Defence

Thursday

Daniel Korski

Mr Obama, tear down these missile sites

Today Barack Obama publicly tore down the missile installations that George W Bush put up in the Czech Republic and Poland. The system was ostensibly meant to counter threats from Iran, but given the swift creation of missile sites in Poland and the Czech Republic in the wake of Russian’s invasion of Georgia, Moscow’s elite never bought into this rationale – and perhaps rightly so. The strength of Russian feeling has always been clear. The latest Russian National Security Strategy states that the “ability to maintain global and regional stability is being significantly aggravated by the elements of the global missile defence system of the US”. So if Obama wanted

Friday

Peter Hoskin

Balancing defence spending

There’s an intriguing story in today’s Times suggesting that the Tories may “backtrack” on some defence spending commitments, and are thinking about shelving the Trident replacement.  Here’s a snippet: “Liam Fox, the Shadow Defence Secretary, pledged last year to protect the three most expensive equipment programmes: aircraft carriers, an armoured vehicle system known as FRES and Britain’s nuclear capability. He also indicated his desire to expand the Army by 10,000 soldiers. An aide to Dr Fox said this week that commitments ‘had been superseded’ by plans for a Strategic Defence Review (SDR) after the election. George Osborne, the Shadow Chancellor, also warned that a Conservative government would have to make

Sunday

Peter Hoskin

Another smear plot story to damage Gordon Brown

After the abortive plot to smear Richard Dannatt, you’d have thought Labour would have learnt their lesson: that it’s often politically foolish, not to mention indecent, to pick petty fights with the military top brass.  But – what’s this? – today’s Mail on Sunday reports that certain Labour figures may have been priming another smear campaign against Dannatt’s successor, General Sir David Richards: “The threat to target the General, who took up his new job just nine days ago, was one of the real reasons that Labour MP Eric Joyce resigned as an aide to Defence Secretary Bob Ainsworth last week. Former soldier Mr Joyce has told friends he attended

Saturday

James Forsyth

A devastating assessment

This quote from a retired aide to General Petraeus about the British performance in Basra is, as Alex Massie says, devastating: “The British failure in Basra was not due to the conduct of British troops, which was exemplary. It was, rather, a failure by senior British civilian and military leaders to understand the political dynamics … in Iraq, compounded by arrogance that led to an unwillingness to learn and adapt, along with increasing reluctance to risk blood and treasure to conduct effective counter-insurgency warfare… …British commanders attempted to cut deals with local Shia leaders to maintain the peace in southern Iraq, an accommodation that was doomed to failure since the

Friday

David Blackburn

Brown’s Afghanistan speech was encouraging, but the strategy’s still flawed

Brown’s delivery may have been beyond sepulchral, but the content was encouraging. He laid out how Afghan stability is being bolstered by the increased activity and competence of Afghan security forces, the replacement of the heroin crop with wheat, an intensification of government in rural hinterlands and by arresting urban corruption. At least there now seems to be a degree of co-ordination between coalition and Afghan security operations, civic reconstruction and the administration of government. These are welcome changes but there is still no overarching sense of what the ‘Afghan mission’ hopes to achieve, beyond the dubious contention that it will make the West safer. As a result, a number

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Lib Dems moving towards advocating withdrawal from Afghanistan

Nick Clegg’s statement today on Afghanistan strongly suggests to me that by the time of the next election the Lib Dems will be for withdrawal from Afghanistan. Clegg told the BBC that: “I think there’s a tipping point where we have to ask ourselves whether we can do this job properly, and if we can’t do it properly we shouldn’t do it at all. I don’t think we are there yet,” he said. Clegg’s use of the word yet seems to be a definite hint that he is moving towards advocating withdrawal. In crude political terms, this would make a lot of sense for the Lib Dems. It would give

Daniel Korski

Why Britain needs to stay in Afghanistan

With the resignation of Eric Joyce as PPS to the Defence Secretary Bob Ainsworth, the question of why Britain is part of the NATO-led Afghan mission has taken on new force. No doubt the Prime Minister will explain what he sees as the reasons when he speaks at IISS later today. But just because Gordon Brown supports a policy does not make it wrong. Here are the reasons why we should remain engaged: 1. To deny Al Qaeda a safe-haven from which to train and organise attacks on the West. Though terrorism can be organized in Oldham, Hamburg and Marseilles, Al Qaeda still believes it needs safe-havens in places like

