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For Review Only ORE Open Research Exeter TITLE A very British national security state: Formal and informal institutions in the design of UK security policy AUTHORS Thomson, C; Blagden, D JOURNAL British Journal of Politics and International Relations DEPOSITED IN ORE 30 May 2018 This version available at http://hdl.handle.net/10871/33014 COPYRIGHT AND REUSE Open Research Exeter makes this work available in accordance with publisher policies. A NOTE ON VERSIONS The version presented here may differ from the published version. If citing, you are advised to consult the published version for pagination, volume/issue and date of publication The British Journal of Politics and International Relations A Very British National Security State: Formal and Informal Institutions in the Design of UK Security Policy Journal: The British Journal of Politics and International Relations ManuscriptFor ID BJPIR-1374.R2 Review Only Manuscript Type: Original Article Institutions, security policy, audience costs, national security council, Keywords: strategic defence and security review, security elites Page 1 of 32 The British Journal of Politics and International Relations 1 2 1 3 Table 1: The Pre- and Post-2010 Evolution of UK Security Policy Machinery and Processes 4 Pre-2010 Post-2010 5 Cabinet-level security policy National Security Committee2 National Security Council3 6 formulation/coordination body 7 Detailed statement of Defence White Paper4 Strategic Defence and Security 8 defence/security posture and Review5 9 associated force structure 10 Top-level public statement of N/A6 National Security Strategy7 11 security priorities and policies 12 PM’s principal security policy Security and Intelligence National Security Adviser (NSA) 13 adviser Coordinator 14 PM’s principal defence adviser Chief of the Defence Staff (CDS) Chief of the Defence Staff (CDS) 15 16 PM’s principal Chair of the Joint Intelligence Chair of the Joint Intelligence 17 intelligence/threats adviser Committee (CJIC) Committee (CJIC) 8 18 Crisis response coordination COBR COBR 19 body For Review Only 9 20 Intelligence and threat Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) 21 assessment body 22 Formal direction of defence Defence Council Defence Council 23 policy 24 Day-to-day running of MoD Defence Board10 Defence Board11 25 Coordination of military policy Chiefs of Staff Committee12 Chiefs of Staff Committee13 26 Coordination of joint military Chief of Joint Operations (CJO)14 Joint Forces Commander (JFC)15 27 operations 28 Publicly-available assessment of N/A National Security Risk 29 national security risks Assessment16 30 *Light grey denotes evolutionary change to existing structures/processes, while dark grey denotes completely new 31 structure/process; white denotes no change. The top two items are the primary focus of this paper. 32 33 34 35 1 36 Not comprehensive; details intended, rather, to flag points of interest in relation to pre-/post-2010 change or continuity. 2 37 Composed of relevant Cabinet ministers, drawn from Parliament and appointed to Government by the Sovereign on 38 Prime Ministerial recommendation; chaired by the PM. Ad hoc attendance list of relevant officials, such as CDS, SIC, and CJIC. Met as required, at PM’s discretion. 39 3 Composed of relevant Cabinet ministers (appointed as before); chaired by the PM. Standing attendance by NSA 40 (Secretary and Principal Adviser of the NSC); regular attendance by the CDS, CJIC, and heads of the intelligence 41 agencies; ad hoc attendance by other officials/officers as required. Meets weekly (with caveats). Unlike the oft-compared 42 US NSC, Cabinet-level UK NSC members are non-specialists, drawn from Parliament (a key consequence of different 43 systems of government). 44 4 Irregular, in response to circumstances. 1998 iteration the first to be called a ‘Strategic Defence Review’. 5 45 Regular, quinquennial. 6 First NSS in 2008. 46 7 47 Regular, quinquennial. 8 Britain’s crisis-management committee. Ad hoc composition of ministers and officials, depending on the contingency at 48 hand. Often also known as ‘COBRA’; both variants are derivations of ‘Cabinet Office Briefing Room (A)’. 49 9 Heads of the intelligence agencies, plus the (military) Chief of Defence Intelligence. Provides agreed all-source single- 50 product intelligence assessments to the PM/government (unlike the single-source US Intelligence Community). 51 10 Army/RN/RAF Service Chiefs still members. 52 11 Army/RN/RAF Service Chiefs no longer members, post-2011. 53 12 Chaired by CDS; all Service Chiefs and Vice CDS members; attended by subordinates, including CJO, as required. 13 54 Chaired by CDS; all Service Chiefs and Vice CDS, plus JFC, members; attended by subordinates as required. 