We Don’t Need A British Army Of The Vistula

We don’t need a British Army of the Vistula: we should spend UK defence money where it can do most good – on maritime power.

The British Army, having left counter-insurgency behind, is reorientating itself in the wrong direction and asking for resources that should go elsewhere in defence.  The aim seems to be the recreation of the British Army of the Rhine (BAOR), this time on the Vistula, able to participate in defeating the Russian hordes should they attack NATO’s land mass.  However, the reasons that made the BAOR useful have gone. Preparing a British Army on the Vistula, either permanently present or held back at home, is diverting resources from what we vitally need: significant maritime power.

What was defensible then…

Creating the British Army of the Rhine in 1945 was defensible both militarily and diplomatically.  In 1946 the Soviets had 208 divisions, of which 66 were in what would become East Germany and Czechoslovakia, facing just nine Allied divisions in Germany: four British, four US equivalents, and one French.¹  The Soviet take-over of the countries of Eastern Europe contrary to their promises at the 1945 Yalta Conference, aggression in Iran, attempted coup in Italy in 1947, and then in 1948 a coup in Czechoslovakia, pressure on Norway and blockade of Berlin all confirmed that they might attack Westwards.  Keeping substantial British land forces on the Continent could be justified partly for the military force they provided, but far more so because their presence, along with maritime action, encouraged others to arm and helped to create the political momentum behind the creation of NATO in 1949 and its subsequent development.

Is indefensible now

Major British forces on the continent would not be similarly useful today, for the situation is radically different. Unlike in the late 1940s, NATO is already formed.  Even better, the countries of Eastern Europe are on our side, rather than being forcibly aligned with the Russians in what would become the Warsaw Pact.  And the Eastern countries of NATO are already rearming without the spur of a major British presence or, like the newly joined Finns, have long been ready.  The existing British battlegroup in Estonia has some use as a symbol of commitment. Larger British land forces would cost far more and would add little in either force or diplomacy.  The Poles will soon have four armoured divisions of their own. Holding the British armoured division back in the UK doesn’t make sense either, for it would take too long to travel East and form up.

Where is the threat?

Where Britain can be threatened, and where we can influence Russia, is not through Central Europe, where the NATO border is 500 miles further away from us than in the First Cold War, but in the Atlantic.  It is in the Atlantic that we must protect the nuclear deterrent, which is declared to NATO and which means rather more to the Lithuanians than the number of British tanks.  It is across the Atlantic that major U.S. reinforcements would have to come and across the ocean’s North-Eastern extensions, the Norwegian and Barents Seas, that we would need to reinforce Norway.  It is also from those areas that carrier aircraft and ship launched missiles can threaten vital Russian facilities directly and far more quickly than by sending road convoys across Germany.  The countries of Eastern Europe are never going to have a nuclear deterrent and carrier battle groups but we do, and it is in these, alongside mine clearance, undersea operations to protect vital communication cables and other actions at sea, that our true value to NATO lies.

A problem-solving move

Investing in maritime power also enables us to solve the standard problem for modern UK defence, whether to prioritise engagement with Europe or with the rest of the world.  Maritime force is so mobile it enables both. A formed task group can move 400 miles in 24 hours, day after day.  By contrast land forces against opposition have managed only twenty miles a day in campaigns from Alexander the Great to the Americans in Iraq in 2003.  It is worth emphasising the point. Maritime force can move an order of magnitude faster than land forces, and then twice as fast again.  And of course, the High Seas enable movement without needing host nation permission.  One can fly light forces, if one is granted overflight and basing, which has been denied to us almost every year in the last seven decades, but anything serious moves by sea.

This maritime mobility enables us to influence our adversaries and friends through diplomacy, deterrence and more.  The 2021 carrier deployment to the Far East hosted the senior leaderships of over 40 countries, and was reported in over 150 languages.  No army formation can do anything similar.  Further, having a fleet that can intervene in East Asia makes us valuable to the U.S. and justifies our place in the AUKUS triad.

Maritime power, which includes maritime focused air power, also helps us to ensure the imports which we in the UK depend on for half our food and half our energy.  If deprived of the use of the sea we would, literally, starve in the dark.  Meanwhile, undersea cables carry 97% of the internet, on which modern society depends. Conversely, because most other countries are dependent on the sea also, maritime power gives us leverage against them.  The Chinese talk of the ‘Malacca Dilemma’, the consequences of another state stopping the movement of China bound shipping past Singapore.

Balance is great… until it is not

Yet despite the way that maritime power enables us to make our most effective contribution to NATO, to influence both Europe and the rest of the World, and to preserve and leverage access to the sea, the UK’s military equipment budget, amazingly, has for many years given equal weight to land and sea focused procurement.  That seems to be an attempt to balance resources between the services rather than to focus on what the UK needs, maritime power.

After decades of under-investment, the fleet is under armed and too small.  Even with the Naval Strike Missile coming into service we are outranged by most adversary missiles.  Our ‘soft kill’ missile defences have actually gone backwards over the last twenty years.  Most critically, lack of hull numbers is threatening our ability to put out meaningful task groups.  Australia, another island nation dependent on the sea, is showing the way with massive investment in submarines while doubling the size of its surface fleet.  The UK should do the same, and that means more money for maritime power, and less for the Army.

Avoiding an already crowded market

In conclusion therefore, to re-create the old British Army of the Rhine on the Vistula would be to apply yesterday’s solutions to a very different problem today.  Our Eastern European Allies are there already.  It is at sea that the UK has vital interests, can do most to support NATO, and can maintain flexibility to deal with a changing world.  It is consequently on maritime power that we should spend the majority of our defence money.

 

 

1. Sean M. Maloney, Securing Command of the Sea, NATO Naval Planning 1948-1954 (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1995), p. 49.