Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much indeed for coming the savings, the 2020 annual lecture for CCW,
the changing control centre for those who don't know CCW has been existence since the very end of 2003,
bringing together scholars with practitioners both military and political and obviously as tight suggests.
We've been studying this what's changing in the character of armed conflicts?
And if you think back to just sort of the 1990s, the late 1990s, the big concern was about peace,
enforcement of stabilisation, but it shifted very dramatically.
Shortly before, CCW stood up as an organisation with the dramatic events of nine 11,
and our focus was on terrorism, of course, from then through the early 2000s.
The big focus then was on insurgency in the United States, stabilisation but against insurgency, particularly the Middle East.
And now we find ourselves discussing much more often hostile state actors.
So you don't change alone. Just a broad handful shows you just how busy we've been, and our focus isn't just on these dramatic geopolitical shifts.
It's also about the human condition, how ethically we respond to this problem of armed conflicts.
And it's been about some of the new technologies that have arrived that have made things very disruptive.
Just recently, we're all pretty concerned at the moment by artificial intelligence,
for example, what difference that's going to make to the future of armed conflict.
And we shouldn't ignore the fact that even outer space is not part of our concern around the world.
But certainly since CCW was formed,
we've been very fortunate to have an annual lecture where we have asked someone who is
prominent in academic or in public life to come and share their reflections on war,
on strategy and perhaps in statecraft, and gives me great pleasure this evening to introduce you to our annual lecturer of Twenty Twenty One.
Peter Wilkins is currently the associate fellow for Chatham House and has been there since June 2019.
But he's had a very distinguished career. He was from 2014 to 2018, the director general in the United Kingdom Ministry of Defence,
responsible for strategic defence policy, including multilateral and bilateral relationships.
And obviously, Naito was part of that. He was responsible for Britain's nuclear debate.
If you like cyber, of course, Nigeria's emerging space and indeed the prosperity agenda, as it was known,
that post I should point out, you know, it's known as director general strategy and international something.
We're not going to have space agency to that as well as another thing to think about.
Previously, he served as director general of the Defence Academy down the road.
From here, the director of operational policy, the director response from the United Kingdom,
share of the Typhoon Combat Aircraft Programme and as defence counsel to the UK Embassy in Berlin.
I was wondering my way this evening whether you were upholding that great British tradition of keeping the Russians out,
the Americans and the Germans somewhere else. He's obviously a frequent participant in debates on defence and security.
Not just the chancellor has, of course, but elsewhere. And he was awarded CBE in 2019 and CBE before that in 2004 for services to defence.
He's got an email from Cambridge.
He was an undergraduate at Peterson, and I should also point out he's had experience in lecturing at the associate courts level,
rather at the Noto Defence College, which we're very fond of here and in 2006 was a fellow of the Weatherhead Centre in Harvard,
another connexion that we have as well in international affairs.
Peter, thank you very much indeed for being on. Annual lecture 2021. Thank you.
Thank you very much for those kind words. I suppose if I were so happy my American colleagues, I'd call you Director Johnson anyway.
OK, I'll go straight into it and then we'll have some discussion afterwards.
I'm sorry, Master Dr. Johnson Distinguished learnt guests.
And ladies and gentlemen, it's an honour to have been invited to give this year's changing character of war and your lecture.
My only qualification for this podium is sort of what Rob's been saying,
which is that I was a senior official in the UK Ministry of Defence for quite a long time.
I joined in 1980, so and I left in 2018, so this centre was founded just over halfway through my stint.
But during that period, I worked mainly on policy strategy, acquisition and resource management.
And as Rob said, from 2011 to 2014, I ran the defence academy,
serving about 20 miles away from here and we had a good relationship with the Centre and with Oxford University more widely.
And I now have other roles and affiliations. You alluded to one of them, which is a board member of the steering board, member of the space agency.
And obviously, whatever I say, I say in a strictly personal capacity.
