Package deal: what would be a credible and effective UK response to the Skripal attack?
In this blog, Joe Devanny considers the UK government’s options to respond to the nerve agent attack on Sergei and Yulia Skripal in Salisbury on Sunday 4 March. He looks at the hard decisions and strategic patience necessary for Theresa May and her National Security Council (NSC) to shape a balanced, credible and effective response, and the danger of initiating a spiral of escalation with Russia. Against this backdrop, there is a risk that the government will talk tough, but that its actions will be neither credible nor effective.
Theresa May informed parliament yesterday (Monday 12 March) that it was ‘highly likely’ that the Russian government was responsible for the nerve agent attack on Sergei Skripal and his daughter in Salisbury. Mrs May delivered an ultimatum for the Russian government to account for its actions or face an as yet unspecified UK response. It is reported that, assuming a Russian response is not forthcoming (and the evidence of public Russian responses to date about the Skripal case suggests it will not be forthcoming), Mrs May will convene another meeting of her National Security Council (NSC) tomorrow to agree the shape and extent of the UK’s response.
There are three sets of measures that have been discussed as elements of a possible UK package of responses. These measures revolve around diplomatic, economic and cyber responses — less coverage has been given to the prospect of, for example, significantly increasing the UK military contribution to the NATO deployment in Estonia, or of significantly expanding British defence and security assistance to Ukraine, both of which should also be on the menu when the NSC discusses the overall composition of the UK package of responses.
Of the measures that have received the most public discussion, the first is the option to expel Russian diplomats from London, and also to restrict the activities of Russian state media (RT and Sputnik) in the UK. This is a formulaic and symbolic step: diplomatic expulsions are certain to provoke reciprocal expulsions of British diplomats from Moscow. I would be surprised if British diplomats, possibly including the ambassador, weren’t already packing their bags in expectation of a premature end to their postings. But tit-for-tat diplomatic expulsions are also unlikely to achieve any longer-term objective to change the behaviour of Russian president Vladimir Putin, or even to greatly inconvenience the Russian government.
The same is true for taking action against Russian media operations in the UK. Whatever benefit might be thought to accrue from revoking broadcasting licenses or similar steps, there are also several reasons not to do so. First, the UK upholds media freedom to a greater extent than does Russia: it is easy to see how Russia would retaliate against British journalists in Russia. Second, effectively countering the propaganda effect of these outlets — as suggested in a recent Times editorial — should not involve trying to suppress them (counter-productive in the age of the Internet), but rather the application of persistent effort to send well-briefed and effective communicators onto those very channels, precisely to disrupt and rebut their messages at source.
At any rate, such diplomatic and media-related measures may be seen as a necessary, symbolic part of a wider package of UK responses, but they can hardly be seen as a sufficient response to the nerve agent attack in Salisbury.
A second set of measures that has received much attention is the intensification of UK efforts to investigate and seize Russian assets in the UK, to make it more difficult for oligarchs closely tied to President Putin to invest in — and even to visit — the UK. This is clearly a more significant and longer term step than expelling several dozen diplomats from London or downgrading the UK’s official representation at the football World Cup in Russia later this year, but it also carries with it some fairly obvious risks to the UK and complications in successful implementation. First, this is a measure that requires international assistance: the UK can quickly close its borders to Russian oligarchs, their families and their money, but ultimately, as inconvenient as this might be, these rich and well-connected actors can change their behaviour nearly as quickly, redirecting their investments and leisure activities to other countries. We see this, for example, in the long-running UK sanctions against former Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe: perhaps it is still irritating to Mr Mugabe that he and his wife cannot visit London, but they have long since switched their assets and conspicuous consumption habits to other foreign capitals.
To be effective, therefore, these coercive measures require the solidarity of our allies, including the chaotic Trump administration, which today replaced Secretary of State Rex Tillerson — admittedly a move a long time coming, but also one day after his stronger statement than the White House press secretary in support of the UK in the wake of the Skripal attack. It isn’t clear, however, that even the existing pattern of international economic sanctions — imposed on Russia following its 2014 invasion of Ukraine — command a strong consensus within the European Union. This doesn’t mean that the UK should not get tougher on the UK-based activities and investments of Russians linked to Mr Putin, but it should force Mrs May to recognise that again, this is an insufficient step to impose a very high cost on Russia, absent strong international support.
The third set of measures discussed in the papers today — due to concerted government briefing effort involving both ministers and unnamed officials (see here, here, and here) — is the option of conducting cyber attacks against Russian state and information warfare targets. Again, there are problems with this option, several of which are problems it shares with the other measures already discussed.
