Muscle memory

BRITAIN has long prided itself on punching above its weight diplomatically and militarily. Yet in its response to Russian aggression in Ukraine, Europe’s most serious security crisis for a generation, it has been little more than a backseat driver. When the fighting flared up, it was François Hollande of France and Angela Merkel of Germany who flew to Moscow. Britain’s prime minister, David Cameron, was nowhere to be seen.

Britain was also notably slow to react when Barack Obama announced he was forming a coalition to defeat Islamic State last September. In a House of Commons vote held, languidly, a few weeks later, the government only asked for authorisation to strike IS targets in Iraq. Even now, Britain’s effort appears puny. In a report published last week, the Commons defence committee noted that the country had carried out less than one air strike a day. When the committee visited Iraq, it found a total British military contingent of just three people outside Kurdish areas. America, by contrast, had offered 3,100 troops. Even Spain and Italy have sent around 300 troops each. In all, the MPs said, Britain’s efforts are “strikingly modest”.

Rhetorically, the government remains committed to the idea that Britain is a great power. The last Strategic Defence and Security Review, in late 2010, paved the way for a cut of 8% in the defence budget. (The damage ended up being close to a quarter in real terms.) Yet the review opened with a bold declaration: “Our country has always had global responsibilities and global ambitions. We have a proud history of standing up for the values we believe in and we should have no less ambition for our country in the decades to come.”

Britain has slipped from fourth to sixth in the global defence spending league since 2012, according to SIPRI, a think-tank—putting it behind France, Saudi Arabia, Russia, China and America. But in truth, its relative military decline has been less dramatic than the country’s diminished appetite to be a leading security player on the world stage. The hangover from what are perceived to have been costly and unsuccessful campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan and a sour, introspective national mood, reflected in a Commons defeat for the government in August 2013 over action in Syria, has made the political establishment fearful of making the case for what the chief of the defence staff, General Sir Nick Houghton, in a speech before Christmas, described as “a grander role, a greater ambition, a place beyond the ordinary…a nation which has values as well as interests, and which considers it has a leadership role in the world”.

Sir Nick may be closer to public sentiment than the politicians. Two weeks ago an annual poll on British attitudes towards international priorities conducted for Chatham House, another think-tank, found that nearly two-thirds of both the general public and “opinion-formers” wanted their country to aspire to be a great power and not accept decline—the highest level since the first survey in 2010.

To be fair, Britain is quietly pulling its weight as part of NATO’s efforts to reassure members in eastern Europe who feel threatened by Vladimir Putin’s irredentist Russia. In 2017 it will be the lead nation for the alliance’s new 5,000-strong rapidly deployable spearhead force. Another good sign is the growing number of joint projects stemming from the Anglo-French defence treaty of 2010, which recognised a shared interest in still wanting to play a global role with reduced means. Money has been saved on testing nuclear weapons, developing an unmanned combat aircraft and producing a new anti-ship missile.

The Conservative-led coalition can also claim success in dealing with the Ministry of Defence’s overheated equipment budget, closing a £45.6 billion ($69 billion) hole left by the previous, Labour, government. It committed itself in 2012 to funding a ten-year £159 billion equipment programme that includes two aircraft-carriers, a modernised air-transport fleet, more battlefield helicopters, new attack submarines and destroyers. If the plan sticks, Britain will have smaller but still highly capable armed forces.

That, however, is a big “if”. The ministry’s Future Force 2020, of which the equipment programme is part, requires spending increases of 1-2% a year in real terms from 2015. A new Strategic Defence and Security Review must be completed by the next government later this year—work on it has stopped because of the general election in May. If Mr Cameron is re-elected, defence will probably have to take at least some of the pain coming from the second stage of the government’s austerity programme. That requires departments that are not protected (as health is, for example) to cut day-to-day spending from £147 billion this year to £86 billion by 2020.

That would mean Britain fails to meet its NATO commitment to spend at least 2% of GDP on defence, despite Mr Cameron again pledging to do so at the alliance summit he hosted in Wales only in September. On a visit to Washington last month, Mr Cameron was left in no doubt that Britain’s influence would wane significantly if defence spending fell further. Should Labour win power, defence will rank even further down its list of priorities.

Sir Nick worries that Britain no longer has a clear idea of what its armed forces are for. That imperils their future. In the same speech last year, he said: “We need to move on from viewing them with a mixture of sympathy and adoration; we need better understanding of their silent utility as the country’s risk managers of last resort.” Amid the campaign cacophony of competing retail offerings to voters, that message is unlikely to be heard.