Hollow Point
Tom Stevenson
For Britain’s defence intelligentsia, a new government means new opportunities. Keir Starmer has made an ‘iron clad’ commitment to increase military spending and to ‘make sure our hollowed-out armed forces are bolstered and respected’. But in the run-up to the general election, and since, there has been a concerted effort to solicit the new government for even more.
Earlier this month, the director of military sciences at the Royal United Services Institute, Matthew Savill, published a paper, ‘A Hollow Force?’, arguing that Britain’s armed forces are in need of serious attention. The idea that they have been hollowed out has some obvious validity (even if it is borrowed from the Conservative former defence secretary Ben Wallace). The navy has two aircraft carriers but only enough deployable vessels to form one carrier group. The army doesn’t have sufficient tanks, self-propelled artillery or combat engineers to form the armoured divisions it thinks it should have.
For Savill this is a matter of urgency because Britain faces a rogues’ gallery of threats, ‘with Russia and China in the vanguard, Iran and North Korea following close behind, and non-state groups like Yemen’s Houthis filling in the gaps’. How can the UK claim to be a ‘leading country in Nato’, Savill asks, if its military is ‘less than the sum of its parts’?
During the general election campaign, the former head of the Secretary of State’s Office for Net Assessment and Challenge (SONAC), Rob Johnson, said that Britain’s ‘defences are too thin’ and the armed forces ‘cannot defend the British homelands’. Spending 3 per cent of GDP ‘at a minimum’ was needed to get the house in order.
Last month, General Patrick Sanders marked his retirement as chief of the general staff by giving an exit interview to the Timesin which he said the armed forces were ‘worn down’ and ammunition stockpiles ‘dangerously low’. Starmer’s decision to maintain the Conservative government’s pledge that military spending would rise to 2.5 per cent of GDP was not enough, Sanders said. ‘Closer to 3 per cent’ of GDP was needed because Russia, China and Iran were ‘new axis powers’ representing a threat ‘more dangerous’ than Nazi Germany.
Britain’s defence intellectuals like to pose as bold dissidents speaking hard truths. But their recommendations are formulaic, if not identical: an incipient crisis in the military, a lack of equipment and a cluster of dangerous enemies mean that Britain should greatly increase military spending, ideally to 3 per cent of GDP or more (even as the chancellor warns that the nation’s finances are in a far worse state than previously thought).
Given the poverty of foreign policy discussion in Britain, this is hardly surprising. If there are no schools of security thought here, it is because there is no serious debate on any of the substantive topics. The role of the defence intelligentsia is instead to agitate for higher military budgets, the better to serve US interests. The MoD established SONAC in 2022, it said, to prevent ‘groupthink’. So far it appears to have had just one thought: Britain should spend more on its military forces.
The new Labour government has gone out of its way to make clear that when it comes to foreign policy, continuity with the Conservatives is the order of the day. The secretary of defence, John Healey, made his first foreign trip to Ukraine to send a message that there would be no shift in support for the war effort there. Labour has restored funding to UNRWA, and there are reports that it may suspend some arms sales to Israel, but in most respects its approach to Israel’s attack on Gaza will be very similar to that of the last government.
In its election manifesto, Labour committed to conducting yet another Strategic Defence Review, following the 2021 Integrated Review, 2021 Defence Command Paper and 2023 Integrated Review Refresh. But Starmer intends to change so little of British foreign policy that he has retained the main foreign policy adviser to the last three Conservative prime ministers, John Bew.
The Strategic Defence Review is being led by George Robertson (Tony Blair’s first defence secretary), the retired general Richard Barrons and Fiona Hill, a former Trump adviser and John Bolton associate. Robertson celebrated his appointment by stressing that Britain faces an axis of evil like the one George W. Bush warned about, but with China and Russia taking the place of Iraq. These states, Robertson said, form ‘a deadly quartet of nations increasingly working together’.
If this is the threat justifying rearmament in Britain, it is the stuff of crackpot fantasy. A Russian army that cannot seize Kharkiv is obviously not an existential threat to Britain. And the only conceivable war between the UK and China, Iran or North Korea would be an expeditionary war chosen by the UK itself.
