TWO important government reviews were published in June: the Strategic Defence Review (SDR) and the National Security Strategy (NSS). Together, they make it clear that, in a context of far-reaching economic, political, and technological challenges, the threats against the UK are increasing.
The SDR suggests that the UK military is not ready. Although highly capable, it is too small, too expensive, too brittle, and not configured for modern industrial warfare. Perhaps predicated on recent experience in Ukraine, the review seeks urgent capability and capacity uplift in, but not limited to, long-range missiles, AI integration into combat systems, drones, armament production, and laser-weapon systems.
The NSS likewise presents the reader with a dystopia in which the fear of attack feels real. It weaves not just the SDR’s pitch, but 15 other government reviews into a narrative of preparation for confrontation. The NSS acknowledges the need for sovereign strength and collective security. It supports defence modernisation and resilience as part of a wider national and societal effort. It looks to secure critical mineral reserves, investment in rapid technological evolution, money for new manufacturing bases to feed the military renaissance, and ever closer co-operation with NATO partners.
The SDR highlights the army’s aspiration to increase lethality by a factor of ten. After all, its primary function is to protect UK territories and interests through extreme violence when politics fails. Christians reflect on this: the SDR and NSS are intended to make us appreciate that the UK may well be dependent on this enhanced ability to kill sooner than expected. This needs to be considered in the light of the 3.5 per cent of the five per cent of GDP committed to core defence spending (the other 1.5 per cent is for national resilience). Both reviews omit the uncomfortable financial trade-offs that the Government will be forced to take to fund this.
ALTHOUGH the primary duty of any government is to defend its population, and these reviews lay out clear thinking for this, they do raise troubling issues. First, there is the feeling of propulsion towards a self-fulfilling prophecy of war. The NSS makes no mention of conflict resolution, reconciliation, dialogue, or negotiation. Diplomacy is mentioned just six times, peace five, and conflict resolution only once. The reviews place the reader on a war footing with no alternative. Compared with developing lasers, for example, the means to defuse, mitigate, and prevent conflict is considerably cheaper.
While acknowledging the importance of both reviews, the Church must argue that integral to any “war-readiness security strategy” is the Government’s commitment to complementing hard military posturing with the mechanisms to bring about effective dialogue — in short, to be simultaneously ten times more effective at peacebuilding.
Bishop George Bell famously said that, in times of war, “The Church should be the Church.” It must, and especially so in its ministry of reconciliation. I have been struck by several examples of this. Often poorly supported and resourced, church peacemakers around the world are nothing but inspiring, often found where security challenges and violent conflict demand trusted guides to navigate pathways to peace.
Recognising this, the UN has embarked on a unique partnership with Anglicans in Africa. UN trainers have equipped our leaders in dialogue skills in extreme contexts of societal wreckage from ongoing conflicts. After a concerted effort by the Church of England’s senior clergy and international relations advisers in 2019-20, the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office established a new team of civil servants to professionalise peacebuilding work for its embassies.
THE Church of England Pensions Board, leading the Global Investor Commission on Mining 2030, has convened global investors with $17 trillion of assets under management to consider the difficult relationship between the mining and extraction sector and conflict. Through this work, a new path is being imagined and incentivised by investors promoting minerals as a driver of peaceful and flourishing societies, versus sustaining conflict and exploitation.
Aligned to this work, under the chairmanship of the Archbishop of Cape Town, the Anglican Church is developing a Global Centre for Peacebuilding and Business with the C of E Pensions Board and bishops from the Anglican Communion. The Centre sustains Anglicans in dialogue work at the nexus around extraction, communities, and armed groups. Global demand for critical minerals is fuelling these conflicts. In response, the Church is equipping itself to reimagine and guide different paths away from the inevitability of conflict.
Underpinning much of our societal work on reconciliation are core peacebuilding habits, as seen in the globally used Difference course, promoting a call to reimagine new realities absent of conflict.
This weekend, the General Synod will hear about the SDR, and the part played by the Church in sustaining the nation in times of war. We must go further and be truly strategic, with Christ as our vision. We need to demand a Strategic Peacebuilding Review to balance the SDR and to ensure that the NSS is intentionally planning for dialogue and resourcing it.
Lasers aside, strengthening the impact of peacebuilding by ten times may be a defining part for the Church in this era of growing conflict and erosion of the global rules-based system.
James Megoran is Director of Peacebuilding, Lambeth Palace, and Director of the Global Centre for Peacebuilding and Business.
