baldysblog.co.uk

UKNDA is an independent body that campaigns on UK Defence and specifically for the members of our Armed Forces – http://www.uknda.org/ they have very recently published a report on the current UK spending levels on Defence and are calling for a 40% increase on top of the current £35 billion Defence Budget.

Winston Churchill, the grandson of the wartime prime minister, wrote the foreword to the report and made the basic point that if defence spending stays at its current level, Britain’s armed forces will “no longer play a significant role on the world stage”. Further that the country will lose its seat at the “top table” of international affairs, becoming “unable to defend her wider interests”.

Failure to Increase Might Mean…

Drastic cuts in existing Defence Programmes and Projects, the reality being that by delaying the building of the two aircraft carriers and faced with certain defeat at the next General Election, Gordon Brown has kicked the issue into the long grass for now. However, David Cameron is going to have to deal with it all pretty soon on coming into Office.

Among the projects “at risk” if the Government does not increase defence spending are the aircraft carriers HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales, which will cost £2 billion each; the Harrier jump jet’s replacement, the F-35, which will cost £15bn, or even the replacement for the submarine-borne Trident nuclear missile, which will cost £40-£70bn over 30 years.

Of course considering the mind numbing amounts of taxpayers cash that Brown and his bunch of “Drunken Sailors on a Spree” are hosing around the place, increasing the Defence Budget by £15 billion is nothing and likely only the cost of the recent 2.5% reduction in VAT – one of the oddest decisions ever taken by any Government, no wonder the Europeans laughed at Brown !

We Need to Focus

Whilst I agree that Defence Spending needs to increase dramatically, I think that both the language, the ideas behind them that they represent are seriously flawed and need serious examination.

• “…that Britain punched above its weight in world affairs…”
• “…the country will lose its seat at the “top table” of international affairs…”
• “…no longer play a significant role on the world stage…”

Above our Weight…

The first one is wrong because it assumes that we should “punch above our weight” and that is untrue and particularly in defence matters because it is unsustainable, either your “killer blows” are your norm or just one off and in which case, you will be found wanting.

At the end of WWII, Britain was on the “winning side”, had bravely stood alone and yet conducted military campaigns in North Africa and less successfully to start with, the Far East. In order to wage this struggle for national survival, pretty much all the overseas assets had to be sold at knock down prices.

In terms of manpower, we had access to quite vast resources because of the “British Empire” but perhaps the key factor lay in having a large Navy, large enough to sustain losses and still remain formidable.

That was our “weight then”, it is not our “weight now”. The Empire and its manpower have gone as has conscription so that along with much smaller “professional” armed forces has come the search for the Holy Grail of “smart weapons”.

Unfortunately whilst these may deliver an immediate tactical advantage, they never will be a substitute for ‘Boots on the Ground’ as the situation in Helmand Province demonstrates. By the same token, “Ships in the Sea” and “Planes in the Air” have the same significance. Both politicians and the general public need to understand that however you slice and dice it, it all comes down to a “numbers game” both troops on the ground and the mental strength to stay the distance and accept the casualties, this is the way it has always been throughout human history and frankly, will never change.

The “Top Table” of International Affairs

You can almost hear the ‘hiss’ of some Foreign Office Mandarin telling an ego driven barely educated politician fresh out the bottom of ‘Pond Life’, just how important this is and to his place in “posterity”. Not true of course but then… “Hacker and Sir Humphrey” live forever.

The reality of Britain’s position today is a direct consequence of our role in WWII so that when the UN was set up and the various International Organizations, we were on the Security Council as a Permanent Member and so on and so forth. If all that was starting today and the UK was where it is today, we wouldn’t get a ‘look in’.

Reality

The answer is not being part of the EU which is little better than a trading block and as easily could be called “The Son of the Hapsburg Empire”. Real power comes from the capability = mentally + physical resources, to simply wage war if required, the EU has none of these characteristics and never will have.

It is likely that in the “Retreat from Empire”, being part of a “European Block” seemed attractive to the FO but, it is now clear that it was a totally wrong decision, Britain united and alone, is a far better option and how this should be approached, I will deal with next.