14 3*, subordinate attendee of CSC (until 2012). Note that CJO still exists post-2012, but as a subordinate to JFC. 55 15 56 4*, full member of CSC (from 2012). 16 Led by Cabinet Office. Publicly released summary derived from more detailed classified analysis. 57 58 59 60 The British Journal of Politics and International Relations Page 2 of 32 1 2 3 4 ‘The informal relationships are what make the system work. You don't get things decided in 1 5 informal relationships, but it’s those that actually generate new thinking.’ 6 7 8 Over the last decade, UK security policymaking has undergone a process of institutional 9 10 formalization, taking on many ‘American-style’ trappings of the US post-Cold War ‘national 11 12 security state’ (Porter 2010). This process began in 2008, with the publication of a standing UK 13 14 National Security Strategy (NSS) late in the last Labour government’s tenure in office (HM 15 16 17 Government 2008). It accelerated in 2010, when David Cameron’s Conservative-Liberal coalition 18 19 government established aFor standing ReviewUK National Security Only Council (NSC) and regular quinquennial 20 21 Strategic Defence and Security Reviews (SDSRs) to accompany regular NSSs over the same time 22 23 horizon (HM Government 2010a, 2010b). As Edmunds notes, ‘taken together, these initiatives 24 25 represent the biggest revision of the architecture of British strategy-making for decades, and signify 26 27 a whole-of-government attempt to take seriously the challenges of contemporary strategic practice’ 28 29 30 (Edmunds 2014, 536). The Conservative-majority government elected in 2015 continued this NSC 31 32 and NSS/SDSR system (HM Government 2015), as has Theresa May since becoming Prime 33 34 Minister (PM) in 2016. And although 2017-18’s ‘National Security Capabilities Review’ (NSCR) 35 36 (HM Government 2018) has sought to reconcile capability commitments with straitened post-Brexit 37 38 financial circumstances (Haynes 2017), May has thus far maintained that the 2015 NSS/SDSR 39 40 2 provides a stable framework. 41 42 43 Yet for all of this formalization, many in both scholarly and policy circles remain concerned 44 3 45 that Britain’s much-lamented limitations in national strategy-making continue. Indeed, these 46 47 formal institutions have themselves been identified as further sites of strategic failure. The NSC is 48 49 often accused of having become a short-termist crisis-response centre preoccupied with ensuring 50 51 positive political presentation of the government’s choices, rather than a provider of long-term 52 53 strategic direction (JCNSS 2012a, 4; Devaney and Harris 2014, 30-35). The quinquennial SDSRs 54 55 56 have been depicted as loci for inter-Service budgetary contestation and Treasury-driven fiscal 57 58 59 60 Page 3 of 32 The British Journal of Politics and International Relations A Very British National Security State: Formal and Informal Institutions in the Design of UK Security Policy 1 2 3 consolidation, meanwhile, which are prone to pre-emption by politically-motivated announcements 4 5 (Blagden 2015), and – thanks to their five-yearly regularity – are now themselves a source of 6 7 rigidity in defence planning assumptions (Cornish and Dorman 2011, 2013; Martin 2011). Although 8 9 the 2015 SDSR was received more favourably (for example, The Economist 2015), the 2010 SDSR 10 11 in particular was ‘widely derided for a lack of strategic coherence and a perception that it was led 12 13 14 primarily by a hastily implemented and cuts-driven government spending review rather than a by a 15 16 measured consideration of the UK’s strategic circumstances and requirements in the new context of 17 18 austerity’ (Edmunds 2014, 527). 19 For Review Only 20 Given this critical backdrop, this article aims to answer two related questions. First, how 21 22 have these institutional innovations changed the process of designing security policy in Britain? 23 24 Second, do these changes represent an improvement in UK security policymaking that equips the 25 26 27 British state with the government machinery needed to protect its citizens in an uncertain, 28 29 potentially dangerous future? 30 31 Drawing on interview research with 25 senior UK officials involved in the post-2010 NSC 32 33 and NSS/SDSR processes, we find that these institutional reforms have yielded significant changes 34 35 in government behaviour, which have in turn produced better security policymaking – but not for 36 37 the reasons often supposed, or professed by the reforms’ original architects. In line with popular 38 39 40 critique, we find that the formal NSC is often a predominantly tactical body and regularized SDSRs 41 42 less ‘strategic’ than their names suggest, falling prey too easily to political/fiscal pre-emption. 43 44 However, the existence of
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