Afghanistan

The Tories have their eyes on Iran

You may not have expected anything less, but it’s still encouraging to see the new government pay so much attention to Afghanistan. After David Cameron’s meeting with Hamid Karzai last week, no less than three ministers have visited the country today: William Hague, Liam Fox and Andrew Mitchell. And Whitehall’s number-crunchers are busy trying to find extra money for the mission. There’s a sense, though, that all the attention actually represents an underlying shift in focus. In his interview with the Telegraph today, Liam Fox is surprisingly forthright on Afghanistan, suggesting that our troops won’t hang around to fully rebuild the country: “What we want is a stable enough Afghanistan,

A grim reminder of the Islamist threat?

Yesterday’s attempted car-bombing in Times Square doesn’t really tell us anything beyond that there are sociapaths willing to blow people up, and that sometimes luck – rather than judgement – foils their bloody plans.  But, given the Pakistani Taliban’s claim that they were responsible for the attempt, it does serve as a grim reminder of the poison seeping out of that region.   The question now, and for the next few months, is whether the West will somehow become more engaged inside Pakistan.  It’s notable how British ministers have increasingly namechecked the country when justifying our presence in Afghanistan – but, still, it seems that the Taliban and other Islamist

Tories would look to withdraw from Afghanistan in the next parliament

Today’s Express is reporting that David Cameron has said it would be wrong to set an ‘artificial deadline’ for withdrawal of British troops from Afghanistan, but that he hoped troops would come home during the course of the next Parliament.   In many ways this is smart politics. Given that President Obama has said that US troops would be looking to come home from 2011 onwards, it is hardly surprising that the Tory leader hopes British troops would return within the next five years. Other countries in Helmand, like Denmark, have begun signaling the same. The statement may – I say may – help those who care passionately about the

A culture of intimidation and a conspiracy to silence

On the afternoon of 4 June 2009, John Hutton, then Secretary of State for Defence, told the House of Commons: ‘Every one of our servicemen and women has the right to know that we are doing everything possible to ensure that every pound of investment in our equipment programme goes towards the front line and is not wasted in inefficient or weak processes of acquisition. That is why I asked Bernard Gray in December last year to conduct a detailed examination of progress in implementing the MOD’s acquisition change programme, as I hope right hon. and hon. Members will recall. I have to be satisfied that the current programme of

Memo to Adam Boulton: It’s about detail

Since the last thing David Cameron is likely to do is surf the web for advice for tonight’s debate, Nick Clegg needs no help and Gordon Brown deserves none, I will give my (again, unsolicited but free) advice to Adam Boulton, the moderator of tonight’s Sky debate. Ask for details. The leaders have rehearsed top-level answers and can express them confidently and fluently. But we need to know if there is anything underneath the surface, beyond the well-crafted lines. Take Afghanistan. They will all say that the fight is important, that a well-resourced military effort is key but will not be enough and that a politico-economic strategy is needed. Gordon

Brown will fear the foreign policy debate most of all

The Tories’ Invitation to join the Government was never going to dwell on defence. (You can listen to the brief chapter on defence here.)  But that doesn’t mean defence isn’t an election issue. It is, and it’s one that the Tories will win. Brown’s defence record is abysmal even by his standards. Former service chiefs have described how Brown ‘guillotined’ defence budgets whilst fighting two wars, and field commanders in Afghanistan have made constant reference to equipment shortages. These accusations were corroborated by facts that Brown then tried to distort before a public inquiry. That’s not all. As Alex notes, buried in Labour’s manifesto, is an admission that the Defence

Alex Massie

Labour’s Defence Weakness

Meanwhile, I’m puzzled by quite a bit of Labour’s manifesto. Some of it seems rather sullen, defensive and most put-out. Take the passage on defence for instance: there’s much protesting that, actually, defence budgets so have risen and it’s rotten that anyone should ever think anything to the contrary. And yet Labour seem to concede – implicitly anyway – that their critics have a point. Otherwise why would they feel the need to promise –  as part of “the next stage of national renewal” no less – to “conduct a Strategic Defence Review to equip our Armed Forces for 21st Century challenges”? Doesn’t this rather suggest that the Armed Forces

