Some Thoughts for Defence Planners in the Shadow of Covid-19

Some Thoughts for Defence Planners in the Shadow of Covid-19*

The world is currently in a state of negative flux as many of the shibboleths of the post-Cold War world - globalisation, freedom of movement, Just-In-Time (JIT) supply chains and so on - are trembling under the weight of a pandemic the like of which has not been seen since the Spanish Flu, over a century ago.

This is the strategic shock (or is it security shock?) which will form the backdrop to the UK's now delayed Integrated Defence and Security Review (IDSR) slated to report sometime this year.  Unlike the vast majority of post-war reviews this had been reported as not needing to be cost neutral, but unsurprisingly, considering the impact of the extraordinary economic, societal and medical shocks caused by the Covid-19 outbreak, defence, security and political commentators on Twitter and elsewhere are beginning to query the sustainability of this, and in some cases, the continuing utility of defence capability per se.  

In this article I will examine some of the intellectual 'tools' which are available to the IDSR planners, point to their inherent limitations, and argue that it would be unwise to act precipitously and be quick to judgement - whilst it is of course natural that whole of government resources dedicated to dealing with pandemics should and will rise, it does not follow that the state or the public should, or will, accept higher risk elsewhere as a consequence. 

I begin by outlining the stretched concept of security and how this has influenced both the academic and policy worlds in recent times.  I then consider the possible implications of the outbreak on security and defence policy, noting that both critical theorists and fiscal hawks are likely to call for defence cuts to address its impacts. I argue that this runs the risk of decreasing, rather than increasing, national security.

From Strategy to Security 

In 2008 the then Labour government published the UK's first National Security Strategy (NSS) and then in 2010 the Coalition government published a new NSS alongside the Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR).  Though some welcomed the publications of National Security Strategies on the grounds that they might help joined up government, the coherence of Security as a concept, its conceptual synergy with Defence, and the apparent absence of concomitant strategies published by the other departments has rarely been commented upon.  This is important as it will be difficult for the ISDR authors to optimise their output if the 'tools' at their disposal are sub-optimal.

In the academic literature Security Studies is said to be a subset of International Relations (IR) and Strategic Studies a subset of Security Studies.  Barry Buzan and others have recorded how Security as a concept was coined in the USA during the so-called 'Golden Age' when non-practitioners played such a leading role in devising nuclear strategy.  In the decades that followed Security Studies greatly 'widened' and 'deepened'.   

It widened in the sense that the focus moved beyond the traditional concerns of security such as war, deterrence, terrorism and coercion to encompass non-traditional sectors such as Health (including pandemics); Environmental; Poverty/ Development; Transnational Crime, Energy and so on.

It deepened in terms of what the 'referent object' (that which is to be secured or protected) of security was or should be.  Henceforth, alongside the traditional focus on state security, a plethora of new theories and perspectives focused on the needs of different referents such as Society, individuals, the planet, the developing world, and women.  For many non-traditional perspectives, sometimes grouped together under the title 'critical', states, rather than being the source of security could sometimes be the source of threats.  

If all of this were not complex enough, another layer of complexity needs to be overlaid.  This is because, as noted above, Security Studies is a subset of IR and so different IR schools naturally tend to sponsor different Security Studies perspectives.  

Consequently, different scholars argue vehemently for an enhanced focus on the referent, and/ or sector, which their theoretical perspective favours.  Further, this process is not limited to advocacy of their view but also includes critiques of the others' perspectives.  This is both an intellectual clash and a normative desire to direct limited policy resources towards their cherished concerns.  

Influence on policy

How then has this shift from Strategy to Security, from a 'narrow' and 'shallow' focus to a widened and deepened one, influenced policy?  Reviewing the 2008, 2010 and 2015 National Security Strategies it is apparent that, whilst avoiding academic language, the policy world adopted much of the widening agenda, with a roughly comparable weight being afforded to traditional and non-traditional security sectors, particularly in the 2008 and 2010 documents.  It should be noted, however, that the relative weight afforded to traditional security concerns increased in the 2015 NSS and SDSR, largely as a consequence of the Crimean annexation strategic shock and the reanimation of Al Qaeda in Iraq in the form of ISIL. 

