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Defence of the realm

As many will have read by now, the British government has made substantial cuts to parts of the country’s armed forces, such as disbanding Royal Air Force Squadrons, cutting frigates, and reducing headcount across the board. As I would have guessed, this has prompted a lot of criticism from various quarters and no doubt some, if not all of it, is justified.

However, rather than get into fine details of whether Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon is a strategic genius, sensible manager or weak fool (I report, you decide), I want to pose the question as to what sort of armed forces a libertarian-leaning government ought to have in place. (Use of mercenaries, perhaps?). Well, given that the first responsibility of any government is defence of the realm against attack, it is at least debateable whether an island nation like Britain requires, for example, a big army, an extensive airforce, or even a large navy with lots of aircraft carriers, and so on. So one could argue that the kind of armed forces envisaged by Blair’s government might be appropriate for one restricted to a self defence role. (In reality I expect commenters to point out the many flaws in these plans. Please do).

However what is obviously strange about the timing and nature of the cuts is that they come from a government not exactly shy of projecting force overseas for its liberal internationalist ends. For example, at times Blair’s position on Iraq has been more to do with overthrowing thuggish regimes that attract his scorn rather than do so on the basis of Britain’s long-term self defence needs. Such a view surely requires rather a big army, navy and air force. It also makes me wonder whether Britain any more has the ability to act as an independent military power in any meaningful sense. I doubt it. A friend of mine who has recently left the RAF says it is almost unthinkable that a Falkland Islands operation would be possible with today’s force levels. Others I know who have served in the military tell me the same thing.

There is also, one final long-term worry that I have. These cuts will further deter bright and capable young men and women from seeking a career in our forces, which require ever-higher levels of technical know-how while also drawing on the permanent need for courage and endurance. The message from these defence cuts is hardly going to get young folk to think about a career. I dreamed once of following my father into the RAF as a flyer. Now I am glad I did not. A shame. I’d have looked pretty nifty in that flying suit.

54 comments to Defence of the realm

  • Brian Moore

    Reducing the effectiveness of the armed forces is not necessarily a result of cutting the budget. If the British military is anything like the US military, it has billions of dollars invested in antiquated, useless equipment.

    Especially given the transformation from 3rd generation warfare (tanks, planes, missles) to 4th generation warfare (guys with AK-47’s and RPGs) a great deal of the weaponry fielded is completely ineffectual. One excellent example is long range field artillery — not very useful against terrorists. Nuclear submarines and heavy naval vessels are also ridiculously ineffectual against terrorists, or even the small “rogue” states we are likely to be fighting.

    Now, in this specific case, I agree, it will probably reduce the effectiveness of the British military because the people making the cuts are unlikely to be able to determine which parts can be safely decommissioned. But I believe that targeting defense cuts to obsolete equipment/personnel is an EXCELLENT idea — this may not be an example of it, though.

  • Jem

    The key question in any assessment is, “what is it that you want the military to do?”.

    If you need to have capabilities to defend against a conventional threat, you need ships and aircraft unless you intend to rely on missiles to prevent ceding control of your airspace and surrounding water (for an assessment of how effective the latter strategy is, consider the cases of Slobodan Milosevich and Saddam Hussein).

    If you intend to deploy forces into a less than welcoming environment, you need forces strong enough to fight their way in and transport aircraft and sealift to get your forces there and resupply them.

    If, on the other hand, you need only a token force to do the occasional parade and/or flyover at affairs of state, and perhaps deploy a company or two of peacekeepers, you can do away with almost everything. Of course, your national existence continues at the mercy of those who are stronger…

  • I know boys love their toys but the overkill of US forces is ridiculous. British generals are excellent whiners when it comes to the defence budget.

    We need a re-orientation of forces – we don’t face off against the Red Army any more and the Chinese People’s Liberation Army has not a single soldier outside of its borders. British and US forces are stationed in over 100 nations – is that really necessary?

  • toolkien

    I want to pose the question as to what sort of armed forces a libertarian-leaning government ought to have in place. (Use of mercenaries, perhaps?).

    I suppose as an ideal, in a world where capital flows and borders are porous, those with economic positions at stake (i.e. corporations) would create and fund forces necessary to protect their resources and contracts out of their own equity or credit, issuing bonds or some sort of scrip backed by equity shares. The libertarian government would not provide any Force against outsiders on foreign shores, the argument being that threats to resources don’t effect us all the same way, only those with direct ties and it should be their fight and their burden. That, of course, isn’t the reality we live as Nations force an interdependency on their populations so if one is damaged all are damaged, and the call is made for collective protection of economic resources. Otherwise, Forces necessary to protect the Nation from direct attack can be staffed and armed on a more local level as it once was (at least here in the States). The Federal government would have to first have to get the buy in from the population at large, and would make for a military constituted from the rise in the martial spirit of the population versus a Federal/Statist controlled military Force that can be applied as the leaders see fit.

  • R C Dean

    If you want to be able to win a shooting war, you need to be able to project your forces. Period. For an example close to home for you Brits, you lost your force projection capabilities early in WWII, and were confined to a purely local self-defense capability. It was sufficient to keep the Hun off your island, but it was utterly insufficient to win the war. It wasn’t until force projection showed up with the American forces that the Western allies were able to shift to a war-winning, instead of a purely survival, strategy.

    Armies with no force projection capabilities are not really war-fighting armies. They might have other uses. Keeping the local citizenry in line certainly comes to mind, as innumerable examples demonstrate.

    So, if the Blair government isn’t planning to use its new “streamlined”army for war-fighting, what is it planning to use it for?

  • Shawn

    “I know boys love their toys but the overkill of US forces is ridiculous.”

    On the contrary, we are currently badly undermanned and underarmed. Our goal as far as the US is concerned should be to rebuild our Armed Forces to 20 Amry divisions, 6 Marine divisions and 18 Aircraft carrier battel groups.

