General Sir Richard Dannatt, the British army's Chief of General Staff, speaking to the Royal Institute of International Affairs on Friday 15 May, said that Britain faced “an age of upheaval”, in which there will be “persistent conflict”, and proposed a change of investment priorities in the armed forces to meet the needs of endless war. The full speech can be read here....

We have extracted below the key points made by Dannatt.

Age of upheaval

We live in an ‘age of upheaval’ in which there will be ‘persistent conflict’. This means that there will be no ‘discernible gap between conflicts’ and Britain needs to be on ‘a campaign, not a peacetime footing’.(p13)

Quoting Niall Ferguson, writing in The Times: “Economic volatility, plus ethnic disintegration, plus empires in decline are about the most lethal combination in geopolitics. We now have all three. The age of upheaval starts here.” (p2)

Causes of instability

The ‘axis of upheaval’ has five main drivers. First, instability caused by climate change, poverty, population growth and energy competition. Second, failed states. Third, ‘non state actors’ like Hezbollah, Al – Qaeda and the Taliban, “these predatory non-state actors thrive and proliferate in conditions where there is a disintegration of state authority spreading insurgency and disorder”. Fourth are hostile states like Iran, and fifth, the economic downturn. (p5,6,7)

Economic crisis

On the one hand economic crisis will constrain military spending, but, “ironically the global economic crisis will also serve as a catalyst of global insecurity – increasing the threats and perhaps by extension, the demands on our armed forces.” (p4)

Britain’s interests

“Our history and the inescapable demographic legacy of our Empire, our status, trading interests, geography, Trans-Atlantic ties and responsibilities as a P5, G8, NATO and commonwealth member make international activism hard wired into our political and national DNA. Any significant reduction in our defence posture would significantly diminish the influence our Armed Forces allow us to exert in Europe, NATO and above all our principle ally, the United States... Britain’s calculation has long been that maintaining military strategic ‘partner of choice’ status with the United States offers a degree of influence and security that has been pivotal to our Foreign and Defence Policy. But the relationship can only be sustained if it is founded on a certain ‘military credibility threshold”.

Afghanistan

“Delivering success in Afghanistan is not discretionary”. Quoting John Hutton: “It may be that Afghanistan will be the defining conflict of this century. It does strike to the heart of our interests as a nation”.

“Succeed we must: our own national security, our credibility and reputation, our strategic partnership with the US, and the future of NATO are all bound up in Afghanistan.” (p5)

Legacy of Blair’s wars

The main legacy of Blair’s wars is “a generation who may have formed the view that military intervention is too costly”. The answer is not to organise fewer wars –‘Doing the right thing will always be the right thing to do’- the answer is for “our politicians to go greater lengths than before to explain the imperative, legitimacy and rationale for the use of force”. (p4)

Prospects

“We should expect to be confronted by multifaceted threats: terrorism, piracy, insurgency and major combat with a hostile state’s armed forces – all simultaneously”. (p15)

While recognising the importance of integrating the range of ‘instruments of national power’, military intervention will have ‘enduring utility’. “We should not assume that the experience of the campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan make intervention less likely …the weight of likelihood is that intervention and stabilisation operations will be the pattern for the future, and with increasing frequency.” (p10)

“Iraq and Afghanistan are not aberrations – they are signposts for the future.” (p11)

Read the speech in full here...

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