Interesting and more than a little thought provoking, even if I find I dont agree with
all the answers...
More interesting to see who is behind it.... step forward Norman Tebbit.
But I find it hard to find fault with the logic of:
We should dismiss out of hand the nonsensical, paranoid claim that Britain faces immediate, perilous, epoch-altering harm from Islamic terrorism, even to the point of nuclear attack. We should do so not simply because the chain of possibility involved – the desire to attack Britain before anyone else is conceived, the means to do so are attained, the plot is successfully executed, and, it’s done so knowing full well that no plausible goal will be attained thereby – is so absurdly remote as to be laughable when not merely rhetorically dishonest.
From whatever security standpoint you come from, or are caricatured as coming from, a full spectrum response has been offered, from ‘head in the sand complacency’ to actually invading foreign countries and occupying them and setting up variously dubious client regimes. And having pursued therefore every foreign and defence policy option existing between those two poles, we are well placed to assess the threat radical Islam presents to the British state: it is nugatory, and entirely containable. Moreover, such threat as it does pose has self-evidently been augmented, for Britain, by British foreign policy mistakes.
and also:
For a foreign policy of choice, we need a defence policy that reflects and underpins that Heaven-sent freedom of opportunity. Instead of endless procurement wrangling about how best to equip petty packets of infantry scattered across the globe for no good purpose to no plausible end, we should be maintaining the privilege of choice.
Er, largely yes, but the language is starting to get a little flowery.
Needless wars of choice squander the limited money we have with which to defend ourselves.
Yup. Cant fault that.
Hence giving the army the chance to find another unwinnable war to fight somewhere between Beirut and Bangladesh will not advance British interests one iota. To deform British foreign policy still further, by ordering our armed forces so that the only thing they can do is act as tactical auxiliaries in other countries’ land wars, would be a disastrous mistake which will hobble us diplomatically for a generation and more.
Indeed. GND, do you not think that if we end up focusing our defence policy and procurement on more on Afghanistan than anything else that it'll end up being that those kind of conflicts are all we will be equipped to deal with? Already many pointed questions have been asked about the value of having the size of the Typhoon fleet that we do, yet air defence of the UK, as it stands at the moment is at its weakest for a generation. Thankfully coincident with a rather low credible air threat, but it may not always be that way. Likewise, the amount of protection currently afforded to the UK coastline by the Navy. What is there, something like 6 warships available for the task, if it came to it, if that? Six??? I realise the value of the old adage of "you always end up fighting the last war" rather than preparing for the next one and that to a degree some aspects of that are inescapable. But these, as they are described "wars of choice" should absolutely not prejudice the defence of the homeland by sucking every available GBP out of the budget because there are no votes in bodybags coming back from an campaign that we should never have been this deeply involved in from the start.
The next Tory government should learn from Labour’s mistakes, both those made with our support in the last decade, and those made in the 1960s.
If only... Maybe Norman should have added "and those made on our own watch following the end of the cold war".
Build the carriers, and leave the ground wars to those who need to fight them.
Ah. Heres where the nub lies...
Am I alone here in thinking that Norman has got this rather @rse about face in using defence policy/procurement/doctrine as the driver for foreign policy - ie, these are the tools you've got, dont even think about getting involved in x, y, or z, because you have too many capability gaps? Rather than the more traditional view of defence (beyond that of the homeland that is) being one of the instruments of (and therefore driven by) foreign policy?
