As the chair of the International Relations and Defence Committee, I am forever advocating better co-ordination and consistency between Britain’s international departments. The announcement of an Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy back in February 2020 was therefore very welcome news. But after a series of promises as to what would be included, and delays to publication, it was perhaps inevitable that the document would sag under the weight of expectations.
The first issue is what is missing. ‘Development’ makes it into the document’s title, but a vision for this essential component of Britain’s international engagement is otherwise absent.
The decision to merge the Department for International Development with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office pre-empted the review, as did the decision to break the UK’s statutory commitment to spend 0.7 per cent of gross national income on official development assistance.
The prime minister’s foreword merely repeats his ‘commitment’ to return to 0.7 per cent ‘when the fiscal situation allows’, language on which I have pressed the foreign secretary for more clarity to no avail. The document asserts that Britain will ‘remain a world-leading international development donor’, with no acknowledgement of the impact of a precipitous drop in the aid budget, and no strategy for mitigating the impact of this decision. It commits to use official development assistance ‘more strategically’, an implicit criticism of past policy which sheds little light on a new approach.
The second issue is prioritization, or lack thereof. The document covers a laundry list of issues, some highly pertinent – challenges to the multinational order and how Britain should engage with China and some less obviously central to the topic – such as a ‘ten-point plan for a green industrial revolution’. Announcements are presented in a seemingly scattergun manner, with a lack of narrative thread. If its intention was to provide a clear statement of the government’s international strategy, and how it will be funded, it falls short.
A third issue, flowing from this, is consistency. The ‘tilt’ to the Indo-Pacific was heavily briefed before publication, and this term is peppered through the report. But the Integrated Review’s analysis identifies not China but Russia as ‘the most acute direct threat to the UK’. One might assume that a concerted commitment to boost resourcing for Euro-Atlantic security would follow. And that Britain’s partners in Europe would be front and centre of the UK’s international strategy.
Increasing UK’s nuclear stockpile
While some standard lines on support for Nato and European partners are there, the Review offers little on the vital importance of working alongside the countries with which we share a neighbourhood – like-minded countries with whom we have worked for decades – in the government’s rush for the Indo-Pacific and new partners farther afield.
A fourth issue is the decision, presented without a proper rationale, to increase the UK’s nuclear stockpile. There could hardly be a less opportune moment – just months before the Review Conference of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) – for Britain to backtrack on disarmament, one of the three pillars of the treaty.
This decision, which has significant ramifications for our NPT commitments, comes just months after non-nuclear weapon states, frustrated with the slow pace of disarmament, ratified the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. If there is a plausible rationale to increase Britain’s stockpile, perhaps based on maintaining the credibility of its nuclear deterrent, then it is incumbent on the government to make that case. No such attempt has been made.
The decision undermines Britain’s record on disarmament – which I presented to the last NPT Review Conference in 2015, as then minister of state at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. The decision also undermines Britain’s leverage to encourage other nuclear weapon states to exercise restraint in their modernization programmes.
As worrying is the accompanying decision to reduce Britain’s transparency on its nuclear weapons stockpile. The government will no longer provide public figures for its operational stockpile, deployed warhead or deployed missile numbers.
The brief justification provided in the document, ‘the changing security and technological environment’ is not good enough. It will make it harder to monitor the size of the UK’s nuclear stockpile and harder to scrutinize its commitments on disarmament. It is a clear step backwards on transparency.
Within the Integrated Review’s pages there is some valuable analysis and insight. But ultimately, it overpromises and under-delivers.
It describes the global environment Britain faces, without prioritizing the government’s interests and ambitions. It fails to acknowledge that Britain must cut its cloak according to its cloth, focus on its principal threats and challenges, and work closely with its traditional allies.
Meanwhile, the government seems unwilling or unable to recognize that its decision to cut the aid budget significantly damages Britain’s reputation and soft power.
Let us hope that more detailed plans which should surely flow from the publication of the Integrated Review will focus better on prioritization and resourcing to deliver the government’s ambitions for a ‘Global Britain’.