Aiding and abetting? The vital importance of DFID and aid budget to delivering UK security goals.

“Scrap the aid budget, spend it on Defence” is a common refrain heard on social media and elsewhere by many commentators, who feel that the UK aid budget is too large, that it is out of control and that it does little to support UK security compared to the MOD. There is also usually a view that the armed forces should take a much stronger steer on delivery of aid, and that it should not be granted to countries with space programmes, nor spent on providing counselling to llamas wearing hand woven 100% vegan sandals and suffering from low self esteem.

It is easy to think this at times – after all when you read headlines like the suggestion that the UK provided money to an Ethiopian girl band, taxpayers rightly may wonder why they are spending this abroad, and not at home, and why not use it on the armed forces instead.

To Humphrey though, the work of DFID is perhaps one of the most important parts of the external UK government influence toolkit, able to do work that can, if done correctly, prevent conflict from occurring and avoid the need to deploy the armed forces in the first place. DFID lists its priorities HERE, top of which is strengthening global peace, security and governance, while the second priority is strengthening resilience and responses to crisis. Both of these are integral to much of the work that the MOD does.

In Whitehall people often do not comprehend that on matters of national security, Departments do not ‘go it alone’ and head off to deliver their own policy irrespective of what other Departments are up to. The top level document setting out UK Government priorities remains the 2015 National Security Strategy, which sets out the roles played by many different government departments in helping deliver good global security outcomes beneficial to UK interests.

This work is overseen centrally, with policy development and implementation closely co-ordinated, ensuring for instance that HMG efforts to build a closer relationship with one country, that may have challenging security and stability needs requiring mentoring, weapons & equipment sales and  other advice to help prevent the government from collapsing, is delivered in a manner which considers all aspects of the relationship. So, DFID may be tasked to provide aid to refugee camps or help work with MOD and the Home Office to provide good governance and capacity building in that nations domestic security forces to ensure stability, and not human rights abuses.  Finally it may offer advice on how to improve rights and the economy, to increase stability in the medium term as people get jobs and hope.

This co-ordinated approach is essential in helping look beyond the short term goals of different departments, and instead focus on the long term multi-year strategy that may take years, if not decades to reap dividends.

This approach can be in stark contrast to how the MOD handles matters, where the  focus is usually short term, involved in providing quick solutions to deliver short term wins to meet the conditions for an exit strategy and which often sees people in country for a short period of time and not involved for decades. The approach is rightly focused on delivering kinetic success to meet military goals – but this is only half the battle.

In Iraq, Humphrey recalls working with the FCO and DFID to talk through how to deal with the problem of militias, many of which were actively targeting UK forces. The military solution was absolutely proper – find them, target them and detain them to take them off the streets. The problem though was deeper rooted than this – it was about proud angry young men without jobs or hope, who saw an occupying force in their homeland, opportunities to win prestige for their tribe and to get some income from launching attacks that in turn would feed their family.

The solution was as much about short term stamping down on militia members as it was about taking a longer-term view. Finding jobs, employment and a chance to give people the opportunity to earn a steady wage and have some basic self-respect was as key to long term success. Many of the conversations were built around identifying what industries would be credible, what could be restarted and what training was needed to get people into work (practical, academic or otherwise), and what investment was required to keep the country going to avoid people getting trapped in a cycle of violence. As one seasoned hand put it ‘we want to create the conditions where people come home from work and are too tired to go out and carry out a jihad’.

This is where DFID was particularly valuable as it was able to take a longer term outlook on what could work to help get young angry men into work, where they could become stable productive parts of society, reducing violence and improving security and stability for all.

The challenge is perhaps that the Armed Forces (and their supporters) don’t see things in the same way. There is a natural desire on a 6 month tour to be seen to ‘do something’, particularly if it helps enhance a metric or show engagement. Humphrey also remembers briefing a brigade many years ago preparing to deploy to Afghanistan who were told the salutary tale by aid workers of how an allied army had gone to great lengths to install washing machines in the village to make life easier for women, only to have them ruined. The women destroyed them because for them, washing communally was a chance to see their friends and engage – not remain in the house all day. This was where aspiration met reality, and being able to draw on expert advice really helped.