So I was asked this evening to reflect upon past defence reviews and how they might
help us better understand the current direction of UK foreign and security policy,
hence the title UK defence policy reviews and redirections.
As I said, I was with the Minister Defence from 1980 to 2018,
and during that period there were five sort of set piece reviews as generally understood.
So in nineteen eighty one 1990, 97, 98, 2010 and 2015,
and I brought the first and I'm not quite the last to start the 1991 review and this one was the 2010 review.
The obvious, I'm afraid I only have one soft copy. I'm sort of gradually becoming less attached to paper as we all are.
So the last two reviews, the 2010 one and the 2015 review were obviously broader in scope.
They were strategic defence and security reviews, but defence was at the core of both of them.
And since then, of course, there's been the integrated review of 2020 21, which was given advance billing by the current defence secretary as quote,
the deepest and most radical unquote review of UK foreign security and defence policy since the end of the Cold War.
So as an official, I had limited involvement with the 1981 review.
I was a very junior official, then often known as Command two eight eight quite unusual letters,
pretty much the only document which is still known generally by its command paper.
No. I have some involvement in the 1990 review, which was named as options for Change.
More with the 1997 98 Strategic Defence Review and the 2010 review,
and I was the director general responsible for the defence element of the 2015 review and as an ex official,
I tracked the Integrated Review pretty closely and have written some short commentary pieces on it,
including some analysis that I undertook with two former colleagues, John McCain,
and will dress it on which I will draw for part of this presentation this evening.
I am conscious that this is pretty well-trodden ground, so in my remarks today,
I'll not consider reviews of their wider context earlier than the period in which I served at the Ministry of Defence.
Now you might think that's a bit self-indulgent, but actually listen to what Rob said.
I don't feel it's quite so self-indulgent because although my being in the Ministry of Defence for those 38,
that particular thirty eight years was just an accident of my personal history.
One could argue that it was a period that saw some pretty transformational change,
so geopolitically shifting from one of the coldest periods of spells of the Cold War.
Shortly after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, through the collapse of the Soviet bloc and the apparent triumph of the West,
then through a period of large scale stabilisation operations of.
Rob alluded to and then to the re-emergence of state on state of great power competition in the Indo-Pacific and the Euro-Atlantic areas.
And then technologically, with huge advances in military and commercial electronics, the arrival of the internet and so on.
And then institutionally, with the British governments,
at least under prime ministers of both main parties striving to be more businesslike with working practises transformed by mobile phones,
email and the 24 hour news cycle. When I started in the Ministry of Defence in 1980, there was no such thing as email or mobile phones.
If you wrote a paper, you wrote it out in longhand on a full full set know not even a full, and it was posted to an office in Glasgow to be typed up.
So I suppose it was quite a long time, but it's a huge change in working practises,
and the period began with events that were harbingers of the end of the old order.
So the death of Tito and the condensed agreement in 1990 and ended with developments that precedes the new set of challenges.
An increasingly confident China. An increasingly distracted United States and accelerating climate change.
So following those introductory points, I'll structure my remarks this evening into roughly four parts.
I realise I'm breaking the rule very much it those two things in three parts, but I'm not French, so I've got nothing against.
But I'll outline the review's pulling out their continuing features and patterns.
Then I'll sketch out the wider context of the UK defence policy during those years and offer some thoughts
on the recent integrated review and asked whether and to what extent it breaks with the mould of the past.
And finally, all of us have thoughts on future challenges. So first of all, the reviews I've listed, the five that took place,
they have all to a greater or lesser extent contained the following elements a risk and threat assessment,
namely, what are the main risks and threats facing the UK and where do they come from a policy baseline?
What is the best general policy response to those risks and threats?
And what specific national security and defence policies and planning priorities should be pursued?
An analysis of capability and force structure requirements.
What new capabilities are required to meet the threats and or changes in the balance of those capabilities?
In practical terms, how many ships, tanks, aircraft, etc. and how many personnel, military and civilian are needed a financial settlement?
What resources are required to sustain the policy capabilities and full structures?
