Trident, Afghanistan, Labour’s Defence Review

I’ve said in previous posts, and in the House of Commons, that we in Labour need to rethink our position on key aspects of Foreign and Defence Policy.  Trident and Afghanistan are uppermost in many people’s minds, yet our approach to those issues remains sluggish – indeed we are presently in danger of being outflanked by the Government on at least one of those issues.  The resignation of the UK’s envoy to Afghanistan, Sir Sherard Cowper Coles, and the sacking of General McChrystal, this week are both important events. Essentially, the McChrystal assumptions about Afghanistan make too much play of the military and too little of the diplomatic and political.  These assumptions drive the US policy which President Obama is committed to. We in the UK remain wedded to a policy, if we can really call it that, of waiting to see what the United States tells us to do next.  Crucially, though, David Cameron is quietly making it clear that he expects some kind of modest early change in the level or nature of our commitment next year and a lot more the year after that.  Liam Fox, the Defence Secretary, has also been careful to sound ambivalent about the current state of play.  Labour, meanwhile, is committed to our pre-election stance to the extent that we show no appetite at all for new thinking.  In truth, on foreign and defence policy our position is more conservative than the Conservatives and that is a fundamentally bad place for us to be.

On Trident replacement, not really a Defence issue at at all but rather a cold national strategic and political one, the Lib Dems and Tories remain determined to leave our nuclear deterrent out of the Strategic Defence Review.  Their official justification is that we voted to replace the old subs back in 2007 and the matter should rest there.  No-one at all truly thinks this is a serious attempt to justify an otherwise inexplicable decision to leave our largest strategic defence asset out of a strategic review of defence.  Of course, the argument presented by the government at face value would mean little else would change with the new government, since many things have been voted on since 2007.  And that would be nonsensical.  So, of course, we are left to assume that the government is afraid of the geopolitical implications of a decision by the UK to look seriously at its nuclear deterrent.  But why is Labour afraid?  Is it really correct to assume that a call to include Trident replacement in the Defence Review would lead the public to assume that Labour had returned to the desperate days of the early 1980s?  That’s the assumption under which we are operating at present.  And it’s so terribly flawed.  A sensible call to look carefully at Trident replacement, and indeed at our present strategy on Afghanistan, would be welcomed by the great majority of people, I think. They want to see us look for the best ways of protecting people and the best ways of spending public money – not obsessing about the cold war context of 30 years ago.

We in Labour should commission our own Defence Review – one which includes Trident.  We should be prepared think imaginatively and boldly about our foreign and defence policies, including – most pressingly – Afghanistan.  I sense that some important players agree with that now, and if the argument gathers pace then Labour and the nation can only benefit.

The Mail on Sunday (Scottish) article on Afghanistan

I wrote this article for the Scottish Mail on Sunday and thought I’d whack it up for those who don’t:  a. Read the paper, and b.  Live in Scotland. Comments appreciated.

Mail on Sunday click here once then a second time when the next link comes up to read my article. It’s a little slow, as there’s a big piccy on the article, so do be patient!

For more information on the Scottish Mail on Sunday click here.

Labour in the Sun

The Sun’s treatment of Gordon Brown over his letter to Jacqui Janes and his subsequent ‘phone call, sought to tread a fine line between attacking the PM for alleged neglect of our troops and mocking him for physical imperfection. I’m not sure they succeeded.

Moreover, many folk I’ve spoken with think that this newspaper seems to relish systematically exploiting a bereaved Mum: not a good look for any paper.  To be honest, I’m not sure that it quite does justice to Jacqui Janes, who’s clearly highly articulate and well able to look after herself.  And I also suspect that political journalists, such as Political Editor Tom Newton-Dunne, are less comfortable with the strategy than some higher up the tree.

Nevertheless, there is another fine line the Sun is walking and perilously close to stepping off.  It’s their attempts to attack the government on defence policy in Afghanistan without attacking any service personnel, who are responsible for planning for maintaining appropriate equipment levels for troops, overseeing operations in theater and making timely, albeit often very difficult operational decisions.

The simple fact is that every attack on the Labour government for equipment levels in Afghanistan is an attack on our uniformed services.  Ministers don’t just decide, in the first analysis, on equipment specs for any deployment.  They ask the services to put together force packages and then  more detailed planning is done by the same folk in uniform.  For example, it’s said we have around 20 helicopters in Afghanistan and that that’s far too few for the job. Well, when the decision was taken to deploy at our current levels, ministers would no more know the appropriate number of helicopters than they would be able to strip and assemble an SA80 – those are the jobs of uniformed professionals.   Those uniformed experts are of course presented with logistical constraints by their bosses, but if those bosses (including General Dannett) didn’t think the final force packages would work, they wouldn’t recommend them to government ministers.

