UK: Soldiering Unpopular



We should stop fooling ourselves. Our armed forces are no longer world
class


Public distaste for Blair's unpopular wars, coupled with the unfitness
of our teenagers, has left Britain woefully short of soldiers
Max Hastings
The Guardian,
Monday April 28 2008
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/apr/28/defence.military

The Ministry of Defence is plunged into a grim process described as a
"mini defence review". Teams of service officers and civil servants
are exploring every aspect of spending and procurement plans in a
desperate effort to save money. Current year sums have been made to
add up only by creative accountancy, pushing back some big bills to
2010. Whoever becomes defence secretary after an election that year
will face a pile of yellowing, unpaid invoices.

Everybody knows that a major defence programme must be cancelled. The
navy's cherished aircraft carriers? These would be the first choices
of most soldiers, but because the ships mean jobs in Labour
constituencies, they are almost certainly safe. Some frigates and
destroyers? At least two planned escorts are likely to be axed. The
army is fearful about its next-generation armoured vehicle. Several
headquarters will have to go. General Sir Richard Dannatt, chief of
the general staff, has failed in his attempt to persuade ministers to
increase the army's numbers.

Dannatt's case is founded on the fact that his soldiers are attempting
to fight one major war, in Afghanistan, with inadequate resources,
while 4,000 troops are in another theatre, Iraq, to appease American
sensitivities. The army also maintains a significant peacekeeping
presence in the Balkans. It was announced last week that another
infantry battalion is to be sent to Kosovo.

Yet the deep instinct of the government, and even more so of the
parliamentary Labour party, is that Tony Blair's wars have brought
Britain only embarrassment and grief. The last thing they want is to
throw good money after bad by recruiting more soldiers, never mind
deploying them in combat.

The scepticism is understandable, but the conclusion is mistaken. Many
people, myself included, are dismayed by the huge mistakes made in
Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet it remains essential for Britain to possess
a credible army. A strength of 100,000 is insufficient. Whether we
like it or not, the 21st century will produce new conflicts in which
we are obliged to participate or at least provide peacekeepers.

Britain cannot alone fill the yawning gap in Afghanistan left by other
Nato countries that refuse to do their share of fighting and
supporting humanitarian reconstruction. But we can never hope to win
this conflict, or any other, without more boots on the ground. Mass
matters. It is not enough for western powers to announce in a given
crisis: "We are committing troops," then to dispatch three men and a
dog. No strategic purpose is attainable unless soldiers are deployed
in sufficient strength, with convincing humanitarian backup.

I argued on these pages two years ago that the force that Tony Blair
and the then defence secretary John Reid were sending to Afghanistan's
Helmand province was entirely inadequate for its role, and represented
gesture strategy. So it has proved. Western defence policy will remain
rooted in tokenism until all the European nations, and indeed the US,
can field sufficient foot soldiers - who are far more relevant to
"wars among the people" than tanks and stealth bombers - to fulfil
policy objectives.

The shortfall is not exclusively the fault of governments. Part of the
problem stems from our changing culture. It is becoming progressively
more difficult for western societies to recruit infantry. Most British
infantry regiments are under establishment, and Scottish units
especially so, not only because of Treasury parsimony, but also
because recruiting languishes and retention is difficult.

For centuries, armies have largely consisted of young working-class
men, often with poor qualifications. They opted for a life of
adventure and comradeship, accepting both the duty to kill and the
risk of their own deaths. The army was seldom their career of choice,
but many prospered in uniform.

Today, however, a lot of parents and schools recoil from seeing young
men embrace the warrior ethos. They find repugnant the notion of
arming teenagers and dispatching them to fight, whatever the cause.
Thanks to the internet, a radio exchange between a female interviewer
and an Australian general named Peter Cosgrove has passed into
contemporary legend. Cosgrove, as head of the Australian army,
described on air a scheme to introduce Australian boy scouts to the
exciting life on offer to a soldier by inviting them to bases where
they could try climbing, canoeing, archery and rifle-shooting.
"Shooting!" exclaimed the appalled interviewer. "That's a bit
irresponsible, isn't it ?"

"I don't see why," said the general. "They'll be properly supervised
on the range." The interviewer was unconvinced: "Don't you admit that
this is a terribly dangerous activity to be teaching children? You're
equipping them to become violent killers." Cosgrove remained
unabashed: "Well, ma'am, you're equipped to be a prostitute, but
you're not one, are you?"

A lot of people share the interviewer's instinctive revulsion towards
guns, as well as other aspects of soldiering. Some British schools are
unwilling to welcome army recruiting teams. The Joseph Rowntree
Charitable Trust recently caricatured itself by publishing a report
arguing that the army has a duty more frankly to warn recruits in its
advertising about the prospect that they may have to kill or be
killed.

Overlaid upon such fastidiousness is the problem of many teenagers'
lack of fitness for service life. The British army is striving to
reduce the high dropout rate in basic training among new entrants who
either find discipline unacceptable or cannot contend with the
physical demands. Teenagers who have never walked if they could ride,
and define enthusiasm for sport by watching it on telly, find assault
courses tough going.

The result is that all western nations are struggling to identify
enough young men able and willing to carry rifles on battlefields. It
is hard to foresee social trends that will make it less so. The armed
forces as an institution still command public respect. But this is of
limited worth unless it translates into a willingness by the young to
sign up and do the business.

It is paradoxical that Tony Blair, who sought to use Britain's armed
forces more ambitiously than any modern prime minister, inflicted deep
damage by associating them with some unpopular and perhaps unwinnable
causes.

Britain's three services are now so small that, if current policies
and difficulties continue, it will be almost impossible to reverse the
process of decline. Relations between senior officers at the MoD have
become rancorous, amid fears and recriminations about budget cuts,
real and threatened.

Unless one is an outright pacifist, rejecting military commitment
anywhere, in any cause, it is necessary to recognise that the national
interest must suffer if the services become tarnished and are
penalised for a prime minister's political misjudgments. The old
cliche is often trotted out that our armed forces are still world
class. In truth, it is no longer valid. However high their quality,
they are now too few to fulfil many of the tasks they are assigned.
Even if ministers try to delude us otherwise, the public should not be
fooled.

.

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