In reality, the UK’s geographical position makes it arguably the most secure country in Europe. It has the region’s largest military budget (the fifth largest in the world). Constant procurement scandals and wasteful mismanagement are matters of serious concern. But they do not demonstrate the need for comprehensive rearmament.
There are good reasons why states in more secure geographical and political positions (Spain, Portugal, the UK) might have smaller standing land armies. Yet prevailing attitudes in both Spain and Portugal are markedly different from those in Britain. Félix Arteaga, a senior analyst at the Elcano Royal Institute, recently complained that in Spain ‘everything to do with defence is seen as a risk.’ Britain, on the other hand, cannot escape the canard of ‘leadership’, which is held to be necessary even as it is recognised as impossible.
For many years the fashion in Britain has been for the expensive and prestigious over the cheap and effective. The former UK national security adviser Mark Sedwill recently pointed out that the US Marine Corps is 30 per cent larger than Britain’s conventional forces and has 50 per cent more aircraft, yet costs 20 per cent less.
The British government has made commitments to provide, in extremis, three divisions to a Nato land force for use in Eastern Europe. Concern about whether the British army can live up to those commitments is fair enough. But the idea that the problem might lie in the level and type of commitment, rather than in the scale of British armoured land power, is almost never addressed.
Advocates of even higher British military spending like to talk about Russia and other supposed ‘peer adversaries’. But Britain’s actual role in present military engagements is a less popular topic. The evils of China and Russia are common themes. The fact that US and European support for Israel’s assault on Gaza is basically run from British bases in Cyprus goes unmentioned.
It isn’t in the interests of the secure states of Europe’s west for there to be large wars in its east. But the conventional military balance, even excluding US forces, is already overwhelmingly in favour of Europe and against Russia. And to argue that higher military spending would automatically increase security ignores the response function of the putative enemies. Raising larger and better equipped military forces tends to inspire a corresponding increase in effort by potential adversaries. Critically, it also increases the chance that those forces will be used in ways that actually decrease security for the home population, as in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Yemen.
The intellectual environment in Britain hasn’t changed much since before the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Official enemies are inflated. Dissent, however minor, is smeared as enemy propaganda (Kremlin talking points, Chinese information warfare). Deviation from orthodox worship of American hegemony is treated as incomprehensible.
Comments
-
31 July 2024
at
4:40pm
Malcolm Hurlston CBE
says:
Spot on assessment. We are wasting resources on agreeing with the US line. Time to learn the lessons of Iraq.
-
31 July 2024
at
4:48pm
Jude Cobbing
says:
Calling Fiona Hill a "former Trump adviser and John Bolton associate" is a lazy slur that very unfairly maligns this independent specialist on Russia, foreign policy, and the impact of neoliberal thinking. Read her biography (or her book) for more on her battles with Trumpism and her insights into inequality and its corrosive effects on democracy. She doesn't deserve this, and frankly it makes me doubt the veracity of the rest of the piece. C'mon LRB, you can do better than this.
-
31 July 2024
at
8:01pm
David Gordon
says:
@
Jude Cobbing
Absolutely - mucky nonsense. Dr Hill knows what she is doing.
-
31 July 2024
at
8:24pm
fbkun
says:
@
Jude Cobbing
That Fiona Hill is a "former Trump adviser and John Bolton associate", as Tom Stevenson mildly puts it, is merely a fact. Anyone reading the Wikipedia entry devoted to her (and no doubt regularly redacted by her or people close to her) can see it confirmed. It's doubtful she would disagree with those two facts, but apparently recalling them is annoying to some.
-
3 August 2024
at
9:15am
bentoth
says:
@
Jude Cobbing
Appointments and honours are no guarantee of independent thought. The chance of a retired general, a Blairite gofer, and Fiona Hill coming up with anything but war drums is vanishingly small.