Last orders | 7 April 2010

The choppers, and the whoppers, were flying at Westminster today. David Cameron invited the prime minister to try a spot of accountability at PMQs. Would he admit that he scrimped on transport aircraft in Helmand? Brown, with breathtaking cheek and not a little rhetorical dexterity, flipped the question upside down. ‘I do not accept that our commanding officers gave the wrong advice,’ he said and insisted that he never sent underequipped troops into battle. He clarified this with a smokescreen. ‘I take full responsibilitiy but I also take the advice of our commanding officers.’ Here was the morality of the restaurant freeloader, accepting the food but passing the bill down

President Petraeus Watch

Not much news came out of Washington last week which doubtless explains why my old chum Toby Harnden used his Telegraph column to chew over the Petraeus 2012 “speculation” one more time. This won’t be the last we hear of this, I assure you. Alas, as Toby laments, the good General stubbornly refuses to play along: The problem is that Petraeus appears to have no desire to be commander-in-chief. His denials of any political ambition have come close to the famous statement by General William Sherman. The former American Civil War commander, rejecting the possibility of running for president in 1884 by stating: “I will not accept if nominated and

How do you solve a problem like Karzai?

A few days after President Barack Obama flew to Kabul to look Hamid Karzai in the eye and demand that he combat corruption, drugs, crime and the influence of notorious warlords in his government, President Karzai has blamed foreigners, including UN and EU officials, for “very widespread” fraud during presidential and provincial elections last year. He is quoted as telling a meeting of election officials: “There was fraud in presidential and provincial council elections – no doubt that there was a very widespread fraud, very widespread … But Afghans did not do this fraud. The foreigners did this fraud.” As insane notions go this one is quite extraordinary – even

Vested interests at the MoD

Yesterday, Alistair Darling pledged £4 billion for the MoD, earmarked for Afghanistan. He did not specify what the cash would buy, presumably because the Defence Spending Review will take place after the election. But a day is a long time in politics and the forthcoming spending review no longer seems to be so decisive: BAE and the MoD have signed a £127million four-year contract to design the proposed Type 26 frigate. This is welcome in principle: the Type 22 and 23 frigates need to be replaced eventually and British companies and their employees will prosper. But this contract should have fallen under the spending review – defence procurement remains unreformed

Germany, where art thou?

It is more than 100 days since Guido Westerwelle became Germany’s foreign minister and the questions about Germany’s diplomatic introspection remain. They may have even grown and are becoming problematic for Berlin’s allies.   Chancellor Schröder appeared to follow a Sonderweg, a philosophy that saw Berlin move away from old notions of peacemaking and away from old alliances, such as that with the United States. At times, he seemed to want a new axis between Paris, Berlin, and Moscow, making Germany a go-between between East and West, a kind of post-modern Tito. Angela Merkel’s first term addressed the worst excesses of the Schröder years, but the vagaries of coalition government

The philosophy of war

Every war takes its time to produce a good film or even a piece of journalistic analysis that goes beyond running commentary. Apocalypse Now came years after the end of the Vietnam War and it took seven years before this year’s Oscar winner, The Hurt Locker, could be produced. The newspapers are full of excellent reporting from Kabul, with The Times Anthony Loyd, The Guardian’s Jon Boone and the NYT’s Dexter Filkens matching anything that came out of the Saigon. But sit-back-and-think-hard reporting has been rare.   Nine years after the ousting of the Taliban, author Robert D. Kaplan’s piece “Man versus Afghanistan” in the April issue of The Atlantic

NATO – with or without the US?

