The UK as a Leading Force
Dean is the Head of the Centre for Army Leadership at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, where he oversees leadership development across the Army and beyond. A former planner in the FCDO’s Africa Joint Unit and UK lead for UN military operations, he was awarded an OBE for his work. His military career includes operational tours in Sierra Leone, Northern Ireland, and Afghanistan, and he commanded the UK’s Forward Presence Battle Group in Estonia. He has delivered Defence diplomacy and training in countries across Africa and Central Asia, and has held strategic roles including with the Army’s Integrated Review team.
My experience at the intersection of Defence and development in action, through time spent across Africa, but most notably so in Sierra Leone, Kenya, Somalia, and South Sudan, gives me a fortunate perspective. My time working in the UK’s Permanent Joint Headquarters and the then-Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s Africa Joint Unit, on policies founded in diplomatic, development, and defence coordination, enlightened me to how each complements the others.
Undoubtedly, each have their own fundamental code, but the sum benefits are far greater than the individual parts, and ultimately have the same aim – increasing stability through the advancement of human security and the prosperity of individuals, communities, and nations. In doing so, we prevent conflict, strengthen alliances, and enhance resilience. Doing so because ‘it is the right thing to do’ is often difficult to justify on a funding spreadsheet; often left out of some of the more idealistic musings though is the fact that all of this is ultimately to improve the security, and advance the interests, of the UK. We need not be shy about undertaking that which contributes to making Britain a force for good, where it also is a force good for Britain.
I have been further fortunate in being able to combine my experience in and working on Africa with my role at the head of the Centre for Army Leadership. As a nation, we have contemporarily forged leadership roles in development, diplomacy, and defence, in many parts of the world; indeed, the space and demand for us to do so may well be greater in the near future than we might otherwise have predicted it would be. It might not always be with the biggest budget or greatest number of troops, but through judicious use of what we can give and deploy, by demonstrating good behaviours which others can look to as an example, and which is the morally right thing to do, we can continue to lead. That could be through Defence engagement, overseas development aid, or diplomatic support; in an ideal scenario it would be a joint venture between the three. In Somalia, the UK has endeavoured to focus on the long-term reform of the security sector and political stability, to generate conditions in which aid can be delivered and human security improved.
In South Sudan, the immediacy of aid has driven the UK’s efforts, while Defence has strengthened the United Nations’ security architecture and presence. The balances between each component will always be different, yet always complementary when executed in unison.
As we find ourselves in a ‘pre-war era’ – whether it be a ‘hot’ or another ‘cold’ one – the UK’s choices become starker. Paradoxically, sometimes stark choices make for easier decisions on priorities, and certainly the UK’s Armed Forces will rightly be focussing on countering the malign influences of Russia in the near future. However, those malign influences reach beyond the obvious military destruction Russia wreaks; it physically moves into unstable and ungoverned spaces and manipulates fissures in the societies of nations such as the UK to widen them as much as it can. There is not a unilateral Defence response to such activity, and so its bindings with development and diplomacy must be tighter than ever.
The need to face-up to Russian military strength with a commensurate Defence offer, in concert with Allies, demands a corresponding response, but need not see a disassociation from maintaining leadership and specialist roles in, for example, deployed UN missions in those places where a vacuum of ceded influence will be quickly filled. There are hugely beneficial wider experiences gained by military individuals and units alike from deploying to difficult places in need of support and working alongside diplomatic and development specialists doing the same in their fields. It certainly benefitted me. What can look like limited interventions – in diplomatic, development, or defence terms – could, dependent on how valid you believe chaos theory to be, be the one small thing which prevents something seemingly minor in isolation tipping the balance into something catastrophic – and ultimately more destructive and expensive.
Of course, funding will always be a challenge – we all want effective and efficient public services and support for people in the UK – but many of the pressures on finances and the nation are generated by instability elsewhere. The forecasts are, disappointingly, for greater challenges to come, as the polycrises of climate change, pandemics, and nefarious actors increasingly test our resources and resolve. Ensuring the focus of funding and effort goes to those states most in need – the most fragile and conflict affected – and which impact on the UK’s interests, will be a necessarily difficult rationalisation.
In military leadership terms, a combination of physical, conceptual, and moral components – with the latter including leadership and deemed the preeminent of the three, generates the power to fight (or operate, in civilian terms). Leading by example is also the most powerful means through which to change the leadership behaviours of others. There will never be enough money to achieve everything we would wish to as a force for good, but sound collaboration and coordination of the UK’s internationally-facing institutions, focussed in the right areas, makes for the strongest leadership.
