A weak document

As Pete said earlier, even by this government’s low standards, the National Security Strategy is a pitifully weak document. It looks like it was ordered up in 24 hours’ notice: the pages have wide margins, large type and pointless platitudes. “Our assessment remains the same as in the 1998 Strategic Defence Review,” it says – ie, not a snowball’s chance of any nation threatening the UK with weapons, ever. Not a hint here of Russia’s new belligerence and massive ballistic spending that may one day be at the disposal of a nationalist psycho in the Kremlin. And defence wise, “we are entering a phase of overall reduced commitments” – huh? This is the same government fighting two wars and considering deploying to Kosovo? 

In parliament, Brown also said the EU has no implications for defence. It has. Plenty of them. “The European Union does not have an official role in foreign and security policy” Brown said in the debate. Has he read the Lisbon Treaty?  That mutual defence clause stuff, how it duplicates many Nato functions? Many, many loose ends here.