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Amid rising tensions in Europe and across the globe, the United Kingdom has officially launched their own white paper, titled, “Defence’s response to a more contested and volatile world”, with some familiar priorities.
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Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has shattered many long-held, post-Cold War myths, whether it was the unrestricted liberalisation of the global economy, the ultimate triumph of liberal democracy over autocratic systems or the “End of History” as championed by Francis Fukuyama in the widespread elation that swept across the Western world for much of the early post-Cold War years.
Today, we now know that those heady days of optimism and hubris have been shattered with autocratic nations on the march across the globe and the post-Second World War economic, political, and strategic order in retreat, with the world’s formerly great imperial powers not far behind.
Nowhere is this better exemplified than in the United Kingdom, as the nation seemed to be regaining some semblance of stability following the chaos of the Brexit vote, the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and ensuing political fallout following the resignation of Boris Johnson, followed by the subsequent transition from Liz Truss to Rishi Sunak, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine adding further fuel to the fire thrusting the United Kingdom into a position not experienced since the early days of the Second World War.
For the British Armed Forces, the Russian invasion and subsequent waves of US and UK-led financial and military aid couldn’t come at a worse time. Despite an ambitious plan for the modernisation and restructuring of the British Armed Forces by former prime minister Boris Johnson, which aimed to focus the nation’s attention towards the rapidly developing multipolar world order, particularly in eastern Europe and the Indo-Pacific.
In doing so, Johnson sought to re-establish the UK as a pre-eminent global military, economic, and political power, or a new “Global Britain”. This radical approach echoed comments made by former UK defence secretary Gavin Williamson in early 2019, when he promised a “major departure and reorientation” and the first major shift in UK defence policy for the first time since the introduction of the “east of Suez” doctrine in the 1960s.
At the time, Williamson described the post-Brexit era as “our biggest moment as a nation since the end of the Second World War, when we can recast ourselves in a different way, we can actually play the role on the world stage that the world expects us to play”.
Can we really believe the hype?
Awkwardly, this ambition and rhetoric has garnered attention from Britain’s major ally, the United States, with a US General warning that the UK Armed Forces are no longer considered a “top tier” fighting force following years of sustained, costly combat operations in the Middle East coupled with chronic underinvestment and costly overruns for major programs draining the economic investments available to the UK Armed Forces.
This has resulted in growing concerns about the material capabilities of the British Armed Forces in the modern context. This point has recently been reinforced by a senior US general who had pointed warning for the United Kingdom’s Defence Secretary Ben Wallace: “Bottom line ... it’s an entire service unable to protect the UK and our allies for a decade.” This was further compounded by a series of concerning details outlined about the state of readiness of the British Armed Forces, namely:
- The British Armed Forces would run out of ammunition “in a few days” if called upon to fight.
- The Royal Air Force lacks the ability to defend its skies against the level of missile and drone strikes that Ukraine is enduring.
- It would take five to 10 years for the Army to be able to field a warfighting division of some 25,000 to 30,000 troops backed by the required tanks, artillery, and helicopters.
- Thirty per cent of the UK’s forces on high readiness are reservists who are unable to mobilise within NATO timelines.
- The majority of the Army’s fleet of armoured vehicles, including tanks, was built between 30 to 60 years ago and full replacements are not due for years.
In response to by now well identified short falls in the capability, manpower, and lack of deployability, the British government under Rishi Sunak commissioned the Defence Command White Paper 2023: Defence’s response to a more contested and volatile world, to support the Integrated Review Refresh released in March 2023, identifying some major “new” focal points for the fundamental restructure of the UK Armed Forces.
At the core of this reorientation is four key priorities, which sound strangely familiar to Australians following the release of our Defence Strategic Review: National Defence in April of 2023, namely the emphasis on the UK taking a leading role in:
- Shaping the international environment;
- Increasing our focus on deterrence and defence;
- Addressing the vulnerabilities that leave the nation exposed; and
- Investing in the UK’s unique strengths to generate strategic advantage.
Unpacking this further, the UK government’s announcement stressed that fiscal circumstances facing the UK Armed Forces wouldn’t materially change, stating, “IRR was published alongside an announcement at the spring budget of an additional investment in Defence of £5 billion over two years, along with an aspiration that the government should spend 2.5 per cent of GDP on Defence over the longer term when the economic and fiscal conditions allow ... DCP23 is required to set out how Defence would respond to the changing context and deliver on the IRR within its resource envelope, increasing its productivity, and focusing on areas that would achieve real-world impact.”
Hard power is still essential
At the core of the UK’s new Defence white paper is a realisation that our “long break from history is over” and we in the Western world will be required to call on traditional concepts of hard power to defend our interests, values, and own national sovereignty and security.
Delivering this is of paramount importance for the British government and will also see the creation of a new Global Response Force to comprehensively deliver what is described as, “create a Defence Global Response Force (GRF), bringing together our deployed and high-readiness forces, and drawing on capabilities from across Defence in all domains … It will be optimised for rapid, global effect to respond to crisis, project force, and campaign constantly. As an all-domain task force, it will deliver flexible responses and strategic choice to deal with challenges that emerge anywhere in the world”.
This shift echoes the comments made by British Chief of the General Staff, General Sir Patrick Sanders, who highlighted this recently in a speech to the Royal United Services Institute’s (RUSI) Land Warfare Conference.
“We should treat many of these lessons with caution; one wonders what shape we would be in if, in the first few days after the Russian invasion, we had sold off our armour to invest in [Turkish-made Bayraktar] TB2 or one-way attack drones,” GEN Sanders told the audience.
GEN Sanders explained further, based on the lessons of Ukraine, saying, “Ukraine has reminded us that success can only be achieved with a secure land industrial base together with the stockpiles to sustain the fight. That mass is still indispensable. That we need to plan to reinforce and regenerate the force – for to only focus on the first echelon – i.e. those troops that we will put into battle at the start of a war – is to prepare for failure.”
However, equally important is the balancing between traditional platforms and next-generation capabilities that are currently being designed, built, and fielded across both the United Kingdom and the broader Western world, including Australia, and the role this generational rejuvenation will play in shaping the British Army and broader Armed Forces in the next decade.
Final thoughts
As we grapple with the challenges presented by the rapidly evolving global geopolitical order, enhancing Australia’s capacity to act as an independent power, incorporating great power-style strategic economic, diplomatic, and military capability serves as a powerful symbol of Australia’s sovereignty and evolving responsibilities and commitment to supporting and enhancing the security and prosperity of Indo-Pacific Asia.
Equally, the Australian public needs to be educated on the challenges we face in our region and more broadly, the post-Second World War order upon which our wealth and stability is built, because without it, many Australians will blindly simply go with the flow and watch as we fade into the pages of history.
Australia is consistently told that as a nation, we are torn between our economic relationship with China and the longstanding strategic partnership with the US, placing the country at the epicentre of a great power rivalry.
Get involved with the discussion and let us know your thoughts on Australia’s future role and position in the Indo-Pacific region and what you would like to see from Australia’s political leaders in terms of partisan and bipartisan agenda setting in the comments section below, or get in touch
Stephen Kuper
Steve has an extensive career across government, defence industry and advocacy, having previously worked for cabinet ministers at both Federal and State levels.
