David Blagden

David Cameron’s Unstrategic Defence Review

Michael Fallon’s confirmation last week that a Strategic Defence and Security Review is underway adds another question to the Conservatives’ growing list of slim-majority headaches: what to do about defence policy. With George Osborne hitting the Ministry of Defence with the second-largest pre-Budget cuts of any government department earlier this month, and Number 10 reportedly looking for ‘creative’ accounting measures to cover the fact that Britain will no longer meet NATO’s defence spending target, hopes that defence might escape further cuts have quickly evaporated.

So the fact that the coming Spending Review is unlikely to deliver a rosy outcome for the MOD is already well known. The additional complicating factor, however, is the presence of various pre-election commitments on specific aspects of defence policy. In short, while unwilling to commit to safeguarding defence in general terms, commitments have been made on several individual capabilities. Incorporating such commitments and cutting budgets at the same time will make it all the harder to put the ‘strategic’ into ‘SDSR’.

So what are these commitments? Firstly, there is Cameron’s commitment – made in September last year – to commission and deploy both of the new aircraft carriers being built for the Royal Navy. Such a commitment ends speculation that one of the carriers would be immediately sold or scrapped. Secondly, there is the Conservative commitment – backed by the Prime Minister – to a four-boat replacement for Britain’s Trident-carrying Vanguard-class nuclear missile submarines. And thirdly, there is his commitment not to shrink the British Army below its current 82,000-troop target.

Other commitments – such as buying at least 48 aircraft from the troubled F-35B Joint Strike Fighter programme – have also been made by Cameron’s government, albeit not by the Prime Minister himself. Having perhaps expected to be able to blame the quiet abandonment of some policy commitments on their Liberal Democrat coalition partners, the Conservatives’ sudden acquisition of a majority leaves them bearing the whole responsibility for their defence choices.

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