The expansion of the UK’s defence budget- Injecting tangible clarity to Britain’s post-Brexit vision but at the risk of breadth over depth
The UK government has announced an extra £16.5 billion in spending over four years for Britain’s defence budget (Ryan Browne, 2020). It is the biggest expansion since the Cold War as Prime Minister Boris Johnson pledged to end “Britain’s era of retreat” (Alex Wickham, 2020).
The extra spending is intended to upgrade Britain’s ‘full-spectrum’ capability, particularly with an eye to protecting underwater infrastructure and shipping lanes (Boris Johnson, 2020), while supporting the creation of new government agencies for Artificial Intelligence, Cyber Security and a UK Space Command capable of domestic rocket launches by 2022 (Ryan Browne, 2020).
This expanded focus compliments the UK’s increasing Arctic presence initiated by concerns that China and Russia are seeking to “dominate” the strategically and potentially economically important region (Tom Cotterill, 2020). Concurrently it also heeds the warnings of the RAF’s head who highlights the growing importance of space as an increasingly decisive war-fighting and security domain (Helen Warrell, 2020).
Overall, this investment indicates what a post-Brexit ‘Global Britain’ looks like in tangible terms. Despite an economy reeling from Covid-19 (Patrick Daly, 2020), significant focus is still given to ramping up Britain’s global presence on a hard power basis, in a way which also provides new domestic jobs (BBC, 2020), and is complimented by the reorientation of UK soft power through a national interest-focused (Steven Brown, 2020), though potentially diminished (BBC, 2020), foreign aid budget.
However, there is a very real risk that Britain is in danger of over-stretching its armed forces. While the funding boost is considerable, it is predominantly geared towards new fronts and capabilities, which in the long term will require significant upkeep. This at a time when the “core” elements of the armed forces are struggling to fund needed modernization and capability upgrades (Helen Warrell, 2020). It is distinctly possible that the funding deployed along current lines see’s the military’s breadth of responsibility widened, but its actual ability to efficiently and capably tackle these areas becomes much diminished.
London likely wishes to appear globally assertive, competitive, and engaged post-Brexit in an increasingly fluid multi-polar landscape. The concentration on new fields of defence is part of “Global Britain’s” drive to be a dynamic and modern nation, able to not just stand on its own two feet but provide value to partners. This element is also a pitch from London to ease any tensions with an incoming Biden administration (Charlie Cooper, 2020) by highlighting Britain’s capacity as NATO’s second largest spender. The reality though might be an already stretched UK military, with multiple competing funding needs is simply stretched further still, with the breadth of responsibility being there, but not the depth of actual capacity.