    “we don’t face off against the Red Army any more”

    Yes we do, with North Korea, which fields a powerful and vast conventional army.

    ” the Chinese People’s Liberation Army has not a single soldier outside of its borders”

    Yes it does, in Tibet, and it repeatedly threatens the free nation of Taiwan.

  • Shawn

    Please excuse the poor spelling in my last message, I should have read it before hitting post.

  • Julian Taylor

    It is of interest to note that Hoon is still somewhat vague as to what the actual future role of the British Armed Forces is. Options For Change was based upon a clear ‘we beat the Soviet Union, therefore we don’t need such a large army, air force and navy’ which was understandable, although it is worth noting that the Ministry of Defence’s bureaucracy was actually increased as the Armed Forces were being reduced. The Financial Times (Link) reports that the review “assumes that the US will take the lead in any “complex large scale operations”, and therefore wants to tailor Britain’s contribution mainly to providing special forces, intelligence, and amphibious and carrier task groups where the UK can “add real weight”. ”

    I have this horrendous vision of Britain’s future army numbering some 10,000 men comprising of the SAS Regiment, Parachute Regiment and Royal Green Jackets, backed by a horde of 200,000 civil servants in the MoD, and having our shores protected by the French navy, who will now have a larger navy than ours for the first time in modern history.

  • LoveSupreme

    “A friend of mine who has recently left the RAF says it is almost unthinkable that a Falkland Islands operation would be possible with today’s force levels. Others I know who have served in the military tell me the same thing.”

    If for no other reason, the UK could not commandeer nearly as many merchant marine vessels as in 1982. Most now go under foreign flags of convenience.

    As long ago as 1961, Eisenhower on retirement told the incoming JFK that he should wind down NATO and compel its European members to supply more of their own defence against the USSR, which Ike no longer saw as a serious menace anyhow. (The nearest to a showdown after that came in Cuba and Turkey, not northern Germany.) Yet more than forty years later NATO still flourishes, its bureaucrats tirelessly inventing threats far from Luneburg Heath while hoping to get Putin to join it. Never underestimate the survivalist instincts of fat cats in the military industrial complex– the phrase Ike coined in exasperation at their manoeuvrings. The invention of an abstraction called “Terror” as a substitute bogey for “godless communism” is their latest masterpiece of misdirection.

  • GCooper

    LoveSupreme writes:

    “The invention of an abstraction called “Terror” as a substitute bogey for “godless communism” is their latest masterpiece of misdirection. ”

    Damn! I must have dreamed that entire Al Qaeda 9/11 militant Islam thing.

    What are they putting in the water these days?

  • On the contrary, we are currently badly undermanned and underarmed. Our goal as far as the US is concerned should be to rebuild our Armed Forces to 20 Amry divisions, 6 Marine divisions and 18 Aircraft carrier battel groups.

    Why? How many Carrier Battle Groups does Osama have? He has to hijack aircraft, how is going to outgun the USAF or RAF? The US outguns the Russia, China, Britain and France. That is over-kill, and its the US tax payer that’s being ripped off. No nation can challenge US military supremacy.

    … North Korea, … fields a powerful and vast conventional army.

    Do be serious. They have a few long range missiles, possibly nukes, but their conventional forces are pitifully outdated and frankly crap. They wouldn’t last more than a few days maximum.

    You are correct to say that China occupies Tibet. But you gloss over the presence of British and US forces in over 100 nations.

  • D Anghelone

    Use of mercenaries, perhaps?

    Where would those mercenaries get their training if not in conventional armed forces? The field training, strategic training or any freaking training would soon cease to exist without conventional armies.

  • Alan Massey

    If you want to rebuild our military into a small self defence force, the current defence review doesn’t do it. The only reason for the force reductions is to enable us to afford the glamourous toys like CVF, F-35 & Typhoon.

  • M. Simon

    Supporting a military “larger” than you need not only invites adventurism. It deters attacks.

    In the case of 9/11 we got attacked not because of the weakness of our military (capabilities) but because people though we would not use it (intentions).

    Since 7Dec’41 it has been drilled into the military that it is unwise to base your strategy on enemy intentions. It ought to be based on capability. Had our enemies only learned this lesson. Well in a way we are teaching them.

  • Cydonia

    Other than, perhaps, a reservist force to deal with the risk of natural disasters and and the like, I don’t see why the U.K. requires any armed forces, as we face no military threat against which conventional armed forces would be the remotest use.

  • Shawn

    “Why? How many Carrier Battle Groups does Osama have? He has to hijack aircraft, how is going to outgun the USAF or RAF?”

    The task of national defense is to maintain forces that can in theory at least respond to any kind of attack, and that can prosecute a number of different kinds of warfare. Whether Osama has this or that military capability is not the point. It would be foolish to base our military planning solely on the kind of enemy we face right now. In five or ten years we may face a completely different enemy. Armed Forces take a long time to build train and ready for use. We must plan now for a wide range of possibilities.

    “Do be serious. They have a few long range missiles, possibly nukes, but their conventional forces are pitifully outdated and frankly crap. They wouldn’t last more than a few days maximum.”

    I’m afraid your the one not being serious. Several very serious military experts have been warning for years now that we are not prepared to fight NK. The NK forces may well be behind us in technology, but they are certainly not “crap”. They are well maintained and very large. They field extremely powerful and effective artillery within range of Seoul that could turn the SK capital into a fireball in short order. The NK tank divisions could fairly easily overun US and SK forward defenses along the DMZ, and they have 100,000 highly trained well armed special forces. Moreover, the NK military has been training for one purpose alone for decades, a blitzkreig attack to take Seoul in a matter of days. This would force the US into a long and protracted re-invasion scenario that, especially with its current commitments, the US military is not well prepared for.

    “But you gloss over the presence of British and US forces in over 100 nations.”

    I dont gloss over it, my question is simply, so what?

    ” That is over-kill, and its the US tax payer that’s being ripped off. No nation can challenge US military supremacy.”

