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Defence review failed to rethink UK's global role, says survey

IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency

London, Oct 29, IRNA -- The British government’s strategic defence review lost an opportunity to radically rethink the UK's global role, according to 68% of the country’s defence and security community surveyed by the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI).

A majority 58% agreed, as opposed to 30% who disagreed, that the US will take the UK less seriously in terms of military capability, following the review that led to an 8% cut in the Britain’s defence budget.

RUSI director Michael Clarke said the responses to the survey of more than 2,000 defence experts revealed relief that the cuts were not higher than 8% when there was an average of 19% cuts across government departments.

But Clarke, a professor of defence studies, said there was disappointment the review had not really settled any of the defence arguments.

'The review may have concluded, but the process goes on and it will still be painful and divisive as it does so,' he said, listing such 'perennial problems' as the over-commitment of forces, the need to get Afghanistan right and the balance of forces.

At the start of the review in May, RUSI said that Britain’s new coalition government must address how much the nation is prepared to pay for defence and the country’s position in the world.

It also carried out a survey of the defence and security community that found that the majority believed the UK needed a ‘radical reassessment’ of the position it wants to play, and is able to play, in world politics.

Many defence experts have argued that Britain cannot continue to play a similar role in the world in the future unless the resources for defence and security are increased in real terms as soon as possible after this financial crisis allows.

The defence review was seen ending Britain’s capability to mount the kind of military operations conducted in Iraq and Afghanistan due to the scale of cuts announced.

It will also be impossible to deploy the kind of carrier taskforce sent to liberate the Falklands Islands in the war against Argentina in 1982, analysts said.