And then we'll come back to this. What steps should be taken to ensure a sustainable balance between commitments and resources?
And then the Fifth Element? An analysis of organisation and processes.
What organisational arrangements will best support the policy and planning responses outlined and what changes need to be made
to existing arrangements and reviews have taken place for the following sometimes overlapping reasons economic and financial.
Two of the review's commanding two eight eight and the 2010 CSO,
which I brought with me, were explicit that they were responding to economic pressures.
The existing defence effort was frankly no longer affordable. This was partly but unstated the case with options for change in 1990 as well.
Strategic change. Another reason two of the past reviews options for change as I mentioned, and to a lesser extent,
the 1997 98 SDR were responding more to changes in the strategic context,
as, of course, was the integrated review, namely to the UK's changed position in the world post-Brexit.
Change of government, which was the main reason, frankly, for the 97 98 SDR and rather prosaically,
compliance with the schedule, which was the main reason for the 2015 review.
The coalition government had set out a commitment to conduct these reviews every five years.
The new Conservative government in 2015 respected this, even though David Cameron was publicly quite publicly unenthusiastic.
And of course,
the 2015 review was also partly a response to the changed security environment in the Euro Atlantic area following Russian misbehaviour in Ukraine,
the fear that will come back to haunt.
Perhaps and looking at the main elements of the past reviews of these past reviews, and as I said, I'll cover the integrated review separately.
One can pick out some patterns, so to avoid repetition, I'll take together the first two elements the risk and threat assessment,
plus the policy baseline, because they tend to overlap a bit. So Command eight eight eight did not seek to overhaul UK defence policy.
Like previous reviews, it saw the primary threat as being from the Soviet bloc,
but given the financial pressures, it decided to take risks against the UK's maritime capabilities.
This was undermined less than a year later by the Argentinean invasion of the Falkland Islands.
Options for change was cautious about whether the threat from the Soviet Union actually gone,
but just that it was prudent to reduce defence spending from about four percent of GDP to 2.5 percent of GDP.
I mean, it's now, by comparison, about 2.1 percent over the subsequent decade.
And actually, it was appropriate to do that over the threat of major conflict in Europe receded during the 1990s and beyond by the late nineties.
Risks to our national security appear to come more from fragile and failing states.
The 97 98 SDR response to manage these risks range seemed to work quite well at first in Sierra Leone, Macedonia and initially in Afghanistan.
But the SDR did not foresee that such interventions would turn into Typekit stabilisation campaigns.
As in southern Iraq and southern Afghanistan Post 2006, SDR Signal 2010 stated confidently quote No state currently has both the intent and
the capability to threaten the independence or integrity of the United Kingdom,
unquote. That said, only 11 years ago, it saw the risks and threats coming more as before from within fragile and failing states.
And given the fiscal situation and the then government's limited ambitions in terms of a limited appetite,
sorry for further heavy stabilisation operations. It deliberately S.T.A.R. 2010 deliberately limited defence ambitions defence's
ambitions in terms of the scale of operations of the armed forces could undertake,
and it took risks against certain capabilities, such as maritime patrol aircraft.
The resulting gaps were managed for several years thereafter,
albeit with increasing strain on these SDF 15 close these gaps and Re-orientate said defence planning on state based threats,
particularly from Russia. It also deepened the investment in the new domains of conflict, namely cyber space.
So after a pretty shaky start with command eight two eight eight,
I think the reviews were about right on the trajectory of risks and threats and set the appropriate baseline policies in response.
But the later ones seriously underestimated the pace of change in the strategic environment and how quickly the character of conflict would evolve,
particularly with the innovative exploitation by adversaries of commercial technologies.
So the third element of each of every review was capabilities and force structures looked at individually.
At least two of the reviews took some bold decisions to reduce capabilities.
Command eight to 88 plan to cut one fifth of the Royal Navy's destroyers and frigates, two amphibious ships and an aircraft carrier.
