Sunday SDR, Chapter 6 - Key Strategic Questions

And we're there! Chapter 6 - Key Questions for the future SDR - attempts to sum up the Green Paper and set some deliverable goals for the full SDR process.

There are six key questions, which also get their own comments threads here; again, one of the salient features is how little there is about the relationship with the US and also that none of the comments seem to find this at all surprising. Not so long ago, suggesting any cooperation with Europe except for the strictest possible interpretation of NATO would reliably get you an avalanche of Tories accusing you of undermining the special relationship. Now, not so much.

It is likely that the American commitment to the NATO Alliance will wane in the next 10 – 20 years...The prospect here, indeed possibly the only prospect, is of closer ties with our European partners through development of the Common Security and Defence Policy....It is obvious that the continual paring down of national capability will end in a Euroforce. Whether this is perchance or by design is a moot point. I think the time has come to stop resisting this and start positively embracing it

The six strategic questions are as follows:

* Given that domestic security cannot be separated from international security, where should we set the balance between focusing on our territory and region and engaging threats at a distance?
* What approach should we take if we employ the Armed Forces to address threats at distance?
* What contribution should the Armed Forces make in ensuring security and contributing to resilience within the UK?
* How could we more effectively employ the Armed Forces in support of wider efforts to prevent conflict and strengthen international stability?
* Do our current international defence and security relationships require rebalancing in the longer term?
* Should we further integrate our forces with those of key allies and partners?

There's also this one:

* To what extent and in what areas should we continue to refocus our current efforts on Afghanistan?

The rest is basically a summary, but it's interesting that a couple of specific policies make it through to the final cut:

Options for enhancing our cyber capabilities and structures to ensure we can defend, and take steps, against adversaries when necessary; and where we might increase our contribution to allied space capabilities or invest in our own national capabilities.

More for reference than anything else, here are the official military planning assumptions, and a list of operations since the 1998 SDR.