Description
The 2025 Strategic Defence Review, pitched as a 'root-and-branch review of UK Defence', promises to make the UK safer through a series of measures. Among these are increased defence spending, treating the defence sector as an 'engine for growth' and a so-called whole-of-society approach to defence. As feminist and other critical scholars have long argued, any increases in spending and attention to defence tend to come at significant cost to other forms of safety such as social security. Drawing on recent work with co-authors on the concept of military social harm (Basham et al, 2024), this presentation will examine the potential harms of the measures envisaged in the SDR and other less visible ones. It will explore what an increased focus on defence might mean for the democratic scrutiny of military power and how a social harm approach might engender stronger democratic oversight.
