The Blairite future of Britain's military
Bradford University's security expert Paul Rogers writes a very good regular column for openDemocracy. His latest discusses the future British foreign policy that the Prime Minister is attempting to set in place before he leaves office.
"Blair made it quite clear - again, both in the speech [in Plymouth last week] and in the ensuing discussion - that [the threat of terrorism] must be met primarily by the vigorous "hard" power of military force, with the "soft" power of diplomacy, sanctions and other instruments a long way behind. This set of priorities was needed, Blair argued, because the decline in states willing to exercise such hard power constituted one of the crisis-points facing western nations. There was a great danger that Britain would join this band of weaklings."
Take your pick from the articles on the "Best of the Diary" page to see how I assess the nature of British foreign policy. No need for me to comment further here on Blair's declared "visions" of Britain's role in the world and their relationship with reality.
What I found interesting was the military balance that the government apparently wants to set in place for Britain going forward. Firstly, Rogers describes "the decision to replace the Trident nuclear force with a new system, setting Britain as a nuclear-armed power for thirty-five years or more". Secondly, there is "the extraordinary plan to build two massive new aircraft-carriers. These, each weighing 65,000 tons and deploying the new and hugely expansive US F-35 joint strike fighter, will be far larger than any other warship ever deployed in the Royal Navy's history - three times the size of the current Invincible-class and much larger even than the battleships of the global 1939-45 war".
As Rogers points out, "the relatively modest size of the British economy, even allowing for Blair's wish to see an increase in defence spending, means that the new carriers will soak up resources to such an extent that all other military roles will be constrained", and the cost of Trident will only accentuate this. Given the recent debates over the lack of financial support given to British soldiery, these future plans seem to indicate an intention to tip the balance away from close-range infantry deployments and towards distance power-projection via air, sea and nuclear power. In other words, it appears that we now intend to bomb or threaten to bomb countries from a great height, rather than get into the messy business of invading them.
This tells us a couple of things. Firstly, it says something fairly straightforward about how human life is valued in government. Bombing from a great height is pretty indiscriminate in terms of killing civilians. It does however reduce the danger to western troops. This isn't to say that foreign civilians are intrinsically less important to governments than their own troops. There's a straightforward political calulation involved. What's been brought home to the British and American governments is the political costs to their own ambitions that military deaths represent. Without those costs the lives of western troops would I suspect be as cheap as those of Iraqis, whose deaths we can barely be bothered to count. Aside from this, its clear that any concentration of material resources into military power of this kind displays a willingness to kill innocent people indiscriminately and in large numbers in order to achieve your objectives.
Secondly, we learn something about how the state of Britain's military credibility is perceived in Whitehall. As far as Iraq is concerned, the Prime Minister has clearly decided to brazen out the issue. But if a long-term switch of resources away from the ability to commit large numbers of troops and towards aerial bombing and threats of nuclear force is indeed being planned, then the official verdict on Iraq - as a seminal failure - has been delivered in emphatic and unequivocal terms. Such a change in military balance would constitute an admission that fighting on the ground, even against the 'weakest' of enemies, has not only failed, but will continue to fail as far as can be foreseen.
The lessons of Vietnam, Algeria, Afghanistan (twice), Lebanon and Iraq may now have been fully digested, at least by British planners. Major powers are far less able than once was the case to impose themselves by putting boots on the ground. Occupying militaries, no matter how well equipped, can not match guerrilla forces rooted in the population and deploying asymmetric tactics to grind down the invaders over time. Britain will therefore concentrate on more credible means of killing with which to threaten the world, lest the impression is given that we have been rendered unable to use organised violence to enforce our will.
The message to the disobedient of the world is simple: if we can't beat you face-to-face we will simply rain death upon you from the skies, and we don't mind too much who dies in the process. In its insistence on the legitimacy of projecting British power wherever we see fit, in its disregard for human life, and in its sheer petulance, this makes a fitting epitaph to Blair's foreign policy. The great man's legacy is secure.