Thursday

James Forsyth

Eric Joyce resigns as PPS to the Defence Secretary

In a move that is sure to overshadow the Prime Minister’s speech on Afghanistan tomorrow, Eric Joyce, a former army office, has tonight resigned as PPS to the Defence Secretary Bob Ainsworth. In his resignation letter, published on the Channel 4 website, Joyce says that the public would “appreciate more direct approach by politicians” to the Afghanistan question and that the public will not “accept for much longer that our losses can be justified by simply referring to the risk of greater terrorism on our streets.” Joyce also states that there must be a run off in the Afghan election if public support for the deployment there is to be

Tuesday

James Forsyth

Following a strike, would Iran close the Straits of Hormuz?

In most discussions about what would happen following a strike on Iran it is taken as a given that the Iranians would close the Straits of Hormuz, through which 90 percent of Persian Gulf oil exports pass. The thinking goes that this would lead to a huge spike in world oil prices. But an interesting article in the new issue of Foreign Policy argues that it would be far harder for Iran to close the Straits than is commonly assumed. It points out that oil tankers can travel through 20 miles of the Straits rather than just the 4 mile official channel, that oil tankers are actually not that vulnerable

Daniel Korski

Commemorating the victims and the survivors

Seventy years ago today, and only a week after the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact had been signed, a Nazi German battleship opened fire on a Polish fort on the Westerplatte peninsula outside Gdansk and began the Second World War. For my family living in Poland, the onslaught of war would change everything. Henrik and Karolina Finkel, having seen their parents and siblings wiped out not long after the German invasion, disguised themselves as Catholics and lived a make-belief life outside the Warsaw Ghetto. Henrik, an inventive man who was born in Vienna and originally named Heinrich (his brother was, believe it or not, called Adolph), changed the family surname from Finkel to

Monday

David Blackburn

But he did for the both of them with his plan of attack

The tension between defence ministers and senior officers has been a running story throughout the summer, perhaps at the expense of the opinions of troops on the ground. The Times’ war correspondent, Anthony Loyd, wrote a piece today describing soldiers’ views in the wake of the Prime Minister’s visit: ‘One can only hope that if Mr Brown had braved the journey northwards from Bastion to Sangin (he didn’t), where British infantrymen are getting killed or wounded at a rate directly comparable to that of their predecessors in Western Europe in 1944, his media men would have first whitewashed the graffiti in the latrine third from the left on the northern wall. ‘“I

Sunday

David Blackburn

Negotiating with the Taliban is fantasy

Lots of photo opportunities for the Prime Minister in Afghanistan, looking almost louche in shirt-sleeves and tie, but he’s attempted to provide some much needed direction for the Afghan mission. Last month, David Miliband said that Nato must talk to the Taliban and the Guardian reports that Brown is considering reconciliation also. Here are the details: ‘A source close to Brown suggested negotiations with insurgents sympathetic to the Taliban, persuading them to switch sides, now formed a key component of Britain’s war effort. He added: “The more reconciliation, the better.” Diplomatic sources in Helmand suggested such efforts could be on a large scale: “A large part of the Taliban are

Thursday

David Blackburn

The case for naval investment

Over at ConHome, Tim Montgomerie debates Will Inboden’s review of the main themes of the Tories foreign policy. I urge CoffeeHousers to read both articles, but the section on the relationship between energy and defence struck me particularly, recalling Liam Fox’s 2006 Chatham House speech on the subject. Here’s the premise of Fox’s argument: “We are all competing for the same natural resources to feed the economic system. The potential for terrorists or even nation states to interrupt this supply to cause widespread – rather than just local – disruption increases enormously.” Fox pointed out that global energy competition requirements had evolved beyond Britain’s defence strategies and capabilities. Nowhere was