The 2010 Edsel brought forward the withdrawal from service of the three small carriers that we
used to have and the Harrier force and cancelled the then Maritime Patrol Aircraft Programme.
The intervening 97 98 review SVR decided to replace the three small carriers with two bigger ones and
created a number of joint formations such as Joint Force Harrier and the Joint Helicopter Command.
But taking a slightly wider view, one gets a different picture.
Although the size of the UK Armed Forces has reduced significantly since the early 1980s in terms of the number of platforms,
war stocks and personnel, their shape has changed very little.
For relatively little, the changes instituted by the main reviews have been mainly incremental,
reflecting political and institutional pressures to maintain a broad spectrum of capabilities,
including as a hedge against uncertainty in the entire period.
Only two significant. Capabilities have been deleted permanently.
Conventional submarines and ground based medium range surface to air missiles
and both outside the main reviews given the pace of technological change.
It's hard not to conclude that these changes to capabilities and force structures made in these reviews were too cautious and conservative.
The fourth element of past reviews was the financial settlement arguably command eight to eight
did what it was set out to do in terms of reducing the programme to match available resources.
But following the Falklands campaign, many of the proposed cuts had to be reversed,
and the government announced in December 1992 that quote We shall now be devoting
substantially more resources to defence than had previously been planned,
unquote. The budgetary dimension of the decisions made in the 1990 review was not spelt out until the following year.
Statement on the defence estimates, which was the first of many indications that either defence expenditure was not
reducing as expected and or that the defence budget was being squeezed by the Treasury.
And as a result, the mod then had to launch in 93 94. The so-called defence cost studies to find significant savings by the time of the SDR in 97 98.
The defence budget was at a low point in real terms, with little hope of an uplift given the then government's ambitious social goals.
SDR much lauded these days, but it concluded with a residual gap between the associated financial settlements and the
estimated cost to the defence programme to be closed by ambitious efficiency measures.
And the result was that the Americans struggled financially throughout the next decade.
The 2010 review cut the defence programme by 10 percent, but it soon became clear that this wasn't enough.
Hence, the so-called three month exercise in 2011, which included a previously rejected reduction in the size of the army.
The 2015 season began with an announcement that the UK would meet the next target of spending two per cent of GDP on defence.
Thus basically fixing the budget.
But this envelope was soon strained by new additions to the defence programme, with the gap to be closed as before by ambitious efficiency targets.
Some additional funding was found was provided in 2010 2018 and a big uplift in 2020.
I don't have the detail, but it is widely understood. I'm choosing my words carefully here that a significant proportion of that funding has had
to be allocated to fill what is technically known as holes in the existing programme.
In short, none of the reviews of the command eight two eight eight has managed to create a sustainable balance between commitments and resources,
and they were all followed by further measures.
The Fifth Element was organisation and processes when all the reviews have had something to say on this dimension.
It was actually only a big part of the 97 98 review,
which created a number of joint organisations which I won't go through to share to spare you from the Minister of Defence Alphabet Soup.
Otherwise,
the studies and reports that led to the most significant organisational changes to the Ministry of Defence took place outside the main reviews.
These included the so-called Hessel Time review of the Central Ministry of Defence in 1984.
Michael has some time, of course, an alumnus of this college, the new management strategy and the related prospect review.
In the early nineties, the Enabling Acquisition Change study, which led to the merger of the entities,
main acquisition organisations and, of course, the Liberal Review in 2010 11 12.
So from an organisational perspective, the main reviews have rarely been decisive.
So having sketched out what the reviews did or didn't do. I'll now turn or return to the my second theme.
The wider context of UK defence over those years, and it will be a personal perspective,
reflecting my standpoints at various moments and former colleagues of my approximate
vintage may have different perceptions in terms of the strategic context.
There was obviously a decisive break point in 1990. But certain elements straddle the divide.
One was the relationship with the United States in the 1980s.
This turned around the US contribution to NATO's deterrence posture in Europe, both nuclear and conventional in the 90s and 2000s.
