Max Hastings, Spectator, 4 February 2006.
What Germany or Spain or Italy calls its soldiers are, on the battlefield, men pretending to fulfil the functions of soldiers with no more conviction than the Royal Opera chorus dressed up in uniform for Act One of Carmen. The theme which today dominates European security policy – a fervent hope that if one’s own nation refrains from employing violence against other people, enemies will display matching forbearance – extends even in circumstances of a military deployment in a cause vital to Western credibility.
Mass matters and does not exist. The Dutch government is agonising about whether to commit a mere 1,100 men to Afghanistan. The total Nato force, if all undertakings are fulfilled, will amount to just 15,000 men. This is fewer than the number deployed by the British governments in Northern Ireland at the height of the Troubles, a far less daunting challenge. The Nato force, charged with extending stability from Kabul into outlying provinces presently controlled by warlords and their militias, will amount to about one European soldier for every 16 square miles of Afghan plain and mountain, or about 2,000 Afghan people per squaddie.
One of the words most abused by some British ministers and service chiefs to justify cuts in armed forces numbers is “capability”. They point out that a single infantry company today possesses the firepower of a battalion a few decades ago. This is valid, if one’s objective is to flatten a town or to blow a path through an enemy armoured division. In the circumstances of insurgency, however, it has been demonstrated again and again that what matters is numbers of boots on the ground. The more men with rifles you can deploy, the more sensitively you can operate. Stealth bombers and Challenger tanks are irrelevant. One hundred thousand men, 200,000, 300,000 would not be too many to accomplish what the West wants to do in Afghanistan, where the Taliban is resurgent, opium is the only major source of income, and most of the country is in the hands of warlords.
After the Nato reinforcement to 15,000 was announced last year, the Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer declared enthusiastically, “When the expansion takes place, it will mean Nato is operating in three quarters of Afghanistan”. This is an extreme example of gesture politics, or perhaps gesture strategy. It may be true that some Nato soldiers will be distantly visible in remote parts of the country. But it is ridiculous to suppose that, in such tiny numbers and under such nationally imposed constraints, they will be “operating” in any more meaningful sense than Scott’s party was “operating” in Antarctica, as it languished in a snowbound tent on the way back from the Pole. In Afghanistan, Nato cannot even work as a coherent entity, when each contingent has different ROE. German rules, for instance, forbid troops of other nationalities from riding German helicopters.
As Ollie used to say, “Looks like another fine f*ck-up in the making Stanley”