Hello and welcome to this week’s Active Measures.
The Integrated Review 2021 is inspiring and disappointing. Inspiring because it outlines with unparalleled insight the threats that Britain and its allies face. Disappointing because — as so often — the ambitions are not matched by a strategic grip on the really hard part: setting priorities.
The good bits are about the breadth of the threat (“hybrid” if that’s your taste in jargon) and the need for a much broader response in dealing with it. But it’s one thing to talk about “fusion” (we’ve heard that term before) and another thing to make it happen. Integrating the different bits of British government (financial supervision, police, intelligence, education) is hard enough, let alone bringing in outsiders, such as business, civil society and the public. We still struggle to do that with Russia after seven years of trying. It’s hard to imagine speedy progress when it comes to the much more potent and pervasive threat from China.
Critics have highlighted the report’s failure to call out China as a full-blown adversary. The point here is that we need the broadest possible response. Big international coalitions can constrain China effectively. Individual countries mostly won’t. Britain would be well placed to rally European countries on issues like stiffening academic and media freedom, disrupting Chinese divide-and-rule campaigns, catching spies, boosting ties with Taiwan etc. Our best asset is close ties to allies on the continent and we could use them more imaginatively. But that would cut against the Brexity flavour of the report. Dominic Raab’s ill-judged trip to the Baltic states (the foreign secretary came across as hurried, ignorant and rude) highlights how far we have to go.
The review’s implied but not stated premise is an intricate bargain. Britain is the only country in Europe which can keep up with the increasingly high-tech US military. In return for helping out around the world, Britain gets some clout with the Americans, and jointly with the US will act as Europe’s security backstop. For its part the EU, jelly-like when it comes to security, will treat Britain sensibly and help out where it can.
That could work, but a lot could go wrong. Britain often overstates its importance to the US. The Europeans have their own ideas, often bad ones (hello France). And Britain’s ability to defend Europe with real mass is diminishing. The small, high-end, highly deployable, cross-domain raider force envisioned in the review will be brilliant for the first week of a conflict. But supposing there’s a second week? We lack the heavy weapons and big numbers needed to make a difference. Only the US can do that. A bigger nuclear weapons stockpile is no use if you run out of other munitions.
Making the review work will require continued extra spending and unprecedented political will in coming years: a time when budgets will be tight and decision-makers distracted. Here’s hoping.
What I’ve been writing: in my fortnightly Times column I praised Lithuania for standing up to China, while my CEPA weekly column looked at the imbalance between military spending (which has plenty of advocates) and other security priorities (which mostly don’t). The weekly China Influence Monitor is a snarky, pithy look at the party-state’s westward footprint.
I’ve also been doing a lot of other China stuff for CEPA, such as this discussion, and this big report comparing and contrasting Russian and Chinese info-ops during the pandemic.
What I’ve been reading: this gripping investigation into Chinese espionage in Hungary.
That’s it — back in your inboxes next week.
Best regards
Edward