It was more operational cooperation, whether in the Gulf War or the subsequent interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq,
but was the sense of peace and cooperation on nuclear and intelligence matters continued throughout, largely following their own rhythm rhythms.
Another one was the Middle East and particularly the Gulf. UK forces had officially withdrawn from east of Suez in the 1970s,
but with the outbreak of the Iran-Iraq war in 1980, the Royal Navy's Miller Patrol was established, which can.
You need for many years and eventually evolved into a renewed, renewed permanent naval presence in the Gulf.
Relations with the Gulf Cooperation Council states were a continuing priority to ministers throughout with regular visits to the Gulf.
What we would now call the prosperity dimension was a big factor.
The defence industrial relationship with Saudi Arabia stepped up significantly after 1995,
and defence exports on a much lesser scale were also pursued in the other states,
including the most recent export sale of Typhoon to Qatar, which was signed in 2017.
And of course, the response to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait and its aftermath was a major preoccupation.
In the early and again in the late 1990s, to be followed by the searing experience of operations in Iraq from early 2003,
even as these receded concern was growing about Iran's nuclear programme,
and I can't think of any other part of the world outside Europe that had such an impact on defence during those years.
Turning to Europe for the Middle East, seen mainly through the prism of nature and key bilateral programmes, including key bilateral relationships,
including cooperation on major equipment programmes,
successive reviews and documents have described NATO as quote vital or as the quote cornerstone of the UK's defence.
But the day to day relationship has been more nuanced given the UK's continued continuing interest beyond the Nexo area.
Nature has not given defence planning in the UK to the same degree as it has in other European states.
The two key bilateral relations relationships during the period well with Germany and France with the former.
The British military presence in Germany steadily reduced up the early nineties and the centrepiece of the relationship between equipment cooperation.
So tornado, typhoon, etc. With France, there was more of a shared strategic culture as fellow nuclear powers with global interests.
But equipment cooperation was much less developed during that period.
And tellingly, the St Malo agreement with France on European defence was signed some months after the 97 98 SDR was published and was not prepared.
And it at all as far as I can make out.
Looking inwards, UK defence was subject to budgetary pressures throughout the period and remains so today despite the budget uplift of a year ago.
This reflected relentless growth in costs above the generic rates of inflation in equipment and, to a lesser extent, personnel.
It's often assumed and and asserted that the defence budget has been in steady decline since the late 1980s.
This is not entirely correct. Defence expenditure, which admittedly is technically not quite the same thing, was pretty steady in real terms.
Across my almost 40 year period, that's around 40 billion pounds a year.
Apart from a significant dip in the mid to late 1990s, the peace dividend was relatively short lived.
Successive reviews and umpteen internal exercises between reviews failed to achieve
a sustainable balance between the cost of commitments and available resources.
Some degree of tension between those things is desirable, as it can help drive if an efficiency and innovation.
But the enduring extent of the imbalance was, in my observation, personal view,
a preoccupation of the NATO leadership throughout with a huge amount of senior time and staff effort absorbed by what one might
call managing the gap time effort that perhaps might have been more game for the use of allies on a slides on other things.
So while there is a natural tendency for academic and other commentators to focus on the cadence of the main set piece reviews,
the reality was one of almost constant reviews,
perhaps because of the slightly artificial way in which the main piece of the main reviews were conducted.
They didn't seem to settle that much.
Whether carried out over a long period like the 97 98 one which lasted over a year or a short one like we saw in 2010,
which lasted less than six months, many big decisions were taken between reviews.
These decisions may not have set directions, but they significantly constrained choices.
So let's give an example from my personal history. The UK's number of Eurofighter typhoons, the number that we were buying was set in 1996,
and the SDR of the following year consciously did not reopen that number,
given the risk to ongoing negotiations for industrial work shares with Germany.
And, of course, key decisions on the nuclear programme, but also taken outside the set piece reviews in nineteen eighty two thousand six and 2016,
finally starting in the early 1980s and initially reflecting a broader government agenda.