    Individually for now yes, but for how much longer? Indian fighter pilots using new advanced jets recently beat American pilots using our best and most advanced jets in a fight simulation excersise. Complacency is a bad strategy.

    Also what about the possibility of an alliance? For example a Eurasian alliance of Russia, Iran and China could seriously challenge the US if it combined both conventional and terrorist warfare. This may seem unlikely, but if in the 1920’s you had said that a corporal in a loony fringe far right party would become dictator of Germany and forge an alliance with Japan people would have laughed at you. And yes, there are people in the Russian far right who have called for just such an alliance.

  • We need a re-orientation of forces – we don’t face off against the Red Army any more and the Chinese People’s Liberation Army has not a single soldier outside of its borders. British and US forces are stationed in over 100 nations – is that really necessary?

    That depends. Would you rather live in a country like the UK or USA, or China?

    As far as the obsolesence of conventional forces, I’m as in tune with “4th generation warfare” as just about anyone, but as devil’s advocate, could not the apparent inutility of conventional forces be, in fact, proof of their success? We reap the benefits of mastery of sea and sky, but those benefits are simply assumed as the natural way of things. The fact that the enemy has stopped impaling himself on our strength does not negate that strength. His change of tactics comes at a cost in economy.

  • Euan Gray

    Britain does not really need a large standing army (at this time) since there is not (at this time) a credible conventional enemy. However, it DOES need the capability to create such an army in short order – this is where investment in logistic support (which is pretty much non-existent in any European force these days) and a well-planned part time reserve would be useful. It does also need an army big enough to protect our commercial and strategic interests around the world whilst at the same time having the capability to react to emergency both at home and overseas.

    A large RAF is not really necessary, again because we are not likely (at this time) to face a large scale air assault. However, we DO need a good logistic capability (4 C17s are only a token show, in reality they can’t do very much), a credible local defence capability and the ability to provide air support to our overseas interests.

    The Navy is MUCH more important for Britain, indeed for any maritime trading nation. We do need a larger Navy, not least because you cannot easily increase the size of Naval forces quickly in time of emergency. It takes years to build larger warships, and the job is so complex you need a big investment in time to train the people who are going to use the stuff. Even in the 1950s, the Navy didn’t want national service sailors because by the time their training was complete they only had time for a few months of service. It hasn’t got any less complex since.

    What we need, IMO, is to expand the full-time Navy in terms of fighting ships, support capability and manpower. The army and RAF can be reduced somewhat, but not much, and need to be overhauled to have a small(ish) core professional element (particularly important for the specialist combat arms) and a larger part-time reserve which focuses on logistic and technical support. It is important to increase the capabilities of specialist arms like the Marines, SAS, etc., because these will be of more use against a terrorist enemy than conventional forces.

    EG

  • Julian Taylor

    “The only reason for the force reductions is to enable us to afford the glamourous toys like CVF, F-35 & Typhoon.”

    I recall hearing somewhere that, in order to save costs, the UK asked that the 27mm cannon be removed from the RAF Typhoons, and that lead weights will be used to counterbalance for this removal. Does anyone know if this really is true or not?

  • WHS

    LoveSupreme,

    Are you seriously suggesting that, what you call “an abstraction called Terror” does not exist, and is merely a self-serving construct of the “Military Industrial Complex”?

    When you allow this kind of conspiracy theorist paranoia get in the way of rational thought, you relinquish any claim to be taken seriously.

    I suggest you wake up and recognise that this “abstraction called terror” is, in fact, a reality. Ask survivors of the Madrid bombings, 9/11 or expats in Saudi Arabia if it’s just a ruse by the MIC.

    Or, if you prefer, ask members of al Muhajaroun or any other jihadi organisation.

    The war on terror is going is going to be hard fought, and if we constantly have to explain the blindingly obvious to those challenged by rational thought, it will be even harder.

  • Jacob

    Cydonia:

    “Other than, perhaps, a reservist force to deal with the risk of natural disasters and and the like, I don’t see why the U.K. requires any armed forces, as we face no military threat against which conventional armed forces would be the remotest use. ”

    Here your pacifist beliefs are revealed. The belief that no army is needed, as nothing wrong can ever happen, all people in the world being reasonable and peace loving, and friendly.

    In reality bad things, like aggression, can happen, bad people do exist, and a military capability is good to have.

    It is true that at this moment in history the potential enemies have little conventional military capability. This is due in part at least to the military umbrella of the US, that makes the developement of conventional military power uneffective, for potential enemies of the West. It is not pacifist ideas that acount for the current lack of conventional threats, it is US’s military might.
    It is the existence of this umbrella that enables pacifists to beleive that armed forces aren’t needed.

    It’s like: living in a capitalist country you can afford to be a socialist. Living in a world policed by US might you can afford to be a pacifist.

  • Shawn

    “The invention of an abstraction called “Terror” as a substitute bogey for “godless communism” is their latest masterpiece of misdirection.”

    Of course! Why didint I see this before?

    The 1993 WTC bombing, Al-Qaeda’s declaration of war, the embassy bombings in Africa, the attack on the USS Cole, The Sept.11 attack, the single worst terrorist act in modern history, the Bali bombing, the attacks in Moscow, the bombings in Turkey, the Madrid train bombing, and the thousands of innocent people killed by terrorists over the last ten years were all just figments of our imagination.

    Thanks for clearing that up for us.

  • A_t

    Shawn, I think his point is more why not just say “War on Al Quaida” or “war on Islamist terrorism”? Terming it a “war on terror” is such a vague & dumb definition as to rank it along with the ‘war on drugs’. It does also lend itself to hyperbole, & it’s unclear precisely where the boundaries of this war are, which is handy for politicians; nothing quite like a poorly defined conflict which you can throw money at.

  • GCooper

    A_t writes:

    ” Terming it a “war on terror” is such a vague & dumb definition as to rank it along with the ‘war on drugs’.”