One lesson from the academic literature on coercive diplomacy, is that the application of limited force is more likely to succeed if a government’s objectives are clear and consistent. Put simply, it helps to know what you are trying to achieve (a point made more generally about UK foreign policy by this week’s Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee Global Britain report). In this case, Mrs May and her NSC must choose a package of measures that aims to rebuke Russia, impose a cost for the Skripal attack, and also try simultaneously to deter similar actions in future.
The precise configuration of the package of measures — how many diplomats to expel, how vigorously to increase investigation of Russian investments in the UK, how much to restrict the travel of figures associated with the Putin regime — depends on several factors, including: how much of a cost to impose as a rebuke for the Skripal attack; the assessment made in Whitehall about what measures are sufficient to serve as an effective deterrent against similar acts in future; and finally, the extent to which Theresa May and her Cabinet are prepared to accept the likely consequences of these measures in the form of the inevitable retaliatory response from Moscow.
Any response therefore requires careful calculation of clear and consistent UK objectives and persistent resolve and strategic patience (from the government and the British people) to see through what is likely to be years of diplomatic attrition with Russia. This is complicated by the currently contingent and fragile nature of Mrs May’s premiership. To be credible, her package needs to be perceived by Moscow as having the long-term backing of the UK government, but few people (in the UK or overseas) expect Mrs May’s premiership to be a long-haul affair. It is, therefore, more important than ever for Mrs May to secure a strong commitment from her senior colleagues on the NSC (who may well include her likely successor as prime minister) to see through the measures.
Whilst clear objectives and strategic patience are important, another factor for effective coercive diplomacy is the appropriate choice of measures. For example, consider one low-grade option for a retributive cyber attack, one that took control of the Russian presidency’s website on the day of Russia’s presidential elections (18 March), exhorting Russians to vote for Putin’s competitors.
There are five problems with such an operation — and indeed with any similar operation that uses offensive cyber to impose a relatively fixed and bearable cost on Russia, such as operations to take offline Russian troll farms and ‘fake news’ factories. First, these steps are merely irritants: they would not change the outcome of an election that Mr Putin is certain to win, or blow off course the wider Russian information warfare operation. Second, cyber attacks (or UK information warfare operations) connected with the Russian presidential election or wider domestic politics would establish an equivalence between UK actions and the Russian attack on US elections in 2016, ceding the moral high ground that the UK and its allies have otherwise been able to occupy on this issue.
Third, although these steps would not undermine Putin’s presidency or change his policies, they would be very public and, therefore, highly embarrassing to him, probably leading him to respond, out of wounded pride, by ordering a retaliatory response of some kind involving Russian operations against the UK or UK interests overseas. The concern here — no doubt exhaustively considered in cross-Whitehall preparatory meetings ahead of tomorrow’s NSC — is about how the UK can control the risk that any set of measures could create a cycle of escalation and counter-escalation, which could ultimately lead to a situation in which the UK regrets its initial response to the Skripal attack, because Russia has escalated to the point that the costs have become unbearable to the British government or the British public, the resolve of both being necessary to see through a tough, long-term campaign of measures against Russia.
Fourth, in choosing to use a cyber vulnerability to impose a punitive effect, the UK government would be accepting that it would not be able to continue to exploit that vulnerability to produce intelligence, or perhaps could not continue to use the cyber exploit in future attacks, as it would be a known quantity that could subsequently be guarded against.
The trade-off is potentially between a long-running, covert operation to gain intelligence from a penetrated network and a one-off, retaliatory measure that degrades the targeted Russian network in such a way that Mr Putin realises that Russian state infrastructure has been compromised. The problem here is that, once the attack has been executed and the vulnerability has at length been fixed, the targeted network would ‘go dark’ as a target of intelligence collection, and the UK would have used an attack exploit that it might otherwise have used for greater effect against a different target in future. The UK must try to choose targets where this trade-off is not a problem, or attack techniques that are not so precious or perishable, but that would seem to rule out a lot of the most likely Russian intelligence and military targets, which are simultaneously good candidates for a limited cyber attack and for long-running intelligence collection operations.
Fifth, there is a problem with the way that the government appears to have very publicly briefed out to the press its willingness to use offensive cyber as a part of its package of responses. Having briefed several national newspapers to put Moscow ‘on notice’, there is the possibility that a rogue state or non-state actor (and potentially even the Russian government itself) might execute a ‘false flag’ cyber attack on Russian government targets, one designed to implicate the UK and reduce the solidarity of its allies with the UK.