Sunday

David Blackburn

Thank God they’re not running a war

Last week, defence maestro Kevan Jones launched his master-strategy to smear General Sir Richard Dannatt. It was ingenious. An FOI request would reveal the General to be a spendthrift, abusing taxpayers’ generosity by lavishing their money on his grace and favour accommodation and on raucous parties for his army mates. To borrow a phrase, there was just one small flaw in the plan: it was rubbish. The Mail reveals that General Dannatt’s grace and favour apartment is a stable block, not a palace, and that he pays tax on it because he views it as a perk. His other claims are modest. Audiciously, Sir Richard secured £19,270.77p in expenses between 2005

Wednesday

Alex Massie

Richard Dannatt is “playing politics” too

General Richard Dannatt may well be correct to demand additional men and equipment for the Afghan campaign and the military has certainly been ill-served by this government (though not only by this most recent ministry). But when the accusation of “playing politics” is thrown around let’s not forget that the good General is perfectly adept at playing that game himself. Perhaps it really is the case that he can only tour Afghanistan in an American helicopter. Perhaps it is even “self-evidently” the case that he’s only using a US chopper because there aren’t any British ones. As I say, this could all be true but it is also most convenient

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Adventures in Defence Procurement. Plus, Do We Need the RAF?

Defence procurement is difficult. It’s hard to design and build new weapons systems and predicting what kinds of equipment and force structure will be needed in 20 years time is a necessarily tricky business. Mistakes and blunders don’t just happen; they’re inevitable. Still, despite the Eurofighter and the looming problems with the Royal Navy’s new carrier class, it’s not clear that there’s anything on the MoD’s books quite so daft as the US Air Force’s F-22 fighter*. It’s not merely a matter of cost – though as nearly $200m a pop the F-22 is no bargain – but that, apparently, the average F-22 only flies for 1.7 hours before developing

Tuesday

Peter Hoskin

Public in favour of ringfencing defence spending

A timely poll from PoliticsHome which finds that two-thirds of the public think defence should be protected from any spending cuts.  Here’s their graphic with full results: The question, of course, is whether this kind of public pressure forces any of the main parties to actually shield defence from cuts.  With the debt burden as it is, its difficult to see them doing so while also sticking to their current commitments in other areas. UPDATE: Ok, just to provide a bit of context in the wake of some thought-provoking comments from CoffeeHousers below.  Yes, there could well be two extraneous factors at play here: a) the prominence of Afghanistan in

Daniel Korski

Time for a British Manley Commission?

If the government wants to stem the haemorrhaging of elite support for NATO’s Afghan mission, there is one major thing it can do at this stage: establish a British version of the Manley Commission. In Canada, ex-Deputy Prime Minister John Manley was asked by the Harper government to take a hard look at Canada’s role is Afghansistan, and lay out a clear plan. Its work effectively rebuilt Canadian support for the war effort. The Brown Government is simply not trusted to give an honest assessment of what is happening on the ground or give the military what it needs. The Defence Secretary is an unknown entity outside of Westminster (and

Peter Hoskin

Defending his own premiership

The Times’s story of how Bob Ainsworth came to be Defence Secretary is equal parts extraordinary and disheartening.  Here are the key passages: “Mr Ainsworth’s predecessor, John Hutton, had indicated to Mr Brown in mid-May that he was thinking of leaving the Government. Mr Hutton, recently remarried, had a compelling family reason for wanting to step down. But Mr Brown, preoccupied with the elections and the possibility of a leadership challenge, appears to have spent little time thinking about the vacancy. It wasn’t until around noon the day after the polls that he began to focus on who should oversee Britain’s military and its engagement in Afghanistan. In the midst

Monday

Peter Hoskin

What did Mitchell mean?

Andrew Mitchell is doing the media rounds to discuss the Tories’ new policy paper on international development, and he seemed to let slip with a major claim on defence spending to the BBC earlier.  Here’s how the indispensable PoliticsHome reports it: “Mr Mitchell said that it was not a question of choosing between the budgets for defence and international development, adding that the two departments would work much more closely under a Conservative government. ‘I don’t think that defence will face cuts, but it’s not a question of either or, you have to do both,” he said. ‘The development effort in Afghanistan which hasn’t always gone well and so to