Military

Thursday

David Blackburn

An American context for UK defence cuts

Yesterday’s defence select committee report provoked stern critiques of the government’s defence policy from Alex Massie and Matt Cavanagh. It is hard to dissent from Matt’s view that Cameron, Fox and Osborne will be defined to some extent by how they handle the defence brief, which, as Alex points out, also proved to be Gordon Brown’s undoing.  It is also clear, as both Matt and Alex say, that the SDSR suggests that Britain is entering a period of ‘strategic shrinkage’, in terms of the size of the defence establishment at any rate. A political squall has erupted over this, but it’s worth pointing out that western countries are narrowing their military

Thursday

Peter Hoskin

The shifting sands of public opinion on Libya

All of the buccaneering rhetoric has been sucked from the Libyan conflict this week, replaced with words of concession, compromise and caution. A few days ago, it was the news that — contrary to what they might previously have said — the government is prepared to let Gaddafi remain in the country after all. Today, William Hague deploys the same line in an interview with the Times (£), in which he also warns that there are “a lot of problems and even convulsions” to come in northern Africa. As it happens, the depressed mood of our foreign-policymakers reflects the tide of public opinion. Here, for CoffeeHousers’ benefit, are a couple

Tuesday

Peter Hoskin

Cameron compromises, but Gaddafi might not

What a difference four months of air sorties make. Back in the early days of the Libya intervention, David Cameron was unequivocal when it came to Muammar Gaddafi remaining in the country: there was “no future” for the dictator within its borders, he said. But now, on top of comments by William Hague yesterday, the Prime Minister is thought to be softening his stance. As the Independent says today, he has decided that “the time has come to find a way out of the conflict and back a French proposal to allow Gaddafi to stay in the country as part of a negotiated settlement with rebel forces.” So, from no

Thursday

David Blackburn

Summer reading | 21 July 2011

It’s a tradition of the British summer. A Tory MP produces a summer reading list of weighty and worthy tomes to co-incide with the summer recess. This year, Keith Simpson has compiled the list, and as you can see it’s long as your arm. Spectator Book Blog contributor Nik Darlington has made a few selections from the list. And of course, we’d like CoffeeHousers’ recommendations too. Diary: Alastair Campbell, Diaries Vol. II: Power and the People and Diaries Vol. III: Power & Responsibility. Peter Catterall (editor), The Macmillan Diaries Vol. II: Prime Minister and After, 1957-1966. Earl Ferrers, Whatever Next? Reminiscences of a journey through life. Chris Mullin, A Walk-On Part: Diaries 1994-1999, A View

Monday

Daniel Korski

Some good news for Cameron?

In the midst of the fall-out from the phone hacking scandal comes some positive news for David Cameron: it appears that the Libyan rebels have won control of Brega, as most pro-Gaddafi troops retreated westward leaving around 150-200 loyalist fighters pinned down inside the town. If true, this is an important step towards the end of the Gaddafi regime: control of the oil-rich town is decisive for the Transitional National Council in Benghazi. It gives the rebels control over Libya’s eastern oil network, with access to more than 2m barrels of stored crude. And as Field Marshal Erwin Rommel said after his 1942 defeat at the hands of the British, “Neither

Matt Cavanagh

Missing the target

It has been a mixed week for Parliamentary Select Committees: they have regained some of their bite, but recent events have also served to remind us of their supine performances in the past. Yesterday it was the turn of the Defence Committee to seek our attention, briefing their latest report on the British military campaign in Helmand to the Sunday Telegraph. Under the headline ‘British Force Was Too Weak to Defeat Taliban’, we read of ‘a devastating report’ which is ‘deeply critical of senior commanders and government ministers’. But, the Committee have got some fairly crucial things wrong. They conclude that the task force was ‘capped at 3,150 for financial