It’s true that there will always have to be adjustments during conflict and that more kit, such as helis, are always welcome, and politicians are core to those  discussions and resource decisions.  But those who say that there should be twice as many helis, or  other technology and that includes comments about body armour etc, are literally attacking all those service personnel responsible for procuring kit and planning operations, not the government.

And here’s another harsh truth; sometimes people die because of command decisions taken on the ground.  Commanders are profoundly aware of this – it’s a heavy responsibility – that’s why they speak with passion when they laud the characters of their men and women who die.  Again, by knee-jerk blaming of politicians (rather than the enemy) for all our casualties, the Sun risks inviting other news agencies to look much more closely at command decisions.  At present, that thankfully doesn’t happen in the same way it does in other professions, such as social work.  Such a focus would hardly be welcomed by or helpful to our brilliant service folk.

The Sun’s game is essentially an extension of the Tories’.  But Liam Fox et al have the luxury of being able to used nuanced language rather than outright accusation – the latter is the Sun’s job.  So if the effect of ignorantly blaming every casualty on ministers is to bring greater media scrutiny of the military judgement of service personnel (and the Sharon Shoesmith-style vilification of some?), it’ll largely be on the Sun’s head.  There’s still time for them to step back and I do hope sensible professional journalists at the Sun take this opportunity with both hands.

Some thoughts on Afghanistan: the Taliban Paradox

There’s an odd paradox at the centre of our present stance on the Taliban.  On the one hand, every minister, soldier, spokesman tells us that if the Taliban were once again involved in the governance of Afghanistan this would inevitably lead to the return of AQ there.  On the other hand, we are told that we must now begin to talk to Taliban leaders.  But if we talk to them, what will they want from us?  They will ask to have some involvement in the running of Afghanistan?

If we assume that the Taliban we will talk with are rational then it’s reasonable to conclude that they’ll understand that a resurgent AQ will ruin any chance making progress.  So the assumption that Taliban=AQ seems at best questionable, surely?

Some thoughts on Afghanistan: Intelligence and Sacrifice

Two thoughts about Afghanistan.  Firstly (the media seemed to miss this) Kim Howell’s intervention in Westminster recently,was significant, and not just because he’s an ex-FCO minister but because he’s the present Chair of the Intelligence and Security Committee in Parliament.  By the way that’s the committee appointed not by parliament but by the prime minister himself, which has oversight of the work of MI5, MI6 and GCHQ.

Most media treatment of Afghanistan focuses upon military analyses of the situation on the ground, but it often misses the point, that it’s the analysis of where the greatest international risk lies which should be central to the discussion.  It is highly likely that Kim has been told by ‘the spooks’ where the greatest risk lies – and that place is not Afghanistan.  Maybe ‘the spooks’ are wrong, but it’s surely time for the proposition: that Afghanistan is the place of greatest risk to the safety of UK citizens was tested. This test should lead to the conclusion that we need many more intelligence folk and fewer military men speaking out about defence and terrorism on TV and Radio.

Secondly, the death of five soldiers at the hand of a British trained, Afghan policeman is far more serious than commentators or spokespeople have suggested.  In today’s papers, General Jim Dutton, Deputy Commander of ISAF, says  ‘this kind of thing is likely to happen  again’. Yesterday, another senior officer said  ‘we have to trust the uniform of the Afghan police’.   If there is a repeat of this terrible incident, it’s game over for UK forces there.   Operating procedures on the ground in Afghanistan will have already changed markedly as a result of this devastating breach of trust  – why, exactly, should any soldier ‘trust the uniform of the Afghan police’?  Would you?

New safety precautions will distance UK troops from their Afghan trainees and this will have the effect of  slowing down training and undermining good work – all this against a backdrop of a huge planned increase in projected numbers to be trained – our apparent ‘exit strategy’.

I think our ‘exit strategy’ is becoming more obvious and it can not wait for a competent Afghan police force to emerge. I sense that Gordon Brown is thinking along these lines too and his speech today suggests that.

A View of a Womb

The BBC is running today with an interesting story about Womb transplants. Apparently, UK scientists have successfully transplanted the wombs of rabbits and think they’ve cracked how to do it for women. But wait, an expert from the British Fertility Society is being reported as noting that; ‘rabbits are different from women’.  It’s always important to have learned input like that.  I can think of some things which women (and indeed men) have in common with rabbits (two eyes, one heart, one brain, for example) but I’m prepared to accept the advice of the expert that in the round rabbits are indeed different from women, and that certainly helps me make more sense of the story.