These years saw successive efforts to run defence more like a business and reform acquisition processes.
On the first, the beginnings were quite modest with aspirations and this document nine two eight eight eight two eight eight but quote
more accountable management of the documents and quotes to carry out further our partnership with the private sector,
unquote in wider support areas. By the early 1990s, we had competing for quality and market testing, and efforts to outsource activities continued.
Following the change of government in 1970,
notably in the Typekit divestment of test and evaluation work through what is now a company called Kinetic one could characterise this,
and I want to write this up at some point as the Liberals, I think, or possibly not dismantling of the warfare state,
as described by David Edgerton in his seminal book With Acquisition.
The key change was the shift from the mid-1980s to an approach of seeking best value for money through open competition between private contractors.
Ministry of Defence ceased officially at least selecting contractors taking account of broader industrial or social factors.
This was accompanied by a quote hands off approach to the defence industry.
The Minister of Defence expected the prime contractors to manage their supply
chains and gradually collected less and less information about its supply base.
Although the military regularly boasted about how much money this was saving,
there was a growing sense by the mid 1990s that the results were mixed with the costs of major projects rising and time scale slipping.
So we had the launch of smart procurement in 1997, followed by many further acquisition reform initiatives.
These tended to focus on organisation and process, rather than the underlying value for money through open competition policy.
Well, I hope you're concluding from all this is that there's been a high degree of continuity, I might say path dependency over the past four decades,
despite claims by successive reviews that they were, in this case, fresh and radical and others.
But yes, they use that term, you know, all those years ago, phrase all those years ago and others that they were setting a new compass.
Perhaps it would be unfair to say that the broad direction of British defence policy didn't change much in 40 years.
I think actually it was more a case of going round in a big circle. And there's definitely been a lag or latency.
Even a substantial numbers of troops were deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan in the first decade of this century.
The UK sought to make its major commitments, exacerbating overstretch.
The campaign in Afghanistan did not become defence's quote main effort, which is a doctrinal term until 2009.
As I noted earlier, the broad shape of the UK armed forces also didn't change much.
This reflected various pressures, as I said, including political desire not to foreclose options and limit physical dependencies on allies.
Some long capability gaps and consequent dependencies were accepted, but generally only when forced by circumstances.
As with the maritime patrol that rocked my sense is that the obsession with efficiencies
from the early 1980s and the constant reviews were mainly about avoiding hard choices.
And I suppose I'm deliberately attacking Peter Ricketts in saying that it wasn't too difficult to pretend otherwise.
It was pretty obvious to anybody that parts of UK defence were not very efficient.
But the quantum of the savings to be made was often based on a rather cursory analysis and was therefore rarely realised in the practise.
Successive efficiency exercises or initiatives to use the modes favoured descriptors.
I'm disappointed and I think the use of those words actually is quite indicative in itself.
One could argue nonetheless, that this multi-year effort was successful, unlike in some other countries.
UK defence did avoid having to narrow its horizons or lose key capabilities as a price
was paid in the disproportionate intellectual effort put into managing the gap.
I suppose the big question, which I wasn't planning to go into in the main part of this is whether there is a link between
this and what is starting to look like a litany of strategic failures since the mid 1990s.
The interventions in the Balkans were at least a partial success, but I don't need to dwell on Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan.
The errors in each case were different, but it seems to me at least arguable that the Ministry of Defence,
less preoccupied with its perennial balancing act, might have handled matters differently.
Against this background and turning to my third theme, how can one assess the integrated review?
Glibly, I could take refuge in the time honoured civil service phrase.
It's too early to say, but I'll think of it more than that.
The outgoing chief of the Defence Staff has said that from a defence perspective,
the Integrated Review reflected a properly strategic approach with an evaluation of ends, ways and means.
I wouldn't dispute this. Apart from to note that they do not appear to have been addressed in the right order publicly,
at least the ways in the form of the integrated operating concept and the means.
The defence budget settlement appeared before the ends, as set out in the white paper of mid-March of this year.