The armed forces also have a critical role to play alongside DFID in delivering aid after a crisis (as many of the images in this article show). This immediate response to a crisis often helps save lives, but it should not be assumed that this is always the best or only solution to a crisis.There is a balance between the two organisations that needs to work together, not with one assuming it can do the job of the other. 

This is perhaps immediately noticeable in operational theatres where military personnel come in with a 6 month tour mentality and a desire to deliver effect, while DFID staff are present often for many years. They see things in a totally different manner for many aid programmes compared to military personnel who want to get success in a vastly shorter time-frame.  

For the UK, the benefit of aid spending for meeting national security objectives can be seen in the impact it has in three key areas – namely Prosperity, Security and Influence.

Prosperity

Aid spending is often targeted to help improve the standard of living in a country and get more access to basic services like the internet or basic education. The reason this matters is simple, the more stable the economy, the less likely there is to be internal instability or risk of collapse of governance.

A more prosperous economy (albeit still poor) is able to be over time less reliant on goodwill and support, and is able to be a source of investment for UK companies, providing opportunities to win business (thus generating jobs at home) and ensuring a stable market. This should generate reasonable governance which in turn reduces the likelihood of despotic regimes embarking on wars or conducting repressive activity.

Simply put, the richer the state is, the more stable it is and the better this is to avoid regional conflict and instability. It also helps generate jobs at home, and opportunities for skilled workers, which in turn reduces the population outflow as people move across the world seeking to escape and better opportunities for their family. It is in the UK’s national interest to see stability across the world because it reduces the chance of conflict and the destabilising effects that this can have.

Lifting people out of poverty reduces the population explosion (thus reducing pressure on resources), and reduces pressure for reform and change. An angry population with few resources and no hope can lead to instability which can see mass migration, starvation, anarchy and collapsing states. Helping generate local opportunities to grow the economy, not top down but bottom up will help over time (often many years) start paying real dividends for the stability of nations.

Governance & Security

An effective investment in capacity building and governance can help improve how a state helps remain stable and not pose a threat to others – either in a competition for resources, or in avoiding conflict. For example, investing in providing good governance and human rights training for police and prison staff may help see better treatment of prisoners, increasing confidence in the rule of law and preventing popular unrest.  

Investing in the provision of aid and shelters in areas affected by conflict (for example the Middle East) helps keep the displaced population alive, but acts as an inducement not to move, thus causing mass migration and starvation. In turn, well run refugee camps can help educate the young and over time provide hope and opportunity so that after the war, people have skills and the ability to return home and rebuild their lands, not remain isolated and unable to progress.

The UK benefits by investing in the provision of capacity building in discrete areas, or delivering aid to other areas because doing so helps improve our security at home. It reduces the potential for humanitarian catastrophes and in turn keeps states more stable and less likely to collapse.

It is far easier and cheaper to invest a few million pounds in helping provide training, advice and influence to underpin a state and its governance than it is to send the armed forces in to pick the pieces up and start all over again when a state collapses, leaving a vacuum for terrorists and conflict to proliferate.

Influence

UK aid helps buy the UK significant diplomatic leverage – far more arguably than is gained from the UK armed forces alone. Many nations where the UK provides aid and relief do not have any real engagement with the UK military, but they do have a vote in the UN, or they do belong to different international organisations.

Aid provides the UK a chance to gain access to influence senior decision makers and Presidents – its much easier to get in and talk about the potential for aid in return for a nation considering different policy (maybe telling Country A that UK aid is contingent on its not threatening Country B), or to lobby for support in international issues. Aid opens doors that allow conversations to happen that would not otherwise occur. Most states in receipt of UK aid do not sit and worry about whether the UK has 6 or 8 Type 45 destroyers and what this means. They do worry about what happens if they don’t take the UK Ambassadors call to ‘discuss funding of aid considering recent developments’...

Finally aid is a great means of the UK helping encourage ‘optimal policy outcomes’, which bluntly put means – ‘its much easier to get a state to help support the UK when they have a vested interest in doing so’. Its incredibly hard, and not really the done thing anymore to threaten to send a gunboat (particularly with landlocked nations), and frankly to do so is expensive, time consuming and can backfire when no other country supports you basing through their airspace or ports and you end up unable to do anything.

If on the other hand you want a state in receipt of aid to consider its position, aid opens doors to delivery of UK policy goals that the MOD cannot and could not do. Be wary of assuming that states fear the UK armed forces, for frankly, the chances of a major deployment to coerce many nations is zero, but the ability of DFID to turn off the funding taps is a much more tangible and visible deterrent indeed.

It is particularly helpful in this way that UK FCO, DFID and other overseas presence is consolidating onto one embassy compound in most countries now. This collegiate working in post is supported by collegiate working in Whitehall - getting people to work together enables truly joint success in planning how to use influence effectively. 

In many ways DFID aid is as critical a deterrent as the SSBN force in terms of helping secure UK policy objectives– its presence and ability to be cut off and influence behaviour, and the impact that this could have in the worst case scenarios on the nation state is significant. National security is about delivering outcomes amenable to your interests, ideally done without resorting to force. Aid is a vital tool in enabling this to occur.

Bringing It All Together…

An example of how UK security is at risk from complex issues today can be seen in the Horn of Africa right now. Here an ongoing environmental catastrophe that has led to droughts in a region reliant on subsistence farming, coupled with civil war and population migration in South Sudan. The outcome has been mass people movements into Somalia and beyond, causing cities to explode in size as tens of thousands of migrants without food or funds flood into previously small towns looking for work.

The lack of effective central government means power is divested into the hands of warlords who fight for land and resources. Many Somalis and others have begun to go to sea in skiffs, some to fish, while others go armed and seek to scare away commercial fishing vessels from the far east, who they think are depleting the region of food. Still more turn to piracy in its most literal sense, robbing ships for resources and food in an effort to eke out some form of living.

Others flee across ancient transit routes to Yemen, where an ongoing and brutal civil war is causing another humanitarian catastrophe, and regional instability that is sucking in other nations to try and bring about some semblance of order.

The reason this matters for the UK is simple, the 12 mile stretch of water known as the ‘Bab-Al-Mendab’ the main chokepoint at the end of the Southern Red Sea. Ongoing attacks on shipping there threaten economic prosperity at home, with insurers potentially raising prices for ships transiting these waters, and impacting on the flow of oil and natural gas between the Gulf and the UK & Western Europe. If these waters close due to regional instability, then the lights in Britain will flicker, and Christmas presents may not arrive, causing economic instability for many small businesses. The jobs and livelihoods of many small towns in the UK depend in part on delivering some form of stability in the Horn of Africa.

UK aid plays a key role in this situation, from providing food relief and trying to avoid mass starvation and the collapse of entire populations (triggering an enormous humanitarian crisis). The more this is alleviated, the less likely it is that locals will feel the need to resort to piracy to make ends meet. Investment in governance, training and capacity building helps rebuild shattered structures and in time denies safe spaces for terrorist movements to operate, in turn reducing the likelihood of suicide boat attacks on passing ships.

The UK military can, and does, play a key role in securing the situation – but it is not something which can easily be solved with force and presence alone. Aid is vital in helping as a short term bandage, and a long term solution to many issues which must be addressed to help meet UK security goals.

The risk is that if UK aid is cut to fund defence, much of this capability is lost and sacrificed to fund a small amount of additional defence output. But, the long term damage to UK influence, reputation and access to help shape states thinking, create countries with Governments amenable to UK interests and fundamentally stopping them from collapsing in a manner necessitating UK military engagement is enormous.

Aid should be seen not as something which is achingly bleeding heart liberal, but something that is a critical weapon in  delivery of UK national security objectives. It is the long term ‘boots on the ground ‘presence that the armed forces cannot provide or sustain. It is the means by which states do not engage in activity or development that threatens our interests, and it is a critical tool in helping make the UK demonstrably safer.

Not every security problem requires a military solution. The best security solutions don’t involve military commitment, because this is time consuming, costly and doesn’t necessarily make things better. In an era where soft power is more critical than ever in helping deliver influence and effects, the UK commitment to aid should be welcomed and praised by all who support a strong UK with a global presence and fooprint, and not seen as an easy sacrifice to buy more bombs and guns.