The Spectator:
The generals must share the blame
.......In the end, it is the politicians who make the decisions on whether to deploy troops overseas. Nevertheless, senior officers have a duty not only to ensure that troops are used in sensible ways, but also to ensure that they are used for sensible purposes, and to tell the politicians what those would and would not be. Alas, Britain’s military leaders have failed to restrain the Labour government from its strategic follies.
Bureaucratic interests explain why. In the late 1980s the British armed forces were orientated almost entirely towards the Soviet threat. The collapse of communism left them without a raison d’ętre. It would have been easy for the Labour government to make major cuts in military spending. It did not. Rather than destroying Britain’s military, the Labour party saved it. The 1997 strategic defence review provided a new mission — expeditionary warfare to be a ‘force for good’ around the world.
We live in a remarkably peaceful era. There is no direct military threat to the United Kingdom, and the magnitude of global conflict has declined by 60 per cent in two decades. Nonetheless, the top brass have embraced the new purpose with zeal. Their existence depends on it.
All these factors together mean that the armed forces are institutionally averse to recognising a fundamental truth — that the problems they have faced in Iraq and Afghanistan derive not from a lack of resources but from the very nature of the missions themselves. Recognising this would mean admitting that expeditionary warfare is not a good idea, and admitting that would cast the whole defence budget into doubt. Blaming Mr Brown provides a convenient way out of this impasse.
In 1997, the Labour government gave the country a new strategic direction. It has not worked out well. If, as expected, the Conservatives take power next year, they will inherit and complete the latest defence review. In the process, future defence ministers, including possibly General Dannatt, need to do more than merely juggle resources. They need to re-examine fundamental strategic assumptions. The stab-in-the-back myth stands in the way. It maintains the pretence that the basic direction was all right, and merely the implementation went wrong, so that all can be solved with the application of additional funds. While this story may serve some narrow bureaucratic interests, it does the people of Britain no service at all.