Is the Kingdom yet lost?

A few depressing rumours are swirling around about the SDR process which seem to indicate that the ongoing Strategic and Defence Review is to be another attempt to squeeze the UK’s defence strategy into the (very) limited money available. This indicates, as sceptics have long suggested, that despite the credibility of the team undertaking the work, the SDR will not be about either strategy or defence. It will simply be another Treasury review, forcing the country to make choices in downgrading our Armed Forces because – and let’s be honest here – the political will on both left and right of the political spectrum simply does not exist to spend more on guns than on butter. We’re not stupid: we understand that choices have to be made, but the ongoing ostrichitis across the political spectrum about the need properly to protect our national interest to the extent required is, frankly alarming. I hope that its not the case that the situation won’t improve until metal starts to fly but I am increasingly alarmed that the next hot war that hits these shores will be, given the track record of defence strategy and spending since 1997, something like a 1939 moment. After years of warnings, war will come, and all those responsible for denying it might ever happen will express surprise. That hot metal has been flying not far from us in Europe since 22 February 2022 hasn’t yet seemed to wake our somnolent political masters from the stupor they seem to be in.

One of my bugbears is not just about this country’s failure to take defence seriously – not just now, in the present moment, but in all the years since the country sought a peace dividend from the end of the Cold War and the supposed nirvana that was to come from it. Serious war, we were endlessly told, was consigned to history. Even very recently our Army was being reconfigured as a permanent gendarmerie to fight COIN. How stupid that all appears now. But my biggest bugbear are the so-called strategic commentators who dismiss the role of a well-equipped army in deterring war. Strategy is not merely about the independent nuclear deterrent, though I am a firm believer in its effect in preventing a nuclear Armageddon. Below the threshold of nuclear use deterrence exists as a political reality in this world if an enemy believes that the deployment of conventional military forces will change their mind. In this context conventional military forces need to be credible if they are to work. This means that they must be available, be deployable and then capable of fighting once deployed. Having an army that is unable to fight a peer-enemy for a sustained period on a modern intensive battlefield, together with our allies, is worse than having no army at all, because it merely lulls our political masters into a false sense that all is well. It goes without saying that it is also important to have the political will to deploy and use this army when necessary.

A good example of the importance of having a conventional military deterrent of this kind was 1936. Britain’s failure to respond to Hitler’s aggrandising in the Rhineland led directly to the Second World War. In other words, not having a deployable military capability able to uphold the strictures of the Versailles Treaty in respect of the demilitarised Rhineland, and not having the political will to use this capability to put Hitler back in his box, led directly to the greatest calamity ever to hit this world since Noah’s flood. General Lord Dannatt and I laid out the argument for this in our book Victory to Defeat (2023).

It’s the oldest lesson in human history, and one that our political masters would do well to remember, that:

For want of a nail, the shoe was lost

For want of the horse, the rider was lost

For want of the rider, the battle was lost

For want of the battle, the kingdom was lost.

Is the Kingdom lost? It might well be, unless bold action is taken now. The SDR is that opportunity. Let’s not waste it, by either failing to defend the country and our national interest to the extent required, or by failing to understand the political power that can come from having a capable and deployable fighting army.