    Politcians have always wrapped up complicated ideas in simple terms. Would you have had WWII summarised as:’The war against German national socialism, Italian fascism, Spanish republican fascism and Japanese imperialism?’.

    When George Bush calls it a war on terrorism, we all know what he means.

    Unless we deliberately choose not to, of course.

  • Shawn

    A_t, that did not sound like his point to me at all. I agree that it would have been more honest and more precise to have called it a war against Islamic terrorism, but can you imagine the outcry around the world from Muslims and PC leftists had they done so?

    Plus, even if it was poorly named, that does not prove the accusation that it was a creation of the so-called MIC in order to perpetuate a fraudulent never-ending war.

    Moreover, LS’s basis for this was that the war against Communism itself had been basically fraudulent, an argument that was clearly disproven by the idiotic Presidency of Jimmy Carter. As soon as Carter began pulling back and appeasing the Soviets, they started expanding rapidly, and invading all new countries.

  • Cydonia

    Jacob:

    If being a pacifist means objecting to taxpayers having to stump up billions of pounds to pay for a huge standing armed forces to counter non-existent threats, then count me in.

  • Cydonia

    Shawn:

    “Plus, even if it was poorly named, that does not prove the accusation that it was a creation of the so-called MIC in order to perpetuate a fraudulent never-ending war.”

    The MIC was so-called by Eisenhower, hardly a pacifistic left-winger, who said this in his 1961 Presidential address:

    “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”

    Libertarians ought to be at the forefront of those on guard. Sadly, going by the evidence of the commentator here, Ike’s warning has been almost entirely forgotten.

  • A_t

    “When George Bush calls it a war on terrorism, we all know what he means.

    Unless we deliberately choose not to, of course.”

    hmm.. yeah, so now anti-coca funds in South America are somehow related to “terrorism”, invading Iraq is related to terrorism (yesyes, i know the ‘draining the swamp’ theory, but c’mon… it’s hardly fighting terrorists directly is it; more of a grand-scale social experiment which may reduce terrorism in the long run, & in the immediate term ‘war on fascist bastards’, which is nice & all, but not the same thing). Seems to me that all sides, both pro & anti-Bush misuse the term, & this could be predicted from the outset; the term’s just too damn vague, & it’s allowed people to conflate relatively unrelated conflicts together just because of shared tactics.

    I thought WWII was quite snappy as war names go tho’! But the point there was that the protagonists were much less shadowy & open to interpretation; state actors are easy enough to enumerate & pin down, & it would have been hard to convince people that a state which had taken no active role in the war was an enemy.

    If one had to define WWII as a war on a concept though, which concept would it be? Fascism… maybe.. but Japan didn’t really fit the bill. Expansionist, oppressive dictatorship? We were allied with the USSR, so that one falls over at the first post. To couch a war in terms of being against something obviously morally reprehensible is an easy & populist move but doesn’t fit the reality.

  • Jeremy Marshall

    Good comments all. But what strikes me as funny is that before 9/11 Bush was considered an isolationist. And furthermore, the world’s chattering classes were wondering why the US wasn’t more involved in helping to solve the world’s conflicts. I remember Bush being criticized for not exerting more pressure to help end the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

    Here in America we have learned what happens when we isolate ourselves. WWII, and more recently 9/11, were conflicts that erupted thanks to our ignoring the world and allowing the evil scum of the Earth to gain power. I personally am in favor of a doctrine of preemptive action. A stitch in time saves nine. It makes even more sense when we stick around to help civil society get back on its feet. Actions such as these take a large number of highly trained and experienced professionals. Only a large military infrastructure can provide such forces.

  • WHS

    Cydonia,

    “non-existent” threats, eh?

    You obviously have the amazing ability to see into the future.

    And this is despite the very real and present terrorist threat we are facing. A threat that requires military force to counter it in its myriad manifestations.

    I know pacifism must seem very seductive if you live in a world where the brutal reality of 21st century foreign affairs is not allowed to inconvenience or intrude upon you and your unrealistic principles. Fantastic.

    And of course the MIC is partly motivated by self-interest. Its unrealistic to expect otherwise. But to suggest they somehow manufacture, manipulate and propogate a conflict to further their own evil needs, is tin foil hat country.

  • Johnathan

    A question I would put to those unpersuaded that a serious threat exists is this: what sort of armed forces should we have if a threat did exist, and how quickly could such a force be brought into being?

    This is serious because it takes years to train a jet fighter pilot, for example. You cannot just conjure up a reserve airforce, navy or tank regiment in a few days. That is why even the most minimal statist libertarian has to realise that a state needs minimal levels of forces, readily equipped and motivated. To imagine otherwise is the stuff of fantasy.

  • Arlingtonian

    The best way to defeat specific terrorist threats is to maintain one’s guard against them at the frontier– not to keep forces patrolling intercontinentally versus busted-flush enemies, the way the USA was doing before 9/11.

    Its armed forces and its intelligence services were geared up to fight superpower-sized nation states, whereas the 21st century challenge is from loosely affiliated or merely sympathetic “non-state actors”. This professional deformation, a hangover from WW2 and the Cold War, has been skewered by the 9/11 Commission. In fact it lingered after 9/11 in the determination to prove that Iraq, Iran or Saudi Arabia was “behind” al-Qaeda. It was inconceivable to the brass and spooks that 9/11 could have been pulled off by freelances.

    “Terror” is a crock: it is just the lumping together of disparate outrages for the benefit of the US booboisie which has to imagine a Goldfinger-type villain to tolerate the ludicrous waste of tax dollars the MIC routinely perpetrates, and the extinction of domestic civil liberties that goes with it. Neocons such as Buckley and Fukuyama who possess some intellectual integrity have belatedly seen through this as Adam Smith would have done, and poured cold water on the Iraq Attaq.

