Title

Can Britain afford to punch above its weight in world affairs? First off the blocks, the Commons Defence Select Committee went straight for the jugular with a study that questioned whether the coalition's 2010 strategic and security review was concerned with anything but deficit reduction. ‘We found it difficult to divine any other genuinely strategic vision in either document,' the MPs sagely noted. With the withdrawal of the armed forces from Afghanistan, now is a good opportunity to challenge fundamental assumptions. The world is a different place after the UK's long involvement in Middle East entanglements, with the Chilcot inquiry into the 2003 intervention in Iraq due to bring recent history to light in the coming months. The decision by the Obama administration to pivot America's strategic interests around the Pacific region has far-reaching implications for the 2015 National Security Review. The downward pressure on defence budgets has caused a disproportionate decline in the armed forces' fighting power. These pressures have been exacerbated by the inability to get a grip on major military projects – from the troubled billion pound over-budget joint-strike aircraft carriers to the imponderable restructuring of the £14bn Defence Equipment and Support agency in Bristol. A second report, issued by the influential Foreign Affairs Committee, firmly advises Britain to downgrade its foreign policy ambitions and be more realistic. It urges the Foreign Office (FO) to ‘attach greater importance to living within its means and recognise that there are limits to what it can take on'. Kent CC has a bigger budget than the FO, observed committee chairman Sir Richard Ottaway. More than 50 years ago, former US secretary of state, Dean Acheson, said that Great Britain had lost an Empire and not yet found a role. Future public spending choices can only result in a diminishing of the UK role on the world stage. But this might be an opportunity for major cities and local enterprise partnerships to step up their work in striking trade deals with their international peers – as Greater Manchester has done in China.

Title

Can Britain afford to punch above its weight in world affairs?

By Jonathan Werran | 15 January 2014

Popular articles by Jonathan Werran

SUBSCRIBE TO CONTINUE READING

Popular articles by Jonathan Werran