Scrap the behemoths?
Published on by James Rogers
In recent weeks, various commentators, academics and analysts have been busily arguing for various things to be included in Britain’s upcoming strategic defence and security review. Some of these interventions have been interesting, focussed and well-reasoned. Both Chatham House and the Royal United Services Institute have been running a series of lectures and articles putting forward various options for the new coalition government to consider.
Other interventions have been decidedly less helpful. On Friday, Sir Max Hastings, author of several works on military history, called for the scrapping of both Britain’s aircraft carrier construction programme and its sea-based nuclear weapons system. Two new 65,000 tonne ‘pocket supercarriers’ are due to be brought into service in 2016 and 2018, respectively. Over three times the size of Britain’s current aircraft carriers, these vessels will be by far the most formidable warships ever put to sea by a European navy; their only competitors will be the American Nimitz supercarriers. Confirmed to be named HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales, Britain’s two new behemoths will enable London to project overwhelming power into any region within range of their onboard air squadron, which will bring approximately seventy percent of the world’s population within reach. They will also improve Britain’s ability to engage in ‘coercive diplomacy’ (what was once known as ‘gunboat diplomacy’) and provide an integrated platform for overseas crisis and disaster response, if required.
But according to Sir Max, aircraft carriers and sea-based nuclear deterrents are unnecessary; Britain is unlikely to face any conventional – that is, State-based – enemy; and the armed forces should be radically re-calibrated to fight only Islamist terrorists and other non-State actors.
This view, not without its merits, has gained increasing traction in recent years, especially since the globalisation hysteria of the 1990s. The argument goes: war and conflict between the great powers is effectively over. Interdependence and democratisation have greatly increased the likely economic and political cost of war, which is further compounded by the fact that there is currently no country strong enough to directly challenge the military reach and wherewithal of North America and Western Europe (or, more precisely, the Americans, British and French). Anyone foolish enough to do so will be struck down fast. The evidence? Britain decisively crushed Argentina’s junta in 1982. Iraq’s Ba’athists were thoroughly quashed in 1991 and 2003 by two different Anglo-American led coalitions. Serbia was undone in 1999 when Slobodan Milosevic initiated genocidal policies in Kosovo. And the Ivory Coast lost its entire airforce in a few hours in November 2004 when its president challenged France.
Further, larger countries, such as China and Russia, while sometimes a nuisance, are still a long way from reaching parity, particularly with the United States. Insofar as they have harmed Europeans or Americans, they have done so using underhand methods, such as industrial espionage, cyber attacks and poisonings, which are better dealt with using effective intelligence agencies than expensive weapons programmes. Meanwhile, the threat from Islamist terrorism is still very real, and this too is increasingly more of an internal threat than an external challenge.
Yet there are several reasons to suggest that Britain still needs its behemoths:
- The argument that interdependence and democratisation have reduced the likelihood of great power conflict looks very different if we enlarge the context. The world has been getting more interconnected over the past five-hundred years, yet each century has been bloodier than the last. Therefore, it is not unreasonable to assert that the peace between the great powers since 1945 has less to do with interdependence and democratisation, and more to do with the rise of American, British and French power – both spatial and temporal – on a planetary scale. More abstractly: order is not natural; it has to be imposed by a central authority and carefully backed up with an iron fist. The key question, then, is what will happen if European and American power wanes relative to countries like China, India and Brazil, as is currently projected? Given that aircraft carriers and nuclear weapons are a long term investment that cannot be rustled up overnight, and given that other countries are busily building them, surely it makes sense for a country like the United Kingdom, entirely dependent on the sea for its imports and exports, to have them?
- Sir Max states that it is ‘incredible’ that Britain would use its nuclear weapons to threaten (or deter) countries like Russia and China. Is it? What the world will look like in 2040 or 2050 is impossible to know. In 1900, when the British and French empires seemed almost eternal, few would have foreseen their collapse in less than fifty years. Equally, few people foresaw the demise of Soviet Russia in 1980, and fewer still the full consequences of 11th September 2001, even a year after the event itself. In short: the future is full of surprises and we should be careful not to replace careful calculation with hope. For it is surely the case that countries with international duties to uphold and obligations to discharge must retain the tools of power? Nuclear weapons are proven to deter and aircraft carriers are unlikely to be replaced by anything better – even a new generation of advanced unmanned combat aircraft will need versatile maritime platforms off which to operate.
