The opening salvo in the annual game of Treasury brinkmanship began today with the Chancellor hinting at Tax Cuts and NATO warning about a Russian invasion. The scaremongering headline that governments are falling behind in their war preparations is designed to pre-empt the “behind-doors” arguments about cuts to the Defence Budget that will need to be made, in order to find the financial headroom for tax cuts. But where is the analysis that led the Head of the NATO Military Committee to liken the current situation to the 1930s when appeasement was at its height?
In 2001, before 9/11, the UK established a concepts and doctrine centre at Shrivenham that was charged with looking thirty years ahead to inform force development and the ten-year procurement of suitable equipment. I was in the original team that moved into the Alanbrooke Centre and used to teach MA students about the process of future-gazing across seven dimensions (Physical, Social, Science and Tech, Economic, Legal, Political and Military). This work was led brilliantly by a civil servant and included input from a huge array of subject matter experts. There was no other government department formally doing this and the results, known as Global Strategic Trends, were used widely in Britain and also fed into many NATO committees. It continues to be routinely updated and even has its own wikipedia page.
As we approach the second anniversary of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, the latest analysis from the Alanbrooke Centre has led NATO to become even more pessimistic about the future. That is not to say that we have to stock our larders in case there is a Russian invasion of Britain this year, but it does mean that the Ministers charged with our protection must fund a civil-military organisation that prepares the country for the worst case scenario in the next decade.
Russian Threat
Rupert Wieloch 