Coalition accused of incoherent defence and security strategy
Ministers need to explain what role UK could, or should take if disconnect between military and public is to be bridged, MPs say
The government has reneged on past promises and failed to draw up a coherent national security strategy explaining Britain’s role in the world and the use of military force, a cross-party group of MPs will warn on Tuesday.
The next defence and security review, due in 2015 after the general election and after British combat troops have left Afghanistan, must be the result of a proper debate about the future shape of the armed forces and not simply the result of horse-trading determined by short-term financial pressures, it adds.
“One of the greatest strategic threats to defence is the disconnect between the armed forces and the public caused by a lack of understanding of the utility of military force in the contemporary strategic environment,” says the report by the Commons defence committee.
It adds: “The government cannot hope to bridge this divide without looking to explain what it believes the UK’s position in the world could or should be, and the manner in which that is to be delivered. Without a proactive communications strategy, there is a serious risk of a lack of support for defence amongst the public.”
The report stresses that “general sympathy and support for the armed forces must not obscure a hard-headed understanding of what they are for”.
It warns that there can be few developments more fundamental to Britain’s strategic alliances than America’s “pivot to the Pacific” – US foreign and defence policy’s new emphasis on China and south-east Asia rather than on Europe and the Middle East – is a “matter of vital interest for both parliament and the public”, say the MPs.
They also emphasise the role played by the private sector in Britain’s defence. “It is estimated that commercial businesses have provided 45% of the operational manpower, in terms of both headcount and input costs, for the UK’s military operations since 2000,” they say.
Opposition parties should be consulted about the 2015 defence and security review, the report says. The defence committee is preparing a separate report on the role and use of Trident nuclear weapons, which its chairman, James Arbuthnot, a former Tory defence minister, recently questioned in an interview with the Guardian.
“We believe that there is a persuasive case for a national strategy … defining what position in the world the UK should adopt as the ends of the strategy and setting out the combination of hard and soft power that represent the ways and means of getting there,” he said on Tuesday.