- Economically, contrary to the claims of people like Sir Max, a country as wealthy as the United Kingdom can afford to build large aircraft carriers. First, there is little to be gained by cancelling the current vessels and building something smaller, except a whopping fine for breaking the contract with the coalition of shipbuilders constructing the vessels. After all, aircraft carriers become cheaper to operate the larger they get relative to the desired military and political impact they can be deployed to achieve. Second, the cost of these vessels, or the nuclear deterrent, is minimal, insofar as this should be the overriding factor. The cost of the two carriers, including their air squadrons, is around £15 billion (€17.8 billion), and they are projected to last for thirty or more years. Likewise, the nuclear deterrent is planned to cost approximately £20 billion (€23.8 billion) and will last for a similar period of time. Is £1.2 billion (€1.4 billion) per year so expensive for a country with an annual national income of £1.7 trillion (€2 trillion)? That is less than 0.05% per year of Britain’s gross domestic product! This debate therefore has little to do with cost, and everything to do with political priorities.
To scrap Britain’s behemoths – the aircraft carriers or its nuclear weapons system – would reduce both the country’s national power and its options during any potential future crises. As an island, the United Kingdom can be nothing other than a seapower: pruning it of its two greatest military assets would be tantamount to selling future generations down the river. What is more, these behemoths could form the centrepiece of a greatly enhanced Common Security and Defence Policy, which means that their cancellation could have far wider ramifications.
• Image: Royal Navy
You are correct in your assumption that Britain can afford the two carriers, but as Lord Guthrie has stated: ‘One way you won’t get a large fleet is if you have aircraft carriers.’ Britain needs a large fleet, as we see the Royal Navy facing overstretch, even though its frigates are everywhere, fighting pirates, drug smugglers, defending the Falklands, working with allies. A small fleet greatly reduces this capability, as we see the continued selling off of still useful warships, and the ongoing decline of numbers.
Your statement ‘To scrap Britain’s behemoths…would reduce both the country’s national power and its options during any potential future crises’ also bears scrutiny, since depending on aircraft carries only locks you in a traditional conventional mode where you can either respond with overwhelming force or do nothing. As we currently see with the impressive and very expensive American carrier force off Korea, it does send a message, but will it really change matters or make difference for all the cost and bluster?
Also, nothing proves national power so much as presence, but if you have no ships, how can you be seen? Recalling that no matter how capable a warship is, it can’t magically reproduce itself, and sail in more places than once.
Thank you for your comment. In response, I’d argue that Britain’s military budget needs to be increased. It is currently at its lowest level as a percentage of gross domestic product since 1930, at approximately 2.3% (and, incidentally, while Britain has been fighting two medium-sized conflicts overseas). The United Kingdom can afford aircraft carriers and a larger fleet; it’s not an economic case of choosing between carriers or surface combatants or submarines, but a political one.
I’d also take issue with your statement that having aircraft carriers locks one into a conventional response, not least because I don’t really understand what people mean when they talk about ‘conventional’ versus ‘new’, or whatever. If anything, we’ve moved back into the past, where we face a mix of threats, which involve the ability to deter powerful countries, as well as undertake what were once known (at least in Britain) as imperial policing duties, i.e. small wars, combating irregular forces, and the like. Either way, the aircraft carrier has a role: it has been used in every conflict Britain has been engaged in since the end of the Cold War, even in Afghanistan.
New technologies may one day render large aircraft carriers redundant, much like they rendered battleships obsolete. But that time has not yet come. In the meantime, a country like the United Kingdom has no alternative other than maintaining a navy with deep oceanic power projection. Without this ability, Britain would have been wholly unable to get involved in every major conflict it has fought in since the end of the Second World War.
