I recall that when I was serving in Iraq in 2003 and at the same time keeping an audio diary from which extracts were broadcast on BBC Radio 4's PM programme, my reflections were scrutinised for anything that might be even mildly critical of our political masters. I remember being summoned to a 'meeting without coffee' (a military euphemism for a bollocking) by the chief of staff in Basra about a phrase I used which could have been interpreted as critical of Jeff Hoon, then the Secretary of State for Defence. Well, how times have changed. First the Chief of the General Staff spoke out a few weeks ago about the possibility of the Army being 'broken'; and now our senior officer in Basra General Richard Sherriff has complained that the army has suffered for a generation from underfunding and relative neglect and that as a consequence the contract between the nation and its army is in danger of being completely undermined.
General Sherriff is right. At the end of the Cold War the nation cashed in a 'peace dividend' as we cut back on military expenditure and capability that had been designed to halt the advance of the Soviet Army across the plains of Northern Europe. We have as a nation continued to take the peace dividend ever since and as a result we now spend a lower proportion of our national resources on defence than ever before. The problem is that as the nation continues to take the peace dividend, the peace itself has long departed. Arguably we live in a world that is as dangerous if not even moreso than the relative, if unpleasant, certainties of the Cold War. We are now fighting a war against terror and have troops embroiled in significant fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. This is at a time when our army has never been smaller: less than one hundred thousand men. In terms of international comparison it no longer even qualifies as an army, it is just too small, it is only a mere 'defence force'. Consequently the troops are spread thinly. There is too little time between deployments which wrecks family life. There is too little time for training so important skills degrade. Artillerymen patrolling the streets of Basra are not training with their heavy guns under their battery commanders for their proper role in war. So when it comes to the crunch will they be any longer able to effectively carry out that role in high intensity war fighting? in short are we going to end up with a gendarmerie rather than an army?
Add to this a perception of relatively poor pay and conditions; a perception of inadequate provision and support for casualties; a perception of relatively inferior and inadequate supplies of equipment. There is little wonder at the fact that the Army is shrinking further as it loses more experienced soldiers who left in the last year than it has been able to replace with new recruits(notwithstanding the fact that recruiting has actually increased).
But there is more to this than numbers, equipment, pay and conditions. There is something less easily measured but no less important: the support of the nation. Iraq has become an unpopular war and our Army is feeling unappreciated, even forgotten. The war is also unpopular in the United States but there remains a tangible support for and appreciation of their armed forces and an enormous concern for their welfare. I do not perceive that to nearly the same extent here. I remember street collections at Christmas time in the mid nineteen seventies for the benefit of 'our boys' serving in Northern Ireland, you do not get that sort of thing happening very often nowadays. Perhaps it is because now that our armed forces are so small that few families actually have a member serving in them. It may be that they have just become invisible to our everyday experience.
Into this background comes the debate about replacing Trident in order to maintain the effectiveness of our nuclear deterrent. The decision will be put to Parliament in the next few months. I know a significant number of military and ex military men who have reservations about proceeding to spend billions of pounds on the nuclear deterrent when our conventional armed forces are in such desperate need of that investment. It is a powerful argument given the state of affairs I have described. The nuclear deterrent did keep the peace during the cold war and I would not want to have a one sided disarmament that made the world safe again for conventional warfare.
It is interesting how the terms of the debate have changed. Churchmen who opposed nuclear weapons used to make an absolute moral case: they were wrong to possess because their use could never be sanctioned given the scale of the consequent loss of innocent civilian lives. Now, however, those churchmen deploy a different argument which is all about the inadequacy of this deterrent in the face of the new terrorist threat: who can we conceivably threaten to use them against? So, the argument has changed from one of absolute certainty to one that relies on a judgement about the changed nature of the world and the sort of threat we face. I will listen to the debate with as open mind as I can manage. My prejudice is, however, that as we are not well qualified to predict how the world and the threat will change over the next half century or so, we are probably better to hold on to what we have – just in case. |
