BLAIR’S BRITAIN, 1997–2007
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upheavals set in motion under the Conservatives had yet to be fully
digested and implemented; service morale was fragile and there was only
limited room for manoeuvre in force structure. By contrast there was a
case for a foreign policy-led review. Under an exercise called ‘options for
change’, set in motion by Defence Secretary Tom King in 1990, the
impression was gained that a peace dividend could be taken without any
reshaping of the forces. The focus was still on Europe and a possible,
resurgent Russian threat. The aim seemed to be ‘smaller but better’,
although the forces grumbled that the emphasis was on the smaller. Over
the 1990s defence spending was cut by over 20%, moving from over 4% of
GDP to under 3%. Because the 1991 Gulf War involved exactly the sort of
forces – armed divisions and air power – intended for the Warsaw Pact it
obscured the possibilities that quite different types of adversary might
have to be faced in the coming years.
The Americans seemed even more prepared to ignore these possibilities and continued to prepare for big wars, stressing the imminence of a
‘revolution in military affairs’ based on intrusive sensors, precisions
munitions and fast communications. The crises within the former
Yugoslavia, and in particular Bosnia, soon demonstrated the alternative
possibilities and notably the need for troops on the ground. Some of the
cuts in army manpower were reinstated to cope with the new demands.
Unlike Margaret Thatcher, who, out of office, was an early proponent of
humanitarian intervention (with the Kurds in 1991) John Major was
unenthusiastic. It had taken time to recognise the severity of the Bosnia
situation.4 So the Conservative government’s attitude towards the developing agenda of humanitarian interventions was equivocal. This provided a reason for Labour’s review: to explain the importance of new
missions connected with humanitarian intervention, and how the forces
could be configured to meet the demands they posed. It would be about
the use of armed force as much as the more traditional questions of
budgets, procurement and the distribution of resource between the three
services.
14 For a critique see Brendan Simms, Unfinest Hour: Britain and the Destruction of Bosnia,
(London: Penguin Books, 2001).
Labour’s Strategic Defence Review
This was the backdrop to the arrival of the new ministerial team to the
Ministry of Defence in May 1997. Unlike many of his cabinet colleagues,
George Robertson as Secretary of State had taken a pro-defence line
during the opposition years, even when it was unfashionable in the party
to do so. John Reid, who had developed good defence contacts in opposition, came in as Minister of State. Yet there was still a credibility issue
because of past policies and practice. The new intake of MPs was drawn
from the liberal professions. A decade earlier and they would have been
assumed to be hostile to defence. Now they could be assumed to be ignorant. Few were left of the generation that had served in the Second World
War or could remember national service. Even those who had entered
politics during the Vietnam period were among the veterans. None of the
Labour front bench had any military experience or even much background in foreign policy. The two top players – Tony Blair and Gordon
Brown – had made their names on domestic policy. Robin Cook was best
known in defence circles as one of the most articulate exponents of unilateralism during the 1970s and 1980s.
Robertson used the defence review process to ensure that defence
issues were pushed to the fore and some sort of national consensus on a
way forward was developed. He was helped by the fact that officials had
assumed both a new government and a defence review, so thoughts
inside the MoD were well advanced and this ensured that the review
process could be structured quite quickly. The process was unusually
open, with a range of industrialists and academics as well as the services
themselves being consulted, and an independent panel of experts was
established.5 This had the effect of creating a reasonably supportive
constituency and also ensuring that the main messages of the review
came as no surprise.
The idea of a reconstituted Russian threat, especially as its forces
struggled against rebels in Chechnya, seemed more remote than ever.
Anxieties here were more to do with Russia’s somewhat chaotic internal
state following the loss of its European empire, and in particular what
this might mean for the management of its substantial nuclear assets. If
15 Including the author. The demands placed on this panel were not onerous. In the United
States a comparable panel set up to advise and comment on the 1997 Quadrennial Defense
Review produced its own report. In contrast to the American practice, the British panel
did not get a chance to form a corporate view, let alone travel extensively at government
expense (although it did eat quite well).
there was no need to worry about a revived conventional Russian threat,
then – more than ever before – defence of the realm was not very difficult.
Britain was unusually secure, even amongst its allies, far away from most
trouble spots and not needing to worry about balancing a would-be hegemonic power in Europe. Yet absent the Cold War, the world was not necessarily peaceful and harmonious. Many regions, notably Africa and
parts of post-communist Europe, were suffering from severe disorder.
