Britain must strengthen its European defence alliances, cut back on major programmes and reassess its nuclear deterrent in order to focus on new security threats, a panel of defence experts warned on Tuesday. Among the proposals set out by the panel was the creation of a US-style national security council.
A centralised security and defence budget authority, and the refocusing of defence spending to fend off Mumbai-style terrorist attacks and rogue states rather than conventional threats. The report said 24 billion pounds ($36 billion) of planned spending, including on aircraft carriers, the US joint strike fighter, Type-45 destroyers and submarines, should be cut back, and nuclear deterrent programmes such as Trident reassessed.
In a final report after a two-year review the experts brought together by the Institute for Public Policy Research, a think-tank, called for a sweeping overhaul of how defence was planned and implemented. The panel, which included Britain's former ambassador to the United Nations and envoy in Iraq, Jeremy Greenstock, said the country needed to pursue far deeper co-operation with Europe alongside its special relationship with the United States.
"In the post 9/11, post financial crisis world, we must be smarter and more ruthless in targeting national resources at the real security risks," said panel co-chair, George Robertson, the former secretary-general of Nato. "When it comes to security, national self-reliance is a dangerous fantasy. European co-operation is the only viable way forward in many areas. We need to make it work."
Paddy Ashdown, Britain's former high representative to Bosnia, said the current defence strategy was not sustainable. "We need to change the way we think and change not just what we do but also how we organise ourselves to do it. In a world where power is no longer the sole preserve of nation states, and where security is no longer only about defence, we need new joined-up machinery" in the corridors of government."
Britain's budget deficit will reach 175 billion pounds this year, more than 12 percent of gross domestic product, and Prime Minister Gordon Brown has come under pressure to concede public spending must be cut - with defence programmes a target. The panel advised the government to carry out a full defence and security review, taking account of the growing number of failed and failing states in the world and the terrorist threats they pose, and how a Cold War-era deterrence such as Britain's nuclear capability was out of step with modern trends.
"The emphasis must be on responding to the shifting geopolitical landscape, and unconventional threats like climate change, energy shortages, nuclear proliferation and neo-jihadi terrorism," the panel wrote. "Reliance on nuclear deterrence for long-term security is increasingly unsafe given concerns over proliferation to both state and non-state actors."
The panel's report is likely to be closely read in government departments and may exert further pressure on the defence establishment to review programmes such as the Trident nuclear programme, Britain's mainstay nuclear deterrent. Defence Minister Bill Rammell welcomed the report and said it did not call for the unilateral scrapping of Britain's nuclear deterrent. He said other options may not be any cheaper.
"We don't put forward proposals to invest in equipment unless we believe it is necessary. We remain committed to the policy we set out two years ago (on Trident)," he told the BBC. Rammell said the government did not consider it safe to make decisions now "which would effectively commit us to unilateral disarmament in the future, regardless of the circumstances." "We are talking about our national security," he said. "We constantly need to keep our position under review and we need to work for multilateral nuclear disarmament."