I took time to read your post and I must convey that you have asked some good questions on the aircraft carriers. I would go a little bit further. Some days ago, on Youtube, I listened (again) to the Last Night of the Proms, more precisely to ‘Rule Britannia’.
After having been the world’s superpower before the United States, the United Kingdom seems to have accepted a sort of decline; it might renounce the aircraft carriers, thus becoming only a regional power. However, it seems that the public is not ready to accept it and still refuses to turn towards the continent to try and get some new levers of influence. I would sincerely think that the United Kingdom is living a sort of strategic schizophrenia.
‘Britain is a wealthy country and can afford aircraft carriers’ and ‘the military budget needs to be increased’. I wonder, James, whether you have realised that Britain is currently on track to sack a large number of public sector workers to balance the budget – the billions of cuts are statistically certain to cost lives at home through illness and crime. The defence budget is already structurally in deficit – even without these cuts. Current projection are twenty percent plus for defence – this is both inevitable and overdue. I agree with Max Hastings that you cannot achieve these kinds of cut by just cutting everywhere, some big ticket items need to go – i.e. Trident and the aircraft carriers are justifiably on the line as the most expensive items, which contribute least to the most probable risks. You can always conjure up worst-case scenario in which you could use either Trident or aircraft carriers, but defence spending should be focussed on an assessment of the most probably and salient risks – not the most unlikely. Please also mention that Trident is projected to cost at least £70 billion over its lifetime not £20 billion if you consider its running costs. It is misleading to just look at the procurement costs, which are overoptimistic anyway given the well-known cost overrun on such projects. Time for some financial realism please.
Christoph: I’m afraid I cannot agree. Even if we include the running costs – which I never intentionally excluded – the cost of these systems would still be negligible. Even if we said that the equipment and the running costs amounted to £150 billion over its lifetime (approximately thirty years) for both Trident and the aircraft carriers, this would still only amount to £5 billion per year – a paltry amount of Britain’s gross national income. Indeed, this would be a mere 0.3% based on a static yearly income of £1.7 trillion. So I maintain that those who make the argument that these critical pieces of military infrastructure should be scrapped have another agenda. Quite simply, if the aircraft carriers – in particular – are scrapped, Britain will cease to be able to do anything of military consequence in the future. The Falklands and other British territories would become immediately indefensible; Britain’s ability to deter would be immediately reduced; and indeed, Britain would no longer be in a position to even provide the infrastructure to make peacekeeping or peace enforcing missions possible, for these also (more often than not) require aircraft carriers.
James: Whether a particular item of public expenditure is affordable or not cannot be measured in relation to a country’s gross national income. Everyting appears small in relation to that figure, but this does not give you sense of the efficiency and effectiveness of a given item as compared to alternative uses of the same resources. Otherwise, you could just as easily say that the police should replace its whole fleet with bullet-proof mercedes-benz cars and porsches. This would probably save one or two lives over a couple of years and catch some more criminals, but both experts and the public would justifiable criticise this as inefficient use of tax payers money – even if it amounted to just 0.001 percent of gross national product.
It would be much more meaningful to look at the share of the costs of Trident and the aircraft carrier in relation to the country’s current defence budget, which was £35 billion in 2009/2010. So you can easily see that Trident and aircraft carriers combined will account for hefty chunk of UK defence spending – even without taking into account that the budget is already in deficit by at least £6 billion (public accounts committee) and can be expected to shrink – not grow in the next years. In this situation it would be much wiser to spend the money on equipment and personnel that are actually useful to most likely operations that Britain is and will be engaging in – helicopters, armoured vehicles, training and pay of specialists relevant to stabilisation and reconstructing missions etc. The argument that you need aircraft carriers with fighter-jets for modern peace-keeping or peace enforcement operation is hardly convincing if you look at the bulk of the missions conducted over the last fifteen years. Fighter-jets are not terribly helpful in most scenarios where civilian casualties need to be avoided and other forms of air-support are more cheaply provided from bases within the country or neighbouring countries. Neither do I find the argument about deterrrence convincing – deterrence against whom or what? And is it not conceivable that offensive weapon system generally create more enemies than they deter? If I look at the language you use about ‘coercive diplomacy’ and bringing ‘overwhelming power into any region within range of their onboard air squadron, which will bring approximately seventy percent of the world’s population within reach’ – I wonder whether this attitude will really make Britain friends.
