Former military leaders are urging the UK government to widen its definition of national security to include climate, food and energy measures in advance of a planned multibillion-pound boost in defence spending.
Earlier this year Keir Starmer announced the biggest increase in defence spending in the UK since the end of the cold war, with the budget rising to 2.5% of GDP by 2027 – three years earlier than planned – and an ambition to reach 3%.
Now, in advance of a key defence review, former senior figures in the UK military are urging the government to broaden its definition of what constitutes “national security” to include food, energy and water security as well as measures to protect communities from flooding, extreme heat and sea level rises.
There are also calls to counter the possible “weaponisation of geoengineering” – hostile actors using geoengineering techniques to manipulate weather patterns to cause extreme conditions.
Retired R Adm Neil Morisetti said that while there was “most definitely a pressing requirement” to invest in military capability to deter the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, the UK’s approach to national security had to be more sophisticated to meet the challenges of the 21st century.
“National security needs to be seen more broadly,” said Morisetti, who is now a professor of climate and resource security at University College London. “We need to think about a lot of factors beyond just military capability – including food security, energy security, land security, health security, all of which are impacted by the consequences of a changing climate. I recognise that none of this is without cost, but governments need to level with society about the risks that we face today.”
Some other European countries have already taken climate security issues into their revamped defence plans. In Germany, the Green party managed to squeeze climate action into a radical defence and infrastructure spending plan. In Spain, the prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, announced that 17% of this year’s €23bn ($26.2bn) military spending would go to climate resilience programs.
Lt Gen Richard Nugee, a retired army officer who held several key posts during his 36-year military career, said the UK should be thinking along similar lines.
He argued that although there was a need for more military spending in light of the threat from Russia and the perceived weakening of US support for Europe, the discussion about the UK’s security in the 21st century needed to be much broader.
Alongside direct military spending, Nugee said there were “five and a half other securities” that the government should consider as it looks to spend billions to protect the UK: energy security and resilience; water security and resilience to floods and drought as well as sea level rises; food security, capacity and resilience; health security; and border security as we enter an era of mass population displacements.
Nugee argued that another “half security” was the potential weaponisation of geoengineering – hostile actors using the latest geoengineering technology to manipulate weather patterns.
He said all these matters were intrinsic to the country’s security in an era of climate crisis, but was concerned they were not part of the conversation about how best to protect the UK.
“I think there’s a very real chance that what I’m talking about just gets ignored … as the pull for increased security spending will focus solely on direct military spending, rather than the wider issue of national security, threatened also by the effects of climate change.”
He said the government needed something like a climate security centre to feed these arguments into the decision-making process around security matters rather than delegating them to other departments such as Defra.
“What we need is a centre or a body of people to be looking at national security in the round and how it is being profoundly affected by the changing world that we are seeing as a result of climate change.”
The UK government is expected to announce the results of its defence review within the next three weeks, after nearly a year of work by the former defence secretary George Robertson.
Some in the Labour party have argued that diverting spending to defence from other areas – including climate and foreign aid – could boost economic growth. However, economists warned against any “magical thinking” in relation to spending on military hardware.
“Defence spending is an economic dead end,” said the economist James Meadway, pointing to research by the Scottish government that showed military spending was one of the most inefficient ways to boost the economy. “It has almost no ripple-out economic benefit … and increasingly it is focused on tech and cyber, not the large-scale production of military hardware that offers good jobs to lots of people.”
He said any government that wanted to stimulate useful economic activity should look elsewhere.
“If Labour was serious about creating good jobs in the country … it would go and create good jobs in the country ideally in areas that are also socially useful – like social care, education or healthcare.”
Additional reporting: Ajit Niranjan
