Interesting argument, guaranteed to put the army's nose out of joint.
Critical Reaction: Challenge I: Defence & Foreign Policy - Keep quiet and don’t cause trouble (http://critical-reaction.co.uk/2529/08-04-2010-keep-quiet-and-don-t-cause-trouble)
In the first of seven articles, CR will examine the most challenging policy areas any new Tory government will have to face.
RansS9
8th Apr 2010, 16:08
I note from the date of the article that they appear to be a week late in publishing!
TIM
Army Mover
8th Apr 2010, 17:34
...guaranteed to put the army's nose out of joint.
Nope; just checked and nose is very much intact. I am however perplexed at the statement:
.... No one challenges our security: no credible risks confront Britain either the way they have just in living memory, still less in the existence-defining manner other countries today have to cope with. We don’t face demographic disintegration on the Russia model, we’re not locked in nuclear and territorial MADness a la India and Pakistan, we’re not a chaotically modernising oligarchic, race-stricken kleptocracy or narco-state on the Brazilian and Mexican lines, and nor are we a seething, superficial theocracy in the Saudi manner. We’re stable, unthreatened and secure, albeit recently prone to engaging in small wars of choice.
which is then followed by:
.... Britain needs nuclear weapons
and:
.... The Queen Elizabeth and the Prince of Wales might well be justified on paper as devices to ‘project power’, but what they really represent is the ability, if chosen, to act alone. ................ Build the carriers
erm - why? :confused:
We don’t need to arm ourselves to fight endless counter-insurgency wars. For if we do, and if that’s all that we’re liable to be able to afford to do, that’s all we’re going to end up doing.
Does that mean this learned body believes all out World War is the way forward or just the ability of the RAF to bob around the globe on Boats is a credible deterrent; not to mention a novel way of holding ground?
A bizarre diatribe trying to defend a singular position – imagine that gaining prominence on this site!!
Jabba_TG12
9th Apr 2010, 07:53
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? :confused: