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The Chief of the Defence Staff gave his annual RUSI lecture last week. It largely repeats some of the ground covered when he announced the Integrated Operating Concept earlier this year, though there are a few points worth covering in more detail. https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/chief-of-defence-staff-at-rusi-annual-lecture
@MikeClarke2020s has already covered it in some depth. Perhaps most significantly, he asks what the rest of government thinks of this approach, and whether it is a truly coordinated effort. https://twitter.com/MikeClarke2020s/status/1339673592506793989?s=20
There's a question that remains to be answered about what 'competing below the threshold of conflict' really means, because - even if the military does more - so much of that is fundamentally about other parts of government. The Integrated Review will hopefully explain this.
That's particularly true if this diagnosis represents a fully cross-government view, rather than the MOD telling everyone else what to think. Making everything a 'military' task will be using the wrong tool in many cases.
It's also a contradictory speech in some cases, which suggests more thinking is required. It can't be the case that rivals both see no distinction between peace and war *and* deliberately try and avoid avoid war.
And this is doctrinally...dubious. A 'centre of gravity' *is* a target; that's precisely why it gets attacked (notwithstanding the question of whether 'ethics' can be a centre of gravity).
Highlighting 'The Social Dilemma' is good, because it is an excellent, if worrying documentary. Additionally, part of the moral was that *internal* forces that can damage society - not an area where the military should be in the lead.
That is emphasised by this subsequent claim (if you can cut through the opaque language). The military wants to make itself more flexible, and able to handle a broader range of security threats. Even so, many of these issues demand an improved civilian response.
An interesting comparison to make, given that 1) it needed the 'Solarium' process to actually produce the strategy and 2) that was defined against a primary rival. This speech identifies many rivals (albeit China looms large). Should the UK base strategy on a primary antagonist?
For more on Project Solarium, I can recommend this @Strategy_Bridge podcast episode. http://thestrategybridge.libsyn.com/pres-eisenhowers-project-solarium-with-richard-immerman
I'm unconvinced by this argument every time it is made; competition is intrinsic to deterrence, because it involves a rival. We need a better explanation, or at least to stop using a meaningless distinguishing factor.
As the next section highlights, there is a challenge in using the military to deter other forms of aggression (though I always think we mischaracterise Ukraine, which ultimately involved an invasion).
The rest of the speech focusses on what sounds like more conventional deterrence, alongside 'integration' (which sounds a lot like 'network-enabled warfare') and modernisation, along the lines used previously.
It closes with this statement on war, which which I broadly agree, but is a message that is muddled by some of the rhetoric. 'Conflict' and 'competition' can be different, but it sounds at times like we can't make our minds up if we actually believe that war still has meaning.
So the modernisation programme that follows, 'persistent engagement' and the Integrated Review will need to take into account how we maintain the ability to fight, but fit the military alongside all the other tools of government to make a difference to other forms of aggression.
Otherwise we will be left with a lot of military jargon that doesn't reflect how other departments think, and a heavy bias towards the armed forces as not just the Swiss army knife, but in fact the whole toolbox for government.
