Striking the Right Balance for the Future

Abstract

British defence policy is clearly at an important crossroads. The argument presented in the last chapter suggests that the government cannot go on for much longer, as it has been doing in recent years, ‘muddling through’ on a day-to-day basis without serious damage to the nation’s defence effort. A significant increase in defence expenditure would help to ease the immediate problems created by a ‘funding gap’, but as we have argued earlier, this appears unlikely to happen. If the government is not to weaken defence across the board by incremental ‘salami slicing’, a more radical assessment of priorities is clearly necessary. But what form should this take?