for Western Europe, has never been seriously challenged’.
The relationship between society and its armed forces – between the ‘political’ and the ‘professional’, the ‘civil’ and the ‘military’ – is periodically subject to a reassessment of international security and national priorities, with a view to ensuring that the armed forces have both the strategy and the capabilities they need to undertake the tasks that society has given them. So far so sensible. The UK is currently undergoing just such a review: the Strategic Defence Review, expected to report in 2025 (SDR25).
In recent years the UK seems to have attempted most conceivable types of defence review including ‘threat-oriented’, ‘capabilities-driven’, ‘effects-based’ and ‘foreign policy-informed’. Critics have argued that each of these approaches was really a desperate attempt by government to disguise the reality that national strategy is constrained by the defence budget which, in turn, is controlled by the Treasury. Governments are, generally, very sensitive to the charge that defence policy is ‘Treasury- led’, on the grounds that public opinion would consider it improper for Treasury ministers and officials to have the final say on whether and when to intervene with military force and on how Britain’s armed forces should be organised and equipped. As SDR25 approaches it seems highly likely that two themes will dominate the national discussion (what there is of it). ‘Threat’ will be the basis of a plea to do the right thing on behalf of the armed forces (and, indeed, the country). ‘Treasury-led’ will emerge as an accusation of short-sightedness, parsimony and lack of strategic awareness on the part of government. And so we can expect to see a relationship – otherwise considered stable, durable and even admirable – begin, once again, to fall apart under pressure that is, largely, self-imposed. As SDR25 moves towards its conclusion we can expect both sides – civil and military – to score some spectacular own goals, either presentational or substantive. This essay describes some of these acts of self-harm.
Own Goal 1 – The Grand Strategy Delusion
SDR25 could become a victim of the obsession with ‘grand strategy’: ringing declarations of intent that have little connection with reality but that nevertheless serve some domestic political purpose. In 2015 the government spoke of ‘Britain’s strong global role’ and ‘our world-class Armed Forces’, and of the need to ‘uphold our national security and project power globally.’ More recently, the 2021 Integrated Review and its 2023 ‘refresh’ referred to ‘Global Britain’ as a ‘science and technology superpower’, a ‘soft power superpower’ and a ‘global leader in cyber’. Without the accompanying capabilities and the necessary staying power, these are simply promises that could not be fulfilled. But perhaps fulfilment is unnecessary: since the ‘grand strategy’ rhetoric costs nothing, sounds ambitious and forward-thinking and is, indeed, rather grand, there is no need for it to be solid and substantial, it just needs to sound cool. ‘Grand strategy’ thus becomes a displacement activity for a political leadership that otherwise has little or no knowledge or experience of security and defence, and even less interest in it (other than in its cost). Its value is that of a marketing device, one that makes it possible for government to appear as a committed and responsible strategic actor, all the while evading criticism; ‘grand strategy’ allows the government to ignore the public debate, rather than lead it. Typically, strategy reviews are reluctant to explain what – if anything – UK Armed Forces will not be expected to do during the five years or so that a review might be expected to cover. Instead, these claims of unbounded capability and influence – appearing as they do with little or no supporting argument or data – come uncomfortably close to being strategically delusional; the delusion being that it might somehow be possible to will strategic ends without willing the necessary means.
SDR25 should not be seduced by siren calls to define a UK ‘grand strategy’, partly because the term is so vague but principally because it will aspire to much more than the UK can possibly achieve, given its current and prospective force posture. It is neither declinist nor defeatist to suggest that as the 21st century advances, a globally ambitious UK is more likely to find itself a ‘strategy taker’ than a ‘strategy maker’. In an increasingly volatile global security environment, the most obvious and effective contribution that UK armed forces could make to the protection of western values and interests would be to ensure the stability of Europe and the deterrence of adversaries on its borders. In national strategy as in most other things, a sense of proportion is usually a good thing, even if the result seems more prosaic than ‘grand’.
Own Goal 2: Arcane Language
In an earlier essay I quoted the Prussian military philosopher Carl von Clausewitz who wrote the following:
We will avoid using an arcane and obscure language, and express ourselves in plain speech, with a sequence of clear, lucid concepts. If concepts are to be clear and fruitful, things must be called by their right names.
If past strategy and defence reviews are anything to go by, however, we can expect SDR25 to make sense (possibly) to its authors, but not to many others. Consistent with the UK defence establishment’s addiction to prolix and bewildering language, SDR25 will likely employ a bizarre, coded lexicon with which contending theories of 21st century warfare will be discussed, and an absurdly selective view of the future will be offered; a view that will, conveniently, find a purpose for the UK’s dwindling military capabilities, rather than vice versa.