    Madrid and Bali were no more linked to 9/11 than Pearl Harbor was to the invasion of Poland, and none of them could have been interdicted by the “shock ‘n’ awe” squandermania which has got 140,000 US troops bogged down in Iraq with no exit strategy, tempting China to make trouble further east. All that hardware don’t impress guerillas much. It takes years of patient infiltration, talking in Arabic, dividing and conquering the bad guys… skills US intelligence has almost wholly neglected since it began to believe videogames were the way to go.

    Moreover, since the recent spate of attacks has yielded under 4,000 fatalities (one night of the Blitz) in three years, it’s unlikely that the US electorate will think “Terror” worth investing in on the same scale as world war or Cold War, unless America’s moral fibre is even feebler than its sworn enemies believe.

  • WHS

    “”Terror” is a crock: it is just the lumping together of disparate outrages for the benefit of the US booboisie …….”

    “Madrid and Bali were no more linked to 9/11 than Pearl Harbor was to the invasion of Poland….”

    Arlington, I hope I understand you correctly – you seem to be suggesting that there is no connection between these events, no common motivating ideology?

    Well. I beg to differ. And I would go further and suggest you obviously haven’t been paying attention to world events in the last, say, ten years.

    Now, if you are suggesting that the organisations behind these events were disparate and unconnected, then I might agree with you. This, therefore, only illustrates the magnitude of the threat, surely?

  • John

    Mr. Pearce asked what sort of armed forces a libertarian-leaning government ought to have in place. To assess that question without all the qualifications necessary to determine it’s size and makeup is rather a wasteful exercise even if the answer is the minimal necessary to defend against invasion. Even in under that criteria, it would depend on other issues, such as alliances and strength thereof, adequacy of resources or free/safe acquisition of them, and capability of being at the top of the heap in military technology, just to identify a few.

    I agree with asking Mr. Moore’s question, “what is it that you want the military to do?” But even this is subservient to the real question to be asked: Considering the political (foreign and domestic), social, and economic policies a libertarian-leaning government (such as, say, GB) has, what ought you want your military to do. Shouldn’t these policies be qualified in sum, at least, before sizing the military? And the preface to this summary ought to answer, “Is it our policy to be an independent nation with a libertarian-leaning government into the distant future? If the answer to that is no, then I think the answer to Mr. Pearce’s question is it should fairly be a military as small as is necessary between now and then and which progresses to that which is proportional to your contribution to the newly forming future nation upon which you are planning.

    In addition, if you have a next to guaranteed, external umbrella of almost unassailable security from other external threats between that now and then, you can probably feel safe to let your military go to pot like – just like France’s.

  • Larry Blue

    My european friends keep telling me that their nations (Germany, CzechRep, Netherlands) don’t face any likely conventional military threats so they are justified in having shitty armed forces.

    But I remind them that they are all members of NATO. As members of NATO (a collective security organization) they have promised to give all possible assistance to their fellow members’ security needs. Doesn’t that mean they need to be ready to send forces to protect the Polish border when the Ukraine goes tits up?

  • Johnathan

    “Disparate outrages”,……….? Like 9/11 had nothing to do with Bali, nothing to do with Madrid, nothing to do with Casablanca, Instanbul, attack on WTC in 1993, USS Cole………..

    But folk in this thread are correct to question whether Cold War militaries are appropriate to all this. My post was not intended to rehash the hawk-versus-tinfoiler debates which have bored me senseless the last few years, but to get some creative thinking up there about what sort of armed forces we need now.

    My rough and ready take:

    basic infrastructure of army, navy, airforces (pilot training centres, ports, garrisons, gunsmiths, etc)

    Also, anti-missile defence, mobile infantry, lots of good helicopters, satellite and AWACs style systems, etc.

  • Cydonia

    Johnathan:

    Frankly, I can’t see much basis for retaining any of the stuff you are talking about. Given that conventional armed forces are useless against terrorism, what is all the point of spending vast sums of money on:

    “basic infrastructure of army, navy, airforces (pilot training centres, ports, garrisons, gunsmiths, etc). Also, anti-missile defence, mobile infantry, lots of good helicopters, satellite and AWACs style systems, etc.”

    What or who is it supposed to be protecting us from? Martians?

  • veryretired

    It is rare, at least on this site, to see a small paragraph with so much nonsense crammed into it as the post of 4:20, so I feel compelled to comment.

    It is reported that at the end of the Civil War, the French Attache’ who was present at the final review of the Federal Army commented ” no power on Earth could resist such might!” This may be apocryphal, but the fact is that the US Army was the pre-eminent military power on the planet, both on land, and, by way of technological developments unmatched by other nations, on the sea.

    Rather than pursue a policy of world conquest, as so many previously powerful nations had, the US began to unravel this military gargantua over the next few decades, content to secure the continent. It was not until the first of the European empires to wobble began to collapse, the Spanish, that the US began to make some modest expansive movements.

    Even then, the nation entered WW1 with the usual problems that have faced us in all conflicts of the last century, i.e., a small semi-professional army and navy asked to rapidly expand to meet the professional forces of a rabidly expansionist foe.

    For the last 100+ years, the US has been engaged in finishing off, and then cleaning up after, the collapsing empires of Imperial Europe and Asia. We have dealt with the fall of the Chinese, Japanese, Austrian, Turkish, Russian, French, Belgian, Dutch, Portugese, and British empires, necessitating our involvement in a series of wars and skirmishes, most all of which were met with skepticism and serious reservation by a goodly part of our populace.

    We have, during this period, defeated militarily and intellectually some of the most dangerous political ideologies the world had yet produced, surpassing in lethality the fabled mountain of skulls said to have been built by Tamerlane, or the threat to Western civilization posed by Attila the Hun. Surely, the insane darkness at the heart of Nazism, or Stalinism, and the utterly amoral xenophobia of the Japanese militarists, would have resulted in a nightmarish world, a new Dark Ages, as Churchill referred to it, if the forces opposed to us had triumphed, and our much derided “bourgeousie democracy” fled the field.

