Chat House Institute International Affairs

The defence dilemma in Britain
Author(s): TIMOTHY EDMUNDS

Source: International Affairs (Royal Institute of International Affairs 1944-), Vol. 86, No.
2 (March 2010), pp. 377-394
Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Institute of International
Affairs
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TIMOTHY EDMUNDS*
The UK faces a pressing defence dilemma. In October 2006 General Sir Richard
Dannatt, then Chief of the General Staff, cautioned that the Army had come
close to crisis as a result of overcommitment and underresourcing, going so far
as to express fears that it might be 'broken' by the experience of Iraq. I Since that
time defence policy in Britain has struggled to adapt to the challenges he identi-
fied. Operational pressures remain as high as ever, with much of the slack released
by the withdrawal from Iraq in April 2009 being taken up by the increasing
tempo of operations in Afghanistan. Bringing both intense combat operations
and continued concerns about overstretch and equipment, 2009 was the bloodiest
year of action for British forces since the Falklands War.2 Resourcing remains a
perennial challenge. A report for the National Audit Office in December 2009
warned that the defence procurement programme was Consistently unaffordable',
with a potential £36 billion gap between extant commitments and the resources
available to fulfil them over the next ten years.3 That same month the government
announced a swingeing programme of cuts in what it identified as 'low-priority'
areas of the core defence budget - including fast jets, civilian staffai the Ministry
of Defence, and Royal Air Force bases - in order to fund equipment and helicop-
ters needed for operations in Afghanistan.4
These circumstances represent a defining moment for British defence. It is
increasingly clear that the declaratory goals of defence policy, the demands made
by operational commitments and the financial and organizational capacities to
meet these in practice no longer match up, while defence policy-makers themselves
have struggled to formulate an adequate or unified response to these pressures.5
* The author would like to thank Malcolm Chalmers, Andrew Dormán, Anthony King and an anonymous
reviewer for their comments on earlier drafts of this article. The views expressed remain the author's own.
1 'Sir Richard Dannatt: a very honest general', Daily Mail, 12 Oct. 2006.
2 'Bloodiest year since Falklands War', Independent, 4 Nov. 2009; 'Overstretch pushes British troops to the brink',
Daily Telegraph, 10 Jan. 2009.
3 National Audit Office, The Major Projects Report 200g (Norwich : The Stationery Office, 15 Dec. 2009), pp. 4-22.
4 'MoD makes cuts to plug budget hole', Financial Times, 15 Dec. 2009.
5 Institute for Public Policy Research, Shared responsibilities: a National Security Strategy for the United Kingdom
(London: IPPR, June 2009), pp. 6, 46-4; Paul Cornish and Andrew Dormán, 'Blair's wars and Brown's budg-
ets: from Strategic Defence Review to strategic decay in less than a decade', International Affairs 85: 2, March
2009, pp. 247-61 ; Timothy Edmunds and Anthony Forster, Out of step: the case for change in the UK armed forces
(London: Demos, 2007).
International Affairs 86: 2 (2010)377-394

© 2010 The Author(s). Journal Compilation © 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd/The Royal Institute of International Affairs
Timothy Edmunds
This article examines how and why this situation has come about. While
recognizing that existing calls for higher levels of defence spending, reform of
the Ministry of Defence,7 efficiency gains, or a renewal of the so-called military
covenant between the armed forces and society9 may address discrete elements
of the defence dilemma in Britain, it argues that current problems derive from
a series of deeper tensions in the system of British defence more widely defined.
These have been exposed and exacerbated by operations in Iraq and Afghanistan
and take place across three levels of the policy process.
The first of these is a transnationalization of British strategic practice, in ways
that both shape and constrain the national defence policy process. The second
concerns the institutional politics of defence itself, including the role of the armed
forces as a whole, the identities of the individual services within this whole, and
path dependency in defence planning. These institutional factors encourage
different interpretations of interest and priority in the wider strategic context,
a tendency which has obfuscated policy responses to current problems and made
it more difficult to link current and future military capabilities to political goals.
Finally, the status of 'defence' in the wider polity is itself changing, in ways that
decrease its political purchase both in Whitehall and among the electorate as a
whole. These factors introduce powerful political and institutional veto points
into the defence policy process, making significant deviation from established
policy difficult to achieve.
The transnational nature of British defence
The UK faces a strategic environment radically changed from that of the Cold
War period. In contrast to the clear and present military threat posed by the Soviet
Union and its allies, today's security environment is characterized by uncer-
tainty and complexity. A diverse range of challenges confront British defence
and security policy-makers, including instability and insecurity caused by civil
conflict, international terrorism, criminal networks and environmental degrada-
tion; the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction; so-called 'rogue states';
and the potential - if currently latent - threat of a more conventional military
challenge from another state.10 Many of these potential threats are transnational
in nature; they transcend national borders and make new demands on defence and
security institutions in western states as a consequence.
Debates about the future of UK defence in this new environment take place
within an emergent ideational orthodoxy about how 'modern' armed forces
6 Andrew Lambert, John Maxworthy, Bob Stewart and Allen Sykes, 'Overcoming the defence crisis', UK
National Defence Association Report, Sept. 2008, p. 20.
7 Cornish and Dormán, 'Blair's wars'.
8 Paul Cornish and Andrew Dormán, 'National defence in the age of austerity', International Affairs 85: 4, July
2009, pp. 733-53-
9 Anthony Forster, 'Breaking the covenant: governance of the British army in the twenty-first century', Inter-
national Affairs 82: 6, Nov. 2006, pp. 1043-57.
10 The National Security Strategy of the United Kingdom: security in an interdependent world (London: TSO, March
2008), pp. 10-24.
378
International Affairs 86: 2, 2010
should best be employed and structured to meet these challenges. The military's
role is no longer seen as primarily to defend states or alliances from traditional
military threats to their territory; instead, it is proactively to manage and curtail
security challenges at source.11 Such a role is expeditionary in conception and
often operationally complex in execution, broadening the range of tasks that
military personnel can be expected to fulfil from outright combat operations to
policing and peacekeeping missions in conflict and post-conflict societies.12 In
order to be able to perform this role effectively, it is argued, armed forces need
to transform themselves to become more flexible, more readily déployable and
more highly skilled. At the same time, new military technologies - in areas such
as communications networking - allow them to project power and create desired
effects in ways that are considerably more effective and efficient than any at the
disposal of their larger predecessors.13
Britain is both a leading proponent of and participant in this agenda of military
transformation, as successive defence policy documentation and public statements
make clear. For example, the 1998 Strategic Defence Review (SDR) set out a future
for the British armed forces that was proactive and expeditionary in nature, and
subsequent documents have either echoed or developed these themes in various
ways. The 'New Chapter' to the SDR, published in the wake of the 9/11 attacks
in the United States, emphasized new technological developments, including
the armed forces' 'Network Centric Capability' and capacity for precision in the
control and application of force.14 It was also explicitly expeditionary in nature,
the foreword to the document noting that 'it is much better to engage our enemies
in their own backyard than ours, at a time and place of our choosing, not theirs
... we need the kind of rapidly déployable intervention forces which were the key
feature of the SDR'.15 This was followed by paired defence white papers in 2003
and 2004. These placed an even greater emphasis on the expeditionary role of the
armed forces, outlining the need for 'modern and effective armed forces equipped
and supported for rapid and sustainable deployment on expeditionary operations',
and detailing the force structure changes necessary to achieve these goals.1
These themes have been consolidated through European and transatlantic
political relationships, security institutions and professional military networks,
including both NATO and the EU.17 Such relationships both facilitate and
reflect a range of transnational influences on the practice of defence in the UK
11 Timothy Edmunds, 'What are armed forces for? The changing nature of military roles in Europe', International
Affairs 82: 6, Nov. 2006, pp. 1061-5.
Edmunds and Forster, Out of step, pp. 27-9.
13 Eliot A. Cohen, 'Change and transformation in military affairs', Journal of Strategic Studies 27: 3, Sept. 2004, pp.
395-407-
14 The Strategic Defence Review: a new chapter (London: TSO, 2002), pp. 14-17.
15 The Strategic Defence Review: a new chapter, p. 5.
16 Delivering security in a changing world: defence white paper (London : TSO, 2003), p. 2 ; Delivering security in a changing
world: future capabilities (London: TSO, 2004), pp. 2-5.
17 NATO, The Alliance's strategic concept, April 1999, paras 48-52, http://www.nato. int/cps/en/natolive/ofTicial_
texts-27433.htm, accessed 14 Jan. 2010; A secure Europe in a better world: European security strategy (Brussels: Euro-
pean Commission, 12 Dec. 2003), pp. 7, 11- 12, http ://www.consilium. europa. eu/eudocs/cmsUpload/78367.
pdf, accessed 14 Jan. 2010.
379

