Speaking on Friday 18 July 2025 in the House of Lords debate on the recently published UK Strategic Defence Review, Lord Alderdice welcomed the report and the positive response by the Government, but warned that strategic defence did not only mean having the weapons that may deter aggressors, but also developing improved diplomatic capacities to de-escalate crises.
My Lords, in our debate on 9 October 2024 on the very welcome Strategic Defence Review being undertaken by the noble Lord, Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, I appealed to the noble Lord – as I had done previously in your Lordships’ House – to see this review of defence as defence in its widest sense. He and his colleagues, General Sir Richard Barrons and Dr Fiona Hill, have done that, with the co-operation of a wide range of colleagues inside and outside government. With a great deal of energy and commitment, they have produced an excellent review document; I was most pleased to see that it addressed many of the issues to which I referred at that time.
I am very encouraged that His Majesty’s Government have accepted both the vision and the 62 recommendations in the SDR – with substantial upgrades to the Army, Navy and RAF – and a greater degree of integration of the services. Although I welcome this, I am less sure that the continued and deepening commitment to the F35 is the wisest choice. The investment in homeland air and missile defence and the creation of a new CyberEM Command is necessary, not just for any future war but to protect us from the global cyber conflict that has already been under way for some years. The announcements about research and development in increasingly technologically sophisticated weapons and defence systems – including the huge increase in the significance of drone warfare, cyberwar, and space as a key domain for defence – are all welcome.
There is also an appreciation of less hi-tech requirements, not only the necessary replacement of ammunition for the weapons we already have but in looking after the people in the services on whom we are so dependent; for example, addressing the shameful deterioration in military accommodation. Your Lordships will not be surprised to hear that, as a doctor, I welcome chapter 7.10 on Defence Medical Services, with its insistence on greater collaboration between the government departments responsible for defence and health and social care.
Chapter 4.3 rightly emphasises that full-time and reserve servicepeople are key to our defence. In Chapter 6, Home Defence and a Whole-of-Society approach are rightly emphasised. Everyone in our country needs to come to understand that we all have a part to play.
In a dangerous world and at a time when the international rule of law seems to be dissolving before our eyes, we need to understand that the traditional boundaries of behaviour between countries in times of peace and war are being disavowed – even by some of our own close allies. I agree that we need to maintain and update our nuclear defence capacities. However, I also firmly believe that de-escalation is an essential feature of defence planning. If our only response to acts of aggression is to engage in ever higher levels of aggression, which then provoke a reaction by the other side, as has often been observed, an eye for an eye just leaves everyone blind. In a world of nuclear weapons, the consequences are potentially not only catastrophic but existential. We need to think, work and plan for how we use diplomatic and other relations with our enemies, as well as our friends, to be able to de-escalate dangerous situations. That requires the deployment of appropriate resources to defend our country.
Discussing this SDR in July 2025, we would do well to reflect that here in London, in July 1955 – 70 years ago this very month – the Russell–Einstein Manifesto was issued by Bertrand Russell in the middle of the Cold War. It highlighted the dangers posed by nuclear weapons and called on world leaders to seek peaceful resolutions to international conflict. Albert Einstein, who had written and spoken extensively on the issue, signed the manifesto shortly before his death on 18 April 1955.
Einstein had already realised that science and technology would take mankind along a road to the development of nuclear weapons so powerful and destructive as to be beyond imagination, and perhaps even beyond survival. In his later years, he devoted himself to thinking, speaking, and writing about the dangers for the future of humankind. In an article titled “The Real Problem Is in the Hearts of Men” in the New York Times in 1946, he wrote:
“Past thinking and methods did not prevent world wars. Future thinking must prevent wars”.
There may be various aspects to the new thinking that is necessary, but one aspect of our strategic defence is not just strategic deterrence, about which the review has a good deal to say, but strategic de-escalation.
