The Government has announced its third round of Armed Forces cuts, imposing 5,300 job losses as part of a programme to reduce the British Army to a strength of 82,000 by 2017.
Yet almost in the same breath, the Prime Minister declared Britain’s support for the French military intervention in Mali, telling the House of Commons that Britain is in the midst of ‘a generational struggle’ against Islamic jihadism.
It is hard to decide which is pottier: reducing our Army to a strength at which it can troop the colour and not much else, or giving even the smallest military assistance to France’s operations in North Africa, let alone doing both at once.
Military assistance: David Cameron has declared Britain's support for the French military intervention in Mali, telling the House of Commons that Britain is in the midst of 'a generational struggle' against Islamic jihadismMoreover, the Ministry of Defence’s right hand does not seem to notice which way its left is wobbling: on the very day the Army redundancies were announced, a media facility blazoned Prince Harry across every front page, extolling the glories of flying an Apache attack helicopter in Afghanistan.
Junior Defence Minister Mark Francois yesterday offered assurances that despite the job cuts, the Armed Forces will retain the capabilities necessary ‘to meet the challenges of the future’.
But everybody in the defence community knows that capabilities are being reduced below a level at which the Army can credibly participate in operations abroad, because this is a relatively easy way to help balance the Treasury’s books, by comparison with cutting the welfare budget.
More... Army to fire another 5,300 soldiers amid warnings about the impact of cuts on Britain's military might Algerian forces scour Sahara for five missing gas workers who are feared dead after escaping into the desert 'This isn't a game': Taliban labels Harry a 'coward' for comparing Afghan conflict with computer games after he reveals he has killed enemy Slaughter at Algeria gas plant 'was led by a Canadian as it emerges white Briton is part of Al Qaeda Blood Battalion behind hostage crisis'A lot of good young men and women are quitting the Armed Forces because they do not see a future for themselves, serving an institution for which the Government seems to care so little, in which the Chief of Defence Staff is paid less than the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police.
The cuts in the military become doubly baffling when this same Government appears at the same moment so eager for Britain to fight abroad.
The Prime Minister has for several months been impatient to see our forces play an active role in toppling President Assad of Syria. There is much muttering in Downing Street about an alleged ‘moral imperative’ there.
The truth is that the Government has so far been deterred from engagement in Syria only because nobody has yet identified rebel groups which Britain can credibly back. Many of the anti-Assad fighters are precisely the Islamic jihadists whom David Cameron this week professed to deplore.
Now, we have Mali.
Optimistic: Junior Defence Minister Mark Francois yesterday offered assurances that despite the job cuts, the Armed Forces will retain the capabilities necessary 'to meet the challenges of the future' Media storm: On the very day the Army redundancies were announced, a media facility blazoned Prince Harry across every front page, extolling the glories of flying an Apache attack helicopter in AfghanistanMr Cameron has spoken publicly in support of the French military intervention. He has already lent France two British heavy-lift transport aircraft and is considering sending further assistance, including surveillance assets.
The Ministry of Defence said yesterday that there is no question of committing British troops — as if we had any spare.
But it is baffling why Mr Cameron should want to put British military assets anywhere within a million miles of Mali.
France’s President Francois Hollande sent troops there because he is desperate to dispel the general belief that he is a hopelessly weak national leader, and to distract attention from his troubles at home.
Moreover, French interest in the country is driven chiefly by the prospect of securing a slice of its almost untapped wealth in gold, uranium, oil and gas rather than by any crusading zeal against Al Qaeda.
Mali is an African wilderness twice the size of Afghanistan, with 60 per cent of the population below the poverty line and more than 40 per cent illiterate.
Leader: French interest in Mali is driven chiefly by the prospect of securing a slice of its almost untapped wealth in gold, uranium, oil and gasIt is true that there is a serious danger that the country’s government will be ousted by rebels from the north. But the fact is that Mali’s ruling regime is by all accounts rotten to the core. The most likely outcome of committing European forces is that we shall drive many of the country’s people into the arms of the jihadists — the very outcome Hollande and Cameron claim to want to prevent.
It is extraordinary that, after our dire experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan, any European nation should risk making the same mistakes all over again, this time in Africa.
Indeed, the first fruit of the Malian intervention has been an unprecedented terrorist attack in neighbouring Algeria that has cost the lives of 48 hostages.
Of course, we must resist terrorism, by force if necessary. The Islamist fanatics are an evil force in the world. But instead of saying, as did a Defence Minister sanctimoniously yesterday, that our Army must ‘live within its means’, it would be more sensible for the Prime Minister to acknowledge that Britain should only fight wars within the nation’s means.
David Cameron told the Commons on Monday that ‘we must close down the ungoverned space in which they [the jihadists] thrive’. But this is precisely what America, Britain and its allies have been attempting to do in Afghanistan for a decade, with painful lack of success.
An aged Afghani told a military friend of mine in Helmand the other day that the British are ‘a tribe from the north who come here every hundred years or so to make themselves a nuisance’. Another well-informed soldier, writing to me this week, categorises the French intervention in Mali as ‘the worst sort of 1920s colonialism’.
The Italian writer Machiavelli memorably observed that ‘we may start wars when we will, but we cannot end them when we please’. President Hollande is likely to discover that it was much easier to give an order for his soldiers to go into Mali than it will prove to get them out again.
The struggle against Islamic terrorists is best conducted through diplomacy, intelligence, bribery and effective homeland security, with rare assistance from special forces. Parachuting ground troops, whether literally or figuratively, into the midst of an alien cuture almost always ends in tears.
Yet Downing Street still sees Britain’s leadership of the intervention in Libya to topple Colonel Gaddafi as one of David Cameron’s big successes.
Amid intractable problems at home, there is hunger for another foreign coup.
Defiant: David Cameron told the Commons on Monday that 'we must close down the ungoverned space in which they [the jihadists] thrive'It would be unjust to suggest that the hostage killings in Algeria were a consequence of Britain’s support for French intervention in North Africa — Norwegians and Japanese perished, and their countries have no share in military operations there.
But the terrorists aimed to discourage Algeria from getting involved in Mali, and to highlight the vulnerability of foreigners in remote places.
David Cameron should not have sent a single British aircraft anywhere near his French counterpart’s rash African adventure. Let us hope the Prime Minister does not for a moment think of dispatching any men.
I am one of many people dismayed by the Government’s ruthless cuts in the Armed Forces. This is not for sentimental or nostalgic reasons.
It is because some day, somewhere, there is sure to be a situation in which our national interests are genuinely at risk from foreign enemies. We shall then need a credible Army. But in the wake of the current defence cuts, we shall not have it.
It is an extraordinary irony that Cameron’s Government is reducing our Armed Forces to their lowest level in more than 300 years, while seeming as eager as Tony Blair was to involve them in foreign adventures that will advance Britain’s interests and safety not one single jot.