Timothy Edmunds
and elsewhere that go beyond the ideational. The first of these is political. The
strategic vision outlined above links the security of one state to those around it
and in so doing engenders transnational responsibilities for action.1 In this vision,
individual states have neither the military power nor the political legitimacy to
pursue such military interventions independently. Instead, they must cooperate
with others, committing themselves to missions which are often long term in
nature and only indirectly linked to national defence as traditionally conceived.
Such justifications have underpinned all multinational military deployments by
western states in the post-Cold War era and are currently visible in NATO's
International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) mission to Afghanistan. So, for
example, in 2008, the then NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer
exhorted member states to contribute more robustly to ISAF on the grounds that
'what is at stake in Afghanistan is our very own security here and in Europe as
much as in Afghanistan itself ... In an age where external and internal security are
more and more interwoven, Afghanistan is a mission of necessity rather than one
of choice.'19 British ministers have been equally forthright in linking the conflict
in Afghanistan directly to the security of European states and calling for greater
troop contributions on this basis. In January 2009, for example, the then defence
minister John Hutton characterized NATO's Afghan mission as Tundamental to
national security', going on to assert that 'freeloading on the back of US military
security is not an option if we wish to be equal partners in this transatlantic
alliance. Anyone who wants to benefit from collective security must be prepared
to share the ultimate price.'20
A second and related transnational pressure concerns interoperability:
that is, the capacity of allied armed forces to work together militarily. This is
most pronounced in NATO, whose most militarily and politically significant
member - the United States - is also the world leader in military transformation.
Indeed, many of the intellectual, technological and doctrinal roots for the military
transformation agenda are derived specifically from the US experience.21 As James
Sperling notes, this position allows the US to 'define the terms of the capabilities
debate' to a very large degree.22 Without interoperable military capabilities, many
of which are expensive to acquire, the armed forces of member states will struggle
to operate alongside those of their American ally. This pressure is felt acutely in
the UK, where the military relationship with the US is particularly highly valued.
All defence policy documentation since the SDR has emphasized this point: the
2003 defence white paper identified the maintenance of the transatlantic relation-
ship as 'fundamental' to UK defence and security policy and called for armed
forces that are 'interoperable with US command and control structures, match
18 See e.g. IPPR, Shared responsibilities, p. 35.

19 Jaap de Hoop SchefFer, 'Afghanistan and NATO: forging the 21st century alliance', speech to the Brookings
Institution, Washington DC, 29 Feb. 2008.
Hutton tells Nato allies to step up to plate over Afghanistan , Guardian, 16 Jan. 2009.
Theo Farrell, 'The dynamics of British military transformation', International Affairs 84: 4, July 2008, pp.
777-9-
James Sperling, 'Capabilities traps and gaps: symptom or cause of a troubled transatlantic relationship?',
Contemporary Security Policy 25: 3, Dec. 2004, p. 452.
38O
the US operational tempo and provide those capabilities that deliver the greatest
impact when operating alongside the US'.23 As Colin Gray has observed, such
commitments constrain UK freedom of action at the highest level of security
policy, and introduce a series of external expectations, considerations and obliga-
tions into the national defence planning process.24
Finally, the practice of multinational military operations themselves has
become more transnational in nature. This is particularly apparent with regard
to the mission in Afghanistan, where the level of integration between different
NATO forces is unprecedented in its closeness. National contingents have been
deployed as part of explicitly multinational formations such as the Kabul Multina-
tional Brigade, made up of Canadian, French and German troops, or the German-
Dutch Corps which took over ISAF HQ between February and August 2003. The
Helmand Task Force - commanded by the British - has incorporated components
from both Denmark and Estonia. This is not to imply that national differences
within NATO have evaporated, or indeed that the individual national components
in these transnational entities have always worked together smoothly. In fact, the
opposite has often been the case, with different armed forces sometimes operating
on the basis of quite different rules of engagement or political constraints, leading
to significant tensions between different national contingents.25 Nevertheless, as
Anthony King has observed, 'Units as small as battalions operate together under
an integrated command structure so that battalions from one state are increasingly
commanded by a senior officer of a different nationality. The European armed
forces are increasingly interdependent and inter-operable at a level that would
have been inconceivable before the 1990s.'2
Such transnational operations have exercised an increasingly pressing influence
on national defence policy. Not only do the contingent demands of the opera-
tions themselves impinge on the procurement, spending and reform priorities of
the defence policy process; the transnationalization of practice they incorporate
and engender feeds back into, and in so doing reinforces, existing transnational
pressures of political obligation and organizational interoperability in security
policy more widely.
Taken together, these ideational, political, organizational and operational devel-
opments represent a significant transnationalization of British strategic practice.
This does not mean that national sovereignty in defence has disappeared. Indeed,
the armed forces remain in many respects a quintessentially national institution.
However, the transnational influences discussed above penetrate Britain's defence
establishment deeply. In so doing, they structure and constrain the freedom of
action available to these elites in formulating defence policy itself. In one sense,
of course, this is unproblematic. If the nature of the contemporary security
23 Deliverinç security in a chancing world: defence white paper, p. 8.