-
4 August 2024
at
2:20pm
Thomas S smith
says:
@
fbkun
Arnold Snarb: Yes, we mustn't criticize some with Fiona Hill's spotless background:
-
31 July 2024
at
7:08pm
Thomas Acton
says:
The problem with a short take on a matter as deep and wide as the threat of another world war, besides it drawing the ire of too sensitive readers (the earlier comment with its j'accuse of the "lazy slur", yet she was an adviser and associate to both of these old fools, and on its own it's not a slur) ~ No ~ the real problem is it cannot be had without discussing Ecological Overshoot. Same goes for all the high falutin' talk that passes itself of Economic Theory. Global politics, the threat of militaristic chaos and warfare, the swirl of global economics ... cannot be intelligently discussed unless we are doing it within the bounds of Planet Earth. And today, that means the Reality that encompasses all our cultural quirks and ways of engaging with one another, be it kindly or cruelly, which is all the ways we are using up the vitalities of life this planet offers up to a species as voracious as ours. What we need is less talk from the Generals, and more talk from the leading statesmen/women from all over, not about economics per se, nor our inclinations to still behave militantly (despite G. Lowes Dickinson having rather thoroughly outlined the idiocy of the disease and the cure a century ago, "War: Its Nature, Cause and Cure" 1923), but about how we need to start taking global meetings tomorrow to discuss what ALL of the Powers that Be know: Ecological Overshoot can only be addressed outloud and in public for all to hear, or it will be doom for each and every imaginary "Leader" in today's world...be they autocratic, democratic, or sociopathic.
-
31 July 2024
at
7:45pm
Simon During
says:
But that description is accurate however. She is also a US citizen which seems inappropriate for such a position.
-
31 July 2024
at
10:10pm
John-Albert
says:
Why does what-is-now a middle country want to still be a big fella?
-
31 July 2024
at
10:54pm
Eric Weisblatt
says:
Interestingly there is here no cogent exposition of where are the strategic interests of the UK. If not Europe, where? If not the Persian Gulf where? The Malacca Straits? Yes Iraq was a horrific blunder. But three highly mobile infantry divisions, two armored divisions, and several battalions of Seabees/Army Combat Engineers seem appropriate.
-
1 August 2024
at
2:14pm
XopherO
says:
Seems to me like a reasonable analysis - there are some 30 NATO countries between us and Russia, and the English Channel has served us well since 1067. At least four, probably more, of those countries have US tactical nukes on their soil, and the US is pushing for the same in the UK. There is no mention here of why the UK has nuclear weapons. The argument some time ago went that the UK did not need as many conventional forces because of the nuclear deterrent to any attacker causing an existential threat, and whether we like it or not the somewhat paranoiac Russia does feel a real existential threat from the hegemonic USA which makes all European countries collect US cigarette cards (sorry, I meant weapons and deference - not defence!). As for China, I cannot see why we should get involved. Remember, in 1982 with much stronger naval and air capacity, we only just defeated the much weaker Argentinians - some say it was touch and go. We are in an arms race, and we know where those almost always end. Of course the military demand more and more with arguments that ought to be seriously queried - they would hardly demand less, and it is the kind of thoughtless expansion of NATO, led by the USA for hegemonic reasons and to punish Russia for being Russia (and all governments need a plausible enemy, as does Oceania in 1984, real or invented!) but followed by all those who worked in NATO - more senior posts with much higher pay, more weapons to coordinate, more travel/junkets etc etc, what's not to like, it is that kind of facile stuff that starts wars? But Labour has shown over and over again it quite likes a bit of real warfare - no change there. So there is little ground for being optimistic. And it seems to me there are quite a few agents provocateurs about never mind what passes on social media to inflame the situation.
-
2 August 2024
at
12:51am
whatnot
says:
@
XopherO
during the Tehran Conference in 1943, Roosevelt an Churchill 'punished Russia for being Russia' by gifting Stalin the coveted-since-1919 Curzon Line, which only proves that 'Russia being Russia', as in cutting a deal with Hitler in 1939 to partition Poland and the Baltics, only for Hitler to change his mind two years later, at witch point, Russia being Russia, it did a victorious runner from its freshly 'liberated by Potemkin referendums'' territories and waited for Lend-Lease, is a guaranteed winner. NB: invading a sovereign country together with Hitler does not an act of war make, hence 'the great patriotic' war in Russia, what with it being Russia, only started after it had its backside kicked, by Hitler, in 1941. it was also subsequently punished with being given what's now a wasteland called Kaliningrad, stuffed to the brim with nukes, and yet those 'existential threats' keep on coming. more likely, the real existential threat to Russia, whose borders seem to expand with each cowardly atrack on this proud nation of 19th century literature, variations of serfdom and Gulags, is that one fifth of its population lives with a hole in the ground for a toilet. uraaa!
