General Sir Roly Walker, the Chief of the General Staff, said earlier this month that a ‘frank conversation’ with the British public about the need to prepare for a future war was vitally important. He is not wrong. The world is increasingly perilous – Russia’s ‘special military operation’ against Ukraine continues and its campaign of ‘hybrid’ attacks is expanding in scope and intensity. America’s conflict in Iran is exposing both the changing character of war and Washington’s own defence limitations. The United States is also pursuing Nato 3.0, which will see it scale back its own forces and shift the conventional burden onto its European allies. The People’s Republic of China has designs on Taiwan and may act, militarily, to retake what it sees simply as a rogue province.
That ‘grave conversation’ needs to be about more than just the threats the United Kingdom faces and its need for increased defence spending. It must be about the United Kingdom’s power and purpose in this changing world and how defence can best advance British interests at home by ensuring its security abroad. Successive defence reviews have sought to achieve this but have fallen short, serving more as accretions of policy ambitions rather than making substantive choices. They have regressed to debates about equipment in lieu of defining the British way of war or answering the question of ‘What are His Majesty’s Armed Forces for?’
Defence must be understood not as a cost centre, but as an investment in the British economy
In Reclaiming the Waves, a new report with the Prosperity Institute, I argue that the United Kingdom should look to its storied history on the high seas to provide a renewed focal point, adopting a reenvisioned maritime strategy for defence. In the late 19th and early 20th century, naval historian and geostrategist Sir Julian Corbett proposed a vision of Great Britain commanding the high seas and leveraging a small, capable army to ensure that no single hegemon could come to dominate the continent of Europe. While not fully adopted, his vision still shaped Britain’s defence strategy at the time and should do so again over the next decade.
This new maritime strategy would accept the primacy of Great Britain’s unchanging strategic geography. It is an island nation and as such should seek to ensure that it controls its nearest waters and denies the enemy the freedom of action in space, the air, at sea, and below the ocean.
These domains are already contested. In April, the government announced that it had ‘deterred’ a Russian operation over cables and pipelines in the waters north of the United Kingdom. Building forces capable of controlling these waters in a sustained manner must be the first priority. So too is the development of a limited integrated air and missile defence system (IAMDS). A ‘Britannia shield’, such as that proposed by the Conservative party, makes for a good headline but needs rightsizing. Defending key critical national infrastructure from drone attack is one thing, but stopping inbound missiles must be about delivering real deterrent effects further from Britain’s shores.
Second, while Great Britain need not currently fear the emergence of a new continental hegemon, it can leverage the investment and rearmament of its allies in Nato to redefine its own forces and continental role. The allied commitment to increase defence spending made at the Hague summit last year will see a stronger European pillar within Nato (even if the maximialist objectives are unmet), meaning that the British army can refocus and reinvest to become more credible and capable, rather than overstretched and under-resourced. Indeed, consolidation and centralisation must occur first before expansion is considered. London’s allies in Washington and Tallinn respect their British counterparts but quietly question the capacity of the British army to meet Nato capability targets. That doubt must be squashed.
Third, just as Sir Julian envisioned Britain serving as an offshore balancer more than a century ago, the British armed forces can today pursue offshore engagement, leveraging their maritime capabilities and air power to deliver land-based effects. Deep precision strike, long-range drones, and cheap attritable munitions are changing the character of war in real time. The British armed forces, as last year’s Strategic Defence Review rightly noted, must embrace this change and develop a new British way of war, one informed and shaped by the context-dependent lessons of Ukraine and Iran.
Defence must be understood not as a cost centre, but as an investment in the British economy. Margaret Thatcher could have been speaking today when she said in 1976 that ‘we put just about everything before guns’. Defence investment is a source of growth and innovation; a study by the American thinktank RAND reported that $1 (75p) invested in defence could yield a $1.20 (90p) increase in GDP. Yes, some kit such as submarines, fighter aircraft, and tanks have only one purpose and one customer, but the technologies involved can spur and sustain innovation and growth throughout the economy and across the country.
For the United Kingdom to advance its defence interests today, it should take a page from its past, once again embracing – though not exclusively – its maritime heritage. This is a heritage proudly reflected 221 years ago by Vice-Admiral Horatio Nelson at the Battle of Trafalgar, which inaugurated a century of British naval dominance. Recapturing that spirit will provide clarity to Britain’s citizens, allies and adversaries on how London will respond to the threats of a changing world.
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