O M. «_» «.J »/ A. M. *.
24 Colin Gray, 'B

25 Anthony Kin
lished MS, ch. 2
Anthony King, 'T
8: 3, Aug. 2005,
381
Timothy Edmunds
environment and the agenda of military transformation it engenders are so well

established and uncontested, then this in turn should indicate a clear path for
defence policy and military restructuring to follow.27 In fact, and as the following
sections will demonstrate, the transnational nature of British defence creates
numerous points of tension in the institutional politics of defence policy-making.
This in turn has led to contradiction and compromise in policy and planning and
has contributed to the dilemma in which British defence as a whole now finds
itself.
A contested defence policy space
The British defence policy process takes place in a complex institutional space
comprising a number of different actors, identities and interests. These include
the elected government of the day, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) and the
armed forces themselves - incorporating the Royal Navy, the Army, the Royal
Air Force and various groups and interests within them - as well as more indirect
influences such as other government departments, parliament, defence industry
producers and the media. Such complexity means the translation of declaratory
policy into organizational and operational practice is not always easy or straight-
forward. Different actors may have different interests or priorities in the policy
process, with the specific institutional context within which they operate influ-
encing their goals and objectives and delineating relationships of power between
them.2 In this way the institutional environment can shape future decisions by
encouraging particular ways of seeing the world; by privileging certain interests
in the decision-making process; or by developing interests within existing policies
that are costly to remove.29 In the UK case, the practice of expeditionary opera-
tions and military transformation engenders at least three points of institutional
tension. These concern, first, the appropriate role of the armed forces; second,
the resources required to equip and sustain them in it ; and third, the influence of
wider political and economic interests in the defence policy process itself.
UK defence policy documentation is unambiguous in its acceptance of a role
for military interventionism in British foreign and security policy. However, the
character of this interventionism and its consequent implications for military
organization are less clear. In particular, there is a substantive division between
those interpretations of the armed forces role that emphasize warmaking and
those that emphasize rebuilding states in crisis. Broadly, this division can be
characterized as one between 'power projection' and 'stabilization' interpreta-
tions of military transformation. The two approaches are connected in a number
of important ways, not least in that the latter often follows on from the former,
27 As suggested, for example, in IPPR, Shared responsibilities, p. 11.

28 For a review, see Kathleen Thelen and Sven Steinmo, 'Historical institutionalism in comparative polities',
in Sven Steinmo, Kathleen Thelen and Frank Longstreth, eds, Structuring politics: historical institutionalism in
comparative analysis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 1-32.
9 Peter A. Hall, 'Policy paradigms, social learning and the state: the case of economic policymaking in Britain',
Comparative Politics 25: 3, April 1993, pp. 277-88.
382
as was the case in Iraq after 2003. Even so, each makes particular demands on
the structure and organization of armed forces and - significantly - each has a
different resonance among the institutional actors of British defence.
The original US vision of military transformation focused on technological
innovations that could enhance the flexibility and lethality of military forces in
a traditional warfighting capacity. It was thus concerned with force projection
across the full spectrum of military operations, with the focus on conven-
tional, generally state-based, military opponents.30 This focus on high-intensity
expeditionary warfighting is visible in official UK interpretations of the armed
forces' role. The 2003 defence white paper, for example, states that 'our forces
need to be prepared to conduct the full range of operations', harnessing 'new
technologies to enhance military capability' in order to be prepared for 'rapid
and sustainable deployment on expeditionary operations, usually as part of a
coalition'.31 This approach is supported by the related 2004 document, which
outlines a force structure built around an equipment programme at or close to
the cutting edge of military technology, including new aircraft carriers, the
Joint Combat Aircraft (JCA), Type-45 destroyers and Astute attack submarines
for the Navy, Eurofighter Typhoon and the JCA for the RAF, and the Future
Rapid Effect System (FRES) of armoured vehicles for the Army.32 The 2008
National Security Strategy document re-emphasizes this position, calling for
'strong conventional forces', 'a broad range of capabilities' for the armed forces
and a 'high-technology approach' to defence procurement.33 This reflects the
power projection interpretation of the military transformation in practice: high-
technology forces capable of projecting military force overseas, fully interoper-
able with the US and prepared to engage with similarly equipped conventional
military opponents.
Yet such a vision for the UK's armed forces is not without problems. Perhaps
most seriously, it does not wholly reflect the practice of transnational expedi-
tionary operations since the publication of the SDR in 1998. The majority of these
have involved peacekeeping, post-conflict reconstruction or counterinsurgency
roles for the armed forces, albeit often in very difficult or hostile environments.
Sometimes labelled as 'new' or 'hybrid' wars, such conflicts have tended to be
internal to states, enduring in nature and characterized by operational complexity
in terms of the range of military tasks that intervening armed forces may be called
on to perform.34 This has certainly been the case in the post-invasion stages of
the occupation of Iraq and with the NATO mission in Afghanistan. Such stabi-
lization missions can make quite distinct demands on intervening armed forces
30 See e.g. Steven Metz and James Kievit, Strategy and the revolution in military affairs: from theory to policy (Carlisle,
PA: US Army War College, 1995).
31 Delivering security in a changing world: defence white paper, p. 2.
3 Delivering security in a changing world: future capabilities, pp. 5-10.
33 National Security Strategy, p. 45. The NSS was updated in 2009: The National Security Strategy of the United King-
dom: update 200c, security for the next generation (Norwich: TSO, June 2009).
34 Rupert Smith, The utility offeree: the art of war in the modern world (London : Penguin, 2006), pp. 267-305 ; Charles
C. Krulak, 'The strategic corporal: leadership in the Three Block War', Marines Magazine, Jan. 2009, www.
au.mil.au/awc/awcgate/usmc/strategic_corporal.htm, accessed 14 Jan. 2010.
383
Timothy Edmunds
from those envisaged in the technologically driven model of military transforma-

