Our Future of Britain initiative sets out a policy agenda for governing in the age of AI. This series focuses on how to deliver radical-yet-practical solutions for this new era of invention and innovation – concrete plans to reimagine the state for the 21st century, with technology as the driving force.
Geopolitics in the modern era is fast-evolving and highly complex. The world is fragmented in new ways: no longer East and West, but increasingly around a Global North and South with a chunk of wavering middle powers. Only the two “super-superpowers”, the United States and China, have the military capability to project themselves unilaterally on a global scale; they are spending more on defence between them than the next 38 biggest-spending countries combined. Meanwhile the shape of war is changing, with new capabilities such as drones, and electronic and cyber warfare, transforming combat.
This presents a complex picture for the UK, which no longer has the military strength to project itself alone, nor the right mixture of capabilities to effectively fight a modern war. This necessitates some fundamental changes to how it does defence policy – and that’s something the country’s political parties clearly recognise, given how important a topic defence has already become during the election campaign. It’s also why the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change (TBI) has just published a paper: Reimagining Defence and Security: New Capabilities for New Challenges.
Defence policy needs to be driven more effectively from the centre of government, with a new National Security Team in Number 10 helping to think through the threats faced and establish the necessary deterrents. This team would include not just the right mixture of personnel from within government but from outside it too, including experts in tech, AI and cyber warfare.
In addition, the time has come for a hard-headed assessment of what the government’s defence budget is being spent on. Prioritising will be most effective having taken full account of the allies and alliances that the UK has. Where does it have comparative strengths that, when combined with partners’ capabilities, add up to more than the sum of their parts? How does the UK form part of a renewed NATO that can defend itself in the context of US forces being increasingly drawn to the Indo-Pacific?
Such a process will require hard questions and even tougher answers, but the UK no longer has a choice: it faces being either very good at some things or not up to scratch on a lot of things.
This thinking will mean prioritising new capabilities. As we have seen recently in Ukraine and elsewhere, technological advances are changing warfare at speed and in an ever-evolving way. These developments require fundamental changes to procurement processes in the UK, including deeper and earlier engagement with the private sector, better investment and more effective cooperation with allies.
As part of a renewed defence strategy, these new capabilities require a different kind of personnel. There is an enduring and unhelpful focus on the precise size of the British Army, when a much more important issue is the type of personnel that populate it. New methods of warfare necessitate different skill sets, so recruitment should reflect this. That means attracting more people with tech backgrounds and finding the right way for them to serve (on secondment, for instance).
The aim of our latest paper, Reimagining Defence and Security: New Capabilities for New Challenges, is to assist the next UK government in two ways. First, by setting out the structural changes that need to be made to how we do defence policy, such as the creation of the National Security Team; second, by giving as clear a steer as possible on the types of questions (and possible answers) that should be focused on as part of the Strategic Defence and Security Review.
It is right for the UK to re-evaluate its strategy and there are obvious elements that the review should focus on, as well as immediate policy decisions that can be taken. A fundamentally changed geopolitical picture requires a fundamentally rethought defence strategy – and that work can get underway in earnest.
For a more in-depth analysis of this subject, read TBI’s paper: Reimagining Defence and Security: New Capabilities for New Challenges.
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