Six emerging threats to Britain
- From: "DVH" <dvh@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 15 Feb 2008 11:15:05 -0000
This is part one of the RUSI report currently under debate.
It is highly critical of the way Britain's security is being managed. In
particular, it shows that multiculturalism has provided opportunities for
terrorism, that resources such as energy and water present us with new
risks, and that the traditional clubs such as NATO and the EU are becoming
weaker or simply adding confusion.
The bottom line? "We need to remind ourselves of the first principles which
govern priorities in liberal democracies. Defence and security must be
restored as the first duty of government."
"The security of the United Kingdom is at risk and under threat. The
mismatch between the country's military commitments and the funding of its
defence moved Lords Bramall, Boyce, Craig, Guthrie and Inge - five former
Chiefs of the Defence Staff - to take the unusual step of raising their
concerns publicly in a House of Lords Defence debate on 22 November 2007. A
public forum - the Defence Association - has also been established to
investigate and articulate the crisis they identify.Security is not only a
question for Chiefs of the Defence Staff. It matters to every citizen of the
United Kingdom. Security is the primary function of the state, for without
it there can be no state, and no rule of law. The former Chiefs of the
Defence Staff have stepped outside their traditional reticence to speak on
behalf of all. Anxiety about defence and security runs far and wide.
This essay addresses the bases of that anxiety: the sources of risk and
threat, both overseas and at home. It argues that weaknesses at home,
particularly divisions in our attitudes to our defence, contribute to
turning risks into threats. It proposes that positive steps to strengthen
and update our defence and security efforts involve returning to long
established constitutional arrangements of the Queen in Parliament. Thus we
may meet the needs of today and tomorrow. Our proposal is not a finely
detailed blueprint. It is more fundamental. It describes the operating
principles and the dynamics of constitutional machinery with the necessary
strength to match present threat and future risk.
How to realign our defence effort to changing risks and threats is not
merely a technocratic question to be answered internally by the defence and
security establishments within government. Repeated assertions by ministers
that all is well, that the matter is well in hand and can be safely left to
them to manage in-house, no longer carry conviction.
Uncertainty
The electorate is uncertain and anxious. People feel uncertainty about
military adventures overseas which have cost many lives and have pushed our
armed forces to the limits. They are worried about security at home since
the successful terrorist attack of 7/7, the similar attack a fortnight later
which was only averted by the incompetence of its perpetrators, and the
narrowly preempted attacks on planes in 2006. In the summer of 2007, there
were also carbomb attempts at Glasgow airport and in the West End of London.
The 'war on terror' is with us now in all its ugliness.
Both current military operations and the war on terror together raise a
deeper point. Is there any longer a clear distinction between being at war
and not being at war? A declaration of war is almost inconceivable today,
and yet both our defence and security services are in action against active
forces, abroad and at home, at this moment. The electorate sees this
paradox. It also worries about the way we were committed to war, especially
in Iraq, and about Washington's sway and leadership. But equally, the
electorate is disturbed by an undertow of doubt about the wider muddling of
political responsibilities between Westminster and Brussels. Who actually
holds, or will take, responsibility for our foreign relations, for our
defence, and for our security? Who - for instance - should guarantee our
borders?
Such uncertainty should be of primary concern because it weakens the bond
between government and the governed, which is precisely what terrorists seek
to achieve and what other enemies of the United Kingdom will exploit. For
this reason, it is not enough for anyone (even Her Majesty's Government) to
say, 'Don't worry, we have it in hand'. The uncertainty has to be addressed.
The confidence and loyalty of the people are the wellspring from which flows
the power with which all threats to defence and security are ultimately met.
Our constitutional arrangements and institutional dispositions must both
deserve and grow out of that loyalty and confidence. The present uncertainty
suggests our arrangements need review and renewal.
Risk and threat
Latent risks can become patent threats. What marks the change of a risk into
a threat is usually the emergence of a factor which has been misjudged. It
has been the reduction of traditional threats (aggression from nation
states) combined with the increase of possible risk factors (most notably,
Islamist terrorism, but there are many others) which has so destabilised
world affairs and increased uncertainty. But linked to these changes is a
loss in the United Kingdom of confidence in our own identity, values,
constitution and institutions. 'This England that was wont to conquer others',
wrote Shakespeare, 'hath made a shameful conquest of itself.' This is one of
the main factors which have precipitated risks into threats. As long as it
persists, it will have the power to do so again.
Islamist terrorism is where people tend to begin. The United Kingdom
presents itself as a target, as a fragmenting, post-Christian society,
increasingly divided about interpretations of its history, about its
national aims, its values and in its political identity. That fragmentation
is worsened by the firm self-image of those elements within it who refuse to
integrate. This is a problem worsened by the lack of leadership from the
majority which in mis-placed deference to 'multiculturalism' failed to lay
down the line to immigrant communities, thus undercutting those within them
trying to fight extremism. The country's lack of selfconfidence is in stark
contrast to the implacability of its Islamist terrorist enemy, within and
without. We live under threat. We sense that now is a time of remission,
between the frontal attack of 9/11, and its eventual successor, which may
deliver an even greater psychological blow.
Significant though they were in their different ways, neither the 2004
Madrid train bombings (which affected a national election), nor the London
Underground and Bus bombings of July 2005 (which exposed the weakness of the
'multi-cultural' approach towards Islamists) were that successor. Thus, we
are in a confused and vulnerable condition. Some believe that we are already
at war; but all may agree that generally a peace-time mentality prevails. In
all three ways - our social fragmentation, the sense of premonition and the
divisions about what our stance should be - there are uneasy similarities
with the years just before the First World War.