tion. They are identifiably joint', in the sense of requiring contributions from
maritime, land and air forces as well as numerous other actors such as development
agencies. However, the primary focus of such missions is the land environment.35
Most particularly, the main requirement has been for effective and sustainable
forces on the ground, supported by assets such as helicopters, infantry equipment,
armoured vehicles and combat service support (such as engineers, medical units
and C4ISR),36 rather than for expensive, high-technology platforms optimized
for high-intensity war fighting.37
In the UK case, the distinction between these two approaches to military trans-
formation is not just philosophical or strategic in nature. It is also embedded in
the institutional politics and traditions of defence. The most significant cleavage in
this respect concerns the weight assigned to different military roles by the services
themselves. Most obviously, the 'stabilization' understanding of the armed forces'
role requires personnel 'on the ground' able to fulfil a range of different tasks -
from policing to counterinsurgency - in complex operational environments over
time. Such a role is suited to the historical experiences of the Army and Royal
Marines, both during the colonial period and more recently in Northern Ireland
and elsewhere. It is also reflective of the direction in which the Army sees itself
developing in future: General Dannati called for the creation of a 'stabilization
cadre', explicitly tailored to such missions, in 2008. 38 Indeed, stabilization missions
are increasingly shaping the evolution of British military doctrine more widely,
with a number of recent doctrinal publications emphasizing the importance of
this role in the future development of the armed forces, in particular that of the
Army.39
The resonance of this vision in the other services is somewhat different. In one
sense this reflects the organizational demands of the role itself, in which the job
of the Navy and RAF is effectively to facilitate the work of land forces in theatre.
In contrast, the 'power projection' approach places these services at the heart of
the project, as both provide the equipment platforms and technological capabili-
ties which enable its implementation in practice. There are also deeper institu-
tional distinctions between the three services in this regard, reflecting established
historical traditions and perceived responsibilities. As Hew Strachan has noted,
for example, the UK's geographical position and imperial past have meant that
historically - and in contrast to much of continental Europe - it has been the Navy
rather than the Army that has assumed primary responsibility for the defence of
35 Development, Concepts and Doctrine Centre, Security and stabilisation: the military contribution, Joint Doctrine
Publication 3-40 (Shrivenham : DCDC, November 2009).
3 Command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance.
37 Lamont Kirkland, 'Future challenges for land forces: a personal view', British Army Review, no. 142, Summer
2007, pp. 10-13.
3 Richard Dannatt, 'The military as a force for good: a contradiction in terms?', speech to the pressure group
Progress, London, 17 July 2008.
39 DCDC, Security and stabilisation; DCDC, The future land operational concept 2008 (Shrivenham: DCDC, Oct.
2008).
384
core national interests.40 The identity of the RAF incorporates similar traditions,
from its role in the Battle of Britain in 1940 to its air defence mission during the
Cold War. These emphasize its own institutional independence and preference for
a continuing commitment to high-end capabilities such as fast jets.
These identities have made both of these services, if not suspicious of the stabi-
lization role, then at least more acutely sensitive to the dangers of committing
to it at the expense of other capabilities. Their fear is that doing so risks intro-
ducing fragility into the force structure as a whole, with specialized armed forces
unable to adapt to or incorporate unforeseen missions and demands. This is not
the case to quite the same extent with the power projection approach, which self-
consciously incorporates the capacity to respond to threats across the full spectrum
of warfare. Thus, for example, in 2009 Admiral Sir Jonathon Band, then First Sea
Lord, argued : 'The importance of the sea to the UK will never change and our
freedom to use the seas will remain vital in protecting our national interests. Only
a balanced maritime force, which contains both the "big stick" of the carrier to
deter conflict and escorts to support it, can protect that freedom.'41
The RAF in turn has been at pains to point out the importance of maintaining
its multi-role capabilities across the full spectrum of operations, able to contribute
to stabilization-type operations but also flexible enough to respond to new (and
unforeseen) demands. As Air Chief Marshal Lord Craig, a former chief of the
Defence Staff, noted in response to the government's decision of December 2009
to divert funding from some fast jet capabilities to operations in Afghanistan, 'Air
superiority is the sine qua non of all other operations . . . Does the Government
think we're never again going to come up against an enemy with air power? That
doesn't seem sensible.'42
For its part, the Army is not unaware of the dangers of apparent role special-
ization. However, as the service that has felt most acutely the pressures caused
by involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan, its priorities have been focused more
squarely on the immediate demands of operations. As Colonel John Wilson
noted in an editorial in British Army Review, 'if - as a nation - we choose not to
[resource both current operations and high-intensity warfare capacities] then [we
must] resource what is happening now and gamble, if that is what it is, on future
threats. The failure to do otherwise is not just to jeopardise the physical safety of
our fighting troops, but to undermine their morale.'43
John Gearson has rightly argued that it is simplistic to view these differences
merely in terms of inter-service rivalries. There are divisions within the services
themselves on these issues, and also alternative - and potentially pressing - visions
for the future role and structure of the Navy and RAF. In the Navy's case these
include a potential requirement for a larger fleet of relatively small ships in order
to combat emergent challenges such as piracy around the Horn of Africa and
40 Hew Strachan, 'The civil-military "gap" in Britain", Journal of Strategic Studies 26: 2, June 2003, pp. 44-5.
41 'The Navy strikes back', Daily Telegraph, 18 June 2009.
42 'Raid on MoD cash to pay for conflict in Afghanistan', Daily Telegraph, 16 Dec. 2009.
43 John Wilson, 'Editorial', British Army Review, no. 142, Summer 2007, p. 3.
385
Timothy Edmunds
elsewhere.44 Even so, the current institutional context for British defence policy-
making means that translating such alternative visions into defence planning
reality is difficult. Indeed, Wilson's comments are indicative of the more concrete
bureaucratic and organizational issues at stake in the current debate. Competi-
tion over resources, the long-term nature of the procurement process and estab-
lished political, economic and institutional interests build a significant degree of
path dependency into British defence planning. This makes it difficult to achieve
sharp changes of direction without significant organizational consequences and
to a great degree ties the individual services into the vision outlined for them in
current defence policy.
Perhaps the most difficult challenge underpinning these tensions concerns how
to resource the armed forces in their current roles. A characteristic of the military
transformation agenda, particularly if it emphasizes the power projection compo-
nent, is that it is financially expensive to implement. This is certainly the case for
the UK, where some 36 per cent of the defence budget is devoted to equipment
programmes, including maintenance.45 The largest of these represent the cutting
edge of military technology and are extremely costly. Thus for example, the
Eurofighter Typhoon programme will lead to the purchase of 160 aircraft for the
RAF, at a unit production cost (UPC) of ^69.3 million. This compares to a UPC
of ^39.4 million at 2005 prices for its predecessor, the Tornado F3. Similarly, the
UPC for the Navy's six new Type-45 destroyers is likely to be around £650 million,
compared to £250 million for the current (albeit much smaller) Type-42.46 The
new Astute-class submarine is similarly expensive in comparison with its prede-
cessor (with respective UPCs of around £800 million and £459 million); and a
number of other major new programmes loom in the near future, including the
Trident replacement, the Navy's two new aircraft carriers and the JCA.
In the past, UK defence spending has proved able to absorb unit cost increases
of this order. In part, this is because the increased capability of the units concerned
has meant that fewer of each new generation than of its predecessor have been
required, making like for like cost comparisons problematic, while savings have
also been made through economies among so-called legacy capabilities'.47 It is also
because until 2003 the armed forces themselves had not been more than routinely
active, or at least had been active only in relatively concentrated operational
bursts, such as the 2000 intervention in Sierra Leone. In contrast, the combined
strains of continuous operations in Iraq since 2003 and Afghanistan since 2006
particularly have exposed defence spending to strains that are increasingly difficult
to bear. Operational costs have spiralled, rising from -£3 billion in 2007 to ^4.5
billion in 2009.4 The MoD itself admitted in 2008 that the armed forces 'have
44 John Gearson, 'The UK defence challenge', World Defence Systems, no. i, 2009, p. 85.
45 David Kirkpatrick, Is defence inflation really as high as claimed? , RUSI Defence Systems, Oct. 2008, p. 60.
4 All figures taken from Malcolm Chalmers, 'The myth of defence inflation?', RUSI Defence Systems, June 2009,
pp. 12-16.
47 I.e. those capabilities seen to be less relevant to the post-Cold War era such as main battle tanks; Chalmers,
'The myth', pp. 14-15; Malcolm Chalmers, 'Preparing for the lean years', Future Defence Review Working
Paper 1 (London : Royal United Services Institute, July 2009), pp. 5-6.
48 'UK military costs in Afghanistan and Iraq soar to .£4.5 billion', Guardian, 12 Feb. 2009.
386
been operating at or above the level of concurrent operations to which they are
resourced and structured to deliver for seven of the last eight years and for every
year since 2002'.49 Partly as a consequence of these pressures, the government
spent ¿4.2 billion from the Treasury Reserve on so-called Urgent Operational
Requirements (UORs) - that is, procurement arising directly out of operational
needs rather than the normal planning process - for the year to March 2009. 5°
In practice, UORs have had some success in meeting equipment shortfalls on
operations.51 However, the scale of UOR spending in recent years points to a
long-term and persistent demand for new capabilities that cannot be funded by
such ad hoc measures indefinitely. At a minimum, such funding does not cover the
additional costs of sustaining and maintaining new equipment once purchased. It is
increasingly clear, too, that the financial and organizational demands of sustained
operations have placed other areas of the defence portfolio under considerable
strain. Training in particular has suffered, with '42% of force elements report [ing]
serious weaknesses against their peacetime readiness levels' in 2007 and the RAF
'struggling to train for general warfare due to operational commitments'.52 The
MoD has also been forced to trade capabilities to stay within budget. The future
Lynx helicopter programme has been cut from 80 to 62 units, while significant
delays have been announced to the new carrier programme, FRES, and the
Military Afloat Reach and Sustainability fleet auxiliary programme.53 The govern-
ment's defence spending cuts of December 2009 have gone even further, closing or
scaling down RAF bases, cutting thousands of civilian and military support jobs,
reducing the number of Harrier and Tornado squadrons, and retiring two of the
Navy's surface vessels.54
In this environment, with a potential £36 billion cost overrun in defence
spending over the next ten years and with public spending as a whole facing an
unprecedented squeeze owing to the repercussions of the banking crisis and the
economic recession, competition over extant procurement projects has become
intense.55 Given the operational demands that fall on land forces, and the fact
that only 10 per cent of all planned spending on defence equipment between 2003
and 2018 has been earmarked for the Army, it is not entirely surprising that the
Army itself has argued that resources should follow commitments, even to the
point of cutting major programmes for the other services.56 The problem for UK
defence as a whole is that any such decision would represent the abandonment
of more than simply military capability in potentia. The ambition and expense of
49 House of Commons Defence Committee, Recruiting and retaining armed forces personnel (London: TSO, 30 July
2008), p. 22.
5 National Audit Office, Support to high intensity operations (London: TSO, 14 May 2009), p. 9.
51 National Audit Office, Support to high intensity operations, p. 6.
52 House of Commons Defence Committee, Recruiting and retaining, pp. 23, 40.
53 House of Commons Public Accounts Committee, Ministry of Defence: Major Projects Report 2008 (London : TSO,
15 May 2009), p. 7.
54 'Navy and RAF pay the price to fund Afghan war', Independent, 16 Dec. 2009.
" National Audit Office, Major Projects Report 200c, p. 4.
3 General Dannatt, for example, caused controversy in 2009 by labelling the new carriers Cold War relics .
See 'Ministers accused of "sea blindness" by Britain's most senior Royal Navy figure', Daily Telegraph, 12 June
2009; also Gearson, 'The UK defence challenge', p. 84.
387
Timothy Edmunds
current procurement projects is such that they require an enormous institutional,