I mean, there were, as you know, three documents that finally appeared the main white paper of the 16th of March, the Defence Command paper,
the 22nd of March, and the Defence Industrial Defence and Defence and Security Industrial Strategy of the 23rd of March.
Between them, they covered the same elements as previous reviews and so briefly and using
the same constituent elements as before my sort of off the cuff assessment.
First of all, the assessment of risks and threats. This appears to me to be thoughtful and comprehensive with a clear and, in my view,
correct restatement of the centrality of the Euro-Atlantic area to the UK security.
But it already feels a little overtaken by events with respect to the security challenge from China.
Taiwan has barely mentioned and the disruptive impact of accelerating climate change.
Second, the policy and planning response.
The integrated review, given its name, puts much weight on integration across domains within governments and even internationally.
This looks right. It posits a tilt to the Indo-Pacific again, given the growing challenges from that area.
This also looks right, but it doesn't address whether the UK can make a meaningful contribution to security
in the Indo-Pacific without detriment to its contribution in the Euro-Atlantic.
However, in my view, one of the most significant shifts in policy is set out in the last but by no means least paper in the trilogy.
The Defence and Security Industrial Strategy for the first time.
This recognises the defence industry as a quote strategic asset unquote, and promises to move away from the previous policy of competition by default.
Third capabilities in force structures The AI R promises increased investment in digital,
cyber and space at the expense of the accelerated retirement of some older capabilities,
which has caused a lot of emotion, as you well know, and it moves off the unattainable previous target of 82000 personnel to the army again.
In my view, the budget settlement. Fourth Element the budget increase announced last November, was greater than any external observer had expected.
It means that, unlike nearly all the previous reviews, this one has not been hobbled from the outset.
But there's still a question whether once existing budget holes have been filled, there will be enough headroom for investments in new technologies,
and it's difficult work with a company at the chancellor's recent budget statement showed.
While the capital budget for the Mod is going up very impressively, the resource of day to day budget is quite constrained,
so there is a risk, I think, that we could be back before too long.
So managing the gap and then fifth organisation and process the biggest step, such as the AFL-CIO and defeat merger,
were outside defence and in this case preceded the completion of the review.
But in the new Space Command should provide a useful focus for an increasingly important domain.
So with its self-consciously radical approach and the welcome rejection, welcome injection of significant capital.
Will the integrated review break the mould that I've outlined so far?
I don't think it's clear that it will. Indeed, the tilts the Indo-Pacific may increase the strain.
The text indicates that the tilt is actually intended to be more economic and diplomatic the military.
But the coincidence with the aircraft carrier deployment has focussed attention
on the military dimension and may have raised expectations in the region,
but will have to be managed. So finally, some closing thoughts on where we now seem to be heading in the weeks after the pandemic struck.
I'm sure many people here will remember this.
There was a welter of webinars about the strategic significance and the consensus that was emerge that it wasn't a great turning point,
but it was accelerating and deepening trends that were already apparent,
not least the shift in economic and political power to the Indo-Pacific that still feels right to me.
So the context for UK defence policy is now both rather familiar and also different.
I see the main challenges still as Russia, China, the US, Europe and climate change.
Russia remains, as we've been reminded over recent days, a disruptive power in the Euro-Atlantic area.
Up until the last few days, it's been attracting less attention from five or six years ago.
But the fundamentals haven't changed. Russia continues to exploit fault lines and other developments in eastern and central Europe,
and we cannot exclude the possibility that it could do so in a way that would be destabilising and could lead to conflict.
So we must continue to invest in credible deterrence in the Euro-Atlantic area.
China is not yet a military threat, so the international order in the Indo-Pacific or more widely in the same way as Russia in the Euro-Atlantic.
But there is a deepening pattern of coercive and or disruptive behaviour in the Indo-Pacific region and increasingly beyond intimidation,
cyber attacks, etc, etc. and, of course, Taiwan intimidation of Taiwan.
The US will continue to have more equities at stake in the Indo-Pacific than any European country.