In these documents the security of disparate referents such as the British state, the globalised system, individuals, and the environment were seen as being largely synonymous.  The papers noted that the security landscape had been shaped by mega trends such as globalisation and a shift in economic power towards Asia. This was sophisticated analysis - an attempt to fuse the needs of different referent objects with the stated aim of ensuring that the UK's values - freedom, democracy, the rule of law - were reflected in the wider world - it was axiomatic that securing and promoting these was not only good for the UK but good for the wider world also.  This was to be achieved via the pooling of national instruments with those of allies and via the UK playing an enabling role within supranational organisations such as the UN, NATO, EU and so on.  In this view globalisation and the rise of countries such as China were seen as both inevitable and affording great opportunities, though the accompanying risks were also noted.

However, planners should reflect on the fact that there are valid reasons why academics often struggle to agree with one another over which sectors and referents should be prioritised. Academics have major philosophical differences over the nature of Security and IR and the degree to which these social phenomena can be objectively analysed.  For a realist it is the state which must be secured and the self-help of sovereign hard power is the surest means to that end; for the liberal the state must be secured via the spread of democracy, liberal institutions and economic interdependence; for the Critical Security Studies (CSS) scholar it is global economic injustice which imperils individuals everywhere and threatens international security.  For a realist an aircraft carrier is a prudential investment in hard power; for a liberal it is a pooled resource to protect the global system whose escorts can be provided by allies if necessary; but for a CSS scholar, feminist or environmentalist it is, at best, an egregious waste of money and focus.  Different theoretical lenses reveal different security prescriptions and these can be hard to reconcile. 

On balance my sympathies lie more with the policy-makers than the academics here.  The former are more pragmatic and more geared towards practice than those seeking imagined intellectual purity for some purpose or other.  I say imagined because there is no definitive 'victor' in any of these debates; though many suppress their critical faculties and imagine that there are. Also, there have been occasions where it is at least arguable that there was no tension between, for example, national security on the one hand, and Human Security on the other.   From an English School 'solidarist' perspective it is surely possible to argue that state and human security were reconcilable in certain, so-called, liberal interventions - Kosovo, for example.  Some Human Security academics might push back against that point of view - wishing the ends but not the means - but the bottom line in that case was, no NATO air power superiority and no threat of a land invasion would have equated to no realistic prospect of achieving human security; certainly human security according to the 'narrow' definition.  

So, the policy preference for fusing the needs of different security referents and sectors was a laudable and coherent exercise.  Unfortunately, though, it may be that the degree to which one can harmonise the ends of disparate entities, or referents, is context specific. There may be occasions when it is not possible to reconcile national security and the needs of some other referent.  Thus, when the 2015 NSS noted that globalisation had lifted many millions out of poverty it was talking primarily about the rise of incomes in China.  However, if this transfer of wealth to the East has, in part, fuelled economic and political grievances in the West, the costs of globalisation, at least in its current guise, may now be outweighing its perceived benefits.  Globalisation has also failed to placate revisionist great power states such as Russia and China who remain dissatisfied with the geopolitical status quo and jihadists continue to seek to overturn the regional orders in the Middle East, Africa and elsewhere.  Thus, even before the Covid-19 outbreak, the established global order was creaking - now with a pandemic having spread from China - a revisionist power, the world's largest exporter of goods, led by a Communist Party which once again has suppressed critical information about the outbreak of a Coronavirus - this order may be in terminal decline.

The Covid-19 outbreak is another reminder that there are costs as well as benefits to globalisation.  Security planners will now need to consider, perhaps more closely than in the past, precisely which parts of the globalised system are net providers of security and which are not.  This is likely to throw up some key questions and dilemmas;

• Are globalised supply chains still a source of wealth and security?
• Is the Chinese Communist Party a reliable trading partner or a source of imported insecurity?
• If offshoring is to continue should production be switched to other countries and regions such as Vietnam or Africa?
• Does the Industrial Revolution 4.0 offer the potential for wide-scale re-shoring?
• What effect would re-shoring have on the developing world? 
• Is a JIT mentality the right one for the economy and has the attempt to graft this onto public services gone too far?