political and economic commitment over time; and commitments of this type and
scale are not easily reversed without significant consequences. So, for example,
Typhoon - which came into service as recently as 2005 - has its roots in defence
planning decisions of the 1970s and is expected to remain in service well into the
2030s. The Navy's future carrier programme was first announced in the 1998 SDR,
yet the first of these vessels is not due to enter service until 2016 at the earliest,
while the operational life of these platforms may stretch for over 50 years to the
2070s.57
At the institutional level, the scale and predicted operational lifetime of these
programmes are such that they tie the future development of the services concerned
closely to the mast of continuation. Indeed, given the concentration of effort
required to introduce new capabilities in the first place - including, for example,
in the Navy's case a substantial cut in the size of its existing surface fleet58 - their
cancellation is likely to have major implications for future organizational structure
and sustainability. Certainly, the Fleet Air Arm at least has expressed fears over
its very institutional survival if cost-cutting measures aimed at directing spending
to current operations end up eliminating its fixed-wing capabilities or threatening
the Navy's new carrier programme. For its part, the RAF has openly pursued
the goal of institutional consolidation in fixed- wing aviation, leading to no small
degree of bitterness between the services.59
The procurement programme also has wider political and economic ramifi-
cations beyond the near- or medium-term strategic needs of the armed forces
themselves. The highly regarded Defence Industrial Strategy of 2007, for example,
stated clearly that there are certain military-industrial capacities - such as the
capability to build complex ships and submarines - that are of enduring impor-
tance and need to be maintained for national security reasons even in the absence of
an immediate requirement for them.60 Moreover, programmes such as Typhoon,
Type-45 and the new carriers provide continuing contracts and employment in
domestic industries such as shipbuilding and aeronautics, and so embed these
capacities into the economy. Accordingly, decisions on how to equip the armed
forces over the long term have significant political, social and economic ramifica-
tions : for example, a leaked memo from defence industry sources in June 2009
suggested that further delay or cancellation of the carrier programme could lead
to the closure of at least two British shipyards with the loss of thousands of jobs.61
The political consequences of such decisions have been sharpened by the fact that
a number of senior ministers in the Brown government - including the Prime
Minister himself - have major defence industry facilities in their constituencies.62
57 Gray, 'Britain's national security', p. 12.

