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Abstract British Foreign and Defence policy in the light of the Ukrainian crisis 2014
Introduction After a decade of interventionism alongside the US, a feeling of "war-weariness and warwariness" (as coined by ex-Chief of the General Staff General Lord Richard Dannatt) is prevalent in the British forces as well as the British society as a whole. With a low morale in many European forces leading to personnel retention issues, the governments and their respective MoDs seem to have much less freedom of action to implement their policies in spite of a volatile worldwide situation. Tony Blair's proactive stance in foreign affairs and defence, as described in his 1999 Chicago speech, started losing momentum when controversial Operation Iraqi Freedom was launched in March 2003. Unsurprisingly Cameron's initial alignment with Barack Obama about a potential intervention in the Syrian crisis was rebuffed by a negative vote in the House of Commons in August 2013. When the 2014 Ukrainian crisis began, with a political and diplomatic standoff turning to clashes with loss of life at the gates of NATO's Area of Responsibility, possibly threatening some of Eastern and Central European NATO partners (the Baltic states, Romania and Poland), it quickly became a concern for European defence & foreign policymakers. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine that no response would be given from London or Paris with the ongoing escalation in the dispute in Crimea and Eastern Ukraine.

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A difficult context:

In order to properly analyse and understand Britain's response to the Ukrainian crisis, it is critical to assess the fairly difficult situation the British Tory-Lib Dem coalition Cabinet has to face in the political, strategic and operational fields: a) UK domestic politics looks like a battlefield with the growing defiance of traditional parties by the so-called Eurosceptics (UKIP and its leader, Nigel Farage, opposing any kind of intervention in Ukraine). With 27.5% of the votes at the recent European elections, they outperformed the Tories who just collected a poor 23.9%, the Conservative party itself being split over the issue of European integration as demonstrated by David Cameron's Bloomberg speech on 23 January 2013. Thus the weak Tory-Lib Dem coalition has fairly limited freedom of manoeuvre in Parliament and with the 2015 General Election closing in, it may be wiser to avoid serious clashes that could damage the unity of the coalition even further! In the background, the September 2014 referendum on Scotland's independence is another highly divisive issue for the Cameron-Clegg Cabinet and avoiding escalation seems to be the smartest way of handling this explosive subject.


b) From a strategic point of view, the rearming or the strategic military buildup implemented in other emerging powers in the world (BRICS, for instance) is unbdoubtedly another source of concern. Russia is modernising its forces, especially in the area of missiles, nuclear forces as well as air force and naval capabilities. The contrast with the decreasing defence budgets in most Western countries is thus made even sharper and may convey the wrong message to the world as regards the resolve of the traditional Western democracies to get involved in crisis resolution and in the preservation of peace internationally. c) It cannot be questioned that the British military is going through a big transitional period (a complete decade overall) to jump to the next generation of organisation and equipement also known as Future Force 2020. The most recent defence review, issued by the current CameronClegg Cabinet, the 2010 Strategic Defence and Security Review planned a reduction of defence budget by 7% in real terms. Once more in the history of British defence reviews, it implied a drastic downsizing of the defence structure (land forces with less than 90,000 troops, a smaller Royal Navy, with the French Navy becoming the first naval force in Europe for the first time since the 18th century!). At the same time, huge procurement programmes are under way such as the Astute-class nuclear-powered attack submarines and more significantly, 2 giant aircraft carriers which will be the largest military vessels ever built in and for the UK. It is worth noticing that the future of the nuclear deterrent is not decided yet, the overall price of the programme (around ё20bn) being repulsive for safe public debates in times of economic difficulties and political instability. Thus the extremely constraining internal and external factors easily explain why there is a painful lack of freedom of action for the UK's Ministry of Defence and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, which undoubtedly gives sense to the rather mild response given by London to the Ukrainian crisis so far.

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UK response: deterrence or reassurance?

a) Alignment with EU sanctions: In February 2014, the EU decided to introduce ''targeted sanctions including asset freeze and visa ban against those responsible for human rights violations, violence and use of excessive force.'' As stated, ''Member States agreed to suspend export licences on equipment which might be used for internal repression and reassess export licences for equipment covered by Common Position 2008/944/CFSP'' defining common rules governing the control of exports of military technology and equipment. In Britain, Her Majesty's Treasury subsequently issued several Financial Sanctions notices from April 2014, in order to comply with what was decided at EU level. Although the effect of financial sanctions on a crisis is rather dubious (Iran had assets frozen after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Saddam Hussein was also the target of financial sanctions in the 1990s), Ukrainian VIPs close to the former regime were sanctioned. As an example, one of the main targets was Mykola Azarov, former PM of Ukraine until Januray 2014 and Olena Lukash, a former Minister of Justice. As regards defence exports, Britain enforced a series of bans but the repressive move was undoubtedly less problematic for the UK Defence industry than for the French one. In March 2014, verbally supported by Foreign Secretary William Hague in