If Clausewitz’s sage advice is ignored then SDR25 will be labelled foolish, pretentious or sinister – or perhaps all three. Whatever else it might aspire to be, a strategic defence review is political – it must be, at least in part, an exercise in domestic public diplomacy. But if obfuscation, deliberate or otherwise, has the effect of removing national strategy and defence from the arena of public interest, understanding and debate, then the suspicion can only deepen that national strategy is not to be explained fully, honestly and openly for fear that awkward questions will then be asked of government. The accusation will resurface that UK defence is ‘Treasury-led’, with the detached technocrats and economists of the UK’s finance ministry making defence-related spending decisions on their own terms, rather than from anything resembling a strategic perspective. And this own goal could prove more spectacular still. If security and defence do become an area of public policy with which the public, ironically, does not feel engaged then it should be no surprise if recruitment into the armed forces continues to decline, perhaps to the point that the UK’s armed forces lose their operational credibility altogether. If this crisis of capability deepens, while the language of UK defence continues nevertheless to be intellectualised, grandiloquent, delusional or evasive, then it is difficult to see what the UK’s allies or its adversaries could make of it, with the result that both the alliance and the deterrent value of UK defence might be undermined.
Own Goal 3: Threat
National strategy, security and defence are, unsurprisingly, concerned with threats to the UK’s territory and interests, as well as those of its allies. It has become customary to think of national power as both ‘hard’ and ‘soft’. The same can be said for vulnerabilities, and so UK national strategy must also be expected to consider challenges to its ‘soft’ principles and values. There is a third category of problem: hazards, e.g., the consequences of events in nature such as pandemics, climate change and floods. All this unpleasantness could, conceivably, be collated into a single, comprehensive analysis. This analysis would be multi-level (everything from war to weather); multi-source (state and non-state adversaries); traditional (organised armed force) and non-traditional (government-sponsored assassinations); direct (to UK) and indirect (via allies); human (terrorism); semi-human (artificial intelligence) and technical (drones).
If such a document were ever to be drafted, the Treasury’s technocrats and economists would know exactly what to do with it – ignore it. The omni-crisis would not be taken seriously, because it could not: the expenditure required to meet all threats, challenges and hazards described would be intolerable. Furthermore, to meet this crisis, the machinery of government would have to be integrated to a standard far beyond anything so far achieved in the UK. The document would be regarded as tendentious doom-mongering, hostage to uncertain fortune or, at best, evidence that the country’s security specialists are confused and indecisive. It would then be time for the experts in the Treasury’s own Defence, Diplomacy & Intelligence department to take charge (it is, after all, the national ‘fortune’ that the Treasury is tasked to manage) with the likely result that threats, hazards and challenges would all be filed under Pending.
Alternatively, the security assessment could be influenced by self-serving accounts of the security situation designed to favour one service over the others. Andrew Dorman and I describe this as ‘service tribalism’, otherwise known as inter-service rivalry, whereby ‘the professional heads of the three armed services and their civilian advocates argue vigorously for an undiminished or perhaps even increased share of the defence budget as it begins to shrink (whether in real or relative terms). An aggressive and unedifying bargaining process can then begin, with each service presenting an exaggerated account of its competence to deal with the larger or more important aspects of the problem of national security and defence, if only they were given the resources to do so. Service tribalism is, self-evidently, inimical to the development of an integrated national strategy and is just another invitation to the Treasury’s defence ‘specialists’ to assume control.
Own Goal 4: ‘First Duty’ versus ‘Prior Duty’
The idea of a covenant – an exchange of obligations and responsibilities – between the UK’s armed forces, government and society, has been familiar for centuries, albeit unwritten until very recently. In 2000 the British Army published a Military Covenant which, in due course, broadened into the Armed Forces Covenant, first published in May 2011. The first sentence of the latter document is simple and direct: ‘The first duty of Government is the defence of the realm.’
The ‘first duty’ assertion now appears regularly as the preface to any discussion of UK national strategy and defence. Although the wording has changed slightly, I see the origin of this language in Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations (1776): ‘The first duty of the sovereign is that of protecting the society from the violence and invasion of other independent societies.’ This duty, said Smith, ‘can be performed only by means of a military force’.[1] But the ‘first duty’, he noted, ‘grows gradually more and more expensive, as the society advances in civilization.’ This led Smith to the following comment – critically important, but not often mentioned:
In a civilized society, as the soldiers are maintained altogether by the labour of those who are not soldiers, the number of the former can never exceed what the latter can maintain, over and above maintaining, in a manner suitable to their respective stations, both themselves and the other officers of government, and law, whom they are obliged to maintain.
In other words, while there is a first duty to defend, it is not an absolute, unconditional obligation: there is, perhaps counter-intuitively, a prior duty to ensure that the economy is not destroyed in the process and that a balance must be struck between the behaviour of ‘other independent societies’, which are beyond our control, and the choices we make in our own society. Treasury officials and economists might be quietly delighted by the frequency with which the (incomplete) first duty claim is made: having very probably read more of Wealth of Nations than others in and around UK government, they know what Smith really meant and can luxuriate in their greater wisdom. But UK national strategy must not descend into rivalry between the unwise (defence) and the smug (Treasury). There is a strong, if on the face of it slightly paradoxical case to suggest that the best approach to defence is one that is informed by economic thinking (i.e. the careful management and distribution of scarce resources) but not captured by it. Military tacticians and strategists understand this as they are all taught, early in their career, that the decision to pursue certain ‘ends’ requires the allocation of appropriate ‘means’. As Smith argues, while the unwise and the smug might not be the most comfortable of bedfellows, they are nevertheless in it together.