5 'Navy to cut its fleet by half, Daily Telegraph, 15 Jan. 2007.
'Harrier dispute between Navy and RAF chiefs sees Army "marriage counsellor" called in', Daily Telegraph,
4 Feb. 2009; 'RAF chief predicts controversial takeover of Royal Naval air power', Sunday Telegraph, 7 June
2009.
See e.g. Ministry of Defence, Defence Industrial Strategy (London: TSO, Dec. 2005), pp. 19-24.
61 'Leaked memo puts two shipyards and thousands of jobs at risk', Daily Telegraph, 1 July 2009.
2 Gearson, 'The UK defence challenge', pp. 85-6.
388
The point here is not primarily the extent to which these claims are legitimate
or not. Indeed, debates over the necessity, nature and sustainability of the British
defence industrial base (DIB) have been well rehearsed over many years. 3 However,
the wider political and economic context provides a series of further constraints
on the freedom of action of policy-makers and reinforces the institutional path
dependency already present in the defence policy process. In short, deviation from
established defence planning in order to adapt the process of military transforma-
tion to the demands of operations in practice has serious institutional, political and
economic consequences, even if such changes may be in the apparent interest of
the armed forces or defence policy more widely defined.
The changing status of 'defence'
Such institutional inertia in the policy environment, even in the face of norma-
tive or political imperatives for change, is a well-recognized phenomenon. Major
change is, of course, possible under such conditions. However, it is likely to require
a combination of circumstances sufficient to change the rules of the existing game
and generate a so-called 'critical juncture' in the policy process.64 The influential
2009 report by the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) on the future of the
UK National Security Strategy is clear in its view that just such a critical juncture
has been reached. Citing the changing global security environment, operational
pressures on the armed forces and economic constraints at home, it argues that
current policy has reached crisis point and that a major change in practice is
required if the UK is to meet the challenges of the twenty-first century.65
How far is this really the case for defence, though? Certainly, the sense of crisis
in the armed forces has been growing for some years, with the strain of matching
the demands of enduring operations with the various institutional priorities of
transformation in the British defence sector proving increasingly difficult to
bear. Even so, the government's response to these pressures has generally been
incremental rather than transformative in nature. Certainly, declaratory defence
policy has remained remarkably consistent, exhibiting few of the characteristics
one might expect of a critical policy juncture.66 The reasons for this conservatism
are multiple and closely linked to the normative and institutional factors already
discussed. However, inertia on defence matters cannot be properly understood
without additional reference to the wider political and social environment in
which defence policy-making takes place. Within this environment the status of
'defence' has changed in ways that have made transformative policy change more
difficult and politically costly to achieve.
63 See e.g. MoD, Defence Industrial Strategy, pp. 15-56; Robert Dover, 'Changing the game? The prospects for
asymmetric acquisition', World Defense Systems, no. 1, 2009, pp. 180-3.
4 John Ikenberry, 'Conclusion: an institutional approach to American foreign economic policy , in John Iken-
berry, David Lake and Michael Mastanduno, eds, The state and American foreign policy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press, 1988), pp. 223-5, 233-5. $ee also Hall, 'Policy paradigms'.
65 IPPR, Shared responsibilities, p. 5.
On this point see esp. Cornish and Dormán, 'Blair's wars'; see also, Adaptabiliity and partnership: issues for the
Strategic Defence Review (London: TSO, 2010).
389
Timothy Edmunds
One of the most striking features of the military transformation agenda - at