Saturday

David Blackburn

Making the peace is a risky business

The UN has lifted sanctions on 14 Taliban leaders, the strongest indication yet that the international community is opening a negotiated settlement with elements of the Afghan insurgency. Indeed, Germany’s UN ambassador said the move “sends a strong signal: the Security Council and the international community support the efforts of the Afghan government to engage reconciled Taliban in a political dialogue in order to achieve peace and security in Afghanistan.” There are serious concerns about engaging with the insurgency, which, though amorphous, shares common ground in its unreconstructed religious extremism. Renowned war correspondent Dexter Filkins has written of the resilient Taliban’s mounting aggression. The instability that their action causes is

Thursday

David Blackburn

It was the Times wot won it

The latest issue of the Spectator features an article in qualified defence of Rupert Murdoch by William Shawcross, author of Murdoch: the Making of a Media Empire. In it, Shawcross writes: ‘Simon Jenkins, now a Guardian columnist, wrote before the current horrors that Murdoch ‘is the best thing that ever happened to the British media and they hate it.’ He was right. There are obviously many things wrong with Murdoch’s group, but without his epic victory over the print unions in the 1980s, there would be far fewer papers in Britain today. Murdoch means pluralism…Who else would have subsidised the huge losses of the Times, an excellent paper, for so

Wednesday

Daniel Korski

Will the defence budget rise, fall or stay constant post-2015?

As British helicopters pound away at Libyan targets, another battle is being waged inside the Ministry of Defence’s fortress-like building. The fight is over the post-2015 budget, and it is an arduous one. After the uniform-creasing settlement the MoD got in the Spending Review last year, the Prime Minister said in the House of Commons on 19th Oct 2010 that while the precise budgets beyond 2015 would be agreed in future reviews, his “own strong view” was that the MoD would see “year-on-year real-term growth in the defence budget in the years beyond 2015.” So far so good — the MoD budget may have to fall now, in line with

Tuesday

Daniel Korski

Karzai’s brother shot dead

The half-brother of Afghan President Hamid Karzai has just been murdered outside his fortified compound in Kandahar. Ahmed Wali Karzai was the political kingpin in Kandahar province, formally serving as head of the provincial council. I am told by officials that he was killed by one of his bodyguards at a checkpoint; the killer was then shot dead by other bodyguards. A senior FCO official has said that David Cameron would want to give his condolences on a “personal basis” to President Karzai for his loss. That said, many people in the British government will not be all that unhappy with the demise of Wali Karzai – or “AWK”, as

Saturday

Daniel Korski

The military’s ECHR concerns

Earlier this week, there was a European Court of Human Rights ruling that is worth dwelling on. To summarise: the Court held that the UK’s human rights obligations apply to its acts in Iraq, and that the UK had violated the European Convention on Human Rights in its failure to adequately investigate the killing of five Iraqi civilians by its forces there. The judgment overturns a House of Lords majority ruling four years ago that there was no UK human rights jurisdiction regarding the deaths. The obligation on soldiers to protect the vulnerable during military operations is not, of course, new. It underlies the Geneva Conventions of 1949 (as well

Tuesday

Peter Hoskin

The Afghan conflict creates other conflicts for Cameron

Another day, yesterday, to remind us of the precariousness of everything in Afghanistan. With David Cameron in the country, it was announced, first, that a British soldier had gone missing from his base; and, then, that the same soldier had been found dead with gunshot wounds. “His exact cause of death is still to be established,” said a spokesman, “and the circumstances surrounding his disappearance and death are currently under investigation.” His is the 375th British military death in the country since operations began. And, of course, the politics quiver on in the background. There had been reports at the weekend (£) that up to 800 more British troops could

Monday

James Forsyth

Afghanistan: The worries mount as the West prepares to drawdown

Dexter Filkins is one of the great war correspondents of the post 9/11 world. So it is particularly sobering to read his assessment of the Afghan situation as the West prepares to drawdown. Filkins reports that: “According to American officers, the level of violence in Afghanistan this year is fifteen per cent higher than it was at this time last year. The insurgents, far from being degraded, appear to be as resilient as ever. And their sanctuaries in Pakistan, where the Taliban leadership resides mostly unmolested, remain more or less intact.” Compounding this problem is that the levels of corruption in the Afghan government are continuing to alienate the population.