Thus the authors of the 2020 NSS/IDSR must consider the degree to which referents and sectors can still be reconciled with one another at a time of tremendous flux - it seems highly likely that if the current globalisation is to survive it can only do so if it is substantially different and so the influence of mega trends and the interaction between different referents and sectors will need to be considered afresh. 

Implications for the National Security Strategy 

The implications for the next NSS are legion because these processes accept a widened and deepened definition of Security.  Before reflecting on what the most important of these may be it is first worth considering the salience of these issues for Defence.  In 2010 and 2015 the NSS - with their widened and deepened security focus - was accompanied by an SDSR.  The traditional security content in the NSS' was clearly a good, high level view of what the role and purpose of the armed forces should be; but it is far less clear what the salience of at least some of the non-traditional sectors are for Defence - they may be tangentially relevant, but they are not directly relevant.

The scope of the current crisis, and of security broadly defined, far exceed the purview of the Ministry of Defence.  In fact, even if the NSS focused solely on traditional security concerns such as deterrence or counter-terrorism, its task would be enormous.  The late Colin Gray argued, perhaps with undue modesty, said that there were no great modern strategic thinkers because the subject was so vast it required a polymath capable of being a great political, military, economics, cultural and technological thinker - it was simply impossible to be the master of so many critical elements.  If this is true of Strategy how much more true must it be of the stretched concept of Security? 

Consequently, defence planners need to be careful in accepting that, somehow, the MoD can bear the weight of the sum of basically everything on its shoulders.  Mega trends and widened and deepened Security touch on so much beyond defence;

• Political economy (home and abroad)
• Pandemics such as Covid-19
• Climate change
• The impact of new technology such as AI, 3-D printing, advanced materials, etc
• Domestic and international political change 
• The fraying international order
• Cyber threats to the digital economy, etc

Still, conducting an NSS seems a worthwhile, if daunting task as it can lay out the key aims and direction of travel for the UK's foreign and domestic policies - it can also provide a framework for the policy that is responsible for the provision of the Armed Forces.  However, logically, it is also laying out a framework for the FCO, DFID, HMT, DfH, DIT the Home Office, BEIS, and so on.  The notion that an NSS based on a stretched definition of Security is solely, or mainly, of concern to the MoD does not make much sense when so much of its content is only tangentially relevant to Defence.

Already the question is being asked what is the point of the military at a time when Covid-19 is killing thousands of people and has led to economic gridlock? The military is admirably aiding the civil authorities via logistical, medical and engineering support.  However, F-35s, the D5 system, Ajax, etc have no utility in terms of tackling Covid-19 - how could they, that is not their purpose?  Thus, defence planners would be well advised to query the automatic linkage between a stretched security strategy and defence policy only - if the security strategy is to inform a newly published defence review surely similar command papers should be published for the other relevant departments?  Not to do so would, at best, represent muddled thinking.

Implications for Defence

The first thing to say is that there was already a lot for defence planners to consider before the outbreak.  To say the last few years in strategic terms have been febrile is an understatement.  In that time the UK has had to;

• Help defeat ISIS in Iraq and Syria
• Help to deter further Russian aggression by positioning forces in the Baltic, the Black Sea, the Atlantic, Iceland, the Mediterranean, etc
• Respond to regular Russian naval and air activity close to the British Isles
• Deal with the interdiction of British-flagged ships in the Persian Gulf

In addition, crises have occurred which could have significant consequences for UK defence policy, such as;

• USA-DPRK brinkmanship
• The collapse of the JCPOA 
• The collapse of the INF treaty
• The US drift towards a policy informed by Offshore Balancing

These operations, threats and negative political developments underline the traditional security challenges facing the UK.  Readers will also be aware of some of the obvious vulnerabilities which a defence review might wish to reflect upon.  For example, it was widely reported in the media that an unusual amount of Russian naval and air activity was undertaken relatively close to the British Isles whilst cases of the Covid-19 outbreak was surging.  This is a timely reminder that revisionist powers are developing conventional weapons systems which could, I say only could, threaten the UK's CNI, military bases and deployed expeditionary and naval forces.  Consequently, planners may wish to consider how defences against hypersonic, ballistic and cruise missiles could be enhanced.  This is certainly a reasonable area of enquiry as if the only answer to such an attack is the D5 system, then an adversary, in the heat of a crisis, might not perceive such a response as either credible or likely.  Unquestionably, it would not be flexible.   Of course, this is just one key question for the IDSR, there are many others relating to the right balance between medium and heavy armour; Russian threats to submarine cables; space based challenges and so on.