It appears to be moving towards a more explicit deterrence posture and it will towards China,
and it will continue to provide most of the forces required. In my view, the UK should be considering how it can best conclude.
Abuse of this posture, taking into account the views of the US and key regional partners such as Japan and Australia.
It may be.
And Lloyd Austin, in one of his speeches in the American defence secretary and one of his speeches in Singapore back in the summer, hinted at this.
The UK might better help. It might be better off helping alleviate the pressures on the US by carrying more of the burden in Europe and the Gulf,
facilitating the redeployment of U.S. forces to the Indo-Pacific.
In the meantime, the core of the competition between China and the West is technological.
China has made no secret of its intent to master the game changing technologies such as A.I. and quantum.
The UK and other key European powers should work with the US and key regional partners to better protect our technological x where it still exists,
uphold international rules and standards,
and ensure that we do not become dependent on China for future critical technologies in the way that happened with wildlife and fight trade.
It might seem a bit odd now to switch to the US and Europe. Surely, they are not strategic competitors in the same way as Russia and China.
True, but in a more fragmented world, one has to pay more attention to what one's allies and partners are up to, as well as potential adversaries.
There was much relief a year ago when Joe Biden was elected president and and and undertook to work constructively with allies.
But we knew that the underlying trend apparent for a decade of increasing US focus on the Indo-Pacific would continue,
and many of us were worried about the trajectory of U.S. domestic politics,
particularly the implosion of the traditional Republican Party and the implications that could have for the US's future international,
wrote US, whose approach to Afghanistan this summer showed that even the current administration to take an America First type
approach and the increasing influence of the increasing evidence of the continuing influence of Donald Trump,
perhaps gives pause for thought on the pause, for thought on the domestic trajectory.
So the UK should, in my view, be thinking hard about becoming less dependent on the US,
and I believe that this could be done in a way that the current administration would not find threatening would actually welcome.
It would, of course, involve almost inevitably working more closely with European partners.
Which brings me to Europe. The idea of quote European strategic autonomy remains a contested one,
and the European Union has a lot less money to spend on defence than was envisaged a few years ago.
UK should not, in my view, automatically assume that European strategic autonomy is a bad thing.
It depends on what form it takes and how open the EU is or becomes the third party engagement.
If Emmanuel Macron is re-elected next year, I would expect to see this concept gain much more impetus.
And those EU countries that are currently a bit ambivalent about it,
including some close industrial partners of the UK, may start falling more into line.
That would create the risk of a growing gap between the UK and its continental European partners.
The Integrated Review had warm words about cooperation with European partners, if not the EU itself, but very few new concrete proposals, if any.
And I think that needs attention.
And finally, climate change in the past climate change climate, the climate was relatively unchanging climatic conditions,
and the seasons always needed to be taken into account in military planning, but not the possibility of them changing in the way that we are now.
Seeing the role of climate change and exacerbating conflict in, say, the Sahel is well documented.
The climate change could now have a strategic impact. Much closer to home parts of the Mediterranean basin will have a climate in 10 to 20 years time
that could create economic and social pressures that might be destabilising for team-mates allies.
I'm not sure this is receiving sufficient attention, and there is another dimension.
The energy published its sustainability strategy back in March, and it contains some very worthy goals,
except that I do think the objective of net zero by 2050 is not ambitious enough.
But it seems to rest on the premise that adaptation to climate change should not have any
detriment in terms of the operational capability of weapon systems against military threats.
I wonder. Climate change is becoming such a big issue that the Minister of Defence may have to accept this in future sustainability considerations.
May have to take precedence over operational performance in major decisions on procurement and infrastructure.
So to conclude, despite all the cynic might say, because of multiple reviews,
British defence policy has shown much continuity over the past four decades.
But we are now entering uncharted waters.
Geopolitically, with the ascendancy of China and the growing introspection of the US and even geographically and environmentally.
I would wager that the reviews of the future are likely to look very different from those of the past.
Thank you very much.