    When the last major threat that we knew of fell into rubble in 1989, an event completely missed by so many who now claim it was inevitable all along, the US again began reducing its military. Those of us who can actually remember things that happened earlier than last semester will recall the debate about the “peace dividend”, the rush to trim our forces, and to withdraw from and close unneeded bases. The military that could put over 500,000 soldiers on the ground in Vietnam, or field a similar number for GW1 in 1991, can barely manage 140,000 now in Iraq. So much for the rampant “squandermania” of the US and its military.

    Now we are involved in another war, with an ancient foe who has not threatened the West so directly since its armies stood at the gates of Vienna. I would sincerely suggest that anyone who underestimates the moral fiber of the people of the US will eventually find themselves in the same situation as Adolph, or Saddam, that is, living in a hole wondering when the Americans will get there.

    For the mullahs in Tehran, or that poisonous little troll in Pyongyang, there is also the possibility that they might have to “endure the unendurable”, if their various plottings result in a devastating attack against the US. We shall see.

    One final comment. It is remarkable to see the word “quagmire” applied to the most powerful military force in the world when it is poised in the heart of enemy territory, its major elements combat tested and morale high, within striking distance of all of our major adversaries’ prime territories. To call this a dilemna without an exit stategy, when the exit is so clearly right through Damascus or Tehran, is myopia of amazing proportions.

  • M. Simon

    John,

    Instead of enough forces to defend against an invasion how about enough forces to deter one? It might be more profitable.

  • Alan Massey

    Julian Taylor: “…the UK asked that the 27mm cannon be removed from the RAF Typhoons, and that lead weights will be used to counterbalance for this removal. Does anyone know if this really is true or not?”

    The MoD hasn’t said much about it, though I believe the current plan is for the Tranche 1 Typhoons to be fitted with the gun, but the RAF will not support it or train in it’s use in any way. So the gun is in effect a very complex & expensive lead weight, though probably still cheaper than replacing it with a real lead weight.

  • Nick Timms

    My libertarian views are tempered in the area of defence by my belief that, throughout history, whenever we have felt that there was no credible threat and we could safely reduce our armed forces, we have have been slapped in the face by a change in circumstance.
    Politicians will always take advantage of another country’s weakness and if we did not maintain strong defences some tinpot dictator would try and take advantage of us.
    Defence is the one area where I am happy to pay taxes. I wish we could really rely on a Swiss style defence where every citizen is armed and presumably prepared to fight for his/her country but there has to be a core of professionals fully trained, equiped and ready to form the backbone of an effective defence force.
    There is no country with sufficient military strength to beat the US/UK conventionally which is why the diverse groups of intolerant idealists are using sneaky and cowardly (terror) tactics. We should not reduce our conventional forces too much and we should strengthen our counter terrorist forces and start developing effective intelligence and intelligent strategies to destroy the brains and the brainwashing behind terror groups.
    The invasion of Iraq has been, and will prove to be, a monumental error. Saddam should have been assassinated by our secret services and in such a way that his allies were convinced some other islamofascist group committed the act. We should be using psycological tools to divide the enemy, to make them fight amongst themselves. We should be trying to win the hearts and minds of the vast majority of the muslim world who just want to get on with their lives.
    Bush wanted the world to SEE that he was doing something about 9/11. What he has achieved is the usual US unsubtle approach which involves a lot of chest beating but actually works against the west’s interests. If we are going to beat the bastards we have to be cleverer not just stronger.

  • Shawn

    Cydonia:

    “The MIC was so-called by Eisenhower, hardly a pacifistic left-winger, who said this in his 1961 Presidential address”

    Ike was a nice guy, but that about all. He may not have been a pacifist left winger (though given his backdown over NK thats arguable), but neiether was he a strong ideologicallly committed right winger. Moreover, as we saw with Soviet expansionism in the 60’s and 70’s, he was badly wrong about the Russian threat.

    Arlingtonian:

    “Madrid and Bali were no more linked to 9/11”

    This is so absurd as to be almost comical.

    Islamism is, with due regard to regional differences, a united and coherent ideology. Whether we are talking about Al-Qaeda or Jemaah Islamiyah in South East Asia, we are talking about a single movement with a single goal, the creation of a united federal Islamist superstate under a fundamentalist Caliph, which would control much of the worlds oil, and which would be committed to rapid expansionism and the forced conversion of non-Muslim peoples.

    I’m no academic, but I have been studying Islamism for more than five years, through the net, through books, through reading and listening to the speeches of Ilsmaist leaders, through talking to Arab friends from the UAE and Qatar, and if there is one thing I have learnt it is that most people in the West are utterly oblivious to the nature and danger of the threat that Islamism poses to the world. Unless we wake up and realise that we are facing an enemy who is going to make global communism look like a minor irritation then we are going to suffer for it.

  • Mike H.

    To begin with, I lay no claim to punditry. A couple of points though, and I hope you can follow my disjointed thoughts.
    A comment was made about Eisenhower, he was a good guy but he was paranoid by the end of his 2nd term. He didn’t trust his JCS, he felt that they were trying to take over his assignment, go figure.
    Now, the question was asked what type of military is needed. I would submit that the type that they are building is what the forcast calls for at the moment, that is , a task oriented, flexible, and changeable organization. What would it look like? The Marine Corps has for a number of years been organized into a Marine Expeditionary Forces made up of integrable units predetermined by tasking requirements. For amphibious operations helicopter squadrons are assigned to the MEF along with the necessary infantry and support and landing craft . For land based combat evolutions, fixed wing squadrons are assigned in addition to artillary and recon and SOF. As I said earlier the idea of flexibility is paramount to success against changing opposition forces. Remember in order to fight the war on terror we had to launch a ground war against the Taliban, Iraq, and a guerrilla war against both the Taliban and Al-Qaida. The U.S.Army is considering the task oriented makeup also. I’ll shut up now. Have a good one.