Own Goal 5: Inputs versus Outputs
The ‘first duty’ assertion is often accompanied by an impassioned plea to increase spending on defence and security. Currently (late 2024), the UK government has undertaken to increase defence spending to 2.5 per cent of GDP ‘as soon as resources allow’. The ‘percentage GDP’ formula has its origin in September 2014. At NATO’s summit meeting in Wales, Alliance governments pledged themselves to ‘reverse the trend of declining defence budgets’ and to ‘move towards the existing NATO guidance of spending 2% of GDP on defence within a decade.’
Even though it is often described as a formal commitment (i.e., a treaty agreement of some sort), the 2014 ‘decision’ was no such thing – it was simply guidance, whatever that word might mean. Diplomats routinely acknowledge the difference between ‘legally binding’ and ‘politically binding’ agreements. The first of these is the serious stuff of treaties, alliances and trade agreements. The second, however, is best understood as an expression of intent and, at worst, as a device to avoid the absurdity of making agreements that are openly ‘non-binding’. While there have been some improvements in defence spending across NATO Europe, the 2014 pledge has not been scrupulously honoured. Its non-binding nature probably kept it (and NATO) on life support; had it been a binding treaty commitment it might have been revoked years ago, causing even deeper rifts within the Alliance. Given that GDP is not fixed, it is an obviously contingent basis for long-term defence spending and investment. It also represents an approach to defence spending that is, plainly, concerned with input (i.e., the quantum of public funds spent on defence) rather than output (i.e., the size and capability of armed forces to be provided by those funds). And it is not standard: in other areas of public finance it is common for value to be expressed tangibly – the number of hospital beds available, school examinations passed, journeys travelled and so on; in other words, as an output, rather than as an input represented by a percentage of GDP.
It is remarkable that the UK Ministry of Defence and Armed Forces should have ceded initiative so readily, stepping into an argument on terms which are so obviously to the advantage of Treasury economists who have a larger and wider view of public finances and who can draw upon the fallacious claim of ‘affordability’ when necessary. The proportion of public spending allocated to defence is not fixed as if by the laws of nature, it is a matter of choice, rather than of fact – the UK economy is of such a size that the government could ‘afford’ to spend more on defence if it chose to do so. By falling into the percentage GDP/affordability trap, the UK’s defence establishment dignifies a fundamentally inadequate approach to national security and defence. Just as strategy, in any area, ought not to proceed as though resource constraints do not matter, neither should it proceed as though it is only resource constraints that matter.
It would be a triumph if SDR25 could break free from the percentage GDP/affordability dogma – a triumph for the UK and a model or the rest of NATO. NATO is currently (December 2024) ‘considering’ whether to increase the target to three percent of GDP at its summit meeting in The Hague in June 2025. Instead, SDR25 should argue for a return to output as the best measure of a national defence effort, just as NATO should realise that, for military people, ‘targets’ mean very little if they have nothing to fire at them. What is needed in the UK, and elsewhere in Europe, are military forces that are capable and responsive and are seen as such. What is the most plausible assessment of what a modern, middle-ranking, west European power’s navy, army and air force should look like for the coming decade or so? SDR25 should show how to achieve that assessment, as quickly as possible, and from the best available source.
Last Words
I have described five ‘own goals’ – exaggerated rhetoric, incomprehensible language, exaggerated or self-serving threat assessments, facile misreading of the machinery of government, and the unintelligent confusion of inputs and outputs. Taken together, the result is that UK national strategy for security and defence is intellectually, materially and even morally impoverished.
National strategy should be non-rival – at least in terms of domestic UK politics. In a mature, globally aware country, a government that professes itself to be strategically competent should seek to achieve an effective, durable balance between the need for security and defence and the investment required to meet that goal. In any area of public policy, ends and means (to coin a military expression) are, each, a necessary component of strategy, rather than a sufficient explanation of it. A government that allowed public health, education and transport to collapse for lack of forethought and investment would, rightly, be pilloried. Something similar can be said for security and defence, although there is a significant difference. In most areas of public policy, agency and initiative lie largely with domestic government. But in defence, agency and initiative can lie far beyond government’s scope of control. Antagonists, adversaries and even allies will all make decisions that could bear directly and critically on UK national security, without first checking to see whether the UK has been briefed. It follows that security and defence against known and potential adversaries require more precautionary, high-risk investment and preparation than would be appropriate in other areas of public policy.
But perhaps the ‘own goal’ metaphor, drawn from the thrilling and very public sport of football (known to the Americans, the Irish and some others as ‘soccer’) is the wrong metaphor. Perhaps we should instead be thinking of old-fashioned board games being played in badly lit, badly ventilated rooms in Whitehall. And perhaps the problem is that there is not one set of rules but two: one side, the Ministry of Defence and the Armed Forces, believe they are playing L’Attaque (a war game devised in the early 20th century, now better known as Stratego) while the other side, Treasury ministers and officials, know they are playing Monopoly (described as an ‘economics-themed’ game for those captivated by the operation of markets).
[1] Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, A Selected Edition ed. Kathryn Sutherland (Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 393, 398, 406.