A top defence expert says the UK has
“neither the financial nor the political and diplomatic clout it once had.”
Prof. Paul Cornish, who is based in the UK, was speaking in the wake of the recently announced Strategic Defence Review.
Prof. Cornish is a defence expert from the University of Exeter which is a Russell Group university. Exeter has over 30,000 students and sits within the Top 15 universities in The Times and Sunday Times Good University Guide 2025 and the Complete University Guide 2025.
The professor said,
“It is essential that our long-held notions about the purpose and value of our armed forces are tested against the contemporary world, and the one likely to emerge from the battlefields of the 2020s.
Different terms of reference are now needed, changing UK defence language and mindset from inputs – the percentage of national income allocated to defence – to output.”
The academic says that an
“output-oriented approach would be fundamentally strategic rather than economic.”
It would, he adds, also be concerned with the practical matter of developing and maintaining militarily capable and credible armed forces and would have closely in mind the geographical environments in which UK armed forces might be operationally committed and the allies with whom they will co-operate.
He added,
“The UK has neither the financial nor the political and diplomatic clout it once had. The UK’s strategic outlook must, necessarily, be more constrained. But it can also be cleverer.
There is a critical need for both coherent and complementary sea and land capabilities to meet crisis and conflict in years to come. Both naval and land power, as well as air, cyber and space power, are required.
Security policy should prioritise deterrence and NATO.
If the UK cannot afford a balanced set of military capabilities then the SDR must produce a strategic outlook that is, at least, honest. UK national strategy can no longer be based on legacy thinking; presumptions of success; a false interpretation of history (or indeed of current conflicts); a doctrine of technological supremacy; or unproven arguments,”
He commented.
