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Protecting Future UK Security and Defence Interests Transcript Protecting Future UK Security and Defence Interests Bob Ainsworth MP Defence Secretary Dr Liam Fox MP Shadow Defence Secretary Nick Harvey MP Liberal Democrat Shadow Defence Secretary Moderators: Dr Robin Niblett Director, Chatham House Sarah Montague BBC 29 March 2010 The views expressed in this document are the sole responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the view of Chatham House, its staff, associates or Council. Chatham House is independent and owes no allegiance to any government or to any political body. It does not take institutional positions on policy issues. This document is issued on the understanding that if any extract is used, the speakers and Chatham House should be credited, preferably with the details of the event. Where this document refers to or reports statements made by speakers at an event every effort has been made to provide a fair representation of their views and opinions, but the ultimate responsibility for accuracy lies with this document’s authors. The published text of speeches and presentations may differ from delivery. Transcript: Protecting Future UK Security and Defence Interests Robin Niblett: Bob, I'm going to turn to you first – Secretary of State, currently for Defence. Where do we, how do we place the type of conflict that we think Britain should be preparing for in the future? Inevitably today Afghanistan is taking up the bulk of our political and military focus and attention; taking up a huge amount of resources. Obviously it's taken lives and effort. But is this the model of the future? Are we preparing effectively for the kinds of conflicts that might be out there? We have risks from Iran, a deeply changing geopolitical situation with the rise of China; we saw the sinking of the South Korean boat a few days ago. How, as Secretary of Defence, do you prepare for the existence of these very intense insurgency-type conflicts, with simultaneously the potential risk of major conflict in the future? Where should Britain be putting its effort today? Bob Ainsworth: We've got to put our effort today into Afghanistan. It's the main effort; it has to be the main effort; we've got 9,500 people deployed there. They're entitled to our complete focus with that regard. But, when we come to planning for the future and the potential threats that we will face, if we plan on the basis that some future conflict is going to be Afghanistan again, or even similar to Afghanistan, we will be in very serious error. If there is one thing that history teaches us, it's that we cannot predict threats. We try to bring out some of these issues in the Green Paper that we did, so therefore planning for the various threats that we could face in the future, having to do that in what may be a resource constraint situation, means that we've got to try to build the maximum amount of capability, adaptability into our force structure that we can. Robin Niblett: When you look at Asia, I know you mentioned in your Green Paper the balance of power in Asia potentially being one of the most fundamental and dynamic changes for the future of British defence. Does Britain have a perspective and even today the capabilities to respond to some type of change in the situation there, whether it be in terms of maritime, an effect on supply routes... if the United States were to find itself embroiled in some situation around Taiwan... do we have the capacities today, militarily, to think www.chathamhouse.org.uk 2 Transcript: Protecting Future UK Security and Defence Interests about that type of crisis at the same time as we're so focussed on Afghanistan? Bob Ainsworth: We have to be prepared to work with others. We are, of any nation on earth, one of the most exposed to the global environment. That brings great benefits to us but also great risks. We therefore... there are some things that we have to plan to be able to do on our own, and we always will have to, like things that affect our own nation and our overseas dependencies. But we have to be prepared and plan to be able to work with others to maintain the world security environment and free passage of goods on the high seas and other environments. There are new threats that we have to look at. We're increasingly dependent on space. We've seen the kind of threat that can come from the cyber environment. We are dependent upon those domains for our own capability so we have to make sure that we've planned to defend that capability. Yes, in some circumstances be able to project force in those environments as well. Robin Niblett: Liam, if I could turn to you now. A similar question, the same question. I'm interested in hearing your viewpoint on the future of conflict, how you see this balance between the likelihood of counter-insurgency being the pattern of the future. And also if you believe that people would want to be engaged in this type of conflict in the future given the experiences we've had over the last seven or eight years. What's your view of the biggest list of risks that we need to be thinking of from a defence standpoint for the future? Liam Fox: Well I'm not sure the public ever want to be involved in any conflict. The point is that sometimes it's unavoidable. I think you have to begin with the wider environment. We live in a genuinely globalized economy. That means that our interests are more widely spread and more susceptible to actors in other places than in the past. I think the politicians have been slow to grasp the realities of globalization and the threats that they bring. They like to talk about prosperity and trade and so on, but they tend to shy away from the unavoidable strategic risk that globalization brings. I think that has to be a starting point. www.chathamhouse.org.uk 3 Transcript: Protecting Future UK Security and Defence Interests The question is, what will wars of the future look like? The honest answer is, we don't know. Therefore we have to maintain generic capability that is adaptable to as many potential identifiable threats as possible. Therefore we do not make the mistake of saying future wars will be like the current war and therefore you invest in the type of capabilities we require for the current war. The pattern is changing as we look at it. People say we'll never have state- on-state warfare again, involving the United Kingdom. Well perhaps not, in a primary sense, but that doesn't mean we wouldn't be dragged into someone else's state-on-state warfare. People say that it's going to be asymmetrical, well, you look at Georgia and the state-on-state attack was preceded by an asymmetrical attack. I think that what you're looking at is the concept of hybridity in the threats that we face in the future. That will require us to have a very different mindset. The other thing I would say is that we come from a history where our defence programmes tend to be about 'let's review the number of ships we have, let's look at our aircraft and our tanks' and the threats out there now are not just about the size of conventional capabilities lined up against us. They're also about the technologies that might deny us access to our own conventional capabilities. The necessity of investing in things that perhaps people cannot see but are otherwise indispensable to security is going to be one of the great political challenges in the years ahead. Robin Niblett: Nick, turning to you on this same question in terms of prioritization, some of the major threats that you see emerging here... Both comments we've heard so far have stressed the need for agility, differentiation, the ability to stop and change. But I think this idea that in a globalized world we may find that we have to project force quite significantly in the future will be important. Nick Harvey: Yes, I think one of the fundamental questions a Strategic Defence Review will have to wrestle with is where on this spectrum of activity between the war we're currently fighting and the contingency of possible state-on-state warfare in the future, we think we want to strike the balance. One thing that we can say with absolute confidence is whatever conclusion is arrived at, whatever assumptions are made, they will turn out to be wrong. www.chathamhouse.org.uk 4 Transcript: Protecting Future UK Security and Defence Interests So we've got to do our best at thinking what the character of future conflict will be. We know in a sense that the nature of conflict is unchanging because in a sense it's endemic to human nature, but the wars that may be fought in the 21st century will be about increasingly desperate competition for natural resources, oil, water, fertile lands, perhaps we'll suddenly see forced mass migrations of people as a consequence of climate change. I think the reasonable assumption to make is that we want very versatile, very nimble troops who can get in and out of situations very easily and that this is going to require some rebalancing of our forces to those who we think will have the most relevance to that sort of activity in the future.
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