least in its 'stabilization' guise - is that the military role is conceived as being
interlinked with, and to some degree subordinate to, a much wider set of
security goals, priorities and instruments, in what has been called 'the compre-
hensive approach' in some circles. 7 So, for example, both the 2008 and 2009
National Security Strategy (NSS) documents outline a vision for UK security
which focuses primarily on non-military challenges, including terrorism, trans-
national organized crime, and failed and fragile states. The NSS itself calls for
a multi-agency response to these issues, including economic, development, law
enforcement and diplomatic measures.68 There is some discussion of the role of
the military within this nexus that broadly mirrors the themes of extant defence
policy documentation; however, this is remarkably thin, amounting to only two
pages of a 61 -page document in 2008.
This conceptual desegregation of defence within UK security as a whole is
also reflected at the level of bureaucratic organization and to some extent in
operational planning as well. Initiatives such as the Conflict Prevention Pool, for
example, share resources between the MoD, Foreign and Commonwealth Office
and Department for International Development with the explicit aim of encour-
aging a more integrated approach to conflict prevention and post-conflict recon-
struction. There is also an increasing expectation that military and development
actors should work together more closely at the operational level, reflected in
part in General Dannatt's proposal for a new stabilization cadre for the army and
increasingly in military doctrinal publications. These individual developments
are indicative of the more general trend to conceive of the UK defence sector
not as providing a discrete response to specific and clearly defined threats - as
was the case during the Cold War - but as a mechanism providing more general-
ized military capabilities in pursuit of UK security policy goals broadly defined.
There is much to recommend about this more integrated approach to UK security
policy. At a minimum it is indicative of a policy response to the broadening and
deepening of the security concept that has taken place in the scholarly literature
since the end of the Cold War, and the increasing tendency to link security with
development.69 In practical terms, it is also a reaction to operational experience
and coordination problems between agencies in UK peace support operations in
the Balkans and elsewhere.
Even so, the involvement of a range of different Whitehall departments, actors
and interests in the defence mission also introduces new institutional complexity
and strategic ambiguity into the policy-making process. Certainly, relations
between the various departments concerned have not always been smooth in
practice, with each bringing distinct organizational priorities, operational capaci-
ties and conceptual approaches to the task at hand. At the operational level, this
67 Joint Doctrine and Concepts Centre, 'The comprehensive approach', Joint Discussion Note 4/05 (Shriven-
ham: Joint Services Command and Staff College, Jan. 2006).
National Security Strategy, pp. 25-57.
^ Mark Duffield, Global governance and the new wars: the merging of development and security (London : Zed, 2001), pp.
1-17.

has sometimes translated into disagreement and friction over the agreed end-state
of the mission concerned and the best way to go about achieving it.70 At the
policy level, these differences have led to disputes over where efforts should be
concentrated and how resources should best be spent.71 The danger for the defence
portfolio is that its institutional priorities, crises and strains become lost within or
sacrificed to the wider policy environment of which it is now a part.72 The issue
is not so much that military matters have disappeared from the policy process or
even necessarily declined in significance, at least on their own relatively narrow
terms, as that they are now part of a wider and more diverse policy nexus, in
which the role and influence of the defence sector specifically is both more diffuse
and less authoritative than might have been the case in the past. Indeed, it is indica-
tive in this regard that the IPPR report of 2009, despite spending some time on
the severity of the challenges faced by the defence sector, is explicit in calling
'not for a Strategic Defence Review but for a Strategic Review of Security in the
widest sense'.73
The status of defence in society more widely is also changing. The armed forces
themselves remain popular among the British public - indeed, they are perhaps
more positively regarded at present than they have been at any other time since
the Second World War.74 However, the expeditionary nature of contemporary
conflict and professional military organization is such that for most people in the
UK the experience of war and the military is something that takes place indirectly
through the media. Justifications for military action are likewise generally indirect
and often transnational or long term in nature. At the same time, threat percep-
tions within the UK itself remain at a historically low point, at least in traditional
military terms, while large parts of the electorate continue to prioritize quite
traditional national defence roles for the armed forces.75 These tendencies have
been reinforced by public scepticism over the wars in Iraq and, increasingly, in
Afghanistan.76
Against this background there has been little public appetite for a transforma-
tive change in defence policy in response to current strains - short, perhaps, of
operational withdrawal or relatively minor incremental improvements, such as
better equipment for the soldiers on the ground. Such disengagement is reflected
in the political discourse, with none of the major parties offering a narrative on
defence that differs substantially from extant policy until late in 2009 at least,77
70 Brigadier (rtd) Ed Butler, formerly Cdr 16 Air Assault Brigade, evidence to the House of Commons Defence
Committee, on the Comprehensive Approach, HC523-Ì, 9 June 2009.
71 Ann Fitzgerald, 'Developing a comprehensive approach to national security', Chatham House transcript, 21
Feb. 2007, p. 7, www.chathamhouse.org.uk/files/8268_2i0207fitzgerald.pdf, accessed 14 Jan. 2010.
72 James G. March and Johan P. Olsen, Rediscovering institutions: the organizational basis of politics (New York: Free
Press, 1989), p. 58.
/4 Britain s armed forces: losing their way? , The Economist, 29 Jan. 2009.
75 See e.g. Ipsos MORI, Ministry of Defence and armed forces reputation and defence research, Spring 2008, www. mod.
uk/NR/rdonlyres/F788EFDA-E5C7-4936-B235-5oF74FOACC7/o/pos_maro8-pdf, accessed 14 Jan. 2010.
76 'Voters turn against war in Afghanistan', Independent, 28 July 2009.
77 Even this was speculative and caused much controversy. See 'Row over Tory plans to axe £30 bn defence
projects', The Times, 16 Sept. 2009; Adaptability and partnership.

Timothy Edmunds
and then defence secretary John Hutton feeling it necessary in January that year
to call for much greater public understanding of why British troops are fighting in
Afghanistan - this eight years after UK forces were first deployed there.78
This popular disconnection from the narrative and practice of British defence
manifests itself in more concrete ways as well. For example, while popular support
for the armed forces may remain high, until recently this has not translated into
a widespread willingness for people either to enlist in them personally or to
encourage young people in one's care to do so.79 The financial crisis of 2008-09
has undoubtedly brought about something of a change in this attitude, with Army
recruitment rising by 14 per cent in the six months to 31 March 2009. ° Even so, all
three services remain short of their personnel targets, particularly in key areas such
as the infantry and artillery, or in high-demand, so-called 'pinch point' trades such
as ammunition technicians in the army or aircraft controllers in the RAF.81 The
challenge here is that not all of these trades - particularly those requiring experi-
ence - are easy to fill in the short or even medium term. Hence past problems of
recruitment and retention in key areas engender long-term structural challenges
for the future, no matter how buoyant the current national recruitment environ-
ment may be. Similarly, many of the most important recruitment challenges faced
by the armed forces reflect long-term social trends - such as an ageing population
and changing social expectations - rather than the immediate pressures of opera-
tions or fluctuations in the economic climate. 2 As a consequence, major personnel
change in the armed forces - a significant increase in the size of the Army as called
for by the IPPR in 2009, for example,83 or a major surge in the number of soldiers
committed to Afghanistan - may be difficult to achieve in practice, even if the
political appetite and economic resources for such changes were in place.
In any case, there is little sign that any such spending bonanza is on the horizon.
In part this reflects the severity of the financial crisis, with most observers predicting
that the defence budget will face further cuts in coming years. However, it is also a
consequence of the ambiguity with which defence is currently viewed among the
British public. Opinion poll data since 2006 have consistently shown that while a
large proportion of respondents (46 per cent in 2008) might be willing to spend
more on defence, a significantly higher proportion (58 per cent) do not want to
spend less on other public services - such as health and education - in order to do
so, nor indeed do they want to pay more in tax (53 per cent).84 Such figures imply
that while the armed forces themselves may be held in high esteem, 'defence'
more broadly conceived remains quite low in the hierarchy of public concern,
suggesting that a really significant increase in defence spending would be diffi-
cult for the public to stomach, with all the political disincentives for action that
conclusion entails.
78 'Hutton tells Nato allies to "step up to plate" over Afghanistan'.