Clearly, if you are contemplating a covert operation, such as an offensive cyber operation, it is better to keep quiet about it and just do it, perhaps signalling covertly to Russia after the fact that the UK was responsible, in order to eliminate doubt and thereby derive maximum deterrent effect.
Overall, these are major political and policy choices to be made by Mrs May and her NSC. Perhaps the most important issue is the question of the government’s resolve, strategic patience and appetite for risk: the stronger the UK response, the more likely Mr Putin is to retaliate by imposing his own costs on the UK. Some of the potential UK measures, like vigorously investigating Russian financial ties to the UK, stand to impose a cost on the UK itself: this kind of leverage relies on mutual entanglement — it could impose a cost on Russia, but only if the UK is willing to accept the corollary of a price paid by the UK for rendering itself a less friendly destination or enabler for Russian capital.
Similarly, as retributive and deterrent measures, the package agreed at tomorrow’s NSC meeting is likely to make it difficult in future to find the right moment and pretext for an ‘off ramp’ or exit strategy. Studies of Mr Putin’s psychology point to the importance of resilience under adversity and exaggerated concern for Russia as a respected and feared great power with a strong state apparatus. Mr Putin — who is likely to be president for longer than Mrs May is prime minister — is highly unlikely in the short or medium term to give the UK any public reason to de-escalate and pare back these measures, as this would most probably be perceived by him, by the Russian politico-securocrat elite, and indeed by the Russian public, as an unacceptable sign of weakness and capitulation under foreign pressure.
This raises a further issue, namely the delicate balance in constructing a package of responses tough enough to signal credible deterrence, but not so tough as to become counter-productive, by embarrassing Putin into retaliating, or by similarly restricting the freedom of expression of any voices within Putin’s inner circles who might be willing to counsel greater restraint in future. In this case, a lot depends on how well the UK government thinks it understands Mr Putin’s and his inner circle’s motivation, likely perceptions of, and reactions to, the chosen UK package of responses. The relevant question to ask here is: just how good is the intelligence and analysis supporting NSC decision-makers? Critical junctures such as this make the case for sustained and significant investments in diplomacy, intelligence and analytical expertise, to ensure political decision-makers have access to the best possible information.
And yet, it is possible in spite all of this that a delicately balanced, well-calibrated UK response might yet impose sufficient costs that Mr Putin is persuaded to refrain from ordering another nerve agent attack in the UK. But even in this case, we should not pretend that it will be possible quickly and easily to press the re-set button: at what point can a future prime minister say, for example, ‘okay, it’s been this many years since the Russians executed anyone with a nerve agent in the UK, so let’s agree that it’s time to de-escalate.’ On one hand, such a step would immediately create a risk for that prime minister, who would be made to look stupid if a similar attack shortly followed such a decision to de-escalate. On the other hand, it is difficult to disaggregate the patchwork quilt of different bilateral and international sanctions imposed on Russia that have several very different ostensible objectives, e.g. those aimed as a response to Russian occupation of Crimea. The creeping aggregation of a complicated and overlapping set of measures increases the risk that future governments are saddled with a policy inheritance that it is very difficult to unpick and improve bilateral relations without the appearance of weakness on one side or the other. (Judging by Jeremy Corbyn’s response yesterday to Mrs May’s statement, this is an issue that would concern some possible future prime ministers more than others.)
The May government is therefore facing a pivotal moment in contemporary British foreign policy. It is clear that a strong response is necessary after an outrage of such magnitude, lest the UK continue to be perceived as a pushover state, unable to defend itself and unwilling to countenance the cost of genuinely retributive and deterrent measures. But it is equally clear that the construction of a credible and effective package of responses is difficult, especially given the obduracy of Mr Putin. In this light, the NSC needs to be clear about its objectives, i.e., to impose real costs on Mr Putin and his circle, and to establish a credible deterrent against future operations similar to the Skripal case. It also needs to be consistent in its resolve to see through what will be a long-haul struggle of attrition with Russia, one likely outlasting Mrs May’s premiership, and willing to accept that a genuinely credible set of measures will carry with them the likelihood that the UK itself will pay a price for acting with sufficient force and determination to be taken seriously by Russia. This is one case where the rhetoric of successive British governments about Britain’s great power status and global reach needs to be met with commensurate resolve, ambition and strategic patience.
Joe Devanny is programme director for security at Ridgeway Information and a former research fellow at King’s College London. You can follow him on Twitter.
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