-
2 August 2024
at
2:11pm
XopherO
says:
@
whatnot
Some of this may contain plausible explanations, but you do seem to lose plot by facetiously suggesting that the 'real existential threat to Russia' is that a fifth of its population has a hole in the ground for a toilet! Many developing countries have worse facilities and it is not long, just pre-war, since the UK was similar. It is no secret that the USA 'won the Cold War' and for some reason then wanted to humiliate Russia and was heavily involved in what happened post-1991 that led to gangsterism, oligarchs and Putin, and the brink of a world war - the CIA never gave up on the Cold War that was its reason for foundation. I would pose the question again: why does the UK need nuclear weapons that can only be used with US consent, when the US has at least 100 times the UK's nuclear capacity for destruction anyway, and if they are not a deterrent, as current military clearly believe in demanding a big expansion of conventional forces, to deter an attack! Maybe it is just that they like a lot of up to date 'toys'. And of course the army has no nuclear forces, nor the air force, so what to do to rival the navy which seems to be taking the lion's share of resources. And what about France's superior nuclear deployment?
-
2 August 2024
at
3:24pm
whatnot
says:
@
XopherO
I don't know, maybe it was precisely because of "France's superior nuclear deployment" that Putin decided to dump his dumped Lyudmila in Biarritz. Russia humiliated itself just fine with the glorious-victorious collapse of its sclerotic Soviet project, and nobody foced its hand to go down the route of gangsterism and oligarchs - being currupt to the bone and run by Cheka/KGB/what-have-you since before NATO came into existance, it ended up with Putin naturally, not as a side or intended effect of some CIA plot - because it doesn't know better, never did, never will, and clearly doesn't really care. and if by 'the brink of a world war' you mean Russia rattling its rusty nukes from Kaliningrad, then I don't see why CIA or whoever runs the evil NATO can't rattle theirs from across the border in Poland or wherever, if only to remind the cornered rat that if lashes out, it will be obliterated. wouldn't it actually benefit Russia if it took a page from the 'build the wall/have our country back' book, and turned its back on this CIA-ran 'Gayropa' as they like to call it? all its best friends are to the east after all, and except for a few stop-the-war-coalition types, nobody really cares about its bruised ego. I'd actually wish Russia luck with that.
-
1 August 2024
at
6:19pm
Dr Paul
says:
It's the constant refrain that Russia constitutes a deadly threat to Britain and Europe in general that puzzles me. We are told that if Russia prevails in Ukraine, we'll be seeing Russian tanks rolling across Poland into Germany and on to the Channel ports. It seems to me that Moscow isn't after all of Ukraine, let alone anywhere else, and that it wants to regather what it sees as the 'Russian' areas of the former Soviet Union. This is not some sort of imperial adventure on Moscow's part, but a result of its not having a similar territorial security arrangement to that which it had after the Second World War.
-
2 August 2024
at
2:39am
whatnot
says:
@
Dr Paul
Yalta 'stabilised international affairs in post-1945 Europe' alright, mostly to the detriment of those 'stabilised', aka 'liberated' by Russia. but hey, you had your Marshall Plan, we had our nationalisation, collectivisation and Gulags - much 'territorial security'. consequently, the 'soviet bloc' didn't 'collapse' - parts of this bloc, mostly those which had no say in becoming part of it, simply cut loose from the collapsing mother of the bloc, namely the corrupt, sclerotic, comatose Russia, before it dragged them along to the state it finds itself in at the moment (isn't it pretty). those parts of the bloc were also, and this might come as a surprise, given the level of your puzzlement demonstrated so far, its European-most parts, so if you don't see Russia as a 'threat to Europe', I can only assume that your Europe ends somewehere along the border between GBD and DDR. would it surprise Dr that those 'areas of the former Soviet Union' which Russia sees 'Russian' didn't become such by choice? purely from my 'realist standpoint', it wouldn't appear so.