"Blair made it quite clear - again, both in the speech [in Plymouth last week] and in the ensuing discussion - that [the threat of terrorism] must be met primarily by the vigorous "hard" power of military force, with the "soft" power of diplomacy, sanctions and other instruments a long way behind. This set of priorities was needed, Blair argued, because the decline in states willing to exercise such hard power constituted one of the crisis-points facing western nations. There was a great danger that Britain would join this band of weaklings."
Take your pick from the articles on the "Best of the Diary" page to see how I assess the nature of British foreign policy. No need for me to comment further here on Blair's declared "visions" of Britain's role in the world and their relationship with reality.
What I found interesting was the military balance that the government apparently wants to set in place for Britain going forward. Firstly, Rogers describes "the decision to replace the Trident nuclear force with a new system, setting Britain as a nuclear-armed power for thirty-five years or more". Secondly, there is "the extraordinary plan to build two massive new aircraft-carriers. These, each weighing 65,000 tons and deploying the new and hugely expansive US F-35 joint strike fighter, will be far larger than any other warship ever deployed in the Royal Navy's history - three times the size of the current Invincible-class and much larger even than the battleships of the global 1939-45 war".
As Rogers points out, "the relatively modest size of the British economy, even allowing for Blair's wish to see an increase in defence spending, means that the new carriers will soak up resources to such an extent that all other military roles will be constrained", and the cost of Trident will only accentuate this. Given the recent debates over the lack of financial support given to British soldiery, these future plans seem to indicate an intention to tip the balance away from close-range infantry deployments and towards distance power-projection via air, sea and nuclear power. In other words, it appears that we now intend to bomb or threaten to bomb countries from a great height, rather than get into the messy business of invading them.
This tells us a couple of things. Firstly, it says something fairly straightforward about how human life is valued in government. Bombing from a great height is pretty indiscriminate in terms of killing civilians. It does however reduce the danger to western troops. This isn't to say that foreign civilians are intrinsically less important to governments than their own troops. There's a straightforward political calulation involved. What's been brought home to the British and American governments is the political costs to their own ambitions that military deaths represent. Without those costs the lives of western troops would I suspect be as cheap as those of Iraqis, whose deaths we can barely be bothered to count. Aside from this, its clear that any concentration of material resources into military power of this kind displays a willingness to kill innocent people indiscriminately and in large numbers in order to achieve your objectives.
Secondly, we learn something about how the state of Britain's military credibility is perceived in Whitehall. As far as Iraq is concerned, the Prime Minister has clearly decided to brazen out the issue. But if a long-term switch of resources away from the ability to commit large numbers of troops and towards aerial bombing and threats of nuclear force is indeed being planned, then the official verdict on Iraq - as a seminal failure - has been delivered in emphatic and unequivocal terms. Such a change in military balance would constitute an admission that fighting on the ground, even against the 'weakest' of enemies, has not only failed, but will continue to fail as far as can be foreseen.
The lessons of Vietnam, Algeria, Afghanistan (twice), Lebanon and Iraq may now have been fully digested, at least by British planners. Major powers are far less able than once was the case to impose themselves by putting boots on the ground. Occupying militaries, no matter how well equipped, can not match guerrilla forces rooted in the population and deploying asymmetric tactics to grind down the invaders over time. Britain will therefore concentrate on more credible means of killing with which to threaten the world, lest the impression is given that we have been rendered unable to use organised violence to enforce our will.
The message to the disobedient of the world is simple: if we can't beat you face-to-face we will simply rain death upon you from the skies, and we don't mind too much who dies in the process. In its insistence on the legitimacy of projecting British power wherever we see fit, in its disregard for human life, and in its sheer petulance, this makes a fitting epitaph to Blair's foreign policy. The great man's legacy is secure.
posted by David Wearing at 5:17 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home