David Blackburn

Whitehall’s monolith faces reform

The Ministry of Defence is one of Whitehall’s largest and most dysfunctional departments; and it has long resisted effective reform. However, the parlous public finances dictate that reform take place. 8 per cent Budget cuts have to be delivered, while attempting to bring a £36bn black hole under control. Strategic retrenchment aside, efficiency is Liam Fox’s most potent weapon. To that end, Lord Levene has conducted an examination into departmental structures. Levene reports that the MoD’s maze of committees and sub-committees should be ripped-up to improve decision making and save money (and perhaps one of the ministry’s five ministers of state). ‘Sound financial management,’ he says ‘must be at the

Sunday

Daniel Korski

In the firing line | 26 June 2011

Talk about an own goal. Whatever Air Chief Marshall Sir Simon Bryant thought he was achieving when he told MPs that the RAF were “running hot” because of the Libya intervention, the result has been to fuel the debate about the appropriate role of military officers in the public debate – and, in the latest instalment of the debate, if the current military leadership is actually up to the job. It is an important question – nothing should be taboo in a democracy and since Britain has none of the parliamentary oversight that the US congress has over military leaders, this debate is an important form of scrutiny. In my

Thursday

Peter Hoskin

Obama draws down his forces

It is as Matt Cavanagh predicted in his article for Coffee House, a few weeks ago. Barack Obama has decided to pull 10,000 of the 30,000 American “surge” troops out of Afghanistan this year. The remaining 20,000 will be outtathere by next summer. “Drawdown,” is the word that the US President used in his address last night, and it is happening at quite a pace. He presented this approach as a victory, suggesting that America has already achieved most of its goals in the country, and that “the tide of war is receding”. But there were one or two revealing notes of concession. “We will not try to make Afghanistan

Wednesday

Peter Hoskin

America and Britain turn their minds to the (fiscal) cost of war

Five-thousand, ten-thousand, or fifteen-thousand? That’s the question hanging in the air as Barack Obama prepares to clarify his withdrawal plan for Afghanistan this evening (or 0100 BST, if you’re minded to stay up). And it relates to how many of the 30,000 “surge” troops he will decide to release from the country this year. Washington’s money appears to be on 10,000, with half of them leaving this summer and half in December. But no-one outside of the President’s clique really yet knows. His final decision will say a fair amount about his intentions in Afghanistan, or at least about just how fast he wants to scram out of there. What’s

Tuesday

Peter Hoskin

Cameron muscles Clarke off the stage

The toughening-up effort continued with David Cameron’s press conference just now. There he was, at the prime ministerial lectern, not just announcing a stricter sentencing system than Ken Clarke broached a few weeks ago, but explaining why the government’s change of mind was actually “a sign of strength”. Out are the 50 per cent sentence reductions for those who plead guilty early. In is a commtiment to jail those caught using a knife threateningly, as well as a bundle of tougher measures all round. “Being strong is about being prepared to admit that you didn’t get everything right the first time around,” said Mr Cameron, again and again. His other

Saturday

James Forsyth

Why enshrining the military covenant in law might not be such a good idea

Charles Moore’s column in the Telegraph today makes a very good case against enshrining the military covenant in law. As Charles argues, once the lawyers and the judges get their hands on it there could be a whole slew of unintended consequences. Judges could decide, for instance, that the court martial system does not offer soldiers ‘fair treatment’. Indeed, it is worth noting that the Major General, now retired, who drafted the covenant does not believe that it should be made law for precisely this reason. There’s no doubt that under the last government were expected to fight wars on peace time budgets and that spending on the military overall

Andro Linklater

Patience v. panache

The square jaw and steely gaze are deceptive. In reality, next to a prima donna on the slide, no one is more vain and temperamental than a general on the climb. So much at least is clear from Peter Caddick-Adams’s intriguing study of generals Bernard Montgomery and Erwin Rommel. Each was assiduous in the celebrity skills of image-making and audience massage, and none more adept at stabbing rivals in the ribs and ascribing good luck to talent. Yet for all the froth, both succeeded in a trade whose yardstick of success, crushing an opponent to death or submission, cannot be faked. In popular terms, it is the great confrontation in