-
2 August 2024
at
8:44am
Sean Ryan
says:
@
Dr Paul
The thing that surprises me is that people don't see the echoes of the 1930s. When the argument is that Putin "only" wants to "regather" the Russian areas of Ukraine doesn't this make us recall that Hitler only wanted the German areas of Czechoslovakia? Until he wanted all of that country and Poland etc.
-
5 August 2024
at
6:37am
MattG
says:
@
Sean Ryan
People are not seeing the echoes because there is no echo; anyway echoes are heard.
-
5 August 2024
at
4:09pm
whatnot
says:
@
MattG
"Ps: "Hitler" invaded Poland only after the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact." - well, that makes it OK then.
-
5 August 2024
at
7:55pm
MattG
says:
@
whatnot
I thought I would get that kind of faux outrage reply.
-
5 August 2024
at
8:26pm
whatnot
says:
@
MattG
what two fronts did 'Polen' fight on, with its government in exile, all its territory overrun by Nazis by mid-1941, and its fate decided by its 'allies' in Tehran, and then sealed in Yalta?
-
6 August 2024
at
12:05am
Graucho
says:
Forget your sophisticated tracts on geopolitics. Putin is an ex-KGB officer, so study the lives of psychopaths and serial killers instead. He's already murdered at least 2 of my fellow citizens and come very close to murdering 4 more. We have only a lower limit on non-Brits he may have murdered. The career path of such characters is well documented. At first they are hesitant, but having got away with one crime their appetite grows. The crimes become more daring and outrageous. Eventually they get as much satisfaction from being able to act with apparent impunity and seeing the forces of law and order writhing in helpless frustration as they do from the crimes themselves. So Putin progresses from Georgia to Crimea to the Ukraine itself with Moldovia in his sights. If you think he's going to stop then you simply have not got the measure of the man.
-
6 August 2024
at
10:19am
MattG
says:
@
Graucho
You maybe right and Putin is a crazed psychopath. But he still needs the means and wherewithal, because Putin, personally, never killed your fellow citizens.
-
6 August 2024
at
11:52am
whatnot
says:
@
MattG
you do realise that in a dictatorship run by a psychopath, nothing gets done without the psychopath's approval, what with all the 'means and wherewithal' at his disposal? Putin is Russia's 'geopolitics', and it shows - you can take your 'like gun control in the US' dead cat off the table now.
-
7 August 2024
at
2:24am
Graucho
says:
@
MattG
Well if you can show me that Polonium and Novichok are items that you can get on Amazon or the Moscow branch of Boots, then I'll believe that Putin might be innocent.
-
7 August 2024
at
7:00am
MattG
says:
@
Graucho
I think you are being disingenuous. My "study [of] the lives of psychopaths and serial killers" did not find any Polonium and Novichok. Both incidents confirm that plenty of your citizens are willing and able to help Putin.
-
7 August 2024
at
8:15am
Graucho
says:
@
MattG
Mr Lugovoi and Mr Kovtun were not British. Neither were Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov (probably aliases). All had KGB connections. Serial killers are defined by being responsible for an ongoing sequence of homicides, not by the means used. The latter however does provide valuable evidence pointing to the perpetrator.
-
8 August 2024
at
2:48am
Amit Pandya
says:
An otherwise sobering and realistic critique of British strategic delusions is marred by two false notes. One is describing Fiona Hill as “a former Trump adviser and John Bolton associate.” Subject matter experts are often recruited to serve on the National Security Council staff. That she served under Trump and Bolton is less important than that she became a prominent public critic of Trump’s Russia policy. So much so that one member of Congress sought to discredit her testimony to Congress by describing Hill as a "George Soros mole infiltrating the national-security apparatus". The other false note is the analysis of Britain’s relative strategic invulnerability by virtue of its geographical distance from Russia. Surely Brexit has demonstrated the truism that Britain’s welfare is tied to that of continental Europe. The crudely mechanistic notion of Britain’s security as an island on the continent’s margin deserves no serious consideration.
-
8 August 2024
at
1:46pm
whatnot
says:
@
Amit Pandya
indeed, geographical distance appears to be no issue when it comes to sending agents on poisoning sprees, or having their offspring appointed to HoL.