Those that hold a critical theoretical perspective will, inevitably, protest that traditional defence activities are irrelevant in terms of dealing with pandemics, global poverty, climate change and so on and of course, based on that narrow analysis, they would be correct.  However, Security planners must consider the sum of threats, risk and vulnerabilities across the sectors under their purview, and Defence planners must consider those, primarily, in relation to traditional security sectors.  Defence planners should also not be afraid to engage in some counter-factual analysis as they seek to scan the horizon.  

Previous NSS' rated both the impact and likelihood of a pandemic as high.  The media has reported how as recently as 2016 a pandemic outbreak was war-gamed in the UK - Exercise Cygnus.  When the outbreak subsides there will no doubt be a huge public enquiry examining how the government has handled the outbreak and what lessons can be learned.  Already, the societal, medical and economic consequences have been profound.  It is hard to imagine many events more debilitating than the one we are living through - hard, but not impossible.  The Armed Forces represent a versatile instrument capable of providing support to the civil authorities; humanitarian interventions; disaster relief; COIN and CT.  But their greatest value is in helping to deter a great power conflict involving nuclear weapons.  The impact of that would greatly exceed the impact of Covid-19 and of course there is both a conventional and a nuclear element to that.  Suppose the UK and its allies did not have substantial forces? Suppose the USA leaves NATO? Suppose Russia and China remain implacably opposed to the current geopolitical and geo-economic status quo?  Suppose NATO did not exist in 2014 - does anyone seriously imagine Russia's revisionism would have stopped at the annexation of Crimea and the complete destabilisation of eastern Ukraine?  None of these possibilities could be described as wildly unlikely. 

A critical response to the above, which would not be wholly unreasonable, might be to point to the need for enhanced diplomacy, to increase the legitimacy of the economic and geopolitical order (somehow?) and so address revanchist political and economic grievances.  A social constructivist might point, correctly, to the way in which the USSR changed the security dynamics of the 1980s by constructing a new conception of its rivals which was reflected by NATO leading to disarmament.  All valid, but that is not where diplomacy is at the moment and whilst we should strive for that, we need to be mindful that whilst some parts of the West may have a Kantian conception of international anarchy, others are geared towards a Hobbesian view.  Thus, the armed forces' primary mission should be to provide deterrence and to optimise it as far as possible.

Defence planners can also expect a challenge from what might be crudely described as the other end of the political spectrum - the fiscal hawks.  No one knows quite how fiscally debilitating the outbreak will be or whether the recovery will be V-shaped - e.g. short and rapid or more prolonged and akin to a slump.  It would be naive to imagine that fiscal hawks, both within and without government, will not seek cuts from the MoD budget to repair the public finances.  They may well return to the 2010 SDSR template and state that the armed forces must once again be pruned in order to provide economic security.  Many readers will know how this modus operandi might evolve - the message that the military must play its part; conflating the security sectors and referents to produce the justification; the compensating very minor investment in some new technology; perhaps the deletion of a key capability or commitment - so I won't labour the point here.  Of course, it might not develop in this way because the current government is a 'Red Tory' government and before the outbreak its guiding lights were the levelling up agenda and seeking out new trading relationships.  So an Osbornesque austerity programme is far from a given.  Nevertheless, defence planners should assume that they will be in the cross hairs.  

