Liam Fox is known as one of the more pugnacious members of the cabinet. But last week the defence secretary was in a more bullish mood than usual when he announced his intention to reorganise Britain’s military hierarchy. He slapped down the top brass for their public carping about the effects of the Libya operation on their forces.
In startling words he almost accused the chiefs of treachery. Colonel Gadaffi, he said, must get “only one message” when “lives are at stake”. It was a clear rebuke to Admiral Sir Mark Stanhope, the first sea lord, who had earlier said the navy would struggle to fulfil its duties if the Libyan conflict extended much beyond September.
For good measure Fox told the Argentine government that no amount of “huffing and puffing” would change our resolve on the Falklands. This was a sideways dig at Admiral Sir Sandy Woodward, who led the 1982 taskforce that recaptured the islands and who said last month that Britain would struggle to defend them now.
Fox’s tone echoed the tetchy remarks of David Cameron the previous week, when the prime minister told the service chiefs: “You do the fighting and I’ll do the talking.”
The public might understandably be confused. The Tories have for decades had a reputation for being staunch supporters of the military; indeed, former officers have traditionally been well represented among its MPs. And the top brass could be expected to be relieved at having a more favourable political wind. What is going on?
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These public spats are genuine enough. Tory politicians in government may now be reaping what they sowed in opposition when they encouraged the previous military chiefs to speak out and seized on every statement to attack Labour’s defence policy. But, as ministers, they have a right to expect clear military advice and public loyalty from their chiefs, none of whom is so naive as to be unaware of the publicity surrounding anything he says.
For their part, the chiefs also understand they are officers of the crown, not the government, and have some responsibility to an independent sense of the national interest. They are not going wobbly over Libya or Afghanistan; they will do whatever they are told by the politicians. But they think the long-term price the forces will pay is higher than their political masters realise.
Relations between the top brass and the politicians have been bad before, of course. During the 1960s they were almost poisonous and for much of the 1930s the military allowed itself to be hijacked for anti-government campaigns. Rifts were healed in the heat of subsequent battles. The present tensions may not work themselves out, however, because they are the symptoms of something deeper.
We expect them to be good, but only as long as it doesn’t cost more than 2% of our GDP The malaise begins with strategy. Put bluntly, we are not very good at it. In southern Iraq we took on more than we could sustain over an extended period. When decisive action was needed to expel the Mahdi army from Basra in 2008, British forces were marginalised, having been stretched too thin to make a difference after five years of effort.
In Afghanistan our troops went to Helmand in 2006 to create security around Lashkar Gah. But they were persuaded by the Afghan governor to move into a series of isolated outposts in the north and within two months they were fighting for their lives in Musa Qala and Sangin.
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The essential mission had shifted, apparently without anyone in London being prepared to admit this was a change in strategy. British forces have been playing catch-up in Afghanistan ever since.
It is not that our political and military leaders cannot think through these problems or the even bigger issues — the future of our relations with America, our stake in Middle Eastern stability, our place in the “Asian century” forming around us and so on. Well-informed people can always do that. But strategy is about blending the “ends” — the big aspirations — with the ways and means to achieve them.
None of our national strategy documents, and certainly not last October’s Strategic Defence and Security Review, has done this. They all list a set of objectives with no clarity about the resources that will have to be devoted to achieve them. A telling example: we are more than halfway through the year and the 2011 public expenditure settlement for defence is still not agreed — but service chiefs are losing and diluting their forces on a weekly basis.
Managing defence is, admittedly, uniquely difficult. In peacetime the Ministry of Defence has to function like a normal department in a cost-effective and accountable fashion. But it must also be structured to win in wartime, when accountancy takes a back seat. It is the only government department that requires large numbers of its employees to risk their lives. It must offer emotional, as well as bureaucratic, leadership. And it must purchase weapons and equipment against its judgment of how the outside world will look in 20 or 30 years.
This is challenging at the best of times. Trying to be an efficient ministry while acting as a strategic military headquarters has led the MoD into a Kafkaesque existence. Too much reliance on committees has produced a system that was, as the report launched by Fox last week put it, “complex and difficult to understand”, even for those within it. The system has been letting both the politicians and the military chiefs down for many years. If the MoD were a leading company, it would long since have gone out of business.
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We ultimately get the defence we deserve. British society is unequivocally postmodern, with all its contradictory expectations. We want protection and security as we enjoy the fruits of a networked, globalised world; we don’t see ourselves under a traditional military threat, but we like to see our troops upholding British prestige and interests. We expect them to be good, but only as long as it doesn’t cost more than 2% of our GDP. We plan to be an innovative player in the new global economy, but we like to carry a lot of military heritage in our baggage.
Before the Berlin Wall came down we had 40 years of peace in a time of war. For the past 20 years we have had war in a time of peace — constant, nasty little wars that rack up the costs while the rest of us are secure enough simply to worry about our individual prosperity.
If we were to manage the public’s immediate expectations, we would slash defence to help the country through its indebtedness. But that would be irresponsible. Moreover, the prime minister’s political antennae seem to make him queasy about announcing more defence cuts, although the finances still don’t add up and further delay won’t improve them.
The tensions between Fox, Cameron and the military top brass are a symptom of the uncertainty over whose long-term vision for British defence policy is the more realistic. It is a question we are no closer to answering. If we were better at strategic calculation and had a well-worked system for doing it, all these discussions would be taking place on the inside rather than merely being debated in public.
Professor Michael Clarke is director of the Royal United Services Institute