Though geography allowed Britain to avoid the most direct consequences
of upheavals elsewhere, the consensus view in London was that the
country could not stand aside. As one of the five permanent members of
the Security Council it had a responsibility to support UN operations,
while as the leading European member of NATO it could not easily decide
to opt out. If Britain were unprepared to act then in most cases the rest of
Europe would not be able to pick up the slack. More seriously all the
arguments that might persuade Britain that it had no reason to get
involved, would apply to the United States. Any effort to encourage
Washington to remain engaged with the rest of the world would falter if
Britain began to disengage as well. When introducing the Strategic
Defence Review (SDR) in July 1998, Robertson argued that armed forces
should be geared not only to defending rights but also to discharging
international responsibilities.6
Although the ‘ethical dimension’ to foreign policy, proclaimed by
Foreign Secretary Robin Cook soon after taking office, was normally
judged as if it was all about arms sales, at its core was a commitment to
human rights.7 Thus ‘doing good’ was about helping the weak and vulnerable in distress, but that also implied getting involved in distant civil
wars and regional squabbles. This raised issues which cut across party
boundaries. Bosnia led many on the left to argue for the use of armed
force in good causes, just as many on the right were highly dubious about
dabbling in other peoples’ problems when British national interests
were
not at stake.8 At the same time those on the left who assumed that no
good could ever come from Western military action opposed it instinctively, even when directed against oppressive regimes, while those on the
right who strained for Britain to be a major player on the world stage were
uncomfortable with the idea that Britain could fail to join any major military expedition.
16 Secretary of State for Defence, The Strategic Defence Review, Cm. 3999 (London: TSO,
1998).
7 Robin Cook, ‘British Foreign Policy’, 12 May 1997, www.fco.gov.uk.
18 This is well brought out in Michael Ignatieff’s exchange with Robert Skidelsky in Prospect,
reproduced in Virtual War: Kosovo and Beyond (London: Chatto & Windus, 2000).
The government demonstrated from early on that it was inclined to an
activist stance. In the summer of 1997, British troops were involved in the
seizure of alleged war criminals in Bosnia. Then the aircraft carrier HMS
Invincible was despatched to the Gulf to put pressure on Saddam Hussein
not to impede UN weapons inspectors. In this case Secretary-General
Kofi Annan’s diplomatic efforts eased the immediate crisis, although only
in practice postponed the eventual confrontation. Annan’s statement at
the time – ‘You can do a lot with diplomacy but, of course, you can do a
lot more with diplomacy backed by firmness and force’ – appeared in
Robertson’s introduction to the SDR.
An activist foreign policy required some reconfiguration of the forces
to become more organised for expeditionary warfare. So despite its privileged geographical position and limited resources, Britain would be
improving its ability to operate overseas. Forces would be geared to active
operations rather than passive deterrence. This required a capacity to
move units to where they would be needed through improved air-and
sea-lift capabilities, proper training, adequate stocks, extra troops and
reserves able to provide specialist capabilities rather than just make up
the numbers. In addition, joint commands were to become a norm rather
than ad hoc arrangements to prevent the three services each fighting their
own separate wars, with a joint staff college, doctrine centre, command
headquarters and rapid reaction force. The latter became operational in
April 1999, two years earlier than originally planned. The modest savings
required to make room for all of this were largely the result of either oneoff asset sales or promises of greater efficiency in equipment procurement
and the management of stores. With the risk of a traditional military
threat low, the insurance premium could be correspondingly reduced.
This was reflected in reduced numbers of combat aircraft, frigates and
nuclear warheads.
The most significant indication of this shift in focus was the consensus
within the defence establishment behind the need for new, large aircraft
carriers. The old requirement for carrier battle groups to wrest control of
the Atlantic from another major sea power would be both prohibitively
expensive as well as strategically obsolescent. In the post-Cold War world
carriers could serve as mobile air bases able to project power to wherever
trouble was brewing. They would not require favours from local governments if they did not wish to be publicly associated with a military action.
Few important cities and military facilities were so far inland that they
could not be struck from the sea. They could also serve as command and
control posts for the conduct of any large-scale rescue or humanitarian
operation, whether or not lethal force was involved. This would require
ships twice the size of the Invincible-class carriers.
The SDR was never intended to reappraise the Trident programme,
although it did provide the fullest account of UK nuclear capabilities yet
published. Each of the four Trident submarines carried no more than 48
warheads, with a total operational stockpile of less than 200 warheads,
100 down from the planned numbers inherited from the Conservatives.
