The Decline of Britain as a Military Power

THE DECLINE OF BRITAIN AS A MILITARY POWER Walter Goldstein JLt was a British prime minister, Benjamin Disraeli, who argued that political life was dictated not by logic but by experience. The conventional extension of this axiom in British political life is better known as "dedicated procrastination" or "muddling through." When in doubt, sit still. Precipitous action can only lead to confusion, while stern choices and daring decisions can always be put off for another day. The axiom has been faithfully observed by political factions since Parliament won acclaim as the great talking shop of the nineteenth century. Indeed, it is often alleged that the British empire was built in a fit of loquacious inadvertence and not by conscious design. Its dismembering was not the result of careful planning, for that matter, and neither was the gradual winding down of Britain's economic or military strength since 1945. The actual seepage or dilution of power was never abrupt or convulsive . Unlike the turmoil suffered by France or West Germany, Britain encountered no terrible defeats on colonial battlefields and little political upheaval at home. British defense capabilities were never abruptly scaled down, and no sudden step was made to give up the status of a great power. On the contrary, during twenty-five years of Conservative and seventeen years of Labour governments, military strength was gently run down. Governments slowly and grudgingly changed spending patterns as financial resources were depleted and as Britain's economy fell into decline. Basically, Britain's leaders relied on the "special relationship " with the United States in order to obtain preferential treatment, Walter Goldstein is a professor of political science and public policy at the Rockefeller College of the State University of New York at Albany. He recently published Fighting Allies: Tensions Within the Atlantic Alliance (London: Brassey's, 1986), and Reagan's Leadership and the Atlantic Alliance (Washington, D.C: Pergamon-Brassey's, 1986). 63 64 SAIS REVIEW nuclear technology, and surrogate political power. When U.S. aid began to dry up too, the defense budget was tightened further but defense priorities remained undecided.1 By the time the first postwar Labour government left office, during the Korean War, the United Kingdom had spent more on defense than all of the other powers in Western Europe together. Britain was then the third nuclear superpower in world affairs, its empire still stretched across the globe, and its gross national product (GNP) was surpassed only by that of the United States. Thirty-five years later, as Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's government nears the end of its second term, the United Kingdom is only a shadow of its former self. Its position of economic strength has long since been overtaken by Japan, West Germany , and France; within a few years it might even lag behind Italy and even East Germany (in per capita GNP). Surprisingly, Britain still spends 5.4 percent of its GNP on defense, as compared to 4. 1 percent in France, 3.3 percent in West Germany, 1 percent in Japan, and 6.7 percent in the United States.2 Given the decline of the pound and the burden of inflation incurred through the 1970s, Britain's annual defense expenditure of roughly $25 billion buys less and less each year. One half of Britain's frontline ships and planes have had to be phased out of service, and no one is sure whether the remaining half should be modernized or eventually scrapped. The dilemma of matching military ambitions with economic resources has defied successive British governments during four decades of cold war.3 It provides a cheap thrill today in the NATO Council to point with horror at the defense-cutting enthusiasts and the unilateral nuclear disarmers who have seized the attention of the opposition Labour party. American critics, including the secretary of defense and the U.S. ambassador , raised a cry of alarm when the Labour party conference adopted a radical defense program in 1986. The Labour platform pledged: (1) to scrap the four aging Polaris submarines that provide the last remaining element of Britain's strategic deterrent force; (2) not to replace the aging Polaris fleet in the 1990s with four extraordinarily...