{"id":11357,"date":"2011-09-27T08:56:29","date_gmt":"2011-09-27T12:56:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=11357"},"modified":"2011-09-27T09:38:10","modified_gmt":"2011-09-27T13:38:10","slug":"britain-finally-admits-it-will-never-again-be-among-the-global-superpowers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2011\/09\/27\/britain-finally-admits-it-will-never-again-be-among-the-global-superpowers\/","title":{"rendered":"Britain (finally) admits it will “never again be among the global superpowers”"},"content":{"rendered":"

For something that’s been obvious to casual observers since 1945 (1956 if you’re generous), it’s taken a while to admit<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

The warning comes from the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) thinktank in a tough report which questions whether Britain’s defence crisis is really over.<\/p>\n

Last year’s Strategic Defence and Security Review led to sweeping redundancies across all three services, and the early mothballing of, among others, the aircraft carrier Ark Royal<\/em>, and the fleet of Harrier jets.<\/p>\n

In a brutally frank assessment of the British military, the report states: “The UK will never again be a member of the select club of global superpowers. Indeed it has not been one for decades.<\/p>\n

“But currently planned levels of defence spending should be enough for it to maintain its position as one of the world’s five second-rank military powers (with only the US in the first rank).”<\/p>\n

Many in the military are likely to bridle at the analysis; last week the former head of the Royal Navy, Admiral Lord West, struck a completely different tone, causing a furore when he said the UK should not consider itself a second-tier power like “bloody Belgium or Denmark”.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Except for brief wartime surges, Britain’s military strength has rarely been the army: it’s been the Royal Navy that provided Britain with both military and economic clout. Gutting the striking power of the navy (HMS Ark Royal<\/em> and the Harriers) was merely the final admission that the government had higher priorities domestically than internationally. As Admiral Cunningham once said, “It takes three years to build a ship; it takes three centuries to build a tradition. It’s remarkable how quickly one can destroy a tradition.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For something that’s been obvious to casual observers since 1945 (1956 if you’re generous), it’s taken a while to admit: The warning comes from the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) thinktank in a tough report which questions whether Britain’s defence crisis is really over. Last year’s Strategic Defence and Security Review led to sweeping redundancies […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,7,5],"tags":[31,30],"class_list":["post-11357","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-britain","category-history","category-military","tag-army","tag-navy"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-2Xb","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11357","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11357"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11357\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11358,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11357\/revisions\/11358"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}