Why Britain needn’t be more like Belgium

On Monday, Britain’s coalition government released its National Security Strategy, A Strong Britain in an Age of Uncertainty. On Tuesday, it released its Strategic Defense and Security Review, Securing Britain in an Age of Uncertainty. On Wednesday, it announced around $130 billion in government spending cuts over the next five years, the most severe cuts in government spending since World War II.

The National Security Strategy is a well-crafted document — one that articulates enduring interests, identifies and evaluates risks, and sets clear priorities. In the process, Britain’s new National Security Council examined a range of potential contingencies and decided that the gravest threats facing Britain are those posed by terrorism, cyber warfare, foreign military crises, and natural disasters.

Prime Minister David Cameron’s government is to be commended for cutting government spending to rein in Britain’s ballooning deficit. However, the British experience provides a cautionary tale of how social spending can crowd out defense. Cameron’s campaign pledge to fence off Britain’s hugely expensive and inefficient National Health Service (NHS) meant that other parts of the government, including the armed forces, were forced to bear the brunt of cuts. As a consequence, 42,000 British servicemen and defense civilians will lose their jobs so that thousands of NHS bureaucrats can keep theirs.

As severe as the cuts are, they could have been worse — and still could be. Defense received an eight percent cut, while other parts of the British government were slashed by as much as 25 percent. Although the Royal Navy will scrap its flagship aircraft carrier and forfeit the ability to launch aircraft from sea until at least the end of the decade, Britain will launch a new carrier, one that will be equipped with a catapult to allow it to launch the naval variant of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. If Britain follows through with the plan, it will acquire a carrier that is more interoperable with the U.S. Navy than its current carrier. The Cameron government also committed itself to modernizing Britain’s sea-based nuclear deterrent, but will reduce the number of launch tubes on the submarines as well as the number of warheads they will carry.

Still, one can’t help but feel that the National Security Strategy and Strategic Defense and Security Review (SDSR) are further evidence of a diminution of Britain’s role. They represent but the most recent sign of the Europeanization of Britain — the emergence of a Britain that not only focuses closer to home, but also one that increasingly emulates Continental habits.

The SDSR notes that even with the cuts in the British defense budget, Britain will still meet NATO’s target of devoting two percent of GNP to defense. That Britain now judges itself by that standard is disconcerting; Britain is, or should be, more than a super-sized Belgium.