We are fortunate in not having the specific external state enemies who once
posed threats to the British state and against whom we could therefore
define ourselves. There has been no straight substitution of the Cold War
threat with another threat of different source but similar type. But the
range and nature of the threats to the security of British citizens in 2008
are not confined solely to what the Islamists call their 'jihad' against the
West.
A shifting complex of risks faces us. An adequate approach to Britain's
security in the next few years must address questions that are intricate,
delicate and strange to our conventional way of thinking. The familiar
categories of 'home' and 'abroad', which have long reassured the British in
a deep part of their national identity, are breaking down. We know much less
about what threatens us and how it does so than our official policies
assert.
Six categories of risk can be identified. Any one of these may ignite the
powder trails in and between any of the others. The examples we employ are
not exhaustive but illustrative.
1) Geo-strategic fundamentals do not change, but new sources of power are at
play within them
There are unchanging geo-political factors of trade, distance, trade routes
and choke-points vital to the United Kingdom's well-being. Yet while British
reliance on sea traffic is increasing, our policy-makers seem to suffer from
'sea blindness'. They have not yet noticed or, if they have, have not
reacted to the weakening of the Royal Navy. The Navy is set rapidly to
shrink in size and in capability because of the failure to maintain
construction and establishment during the last decade. (We emphasise this
point here not because there are not grave shortcomings throughout the
services, but because naval force structure, once lost, is especially
difficult to recover.) Likewise, the other fixed geopolitical fact is that
Britain is an island adjacent to continental Europe. Our security depends
upon continental arrangements not encroaching on our basic freedoms, that do
not sap but amplify our strengths and that do not traduce the limits of
public consent.
2) The old surfs the new
Standing astride the old fundamentals are actors who deploy against us both
old and very new sources of moral and material power. The jihadists deploy
the power of conviction that comes from a sectarian understanding of
religion. They also surf the internet and use it to their advantage and our
peril. They are not state-bound, but can take over part or all of a state,
as has happened in Afghanistan and Somalia, and as could happen in Pakistan.
That is why 'home' and 'abroad' are now seamlessly interlinked in such
troubling ways.
3) There is new competition for resources
Competition for energy, water and food is sharpened every day by the demands
of the two awakening demographic superpowers, India and China. This
competition entails, at the least, tighter markets and, at the worst, real
vulnerability to interruption of supply. Both India and China are matching
their greater dependence upon increasing volumes of sea trade with
substantial programmes of naval construction. These resource questions
interlace with wider and older types of question. Can the Chinese Communist
Party successfully maintain its rule in an open economy? Can it manage to
hand power down without internal collapse, in a way that Gorbachev could
not? How may these tensions influence its competition with India, the world's
largest democracy? And what will be the consequences of America's deep and
different engagements with each? These will be some of the most important
and obscure questions in the coming decades. They are of a high order of
importance in judging how best to plan for British security.
4) The politics of climate represent unexpected pressures
Climate change has now been added to the more familiar factors governing the
competition for resources, and the security implications that flow from that
competition. World food stocks may fall as demand increases for plant-based
feedstock for biofuels. China and India have both made it plain that they
will not constrain their economic growth to curtail emissions of man-made
greenhouse gases. But can the Chinese Communist Party cope with political
pressures rising from pervasive domestic pollution of air, land and water?
The present failure of the Kyoto Protocol and the probable future failure of
any successor built on the same flawed structural assumptions lay the ground
for future conflicts of interest. This is a new source of tension between
the advanced industrial regions, the demographic superpowers, and the rest;
and it represents a simple operation of the Law of Unintended Consequences.
The Law is greatly to be respected in developing a viable defence and
security establishment. It turns risks into threats.
5) The problem of Russia is re-emerging
President Putin is showing considerable skill in mixing the old with the
new. He has answered, with troubling clarity, the question in Alexandr Blok's
poem: as Russia, the Sphynx, gazes at Europe, sometimes with hatred,
sometimes with love; which sentiment predominates? A new Russian nationalism
is being promoted. Proud in its wealth of oil and gas, this nationalism
revels in its isolation and its contempt for the 'soft' West. It is ready to
expropriate property, to break contracts, to hint at energy blackmail, and
to pursue opponents wherever they are - for instance in the unprecedented
2007 cyber-attack on Estonia, in which state resources were apparently
complicit. The opportunity to engage Russia in the world economy efficiently
(as opposed to colluding with robber baron capitalism) was squandered by
those from the West who gave advice in the 1990s. We are yet to see the full
bill for these errors. Meanwhile both birth rates and life expectancy in
Russia continue dramatically to slide, compounding the ferocity of the new
nationalism with a tragic urgency.
6) Multilateral institutions are weakening
Currently, for essentially ideological reasons, the United Kingdom continues
to invest much effort and faith in three supranational institutions: the UN,
NATO and the EU. The current Prime Minister restated that investment as his
central credo in his first Mansion House foreign policy speech in November
2007. Yet all are simultaneously weakening. Originally intended as alliances
to support agreed ends, they have lost their way and no longer offer their
members the benefits once covenanted. What are the essential features of
alliances worthy of that name? Shared essential values; shared culture, and
especially military culture; shared interests; and, most basic of all,
trust - trust enough to permit the special intelligence relationships
enjoyed by the UK for the last sixty years with Australia, Canada, the US
and New Zealand. We have only to look at destinations for British
emigration, and at world-wide phone traffic patterns, to see where our
practical preferences are exercised."
Part two follows in a new post.
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