The idea appeared to be to explore to the full the possible meaning of a
‘minimum’ deterrent, by not running the submarines intensively, with
only one on patrol at any time, and only one crew per boat (compared
with two during the Cold War). The missiles would not be on quick reaction alert but kept days away from operational readiness and not targeted
against anyone in particular. Yet despite this, and the fact that Trident was
just entering service as Labour entered office, by the third term the government argued that unless early preparations were made to prepare for
replacement submarines, the system could become obsolescent by the
2020s.9 This led to a debate that previous generations of Labour leaders
would have avoided at all costs, but it was surprisingly muted. The best
argument for was future uncertainty, and with the background noise of
Iran’s nuclear exertions, it was not clear why this was the moment for
Britain, alone among the nuclear powers, to abandon the status. The best
argument against appeared to be that the £20 billion expenditure would
be wasteful and meet no evident security purpose. As both sets of arguments were speculative, the debate was conducted with little passion and
scant public interest. Labour dissidence was not as high as with the 2003
Iraq vote, although Conservatives were still necessary for a majority.10
The impact of Kosovo
The first main test of the underlying approach came in the Serbian
province of Kosovo. In the summer of 1998 Blair was among the first
Western leaders to urge that a strong stand be taken against Yugoslav
President Milosevic whose forces were turning on the Muslim majority in
Kosovo in response to an outbreak of violence led by the Kosovo
19 Secretary of State for Defence and the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth
Affairs, The Future of the United Kingdom’s Nuclear Deterrent, Cmnd 6994 (December
2006).
10 There were 409 MPs supporting the proposals, and 161 against, including 88 Labour
backbenchers, a majority of 248. In 2003, 138 Labour MPs voted against the Iraq War.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/uk_politics/6448173.stm.
Liberation Army (KLA). Beginning on 26 March 1999, allied air forces
attacked targets in Serbia. It took until June for the campaign to conclude
with Milosevic effectively conceding on all of NATO’s demands. The
intervening weeks were extremely difficult for NATO. Its initial coercive
threat failed as Milosevic called the bluff. The air strikes had little impact
on the Serb campaign on the ground in Kosovo. Instead there was a
massive outflow of refugees across the province’s borders into Macedonia
and Albania. The very process that NATO was supposed to be preventing
was accelerating. Yet this ruthlessness also sealed the Serbs’ fate, for it gave
new purpose to the KLA’s campaign, and provided it with opportunities
to acquire and train new recruits. In addition, whatever the misgivings
expressed during the fir
st days of the NATO campaign, outrage at Serb
behaviour created a bedrock of popular support that saw the alliance
through many difficult days.11 The big question was whether public
opinion would tolerate a shift from a strategy that relied on air power
alone. The United States in particular (though not uniquely) was reluctant to commit ground forces in combat. Yugoslav forces were considered
to be tough and capable of imposing severe casualties on Western forces.
Kosovo was also a logistical nightmare. Gradually it dawned on NATO
leaders that explicitly ruling out land operations was mistaken, and planning began. Air power was problematic: the Serbs were largely using
small paramilitary units, not easily disrupted by aircraft flying at high
altitude. It was more effective when directed against the Serb political and
economic system, but this was morally awkward for an alliance that
claimed to be attacking military targets and seeking to avoid civilian
casualties. In the event bridges, railway lines, power supplies and some
factories could be described as militarily relevant, although the main
consequences were felt by the Serb population.
For Blair Kosovo was a turning point. This was not the first time he had
demonstrated his readiness to take a robust stance on armed force. He
had already taken a tough line on Iraq. The continuing arguments over
Iraq’s refusal to cooperate with UN inspectors led to a sharp series of air
strikes in December 1998, known as Desert Fox. These were inconclusive
in their effects, and led to niggling activity over the following years as Iraq
unsuccessfully attempted to control its air space. It was therefore not surprising to find Blair to the fore in making the case for NATO action over
Kosovo. As the issue of ground operations was debated there was no
11 See Lawrence Freedman, ‘Victims and Victors: Reflections on the Kosovo War’, Review of
International Studies, 26:3, 2000.
doubt which country was pushing hardest for a bold and decisive move.
Yet for most of the time Britain’s actual military contribution was
modest, in line with other European countries. It was better prepared
than others for ground operations, which had given Blair’s offers of a substantial contribution for a new strategy added force, and when the capitulation took place and NATO peacekeepers streamed into Kosovo British