Britain’s geopolitical standing in the 2020s

Open Briefing | No. SDR-01.2024

Image generated using Artificial Intelligence

This is the first in a series of Open Briefings to the Strategic Defence Review (SDR) from the Council on Geostrategy. Our aim is to analyse ten key questions facing the Defence Review Team, from the vantage point of the United Kingdom’s (UK) adversaries and competitors (an approach known as Opposition Forces, or ‘OPFOR’). We will avoid euphemisms and address the challenges head-on. After holding an expert seminar, we will formally submit the briefings at the end of September. Our contributions are deliberately candid – and we invite comment and challenge from all quarters. This first Open Briefing assesses Britain’s geopolitical standing in the 2020s:

1. The UK is a highly developed and compact country at the heart of the Euro-Atlantic world. As an island state, Britain is completely dependent on the sea for its prosperity and security, but its proximity to the European continent means it ignores European geopolitics at its peril. Thrice in the 20th century, a major threat emerged with the capacity to overwhelm British defences.

2. By international standards, Britain remains a major power. It has the world’s sixth biggest economy, ranks 15th for Human Development (or second among larger nations, i.e., those with a population over 50 million), holds one of the global economy’s two ‘command centres’ (London), and excels in terms of research and tertiary education, financial services, and advanced manufacturing. Despite the recent instability resulting from Brexit and sectoral agitators, including environmental and religious extremists, the UK’s system of government enjoys broad support and minimal corruption.

3. This national powerbase supports the world’s fifth largest defence budget, which amounts to 2.3% of GDP – higher than British spending in the late 2010s, but very low by historical standards. During the Cold War, the UK’s defence budget averaged at over 6% of GDP per year, meaning His Majesty’s (HM) Government has considerable bandwidth – politics willing – to redirect resources to strengthen the British Armed Forces.

4. Britain, the third country to develop atomic weapons, possesses a small but potent nuclear deterrent with a guaranteed second strike delivery system. Despite a noisy anti-nuclear fringe, including the main regional secessionist parties in Scotland and Wales, the largest political parties all support the UK’s position as a nuclear power. There is also broad backing for Britain’s policy of extending its nuclear deterrent over its allies using forward deployments of conventional forces, such as those stationed permanently in Estonia, Norway, Germany and Poland, and persistently in Iceland, Lithuania and Romania.

5. Despite the commitment of successive governments to enhance and modernise the British nuclear deterrent, worries persist that the UK may encounter serious obstacles in deploying on time its next generation nuclear platform. Because previous governments delayed the introduction of the new system, the current submarine launch platforms, known as the Vanguard class, may struggle to maintain a continuous at sea deterrent by the 2030s. And, although the UK can calibrate its nuclear system for a lower-yield release, it lacks a tactical or theatre level delivery system, which nuclear peers such as Russia possess.

6. In terms of Britain’s conventional forces, the picture is mixed. On the plus side, the British Armed Forces are technologically advanced and have extensive operational experience, most recently in their efforts to suppress the Houthis and assist Ukraine. The British military is also unique in its ability to project force over long distances:

   1. The Royal Navy is second only to the United States (US) Navy in being able to operate at all times a carrier strike group and a fleet of nuclear propelled attack submarines armed with ‘long-throw’ cruise missiles; 

   2. The UK maintains an array of sovereign and non–sovereign military bases and logistics facilities in every geographic theatre. Some of these are next to crucial strategic choke points, such as the straits of Gibraltar, Hormuz, Malacca, and Magellan. With Gibraltar and the Sovereign Bases in Cyprus, Britain is the only pan-European power.

7. Less positively, the British Armed Forces suffer from several growing defects. The conventional forces lack mass and face difficulties in mobilising in the event of an emergency:

   1. The Royal Navy has been reduced to a skeletal force of just six destroyers, nine frigates and seven nuclear attack submarines, while the Royal Fleet Auxiliary lacks a modern flotilla of solid support ships. A lack of hulls and problems with support infrastructure has reduced Britain’s ability to generate presence or a large battle force – just as the Russian and Chinese navies have grown in strength;

   2. Although the Royal Air Force (RAF) is one of only a few air forces to operate ‘fifth generation’ warplanes and a plethora of unmanned aerial vehicles, it has been cut to only a handful of operational squadrons, which are thinly spread;

   3. Lacking vision and still impacted by the legacy focus on counter-insurgency operations rather than general deterrence, the British Army requires wholesale reform to reinforce European allies along the northern and eastern flanks of the alliance and support naval- and air-led operations in pursuit of UK objectives;

   4. In terms of critical enablers, including space, reconnaissance and command and control, Britain is largely deficient. Strangely for a country responsible for exploring and mapping much of the world, HM Government has failed to understand the need for a well-funded and politically backed national strategic space programme.

