National resilience in defence

Open Briefing | No. SDR-02.2024

Image generated using Artificial Intelligence

This is the second 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 how the United Kingdom’s (UK) adversaries and strategic competitors see us (an approach known as Opposing 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 second Open Briefing assesses Britain’s national resilience in defence:

1. The Strategic Defence Review should begin from the assumption that war with a peer adversary is possible within the decade, and that the UK is already the subject of sustained ‘hybrid’ or ‘grey zone’ aggression by Russia.

2. The UK is strong in military power but weak at the level of potential economic resilience in wartime, in its energy security, and in the level of societal support for its geopolitical stance. 

3. This combination – an eroded industrial base, a vulnerable energy supply and a fragmented national culture – provides the ideal point of attack for Russian and other hostile hybrid warfare. Consequently, the SDR should consider not only the military-technical challenges facing the armed forces (drones, electronic warfare, and integrated air and missile defence, and so on) but address weaknesses of the UK as a potential ‘state-victim’ (per the Kartopolov doctrine).

4. Key elements of hybrid aggression against the UK include:

   1. Large scale disinformation via social media, aimed at the delegitimisation of the state and mainstream media and fuelling social unrest; 

   2. The presence of willing UK-based proxies (for Russia, Iran and the People’s Republic of China (PRC)), both on the far right and far left of politics;

   3. Influence operations carried out via high-net-worth individuals and public affairs companies;

   4. Threat-induced restraints on defence investment, and foreign penetration of strategic industries through ownership and financial control.

5. In the acute phase of any global crisis – e.g., Russian aggression against a North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) ally, or a threatened invasion of Taiwan by the PRC – the UK should expect the adversary to mobilise these efforts towards specific ends:

   1. To isolate the British Armed Forces and UK intelligence and law enforcement services from the general population;

   2. To mobilise opposition to the use of armed force among groups inclined to distrust the narratives and aims of the political mainstream, sometimes for legitimate reasons;

   3. To create the fear among mainstream political parties that a significant portion of their voting base will desert them for the extremes, should they support military action;

   4. To make it impossible for the civil power to impose legitimate wartime restrictions on, for example, protest and communication (which the adversary already operates in peacetime), or to perform civil contingency operations;

   5. Thus, to achieve the classic doctrinal goal of ‘winning without fighting’, by inculcating in the minds of decision makers the belief that defending UK national security is not the ‘will of the people.’

6. At a society-wide level, this challenge can be addressed within the framework of ‘securonomics’ as outlined by His Majesty’s (HM) Government: to align the objectives of economic growth, wealth redistribution, energy security and greater social cohesion with those of national defence. However, there are defence-specific aspects of the resilience challenge that fall within the remit of the SDR.

7. The armed forces, by their own admission, are rooted too narrowly in the civil society they are designed to defend. No matter how active the current leadership works to overcome this, it is a glaringly noticeable opportunity for hostile states and one which they will certainly exploit. Namely:

   1. The improved representation of ethnic minority Britons in the armed forces (11% versus 18% across society) is offset by the low representation of Muslims, who make up just 800 (0.6%) members of the armed forces, despite numbering 2.9 million (6.7%) of the UK population;

   2. The unacceptable rates of sexual violence and harassment reported within the armed forces, which – together with the toxic contents of anonymous military bulletin boards – limit the attractiveness of service careers to female recruits;

   3. The mismatch between the ‘political tribes’ which make up the British electorate and their representation in the armed forces and defence industry. Ben Wallace, the former defence secretary, called this the military’s ‘Gen Z Problem.’ It would be amplified if new fighting forces had be recruited in a crisis;

   4. Satisfaction with service life is at an all time low – a problem which was recognised by the current defence secretary while in opposition – and translates into negative concepts about the armed forces among the civilian population.

8. Until now, each of these problems has been dealt with managerially and separately. But hostile states will seize on them as part of a single, strategic opportunity – to undermine societal support for national defence, and thus to reduce the supply of willing recruits, reservists and defence industry workers in a time of crisis.

9. If Britain is serious, this should be recognised in the SDR as a first order threat. It cannot be met simply by better recruitment practices, or fairer selection criteria, but instead has to be met with a mixture of society-wide delivery on securonomics, winning the battle of the narrative and coordinated reforms to the structure of the armed forces, reserves, defence industry and higher education.

Recommendations to the Strategic Defence Review:

1. The Ministry of Defence (MOD) should state its overt, strategic aim that the armed forces will recruit from every community and culture in the UK. It should be made clear to all leaders that there is no alternative to this; the status quo – where officers and other ranks are recruited from traditional, limited demographic groups is no longer supportable.

2. The armed forces leadership should consult with ethnic and religious minority organisations, and with relevant allied countries, on the design of a programme to radically improve minority recruitment. This effort should be framed around the aim of rooting the armed forces more deeply in British society. Likewise in the creation of a zero tolerance culture for sexual harassment and violence.

3. The UK should reconstitute the Territorial Army as a self-sufficient second-line force, allowing the Field Army to be redesigned for dynamic forward deployment and the current Volunteer Reserve to operate as its auxiliary. The new Territorial Army should be given a specific remit to recruit for diversity and with service regulations that allow its members full participation in civil society, including politics. Its potential operational roles and size will be the subject of a future Open Briefing, but might range from guarding routes and installations to Ukraine-style territorial defence in time of need. In all events, the new Territorial Army should be designed to scale-up rapidly in times of crisis.

4. Information warfare should become embedded in the practice of every formation, right down to sub-unit level, rather than centralised in a single, opaque brigade. All branches, including the Reserve and the proposed Territorial Army, should practise information warfare. This will require cross-party political consent and scrutiny, but is necessary in order to make the forces and the civilian infrastructure supporting them resilient against hybrid attack and capable of conducting counter-hybrid operations against the adversary. (see, for example, how OPFOR at the US National Training Centre simulates information war against the families/communities/social media of units rotating in).

5. The armed forces should offer an 18 month ultra-short service option for up to 10,000 graduates (or equivalent qualified) per year. The aim would be to create a pervasive cadre of potential small unit leaders, which could be called on in times of crisis, enabling the forces and reserves to scale rapidly, and whose presence in society would enhance the rootedness of the armed forces.

6. HM Government should stage a major, realistic civil emergencies exercise, premised on an Article 5 type crisis, and drawing in the widest possible range of civil society institutions, within 12 months of the SDR.

7. The aim of these measures is to make the armed forces more scalable and more broadly rooted in the society they are defending. Each of these measures needs to be executed in a way that promotes an overarching narrative, which needs to be explicitly stated by the SDR, where:

   1. The UK is a country worth defending – and will scale its reserves in order to defend itself in depth; 

   2. The British Armed Forces represent all Britons and intend to recruit the best of all citizens; 

   3. Service careers and defence-industrial careers are something to be proud of, and in which all sections of society are welcome; and 

   4. Democratically controlled, defensive information warfare is legitimate for a society under hybrid attack.

Paul Mason is the Aneurin Bevan Associate Fellow in Defence and Resilience at the Council on Geostrategy and a journalist, author and political researcher.

---

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?