Surprise! Another Tory Defence Shambles

First things first: defence policy is difficult. Even more than is generally the case in other departments every decision made at the MoD is a question of trade-offs. This is true of all aspects of the brief: policy, personnel, procurement and so on. If you do this you can’t do that and so on. Add the timescales involved and the realities of inter-service rivalry plus some unhelpful sniping from the Treasury and you can see why the MoD can become pretty dysfunctional pretty damn quickly.

Nevertheless…

Is anyone impressed by Tory defence policy? No, I didn’t think so. Neither the Prime Minister nor his Chancellor appear to have much interest in Defence issues and it shows. Then again, at the MoD Liam Fox is hardly master of all he surveys either. Indeed it’s hard not to think that Fox was woefully unprepared for government. Read the speeches he made in opposition and you’ll find little evidence of a man prepared for the complexities and compromises required to run the MoD.

On the contrary, we were assured that Gordon and his chums had made a hash of everything but Doc Fox had the cure for all known ills and all would be well with the world. The MoD, under a Conservative government, would give the uniformed brass everything they wanted and meet all of Britain’s existing commitments and everyone would be happy. Oh and this austerity business needn’t trouble anyone because cunning Dr Fox could cut 25% of the MoD budget without anyone on the “frontline” noticing.

Balderdash then and obvious hubris now. Perhpas the MoD is a hopeless department but it doesn’t seem burdened with an especially impressive Secretary of State either. If it weren’t for the mischief he could cause from the back benches one wonders whether Fox’s cabinet place would be so secure. It was his SDSR that, as was apparent at the time, was a completely botched job leaving us with the Ruritanian Naval position of building aircraft carriers but having no planes to fly from them.

Matt Cavanagh is quite right to scold this government for:

[T]he incoherence in the Government’s position on the crucial question of whether Britain is entering a period of “strategic shrinkage”. Ministers flatly deny it, and so does the National Security Strategy; but the SDSR tacitly accepts it, and the cuts make it a reality. The Committee treats David Cameron’s recent assertion, that the armed forces will still be able to carry out the “full spectrum” of operations, with open disdain. It also draws an unfavourable contrast between the statements made by Cameron and Liam Fox in opposition, about “bringing defence commitments in line with resources”, and their decisions in government: embarking on an open-ended military operation in Libya, while maintaining the current high tempo in Afghanistan, and proceeding with steep budget cuts, all at the same time.

The Tory right likes to moan that the corrupting influence of the Liberal Democrats has watered down proper Tory principles and policies but the mess at the MoD has nothing to do with Nick Clegg’s platoon. It’s not Clegg’s fault that this government’s defence policy is  -and always has been – a shambles. That said, I’m not sure we should be surprised by this since it was clear in their opposition years that Tory defence thinking (as shadow cabinet level anyway) was hopelessly thin and thoroughly inadequate.