79 House of Commons Defence Committee, Recruiting and retaining, p. 25.
80 'Thousands join army to escape recession', The Times, 9 May 2009.
House of Commons Defence Committee, Recruiting and retaining, p. 21.
House of Commons Defence Committee, Recruiting and retaining, p. 31.
84 Ipsos MORI, Ministry of Defence and armed forces, p. 11.
392

The status of defence in the UK has thus changed from a concentrated portfolio
focused on the prospect of a war for national survival, to a more diffused set of
expeditionary tasks premised on the management and containment of security
challenges at source. Such a role carries a quite different resonance among
politicians and the general public from that generated by the immediate threat
of the Cold War. This exacerbates the defence dilemma in Britain, introducing
new bureaucratic and societal veto points into the policy process. These lessen the
institutional influence and significance of the defence sector in the wider policy
process and raise the political costs of transformative policy responses.
Conclusion: defence planning for the future
This article has presented the defence dilemma in Britain as an inter-related

institutional complex, in which traditional notions of a national defence policy
space - narrowly focused on Whitehall and the armed forces themselves - do
not capture the full range of identities and interests at play. In this context, it is
perhaps unsurprising that crises and strains within the defence sector itself have
to date been insufficient to engender major policy change. Instead, the institu-
tional politics of defence in the UK have been characterized by path dependency,
conservatism and inertia; and this during the most operationally active period for
the armed forces since the Korean War at least.
So, is adaptation to the defence dilemma possible? In one sense it is already
happening. In the absence of major policy change from above, operations in
Afghanistan are increasingly driving organizational change in the armed forces
from below. This is demonstrated by the extent to which defence spending has
been skewed towards UORs in recent years and by the government's decision of
December 2009 to divert spending from the core defence expenditure commit-
ments to ongoing operations. Yet by its very nature such change is ad hoc, short
term and incremental in nature. While it may help to address the immediate
pressures of the day, it is unlikely to establish a firm foundation for UK defence
planning into the future. Nor is it likely to address the fundamental tensions at the
heart of the defence dilemma in Britain.
These tensions are located across the transnational complex of British defence
policy-making and represent critical path dependencies and veto points in any
potential process of transformative change. They include the appropriate role,
purpose and structure of the armed forces themselves, including their contribu-
tion to homeland defence, their commitment to enduring operations overseas,
and questions of interoperability and cooperation with allies; the political and
institutional interests of different actors in relation to these questions, including
procurement decisions, the balance between the services and the continuing polit-
ical significance of the Defene Industrial Base; and the manner in which such
issues are understood, supported and ultimately resourced by the wider polity. As
presently constituted, the competing demands of these imperatives combine in
ways that are increasingly unsustainable for defence policy as a whole.
393

Timothy Edmunds
In this context, it seems unlikely that either Efficiency gains' or incremental

change within existing frameworks will be able to deliver the scale of change that
increasingly seems necessary. Instead, key elements of the defence policy complex
may have to be either transformed themselves or removed. By their very nature
such choices will be difficult and will entail a reconsideration of some of the core
assumptions and practices that have underpinned British defence since the end of
the Cold War and perhaps a long time before that too. At the time of writing,
there are some signs that the beginnings of this process may be apparent, stimu-
lated in part by the pressures of Afghan operations, the impact of the 2008-9
financial crisis and the opportunities presented by a forthcoming general election.
Certainly, the government's 2010 Defence Green Paper - released as this article
was going to press - recognizes the need for 'radical change' and 'tough decisions'
if defence is to adapt to the challenges of the moment.85
However, what is notably absent at this point is what Colin Hay has called
'a dominant crisis narrative' in the form of a distinctive and generally agreed
programme of institutional change.86 While a series of shocks have destabilized
existing policy, created various competing notions of contradiction and crisis,
and prompted ad hoc cost-saving measures from the government itself, the polit-
ical and ideational struggle over the future contours of British defence is still
unresolved. The new SDR, widely expected to take place after the next election,
is likely to form the crucible for such change if it comes, and it is in this context
that the current tensions and disagreements within and between the institutions
of British defence and other interests should be seen. How transformative such a
review will be able to be in practice remains an open question. Much will depend
on the extent to which the UK's defence dilemma is recognized as a crisis by the
actors and institutions at play and on the outcome of the political and ideational
struggles between them. It is also apparent that these are defence-specific questions,
albeit ones which only make sense in the context of security policy more widely
conceived. While a full Strategic Review of Security might also be desirable, it
should be only a precursor to, rather than a replacement for, a proper treatment
of the defence dilemma in Britain.
85 See Adaptability and partnership, p. 9.

Colin Hay, 'Crisis and the structural transformation of the state: interrogating the process of change', British
Journal of Politics and International Relations 1:3, Oct. 1999, pp. 330-31.
394


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The defence dilemma in Britain

Author(s): TIMOTHY EDMUNDS

International Affairs 86: 2 (2010)377-394

The transnational nature of British defence

International Affairs 86: 2, 2010

18 See e.g. IPPR, Shared responsibilities, p. 35.

23 Deliverinç security in a chancing world: defence white paper, p. 8.

24 Colin Gray, 'B

environment and the agenda of military transformation it engenders are so well

A contested defence policy space

27 As suggested, for example, in IPPR, Shared responsibilities, p. 11.

from those envisaged in the technologically driven model of military transforma-

current procurement projects is such that they require an enormous institutional,

57 Gray, 'Britain's national security', p. 12.

The changing status of 'defence'

One of the most striking features of the military transformation agenda - at

International Affairs 86: 2, 2010

International Affairs 86: 2, 2010

78 'Hutton tells Nato allies to "step up to plate" over Afghanistan'.

International Affairs 86: 2, 2010

Conclusion: defence planning for the future

This article has presented the defence dilemma in Britain as an inter-related

International Affairs 86: 2, 2010

In this context, it seems unlikely that either Efficiency gains' or incremental

85 See Adaptability and partnership, p. 9.

International Affairs 86: 2, 2010

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