Over on Foreign Policy magazine, Andrew J Bacevich and I are going at each other. Topic: the nature of the transatlantic relationship. In the slipstream of US Defence Secretary Robert Gates’ lament about Europeans’ pacifist leanings, Professor Bacevich wrote a delightfully provocative piece arguing the US should leave NATO: “If NATO has a future, it will find that future back where the alliance began: in Europe. NATO’s founding mission of guaranteeing the security of European democracies has lost none of its relevance. Although the Soviet threat has vanished, Russia remains. And Russia, even if no longer a military superpower, does not exactly qualify as a status quo country. The Kremlin

Wanted: The Hague Doctrine

Out of the conference hall, and back on to the campaign trail, it would nice to see the Tories talking about the things which make them ready for government.  In particular, William Hague should make a foreign policy speech setting out what ideas he has, and which would merit him being referred to as the likely “greatest foreign secretary in a generation” by David Cameron. Hague’s past foreign policy speeches have been solid, but unspectacular. He ticks off the likely issues, talks about global trends and looks knowledgeable about the crises that could emerge. But there is no overaching concept, such David Miliband’s idea of Britain as a “global hub”.

Defence debate? No thanks, we are British

A few days ago, BBC Newsnight ran in effect the first live TV debate between the three parties when Secretary of State for Defence, Bob Ainsworth, Shadow Defence Secretary, Liam Fox, and Liberal Democrat defence spokesperson Nick Harvey shared a platform at the Imperial War museum. The programme was meant to focus on the main issues facing the future of British defence and security. In the event, it defaulted to a discussion about Afghanistan. Despite Jeremy Paxman’s prodding, many of the strategic questions were shirked as an audience of generals and airmen fought each other over which service had played a bigger role in the Afghan theatre, and the issue

Mars & Venus Revisited

Bob Gates’ criticism of european defence shortcomings yesterday was couched in unusually harsh terms. Then again, NATO faces an uncertain future and there’s a growing sense in the United States, I think, that europe is failing to lift its weight when it comes to defence matters. As Gates pointed out just 5 of NATO’s 28 members spend more than 2% of GDP on defence. Consequently: The demilitarization of Europe — where large swaths of the general public and political class are averse to military force and the risks that go with it — has gone from a blessing in the 20th century to an impediment to achieving real security and

ISAF = I Saw Americans Fight?

The imminent Dutch withdrawal from NATO’s Afghan mission will ignite the question of allied troop contributions. But what are the real numbers and how do they compare to past missions? In a new article for the Spanish think tank FRIDE, I have done the sums, as part of a broader analysis of transatlantic “AfPak” policy since President Obama came to power. The contribution of EU member states to NATO’s ISAF has grown from 16,900 soldiers in 2007 to 22,774 in 2008, 25,572 in 2009 and 32,337 in 2010. Soldiers from EU countries have until this year made up 45–53 per cent of the total force and for three consecutive years.

Going Dutch | 23 February 2010

“Going Dutch” will take on a whole new meaning now that the collapse of the Dutch government looks set to result in the country’s departure from Afghanistan. Withdrawal had been on the cards for at least a year – especially as the coalition Labour party had campaigned to return Dutch troops at the last election. But now the process has gone into overdrive.   Militarily, the competent Dutch forces will be sorely missed. They have done a really quite impressive job in Uruzgan province. But the Dutch pullback will be an even bigger problem politically. NATO likes to refer to the dictum it formulated during the Balkan operations – “in

The new AfPak strategy in action – decapitation, reintegration and reconciliation (DRR)

It’s not quite the “we got him” moment, as when US soldiers unearthed the fugitive Iraqi dictator. But the capture of Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, a top militant commander who is said to be second in command to elusive Afghan Taliban chief Mullah Mohhamad Omar, may be even more significant. By the time Saddam Hussein had been caught, the US was fighting a different enemy, though the Pentagon leadership had not realised yet. Baradar, who was in charge of the insurgency’s day-to-day operations on behalf of the so-called Quetta Shura, the Taliban’s leadership council, is very much today’s enemy – and his seizure should not be underestimated. Doubts remain as