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This electronic thesis or dissertation has been downloaded from the King’s Research Portal at https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/ Why does the UK have the Military that it has? Curtis, Andy Awarding institution: King's College London The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without proper acknowledgement. END USER LICENCE AGREEMENT Unless another licence is stated on the immediately following page this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ You are free to copy, distribute and transmit the work Under the following conditions: Attribution: You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). Non Commercial: You may not use this work for commercial purposes. No Derivative Works - You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work. Any of these conditions can be waived if you receive permission from the author. Your fair dealings and other rights are in no way affected by the above. Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact [email protected] providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Download date: 02. Oct. 2021 Why does the UK Title Page have the Military that it has? An exploration of the factors relating to the translation of strategic direction into military capability PhD December 2019 Andrew R Curtis page 1 of 338 Abstract This thesis is an investigation of the factors relating to the translation of United Kingdom strategic direction into military capability. Concentrating on decisions taken below the political level, by the military officers and civil servants in the most senior positions within the Ministry of Defence and at the very top of the armed forces, it answers the question ‘why does the United Kingdom have the military that it has?’ In doing so, this thesis has identified the factors that have shaped capability choices and determined why those choices have had the effect that they have. Its analysis has drawn on historical trends and contemporary elite interviews to assess whether the nation’s current methodology to link strategic direction and the development and maintenance of military capability will fare any better than its predecessors. The thesis’ research methods were a combination of qualitative content analysis of relevant government policy documents together with associated policy analysis from the commentariat, and semi-structured elite interviews. A total of thirty-two interviews were analysed using constructivist grounded theory methodology. In the first instance, open coding was undertaken, with data points collected into a manifest, latent or global code. This was followed by selective coding to scale up the open codes into categories important to the research problem. At this point, insights from the content analysis were introduced. The final coding stage was theoretical coding, during which relationships between the categories were considered and confirmed, with the aim of identifying what is central in all of the data generated during the research and generating a substantive theory. The conclusions identified in this thesis are the result of the first detailed empirical investigation of how defence decision makers interpret defence policy and expend resource to achieve the government’s policy aims. This has developed a new understanding of the linkages between the articulation of strategic direction and the generation of military capability. Furthermore, through the application of constructivist grounded theory, this thesis has identified a core concept of the research and developed the following substantive theory. page 2 of 338 Strategic direction is translated into military capability to deliver fit-for- purpose armed forces through an open-ended collection of interacting activities involving the government and defence decision makers. These interacting activities are: defence policy formulated by government; resource allocated by government; identification of military capability required to meet to meet policy aims by defence; and allocation of resource to acquire and maintain required military capability by defence. Interaction of the activities is regularly disrupted by events and influences over which defence decision makers have either no, or only a limited degree of, control. These events and influences, or factors, can be grouped in five distinct categories: strategic context; politics and politicians; affordability of defence; single services’ conduct; and managing the defence enterprise. In order to counter the worst disruptions caused by these factors, defence decision makers must seek to maintain a balance across all of the interacting activities involved in the translation of strategic direction into military capability activity because, whilst in balance, these interacting activities afford the best chance of operating on or above the level that delivers fit-for- purpose armed forces. page 3 of 338 Acknowledgements No-one completes a PhD alone, and I have a number of supporters to acknowledge and thank. Firstly, all thirty-two interviewees because without their input, there would be no thesis. Next Dr Christina Goulter, who, in the summer of 2015, convinced me I could actually do this. Also, my two supervisors, Professor Matthew Uttley and Professor Andrew Dorman; I am certain they still know more about my subject than I do! Special thanks to my daughter Joanna, who I do not believe has any idea how useful our discussions about both my research and hers have been to me. Finally, the most thanks go to my wife Laura, without whose belief and support this thesis would never have been written. page 4 of 338 Table of Contents Title Page ..................................................................................................................................... 1 Abstract ........................................................................................................................................ 2 Acknowledgements ................................................................................................................... 4 Table of Contents ....................................................................................................................... 5 List of Figures ............................................................................................................................. 7 List of Tables .............................................................................................................................. 8 Chapter 1: Introduction ............................................................................................................. 9 1.1 The Problem Space ................................................................................................... 11 1.2 Research Planning .................................................................................................... 17 1.3 Thesis Construct ........................................................................................................ 19 Chapter 2: Literature Review ................................................................................................. 24 2.1 Strategic Direction .................................................................................................... 24 2.2 Defence, Strategic Defence, and Strategic Defence and Security Reviews ....... 29 2.3 Pan-Defence Review Themes .................................................................................. 44 2.4 Military Capability ................................................................................................... 48 2.5 Summary .................................................................................................................... 50 Chapter 3: Methodology ......................................................................................................... 51 3.1 Methodological Approach ....................................................................................... 51 3.2 Grounded Theory Methodology ............................................................................ 58 3.3 Data Selection and Collection Methods ................................................................. 60 3.4 Chronology of Analysis ........................................................................................... 63 3.5 Evaluation and Justification of Methodological Choices .................................... 69 Chapter 4: Strategic Direction and Military Capability ................................................... 71 4.1 Strategic Direction .................................................................................................... 72 4.2 Military Capability ................................................................................................... 87 4.3 Summary .................................................................................................................... 99 Chapter 5: Themes from Past Defence Reviews .............................................................. 101 5.1 Cold War Defence Reviews ................................................................................... 102 5.2 Early Expeditionary Defence Reviews ................................................................ 116