Last week, I debated on Radio 4 with a Brigadier who pointed out that the allies aren’t ‘trying to create Berkshire in the Hindu Kush’.  As with the rabbit man, I found this helpful.  Indeed, the Chief of the General Staff has noted that, variation on a theme this, ‘we’re not trying to turn Afghanistan into Switzerland’.  Again, the fact that we’re not going to be forcing Afghans to wear lederhosen and stash large amounts of Nazi gold is surely comforting to us all as it represents just the sort of pragmatic move which is going to help us resolve our present difficulties around the whys and wherefores of Afghan culture.  So thanks, lads.

Yet, and I’m not sure if this is healthy scepticism or unhealthy cynicism, it might be that when ‘experts’ treat the public like they’re daft and sally forth with patronising simplifications they invariably have the opposite effect from the one they intended.  Were the rabbit man, the Brigadier and the General really going for a full-on comedic effect (think of the images they conjure up)?  Well, whether they were or not, they certainly succeeded.

General Richard Dannatt

I was asked to make comment on BBC Newsnight tonight on General Dannatt . However, I was told not so long ago, by  the most insightful person on the planet, that my appearing on telly is for me a ‘negative multiplier’.  I often seemed arrogant and even hateful. A tough judgement, but right.  So I thought I’d make few points here instead.

I listened to Richard Dannatt’s R5 interview earlier. It was full of  “old chap” and delivered in a style people will come to ridicule. It seems to me that he’s quite unprepared for what’s about to happen to him. For example, he didn’t seem to understand that he’ll have to resign immediately from the job he was sworn into today as Constable of Tower of London.  And did he consider that he might have harmed this colleague Sir David Richard’s chances of becoming head of the armed services? Most significantly, his military service has been, without question, of the highest order but he will now be forced to trade on it for the Conservative party. His military reputation will be diminished by the political process as an election draws closer. That will be more painful (and more unfair) than he thinks. Politics can be the most satisfying thing to do, it truly can, yet it can also be personally brutal.

And what of the wider politics? Well, it’s a blow for Labour, of course. Commentators will say that Gordon Brown never really appreciated the military and that Labour has misjudged it’s relationship with the Armed Services. Yet no-one really doubts GB’s genuine human concern for people  here and abroad. If his deep worry about casualties is reflected in a policy decision to send as few additional troops to Afghanistan as possible) then that’ll reflect strong public opinion.

I welcome the recent elevation of Defence to the top of the political agenda but it’s unlikely to last. And General Dannatt will very soon be required to do something i know plenty about –  subordinating his views to party loyalty.  A very smart Scottish colleague told me a long time ago I’d got it badly wrong and should have stuck to speaking out for soldiers instead of sometimes looking stupid in lieu of more senior players, and of course he was right. I had a reasonably successful half-career in the services – for General Dannatt, his hugely successful full career will be the negative multiplier, I think.

As the Parliamentary recess ends and the Tory conference finishes, we seem to be moving towards a new kind of politics. Gordon Brown has made ministers of surgeons, lawyers, business people, trades unionists, Admirals – a good thing – but the very few days which have passed between the General’s retirement and entry into politics is very significant.  Until now people inside and outside the military have thought the armed services ‘different’.  Soon to be ex-constable and new Lord Dannatt, along with the Conservatives, has just put an Improvised Explosive Device under that idea.

Afghanistan and General Dannatt

Former Army Chief, General Sir Richard Dannatt, is reported in today’s Sun as criticising the government over its level of commitment to the Afghanistan deployment. There’s no doubt at all that he was a very fine officer, yet ironically his words may have the opposite effect from the one he hopes to give us. On the whole, soldiers naturally want to soldier and to be as professional as they can be, but politicians must take growing public opinion about this matter carefully into account when they make the big decisions. The stock line politicians use to justify our present commitment levels in Afghanistan  is that we must do all we can do to keep our streets  in the UK safe. However there are more and more people ready to point out the obvious truth about our European allies’ much lower commitment in Aghanistan.  They are left wondering  if it is really true that our streets are more safe than they were before 911 or more safe in London than Berlin, France or Rome.

The fact is, I think, that the decision on whether to upscale troop levels now or in the future is very much one for President Obama. If he decides to go ahead and put more troopps into Afghanistan, then that is what will happen,  regardless of the  decisions that are made by NATO or European allies. The real question for the UK government is therefore whether we can, in the face of growing public opinion against high deployment levels, still justify our disproportionate commitment.

General Dannatt’s words make it less likely. If the UK is requested to send extra troops by the USA and then doesn’t, it will be a blow to Obama not because he can’t do it without us, but because US public opinion is even more strongly against the deployment than ours. If Britain fails to give ‘allied’ political support at this time the situation is serious for Obama. I think that in the face of the  modest contributions given by our European allies it’s becoming close to intorerably difficult to justify asking for more British troops to take life and death risk on behalf of all Europeans.

We are approaching a tipping point and it’s not at all guaranteed that President Obama will go ahead with the increase in numbers his field commander wants and many in our own military would support.