I would like to think that the politicians are 'starting to get it', but the pessimist in me laughs at any such notion. However, what to my mind we are starting to see to see the ground work laid for the next SDSR, what with this Defence Select Committee report and Sir Hew Strachan's conveniently timed piece which appeared in the Telegraph the other day:
Britain's wars 'have no strategy?, says top military adviser - Telegraph
Added to this was Professor Laurence Freedman's magnum opus,
Strategy: A History which was published last year and was one of the FT's books of the year, all of which follow on from a glut of papers that RUSI have published in recent years bemoaning the lack of strategic thought in how the UK does defence - both the physical and conceptual parts of operations.
So if I were being an optimist, I would like to say that maybe people are starting to wake up to the fact that a coherent defence strategy must have its genesis in solid evidence and policy, rather than being based solely on Treasury targets. The Government's line that securing the economy had to be the main effort holds water, but only up to a point. As Professor Paul Cornish pointed out in his paper
Strategy in Austerity, a country with a failed economy cannot be described as stable, whilst an economically successful country that lacks the means to secure its interests will not remain economically successful for long.
However, I am fundamentally a pessimist, some may even say a cynic. As such I think the current glut of publications and articles on UK strategic thought have appeared precisely because the politicians have not, do not and are not likely 'to get' strategic thinking and need a nudge in the right direction. What we are seeing here, I believe, is the start of 'shaping operations' in advance of the next election. If as the Chancellor notes, we have so far merely dipped a toe in to the waters of austerity and further drastic cuts are required, and if in the post-Afghan era the UK military is seen to not have a purpose - or as is more likely, many individuals do not understand what our purpose is (in these days of globalisation, domestic interests and associated security concerns are often rooted in nebulous causes and issues thousands of miles from your own national doorstep), then the Armed Forces will be ripe for culling and a general public largely concerned with immediate self-gratification will not raise an eyebrow in concern.
Let us pray that those at the top of our respective Services for once stop playing parochial single Service games and start pulling in the same direction in advance of the next election. To my mind, the biggest strategic threat to the UK's armed forces lies not in some far off dusty part of the globe, but in the corridors of Whitehall and the Treasury.