  • John

    M. Simon,
    Your question raises a question. Would a force necessary for defending against an invasion be smaller than one needed to deter contemplation of an invasion (nuclear scenarios aside.) Having a naval and air force make-up capable of obliterating any attempt by sea and/or air ought to be sufficient to deter also. If defeat is the defining criteria, then, it seems the make-up ought to include provision to prevent long term blockade also. Of course, all this presumes neutrality of non-belligerents, and everything is normal trade relationships.

    I think this points to the problem in defining military needs absent the underlying policies for which a military is needed. Alliances are made, non-belligerents eventually take sides, the engines of war preparation and war making need resources as does the economy, the stability of which must be maintained, etc. (excluding from consideration an enemy who has no qualms about playing dirty.) Answering the question “what size military …” cannot be made in isolation or without considering evolving circumstances. And how good are any of the decisions you do make for the future if you can’t even recognize evil on your doorstep.

    I read an article (which I am trying to find again now, damn me for not bookmarking it) that prodded consideration of whether our society is (my lousy analogy) a continent of peace and safety with danger lapping at our shores or a tiny island in a raging sea of danger. I think the latter is more realistic and with that in mind, I would prefer a certain libertarian-leaning government first (excuse this Yankee’s naiveté) climb the Tower stairs, unlock the dusty trunk and pull their “Rule, Brittiania!” music sheets out of archive and begin writing new stanzas.

    I am busy myself with my own lame attempts at composing right now, but to try and keep to Mr. Pearce’s request, off the cuff I would target a 10-10% increase in active-reserve manpower, a 20% increase in equipment/supplies and numerable flocks of predators (can those things carry MOABs?) generally on both sides of the pond (maybe a smaller increase in manpower here.) Oh yeah, much more work on coordination and integration.

  • Arlingtonian

    Shawn: If you think Islam is united, I recommend a prolonged liedown in a darkened room. Ever heard of Sunnis and Shi’ites? The Iran-Iraq War? Wahhabis? The Arab world is so riven by sectarian divisions that it can’t even decide who, if any, its external enemies are. All this guff about the Caliphate is merely to console them for that. Treat it about as seriously as Reagan’s and Bush’s vision of Armageddon.

    To perceive a religion which can make the Bosnian brigand, the Lebanese pimp, the Iranian mullah and the Indonesian disco owner all secretly united in their determination to do down “the West” (whatever that is) requires more synthetic indignation than I can muster.

    The grand monolithic communist conspiracy, nukes and all, never kept me awake at night. Useful idiocy for Boeing and Halliburton will have to come up with more frightening bogeys than the boxcutter brigade to give me insomnia.

    As Nick Timms says, a more sophisticated and pragmatic approach would have knocked off America’s palpable enemies without creating far more. But the MIC has to have a shooting war now and again to prove that all that spending was necessary.

  • Shawn

    Arlingtonian:

    If you had bothered to read my post with your brain in gear you would have been aware that I never said that Islam was untited, I said that ISLAMISM, which is a radical version of Islam that goes back to Sayyid Qutb, is unided both in its goals and in its opposition to the West. And whatever differences there may be between various groups and even between traditional enenmies have been put aside. Witness the fact that Iran facilitated the Sept.11 attacks by a Wahabi group, even though Shia and Wahabi’s are supposed to be enemies. Guess that one slipped by you when you were sleeping. If you want to be taken seriously in this discussion I suggest actually bothering to learn something about Islamism as your ignorance is showing.

    ” Treat it about as seriously as Reagan’s and Bush’s vision of Armageddon.”

    What vision of armageddon? Puhleeease. Are you really going to trot out this “Reagan and Bush were evangelicals seeking the end of the world” crap?

    “The grand monolithic communist conspiracy, nukes and all, never kept me awake at night.”

    The only reason you were able to slepp was because other people DID take it seriously.

    “Useful idiocy for Boeing and Halliburton will have to come up with more frightening bogeys than the boxcutter brigade to give me insomnia.”

    Ah yes, the “its all about evil corporations” argument.

    Nice to hear that the violent muder of three thousand innocent people didint interfere with your sleep. That alone speaks volumes.

    Seroiusly, If you think this war was cooked up for the benifit of corporations then your a fool. If you think the literally hundreds of terrorist atrocities that have taken place over the last 10 years alone are nothing to worry about then you living on a different planet. Perhaps you should try talking to the people who have lost sons and daughters and mothers and fathers to Islamic terrorists.

    THEY dont get to sleep at night.

  • Shawn

    By the way, extensive links between Jemaah Islamiyah in Southeast Asia, Al-Qaeda, Hamas, Hizbollah, The Iranian Mullahs, parts of the Saudi government, terrorist groups in Chechnya, Kosovo, Bosnia, and cells throughout the the Middle East and the West have been well documented. This network may weel be made up of different Islamic theological traditions, but it is nevertheless working together in concert, and extremely dangerous.

    As to “terrosists armed with boxcutters”, those therrorists turned four aircraft into lethal weapons equivalent to military airforce missiles.

    http://jihadwatch.org/

  • Johnathan

    Cydonia, in several comments above, says that armies, navies and airforces are useless against terrorism. They are mighty effective at knocking off regimes (ie, the Taliban) which shelter, support and finance said terrorism. No anti-terror policy can ignore offense as well as defense, as they say in American football. I certainly think that any military defence policy will have to be matched by security, good intelligence, good policing, not to mention a vigilance domestic populace (preferably given the liberty to bear arms).

    There may be reasons in future why we will need armed forces of sorts, including those with high-tech capabilities and the ability to operate thousands of miles from the home country. It would be dangerous to take the view that no such eventualities will be likely any more. All I can say is that it is precisely at the times in history when nations feel most secure from certain threats that attacks occur. We will therefore need a hard core of well-trained and motivated military forces as a precaution for the future.