In their defence, they could make arguments similar to those outlined above but I wonder if there is another point they could make to aid their case.  Namely, that in a time of great threat, now is not the time to run risks elsewhere.   No doubt many will consider the Covid-19 outbreak as being one of Nassim Taleb's 'Black Swan' events - a staggering shock that few saw coming because the great majority were too focused on all the less damaging 'white swans'.  However, is the outbreak really a black swan event?  There is enough information already in the public domain to suggest that the government, indeed governments all over the world, knew something like it was likely, could have a massive impact and that many key vulnerabilities had already been identified.  Every day individuals, society, humanity at large, take calculated risks in order to function productively.  That said, it's hard not to hold the working hypothesis that as regards the outbreak the calculated risk policy failed. It follows that compounding risk in other security sectors by addressing the needs of one is not necessarily wise.  If deterrence were to fail in the future because it lacked credibility in the eyes of the opponent because of known weaknesses and vulnerabilities would it be that surprising as so much commentary is devoted to discussing these?  Perhaps the true black swan is the unpredictable nature of the timing of these events.  We know one day a major asteroid will strike; we know that history shows that avoiding a major war will be problematic; we know the effects of climate change could be debilitating and have many knock on effects.  Two questions arise - how much can and should we insure against these risks and threats?  And when will we have to cash in the premium? This second part is the hardest challenge of all.  

Further, there are several ways in which the public finances could be addressed - borrowing, taxation, growth and cuts.  Perhaps it's time for a truly whole of government approach to Security to be undertaken - perhaps now is the time to wrap 'armour' around the nation across all - or perhaps realistically - many of the security sectors?  The cost of insurance has risen - if you want platinum-level cover then you may have to dig deep.  If you don't that's understandable in some respects, these are complex issues, no action is cost free, there is an opportunity cost to having insurance - but then, be prepared expect more of those 'black swans' to appear on the horizon.

Possible lessons and cross-fertilisation

It would be imprudent to seek to draw hard lessons for both Defence and Security from the current crisis so I will conclude by sketching out some possibilities;

• Clausweitz's injunction that it is important to be strong generally and at the decisive point is an intriguing one, and at first glance is not very helpful in a world of finite resources.  In the Covid-19 context this might be applied to addressing vulnerabilities such as the need for reserves of people and materiel.  Many governments have moved metaphorical mountains in short order - the re-recruitment of thousands of nurses and doctors, for example.  Perhaps this should underline to Defence, Health and other sectors the need to have a surge or reserve capacity to hand so they can be 'strong' at the decisive point

• In Defence terms the lesson here may relate to the need to fill manpower and stocks gaps in areas such as, for example, key naval trades.  This will cost but it will not break the bank.  Also, perhaps now is the time to look again at the cost-benefits of mothballing.  Building new platforms has become an excruciatingly drawn out process - it has already been well described, for example, that naval escort numbers will dip below their already low levels.  Rather than decommissioning and scrapping ships (and other platforms) perhaps they should be held in extended reserve? 

• Addressing key vulnerabilities, such as the Russian missile threat, needs to be accelerated.  It may be that the cost of Covid-19 means that some new and expensive capabilities can only be developed with partner nations to share the development and operational costs

• If cuts must be considered, then a rigorous assessment of what are core Defence functions (such as deterrence) and what are not (disaster relief) should be made.  As regards the funding of the latter, planners should look to DIFD for further support - after all, it is the logical font of international Human Security within the UK government.

The full course and consequences of the outbreak is not yet known.  I would argue that it will both change everything and change nothing.  Overall, states' and peoples' appetite for risk will diminish sharply, if only in the short-term.  There are numerous examples in history where faced with an existential crisis the normal, peace-time truisms and practices were ditched in order to fight that which was front and central - in order to survive.  Thereafter, people tend to forget the lessons learned and the appetite for risk returns.  There will be a strong push by some to cut the defence budget on the grounds that the military is not a source of security and/ or is largely irrelevant to the true needs of individuals, society and the world in general.  If the crisis heralds a cosmopolitan revolution in the international system they will be proven correct.  The military could then reconfigure as a sort of international gendarmerie of the type recommended by 'New War' thinkers such as Mary Kaldor and Paul Robinson - it would certainly be cheaper to maintain.   Alas, that is not where we now stand nor is it likely to be.  Others will seeks to cut the budget for reasons of fiscal prudence.  I suspect they will be held at arms length for a while, but then of course return with a vengeance when the appetite for risk returns once more.  In the end though, one lesson we can tentatively draw is that whilst we will need to look to our heroic doctors and nurses, it is, alas, highly likely that we will need to continue to look to our guns.

*In memory of the late Professor Colin Gray - his influence was everywhere at the University of Hull.