The Political Challenge

Abstract

Economic constraints and technological innovation have clearly been very influential in helping to determine British defence policy since 1945. As Chapters 6 and 7 have tried to demonstrate they are also likely to pose important challenges for the future. Defence policy, however, is not simply the product of economic and technological pressures. Such pressures help to define the limits of policy choice but ultimately that choice (relating to the size, shape, equipment and deployment of the armed forces) is a political matter. Defence policy is the result of a judgement about priorities which stems from the values of those who hold power. In the case of democratic governments that power resides in the elected government of the day. In Britain, as Harold Laski has argued

It is the essence of our Parliamentary system to make the responsibility for… priority in value one that the Cabinet must take. Any alternative would destroy that system because it would ultimately place the responsibility… outside the area where it can be controlled by Parliament and the electorate. That road ultimately leads to dictatorship… For it rests upon the assumption that, whatever the popular will, it must accept the specialists conclusion of what is good for it.¹