-
10 August 2024
at
3:39pm
David Ascher
says:
Was Mike Myers' "Austin Powers" banned in the U. K.? It's central joke was that Britain is NO LONGER A WORLD POWER that has "strategic interests" (a. k. a. "Colonies") all over the world. The Sun does set on the "British Empire", every day. The U. K. Is no more important than France, Italy, or Germany in helping it maintain a strategic presence in Europe - and realistically probably much less important than France or Germany and some of the 'front line' former Warsaw Pact countries.
Read morehttps://x.com/MarkAmesExiled/status/1184541536303898626
And this:
https://x.com/DrMatthewSweet/status/1182711977698844672
The Yalta agreement, seen from a 'realist' standpoint, stabilised international affairs in post-1945 Europe. The absence of a 'Yalta Mark II' in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet bloc in 1989-91, that is, an agreement about what Moscow's patch would be, and the quest of Washington to push its military alliance, NATO, ever eastwards, in the full knowledge that Moscow would cut up very rough at some point, has led to the current dangerous situation. This situation, including Moscow's invasion of Ukraine, could have been avoided.
I don't see Russia as a benign actor on the world stage, and its invasion of Ukraine is indeed reprehensible. Nonetheless, I don't see Russia as a threat to Europe and I feel that the bandying around of the idea that it is so, and is with China, Iran and North Korea, a member of an anti-Western bloc, is intensifying international tensions rather than reducing them.
It seems obvious that Putin's original war aim was the compete conquest of Ukraine which is why the initial attack was on Kiev. The past is not a perfect guide to the present but it is a leap of faith to believe that Putin would stop at Ukraine. And if he doesn't where would Nato draw the line?
The idea that "Hitler only wanted the German areas of Czechoslovakia" is a primary school teacher's abbreviation of what actually happened.
The Munich and Vienna accords were supported by the governments of German-Austria, Britain, France, Italy, Poland, Hungary, and the (First) Slovak Republic. I.e. all the neighbors (France undermined the Little Entende and Romania). The dismemberment of Czechoslovakia was the most spectacular failure of Wilson's post-WW1 settlement. The big powers (US, Britain, France) did not support the government in Prag and had no means of doing so anyway.
The current Ukrainian war is a straightforward Eastern expansion of NATO, which will acquire contiguous territory from Portugal to the borders of rest-Ukraine. That's why the Ukraine has been able to fight back for more than two years whereas the Prag government asked its population not to shoot back.
The Putin = Hitler trope is beloved by nationalists of all stripes but has little merit.
Ps: "Hitler" invaded Poland only after the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact.
Putin invaded Georgia only after..
Putin annexed Crimea only after..
why can't the clueless folk of 'the Ukraine' and 'rest-Ukraine' just surrender all their agency to peace-loving Kremlin chekist already ...
the difference is that the Hitler-Stalin pact forced Polen to fight on two fronts without a steady supply of weapons and support from its allies.
That's why geopolitics is important. It's like gun control in the US.
Of course it is nice that the U. S. President and the U. K. Prime Minister can exchange niceties without an interpreter, and maybe even swap stories (probably apocryphal) about the 'good old days' when the spunky little island's colonies circled the globe and contained a very significant portion of the world's people.
If the U. K. decided to "go it alone" and leave NATO (why not? They left the E.U. and Starmer shows no signs that he would even consider attempting to rejoin.) the U.S. would be very unhappy - primarily because it could signal the beginning of other "European" nations leaving - perhaps forming their own 'self-defence pact' without the inclusion of the U. S.
With the U. K. Economy, hobbled by the refusal of both Labor and the Tories, refusal to recognize that Britain has to deal with the facts that the Empire is no longer supplying it with cheap raw materials and a captive market for its manufactured goods, the drum beating about the 'almost, right around the corner" threat of an invasion from North Korea, China, Iran, or Russia - so they can control the fabulous wealth generated by the 19th century coal mines (whoops, those are gone, aren't they?) and 18th century shipyards (??) and 19th century steel mills - is beyond ridiculous.
Most people in the U. K. have been struggling to survive since they won WWII, while successive U.K. governments have tried to outdo their predecessors in becoming more loyal lapdogs to the U. S. Increasing the U. K. military budget is great for the manufacturers of weaponry but it is money completely wasted that should long ago have been repurposed for building a society with social mobility and social justice.