  • Wild Pegasus

    A libertarian-leaning government will rely on non-interventionism and a well-armed populace to provide the bulk, if not all, of its defence.

    – Josh

  • Arlingtonian

    Shawn: “Witness the fact that Iran facilitated the Sept.11 attacks by a Wahabi group, even though Shia and Wahabi’s are supposed to be enemies. Guess that one slipped by you when you were sleeping.”

    How long were your kind sleeping while Chalbai the Thief stuffed you with the pretence that Saddam, a secular socialist, was behind it all? Better make sure the Iran yarn checks out, don’t want another government commission shooting that one down in a year or two.

    “Perhaps you should try talking to the people who have lost sons and daughters and mothers and fathers to Islamic terrorists.”

    Like the relations of 9/11 casualties who are now campaigning against the “War on Terror”? Like Nick Berg’s family?

    Personal experience does not dictate a particular response to a political or military problem. Nor does it make it more valuable, except in the eyes of somebody soaked in therapy culture. I discount the views of victims’ relations. Letting them decide whom we kill in response would be soooo Islamic.

    The body count of “Terror”, even if you persist in lumping disparate actions together, is negligible compared with those of conventional warfare. I don’t intend to have my earnings extracted to slake some paranoid’s misdirected thirst for revenge.

    “The State is not your friend”– least of all in uniform. A perception the majority of Americans have now taken on board in the matter of the Iracket.

  • John

    WP,
    Actually only the purest libertarian government would dare to implement such concepts on idealism alone. On planet Earth, more pragamatic factors influence a decision to attempt such a policy. Terrain is one such factor. Those governments having that luxury are called lucky. Another factor allowing such policy is close proximity to militarily powerful freedom loving governments. Those governments having this luxury are called parasites.

    Libertarian-leaning governments worthy of such a moniker recognize that, for society’s long term benefit, libertarian philosophy is best served if it is not trucked, fully loaded, into foreign policy also.

  • ed

    Hmmm.

    “How long were your kind sleeping while Chalbai the Thief stuffed you with the pretence that Saddam, a secular socialist, was behind it all?”

    Ummm. While there might be quite a few people who believe that Saddam was involved in 9/11, it wasn’t Chalabi that was responsible for it. I figured that 9/11 was Saddam’s way of getting back for the Gulf War I long before I had ever heard of Chalabi.

    Frankly if you took a poll you’d find out that very few Americans have ever even heard of Chalabi. And of those few most would associate it with an premium brand of ice tea.

    “I’ll have the twelve ounce Chalabi please.”

  • Shawn

    “How long were your kind sleeping while Chalbai the Thief stuffed you with the pretence that Saddam, a secular socialist, was behind it all?”

    Chalabi never made such a claim, and the current administration hasnt made it either. What a number of people did say and think was that Saddam may have had a hand in facilitating the Sept.11 terrorists, and on that the jury is still out. As for him being a “secular socialist”, Saddam was a egomaniacal tyrant prepared to use any ideology, including Islam when it suited him, to further his aims. The claim that because he was supposdly “secular” he would not have cooperated with Islamists is absurd.

    “Like the relations of 9/11 casualties who are now campaigning against the “War on Terror”? Like Nick Berg’s family?”

    Whether they are for or against, and I have talked to victims families who are for the war, they at least take the threat seriously, unlike you. Their point is that they think a different strategy is required. Yours is that there is nothing to worry about in the first place. The problem with your claim, unlike theirs, is that the three thousand victims of Sept.11 prove you wrong.

    “The body count of “Terror”, even if you persist in lumping disparate actions together,”

    I dont lump them together, they are related, and provaby so.

    When Islamists in Spain kill hundreds of people in the name of Allah and Islamic Jihad, and Islamists in Iraq or in the US or Indonesia do the same thing, in the name of the same god, and under the influence of the same ideology, a reasonable person concludes that there is good reason to think the actions are linked, even if only by ideology.

    And as I said that link is provable. It only takes a little self-education and the willingness to read as much as you can on the subject. However you seem to have adopted the “ignorance is bliss” philosophy.

    “The body count of “Terror”, iis negligible compared with those of conventional warfare.”

    So what? Does that means that the victims of Islamic terrorism deserve no justice? That a nation has no right to self defense when a group not only decalres war against it but backs that declaration up with a direct attack on that nations soil?

    Your concept of justice and the right to self-defense is twisted to say the least.

    “I don’t intend to have my earnings extracted to slake some paranoid’s misdirected thirst for revenge.”

    As national defense is a legitmate function of government you dont have a choice but to contribute or leave. And those of us who care about freedom, self-defense and justice do not seek revenge, we seek the prevention of more Sept.11’s.

    I get the impression though that more terrorist attacks on the US wouldnt bother you, so long as they didint interfere with your sleep. Thankfully the vast majority of Americans, Democrats included, dont agree with you

  • Johnathan

    By the way, there appears to be one common point of agreement to the folk in this thread — we should all have the right to bear arms. There can be no doubt in my mind that any military policy has to encourage, rather than foil the ability of law-abiding citizens to carry and know how to use guns. Up until the middle of the 20th century it was regarded as a patriotic duty of citizens to know how to use a weapon. One of the dire consequences of the Blair govt’s ban on handgun shooting, for instance, has been the decimation of the UK small arms industry, which has knock-on effects on our wider defence infrastructure.

    Side point: I did not intend this thread to become a pissing match between the hawks and tinfoilers, but for what it is worth, Shawn’s comments above are dead-on, in my view. To assume that the different islamic attacks in parts of the world can be all treated as isolated events requiring very different responses contains a certain amount of truth, but also ignores the fact that co-ordinated efforts are needed to combat such threats. To posit that there is no real link at all, as some in this thread seem to do, is plain insane. I wish the more utopian-minded libertarians out there would yank their heads from the sand. It does not do our cause much good.