The UK’s new government is looking for ways to be stronger abroad, but is that any way to build a more secure country and society? Diana Francis argues that the government will make things worse by pushing for military dominance and failing to address the climate and ecological emergency that threatens us all.
Days after the July 2024 general election, Prime Minister Keir Starmer launched yet another Strategic Defence Review (SDR), announcing that its objective was to make Britain “secure at home and strong abroad for decades to come”.
Presumably, when related to national ‘defence’, ‘secure at home’, means being safe from attacks, chiefly military, from outside. However, to most of us living in the UK, ‘secure at home’ would suggest having a home to live in, enough money to keep warm and pay the bills, safe streets, kind neighbours, good hospitals and protection ready for future pandemics. For some of us, security would also include freedom from fear of climate catastrophe or a global nuclear conflagration. In introducing the government’s review, however, the word ‘secure’ implies, primarily, the military capacity and preparedness to repel an invasion, which is probably the last thing that is currently preying on the minds of most UK citizens.
Strength abroad
‘Strong abroad’ is wide open to interpretation. Does it refer to strength of a kind that works for the good of others around the world, saving lives, for instance, rather than destroying them? Now that it is increasingly recognised that we are all interdependent, not only within our own species but with all others – and with the earth itself and its atmosphere – surely all must be taken into account. It is not any government’s responsibility to ‘look big’ on the world stage but surely it is its duty to be thoughtful, to recognise the humanity of all people and, while meeting the fundamental needs of its own citizens, to contribute to the wellbeing of our planet and all its occupants. However, that would require a very different use of the word ‘strong’ from the one I assume is intended here, which has a macho flavour to it: a sense of ‘power over’ others.
Down the ages, countless people have lived through times of crisis, often with far fewer resources. Now, however, the twin crises of war and the climate and ecological emergency (CEE) threaten the future of all life on our planet. At a time of unprecedented floods and fires in our own continent, disasters elsewhere go from bad to worse. And, as if those man-made disasters were not catastrophic enough, we hear and watch every day the horrifying news of the ongoing wars in Ukraine and Palestine/Israel – now spread to Lebanon, Syria, Iran, Yemen and Russia itself – while the devastating civil wars in Sudan, Myanmar, the Sahel and a myriad of other, less ‘strategic’ places are barely reported.
Nonetheless, Keir Starmer’s approach to ‘strong abroad’ seems set to be very similar to that of our last government and many before it: to adhere to the longstanding ‘us versus them’ model of international relations, with growing animosity towards China, closeness to the United States and, ever closer alignment with Europe in defence matters. It also means a commitment to raising UK military spending to the full 2.5% of GDP, while leaving many UK families reliant on food- banks and pensioners afraid of their fuel bills.
‘Strong abroad’ means preferring escalation to negotiation, while Ukrainians and Russians die and the threat of nuclear war increases. It has also meant continuing to supply almost all the usual weapons to Israel during its utter devastation of Gaza, the great proportion of whose people are now homeless, bereaved, incapacitated or dead. It has meant failing to take a lead in putting enough pressure on the United States to use its power and influence to achieve a ceasefire, to stop the killing, obtain the release of remaining hostages, and prevent the war from spreading.
The wars afflicting people in countries not seen as strategic do not of course appear on our government’s menu for ‘strength abroad’. Nor is concern for the wellbeing of the poor world evident in the level of overseas aid being spent currently, now shamefully low at 0.5% of GNI per annum (of which over one-quarter of that is being used in the UK to pay the bills for housing refugees).
Two routes to extinction
As if all that were not bad enough, the PM and his climate minister show no sign of understanding that war and climate change, both of which could lead to human extinction (or something close to it), drive each other. This is despite the recent ‘Peace and Climate Justice’ protests around the world. That word ‘justice’ is important, speaking of the current injustice that the rich world, which does most to speed up global temperatures, has until now suffered the least from its impact, while poor countries suffer most and lack the wherewithal to recover, protect themselves or adapt. It is to be hoped that the recent experience of floods and fires across Europe will raise awareness of their impact and increase the level of empathy and financial solidarity here in the UK.
Even beyond that, it is essential that our government recognises, and reflects in the current ‘Defence’ Review, is that global carbon emissions from military activity of all kinds, even before wars begin, account for 5.5% of all such emissions. Moreover the resources, financial and otherwise, of sustaining this global incubus, ‘steals limited resources urgently needed for addressing the climate and ecological emergency’.
Once wars do start, it is hard to imagine the extent of the damage, in terms not only of human suffering and death but of carbon emissions and other environmental harm: the endless cycles of weapons supply, from materials extraction to manufacture and delivery, then their use, causing destruction of land and wildlife, buildings and infrastructure; then the eventual cost of rebuilding, with the massive use of concrete.
Moreover, as the Conflict and Environment Observatory reported in 2020, ‘Climate change and ecological destruction increase the risk of conflict [war] by damaging economies, disrupting agriculture, and increasing competition for resources’.
Scientists for Global Responsibility argue that there is no good reason for the UK’s military spending to be increased, even from a military perspective. Decisions taken during the 2021 Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy, including committing more forces to the far-off ‘Indo-Pacific’ region and the astonishing increase of 44% in the UK’s stockpile of nuclear warheads have only tended to increase unnecessary commitments and costs. Is this the model of being ‘strong abroad’ which our new government wants to pursue? Will it really ‘defend’ our islands?
Climate change and the loss of biodiversity are the real and present danger to life at home and abroad, and they cannot be addressed militarily. Moreover, while the threat of nuclear confrontation may seem to have faded over the years, the danger has not. It is all too present in the Ukraine war and, more latently in the increasingly hot war between nuclear-armed Israel and nuclear-aspirant Iran.
Cooperation in place of domination
The assumption that power requires domination, via the sabre-rattling, fighting and carnage of militarism, has cost the world dear. What is needed now is a measure of humility and much profound thought. The currently prevailing model of International Relations is antagonistic and destructive. It must be replaced with a cooperative one, grounded in the recognition that humanity is on the brink. It will require a greatly expanded supply of skilled diplomats, focussed on honest communication and motivated by a shared recognition of our fundamental interdependence. If those diplomats are able to open their minds, listen to and understand one another, then focus together on humanity’s desperate plight, then cooperation will become a real option – if only in the nick of time. Resources for global rescue and carbon reduction will need to be contributed to the maximum, according to countries’ widely varying capacity, with the suspension of all military spending, paving the way for an agreed process of global disarmament. Then perhaps our world will have the chance of a future – and a better one.
Is that just a fantasy, or the beginnings of a necessary vision for the kind of profound change that could yet steer us away from global catastrophe? It is hard to have hope for the seemingly inevitable content of the current Defence Review but we can and must begin now to prepare the ground for the next: to persuade all those who recognise the need for a new vision to join in the process of its creation, while constantly reaching more people.
As Marge Piercy wrote:
It goes on one at a time,
it starts when you care
to act, it starts when you do
it again and they said no,
it starts when you say We
and know who you mean,
and each day you mean one more.
The views and opinions expressed in posts on the Rethinking Security blog are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the position of the network and its broader membership.
Image Credit: US Intermountain Forest Service, via Flickr. Night Firefighters, Rocky Mountains, September 2017.
Please let us abandon the aircraft carriers! The slightest war will see them sunk.
Good on yer Diana!