8. To compensate for these shortcomings, the UK has become more and more dependent on alliances and strategic arrangements as ‘force multipliers’. Of particular note are the:

   1. North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), to which the UK was crucial to creating, and the Joint Expeditionary Force – a kind of ‘sub-alliance’ within NATO;

   2. Five Eyes, a unique intelligence sharing partnership with numerous spin-off arrangements between the largest Anglophone powers;

   3. Group of Seven, where the UK has convinced its partners to accept a wider remit touching on security and defence (including issuing Ukraine with security commitments);

   4. AUKUS, where the UK will be the largest beneficiary not only in terms of defence industrial collaboration but also in using Australia’s Fleet Base West for naval deployments to the Indo-Pacific;

   5. Bilateral relations with the US, Ukraine, Poland, Japan, Germany, France and South Korea – some of which have growing profiles and the propensity to resist authoritarian aggression.

9. The material and relational foundations of British power have been further undermined by deficient strategy. Most importantly, unlike during the Cold War, Britain’s political and economic establishment lacks a sense of national purpose and has fallen for several fallacies. Chief among these has been the idea that apparently teleological forces – globalisation or the guiding hand of the market – are inevitable and highly desirable. More cynically, some British business owners and executives have promoted these ideas to discourage policies which may jeopardise their own economic interests, particularly in countries such as the People’s Republic of China (PRC).

10. Given the lack of intellectual leadership, various foreign policy advocacy groups have emerged to fill the void, sowing further confusion:

    1. Post-nationalists‌, in the liberal centre, promote the idea that a weakened Britain should do little more than reinforce global, multilateral structures;

    2. Isolationists‌, on the right, seek to stay out of other countries’ affairs; sometimes isolationism morphs into an outright rejection of the threat posed by authoritarian regimes;

    3. Compensationists, on the left, promulgate the notion that British foreign policy should centre on dispersing ‘reparations’ or aid to developing countries to make up for Britain’s past historical faults, real or imagined.

11. At the same time, HM Government has often been too passive and afraid of escalation. Its unwillingness to punish misbehaviour emboldened Britain’s opponents and increased their propensity to engage in greater aggression. For example, it failed to: 

    1. Punish Russian ‘wet work’ against British residents and citizens, most famously in 2006 and 2018, when the Kremlin brazenly targeted opponents in the UK with radioactive poison and nerve agents;

    2. Chastise Bashar al-Assad’s regime for the mass murder of civilians in Syria in 2013;

    3. Discipline the Kremlin for invading Ukraine and annexing Crimea (despite signing the 1994 Budapest Memorandum) in 2014;

    4. Challenge Russian and Chinese attempts to ‘continentalise’ the seas, critical to international trade and prosperity;

    5. Resist Russian and Chinese disinformation, narrative projection and ‘discursive statecraft’, which often aims to undermine Britain.

12. Equally, the UK has made itself an easy target. Because of its inherent openness and pluralism, Britain’s political system is susceptible to interference, especially when the nation’s political and economic establishment lacks consensus over its geostrategic direction. That the country lacked legislation such as the National Security Act until 2023 allowed hostile states to turn it into a political and economic playground.

13. However, the fact that it has punched below its weight for the past two decades does not guarantee that the UK’s geopolitical rivals will have such an easy time securing their interests in the future. Britain’s political elites are awakening from their strategic slumber: there is a broad consensus that investment in defence must increase, that Russia and the PRC are in alignment with one another, and that Britain must provide international leadership in response – note HM Government’s vigorous retaliation to Russia’s ‘special military operation’ against Ukraine.

14. In short, if HM Government pursues ‘securonomics’, accelerates economic growth, and hones national strategy, Britain has the potential to be a potent and dangerous adversary.

Recommendations for the Defence Review Team:

1. Appraise Britain’s global position, identifying geopolitical threats to its national interests and objectives, particularly across the Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific theatres.

2. Advocate for investment in defence to 2.5% of GDP. Without additional resources, Britain will decline in power and lose its leadership position, especially as the geopolitical environment worsens and allies and partners rearm and seek greater influence;

3. Evaluate Britain’s alliances and strategic arrangements relative to its needs and interests, with a particular emphasis on their instrumentalisation as ‘force multipliers’ for British objectives;

4. Commit to amplify, extend and accelerate the introduction of platforms the UK can use to lead and generate geopolitical effect, such as the nuclear deterrent, carrier strike groups, nuclear attack submarines, and logistical capabilities. Calibrate the British Army to extend the British nuclear deterrent more effectively over NATO allies in Europe, by integrating British forces with larger Polish, German and Baltic formations.

James Rogers is Co-founder and Director of Research at the Council on Geostrategy.

---

To stay up to date with Britain’s World, please subscribe or pledge your support!

What do you think about this Open Briefing? Why not leave a comment below?