David Cameron's Unstrategic Defence Review

Michael Fallon’s confirmation last week that a Strategic Defence and Security Review is underway adds another question to the Conservatives’ growing list of slim-majority headaches: what to do about defence policy. With George Osborne hitting the Ministry of Defence with the second-largest pre-Budget cuts of any government department earlier this month, and Number 10 reportedly looking for ‘creative’ accounting measures to cover the fact that Britain will no longer meet NATO’s defence spending target, hopes that defence might escape further cuts have quickly evaporated.

So the fact that the coming Spending Review is unlikely to deliver a rosy outcome for the MOD is already well known. The additional complicating factor, however, is the presence of various pre-election commitments on specific aspects of defence policy. In short, while unwilling to commit to safeguarding defence in general terms, commitments have been made on several individual capabilities. Incorporating such commitments and cutting budgets at the same time will make it all the harder to put the ‘strategic’ into ‘SDSR’.