Christoph: Thank you for your response, but again, I disagree, and I don’t think we are going to agree on this matter! As far as I’m concerned, the military’s role is to do three things (and in the following order): (1) to uphold Britain’s international standing and support its foreign policy; (2) protect British citizens from harm overseas; (3) defend the country from internal and external threats and challenges, from flooding and mudslides, to terrorists and enemy forces. I also think that upholding military power should be the main priority of government, for nothing else can function internally without the ability to protect and sustain national sovereignty. In short: the military budget has fallen to a level that is too low for a country like Britain with its numerous national and international obligations and responsibilities. If our military strength – and particularly our naval strength – declines, our economic and political power will decline with it.
So, I think, by drawing attention to the military budget, that you have just confirmed my claim that this is a political matter and not an economic one. Military budgets are not objective: they are set politically and can be reduced and increased as the need dictates (this ‘need’ also being a matter of political judgment). The point, therefore, is not that Britain cannot afford to fund important pieces of military infrastructure, because it can. Equally, the point is not that it has been trying to do too much with too little (with the implication that it should do less). The point is that it has not been funding its military adequately. While Britain has been fighting numerous small wars (in Afghanistan, Iraq, Sierra Leone, Kosovo) the previous government failed to increase defence spending, or even to maintain it at a level matching that – relatively – of 1997. And this occurred while Britain’s economic output almost doubled during the same period and when all other areas of government spending increased, in some cases, dramatically. I also say this as a card-carrying member of the Labour Party, so I’m not trying to make a cheap point in support of the Conservatives, as their record on defence is even worse.
China, Australia, Spain, Italy, and Japan are all building or have recently built aircraft carriers (or ‘projection vessels’ with the means to launch aircraft). Even India, hardly an economic powerhouse, is currently planning to build three very large carriers, in order to spread its wings across the ocean bearing its name. All of these countries (bar Japan) are considerably smaller than Britain economically and all have a far smaller military expenditure. If they can afford such vessels, so can the United Kingdom. Carriers are an essential piece of military equipment and I’m not altogether sure how you can assert that Britain has not needed them over the past fifteen years: they have been used extensively during the operations in Kosovo, Sierra Leone, Afghanistan and Iraq missions. Indeed, the operation in Sierra Leone would not have even been possible without them. Both HMS Illustrious and HMS Ocean were deployed in that particular operation to provide offensive air support, move troops and gather intelligence (incidentally, with their onboard helicopters), as well as supply that all-important psychological ‘presence’ for British forces in theatre, the Sierra Leonean government and the native population alike. Equally, carriers have also been deployed to support Britain’s allies and confirm London’s support for their sovereignty, as well as to provide aid and assistance during foreign wars and natural disasters (examples include the deployment of HMS Illustrious to the Baltic Sea in 2007 to take part in military exercises and assert Britain’s support of NATO’s eastern members, namely Estonia, and the deployment of the same vessel to evacuate Europeans from Lebanon in 2006). And all this is excluding the simple fact that Britain’s most important military operation since WWII – ousting the Argentine junta from British territory in 1982 – would have been utterly impossible without them. Britain has thirteen similar overseas territories, which also need protecting.