Parliament, London suspended 28 export licences (and stated that the authorities would not consider any further requests). The suspensions covered export licenses for equipment which could potentially be used in Russian military operations in Ukraine, although it is sometimes difficult to know what equipment will or could not be used for repression of demonstrators or the civilian population (practically anything sold to the defence structure of another country could be used for military operations: rifles, communication systems, engines, protective equipment, etc.). Armoured vehicle seats, antennae for military airplanes, radios and power plants for naval vessels are among the equipment for which delivery was suspended. But impact of this ban on British defence industry will be minimal since defence export deals with Moscow have been much lower than the French ones, notably with the Mistral-class amphibious assault ships programme worth over 1.2bn, and whose cancellation could severely damage France's reputation as an arms trade partner. Therefore we can assess that the UK's retaliation was compliant with EU measures but with no zeal: it was rather a cautious and distant alignment. This is no surprise as Britain was not part of the initial negotiation team in the Ukrainian crisis consisting of France, Germany and Poland in February 2014. b) Alignment with NATO posture: The crisis in Ukraine, in the vicinity of some of the NATO members (Baltic states, Poland and Romania) triggered off the traditional NATO response to any threat targeting one of the partner nations as described in Article 5 of the Charter. Unsurprisingly the UK contributed to the various security missions and NATO-led exercises in the region such as Baltic Air Policing (sky police) with a Royal Air Force Typhoon fighter deployment in Lithuania. There was also the participation of Royal Navy vessels such as HMS Montrose, a Type-23 frigate in a two-week long security exercise, Exercise Baltops, in June 2014. The manoeuvre was designed to test the maritime capabilities among Baltic sea countries and allied nations but obviously also showed the presence of the Alliance in the area. Finally more than 100 British soldiers took part in live-fire training in Estonia and Latvia as part of exercise Sabre Strike, which was conducted from 9 June 2014. Even if the UK's Defence & Foreign policy was clearly aligned with EU and NATO defensive postures, the moves implemented by London were more symbolical than tangible (political rhetorics and diplomatic gestures along with limited British military presence in the region). Hence we can actually wonder if the measures taken aim at achieving deterrence of aggression and human rights violations or if they were a mere reassurance of NATO partners.

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The shape of things to come: an era of cautious moves?

What are the options left for the UK especially after the Obama administration's decision to enhance focus on the Asian region and consequently to reduce the US military deployment in Europe?
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NATO strategy may be reshuffled during the next summit in the UK (4-5 September 2014) but could the decision to have a lighter US military footprint in Europe be


reversed? Likewise, UK General Sir Richard Dannatt advocated for a permanent 3,000 British troops maintained in Germany instead of withdrawing them all by 2020, as planned by SDSR 2010.
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Filling the strategic and operational gap with a step-by-step policy using diplomacy at full strength to avoid excessive commitment or uncontrolled escalation, which is somehow what London has tried to implement recently. Adopting a tailored posture involving partneship with other nations to make for the operational shortfalls of the UK's defence structure especially in the transitional period of transformation of the British defence structure. Following the principles of the Lancaster House treaties could enable Britain to work more closely with France, for instance.

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Conclusion: no clear strategy

The current period undeniably has a weird Cold War flavour with a multiplication of NATO-led manoeuvres on the Northern Flank (Exercise Cold Response in March 2014) and on the Eastern NATO border (Exercise Steadfast Jazz with France and Poland between 2-9 November 2013). With a visible US presence (including air patrol missions in Poland as well as naval exercises with Romania in the Black Sea and Ballistic Missile Defense [BMD] sites planned in both countries) the UK has to give guarantees to its major NATO partners and the EU but this seems to be more lip service than real commitment (maybe the least uncomfortable position for London trying to avoid extreme postures). If the nightmare of the British decision-makers was Suez until late in the 80s, now it would most probably be the Balkans, the initial phase of the Bosnian crisis turning to a quagmire for European politicians, incapable of stopping the escalation and the resulting bloodshed notably in the civilian population. In comparison with the conflicts in former Yugoslavia, the level of violence in Ukraine is not that high at the moment but the presence of a lot of Russian-speaking or Russian-oriented minorities in other regional areas (Estonia, Latvia) is far from being reassuring for leading NATO members like Britain.