You say: ‘Neither do I find the argument about deterrence convincing – deterrence against whom or what? And is it not conceivable that offensive weapon system generally create more enemies than they deter?’ I would respond: the point of deterrence, much like a good castle in mediaeval times, is not to deter a specific enemy, but to retain a level of power so great that nobody will ever think of becoming your enemy. The Anglo-French-American triumvirate, which underpins Western power, still, just about, provides that, as it has for the past twenty years (and as it deterred a direct enemy – Soviet Russia – for forty years prior to that). As such, I do not believe that offensive weapons systems ‘create’ enemies; far from it, I think such systems reduce enemies. Had Britain reaffirmed its commitment to the Falklands in the early 1980s by sending a destroyer into the region rather than making noises about withdrawing HMS Endurance; and had Britain been more decisive in the mid-1990s in the face of Milosevic’s aggression in the former Yugoslavia; or indeed, had British leaders not listened to those well-meaning but nevertheless naïve people, who in the 1920s and 1930s, promised a better world with disarmament and internationalism, then history would probably have been very different.
Thank you, James, for taking the time and effort to respond in detail.
I think the first paragraph makes quite clear that we have fundamentally different views of what the primary purpose of British defence and foreign policy should be and how to handle the issue of limited resources and competing priorities.
Christoph: Many thanks for taking the time to leave some comments – they are always welcome!
A very good post. It strikes me that if Britain is to have an independent military capability with power projection at all, it would be wiser to keep the carriers than to scrap them. Even if we are to assume that the postmodern conflicts/”small wars” type operations are the so-called “foreseeable future” of British military operations, carriers are still incredibly useful tools for carrying that out, as you note. Without them, Britain is essentially tied to the United States (or perhaps France?) and local/host nation capabilities for staging aircraft and protecting SLOCs. While I am an American, I would not assume that British and US interests will always coincide in the decades ahead (and any decision about carriers requires a multi-decade strategic context), particularly since the US is contemplating its own strategic and material retrenchment.
It is also worth considering that the “small wars” which make carriers “obsolete” are actually the product of the military superiority conventional systems like carriers grant Western powers, allowing then to deter conventional war and even the conquest that historically has turned small wars/failed state issues into regional conflicts. But really, as recent political science work has demonstrated, part of the reason these small wars and weak states are proliferating is because the absence of conventional conflict has reinforced the geopolitical conditions under which regimes can allow their states to “fail” without fear of invasion. In other words, to the extent that we choose to sacrifice the ability of Western militaries to conduct conventional wars in order to bolster their irregular warfare capabilities, we open the door for problems graver for the international system than the small wars we set out to address.
It also strikes me that without an robust independent power projection capability or a nuclear deterrent capability, what credibility would Britain really have in its permanent seating on the UN Security Council, particularly when, say, India will have active carriers, a nuclear deterrent, and extremely active contribution to UN peacekeeping missions…
Interesting piece! You are probably right that the United Kingdom could afford all that, even though Conservative governemtns do not like Keynesian policies to boost the economy and are keener to spending cuts instead.
As far as military force is concerned, I think a major issue is not spending ‘per se’, but interoperability and actual capacity. I wonder whether a rationalisation of resources among major European Union countries would not give better results?
According to SIRPI (2010 estimates – in billion US$), France spent 63.9, United Kingdom 58.3, Germany 45.6, Italy 35.8 and Spain 18.3.
This means that these five countries totalled US$221.9 billion, which is a bit more than one third of United States expenditure (US$661 billion). I believe that a priority should be to co-ordinate the use of this budget to enhance the overall effectiveness of our military forces, and to reduce wastes and duplications at European level.
Pietro: Yes, I quite agree. That I what I was alluding to at the end. I think we would be much better off in every way if we pooled our resources and developed standardised military equipment. I also think we would be better off if key military infrastructure was maintained at the European level, with every Member State helping to fund it. All the wasteful armies could be dispensed with: we have almost 1.2 million soldiers between us and we could probably get rid of half of those and invest the money into weapons and pieces of equipment that we could actually use to improve our global standing and national (European) security. ‘Big ticket’ items like aircraft carriers, submarines and, indeed, the nuclear weapons system, should also be maintained at the European level and put to service in defence of the European interest.
Will it ever happen? I’m not sure: an unholy alliance between nationalists and pacifists is developing – the former don’t want their respective countries to give up such a key component of national sovereignty; while the latter don’t want the European Union to be able to protect itself, deluded as they are that everyone will be nice to us if we are nice to them.