Tony Blair famously said that the defence budget had remained steady at about 2.5 per cent of GDP under Labour, “if you include Iraq and Afghanistan”. That is classic New Labour spin for the fact is that Gordon Brown was never willing to fund Blair’s wars and, as a consequence, we were forced to engage in two conflicts on a peacetime budget. Neither Blair nor Brown had the courage to take the tough decisions to match our resources to our commitments. The defence budget allows equipment to be replaced in line only with a pace of activity that existed in 1998, before our military involvement in two major campaigns. It has been an exercise in irresponsibility and failure of duty.

As a consequence, our troops struggle with inadequate numbers of helicopters and armoured vehicles in Afghanistan. We are short of infantry and Special Forces. Our soldiers have endured the slight of a part-time Defence Secretary; now they have a part-time procurement minister and a Secretary of State ranked 21st out of 23 in the Cabinet.

To add insult to injury, the Ministry of Defence will be forced to repay the Treasury for some of the equipment it is using in Afghanistan in 2011-13: part of Labour’s scorched earth policy for the next government. Of course, they don’t expect to be around when the chickens come home to roost.

The same is true, sadly, of their announcement yesterday of a new Strategic Defence Review. On June 24, I was told in an answer to a parliamentary question that “no date has been set for a defence review”. Now, as a result of the pressure heaped upon Labour in recent weeks, the Government has announced that it supports the calls made by the Conservatives – for the past two years – for such an exercise to take place. But not until the next election. Not for Labour any difficult decisions which may be unpopular; no chance that voters will be told the consequences of its catastrophic economic management. Even by the standards of New Labour, this is an unparalleled exercise in cynicism, manipulation and cowardice.

A Strategic Defence Review under a Conservative government would follow a logical sequence. First, it would determine what the national interests of Britain are and where they exist in a truly global economy. These need to go wider than the traditional definitions, and include threats in areas such as energy and cyber-security.

Second, we need to make an assessment of how we perceive threats developing in the foreseeable future, which is never an easy task. Third, we must determine the defence capabilities we require to protect our interests from these threats.

Only then, fourth, are we able to decide the specific equipment programmes which make a reality of these capabilities.” Finally, we need to take account of the financial constraints that will ultimately decide what we can and cannot afford to do. Reviews have frequently been done the other way round – beginning with the finance and ending with foreign policy.

Other elements will also need to be considered, such as the state of our alliances. Nato, which serves as the cornerstone of the West’s collective security, has hardly been a glowing success in Afghanistan, with America, Canada and Britain carrying the lion’s share of the burden in terms of finance, casualties and fatalities.

The EU, too, seeks a new role – but why should we expect those European nations that have failed to step up to the plate for Nato in Afghanistan to do so for the European Union? What strategy will we have for Britain’s defence industry, which provides many thousands of jobs, as well as cutting-edge innovation and technology?

Any responsible government would have addressed these questions long before now. And our allies will be paying close attention to how we deal with specific programmes, not least our nuclear deterrent. This does not apply only to the United States, with whom we have one
of our closest defence collaborations. The French, with whom I had discussions in Paris yesterday, are anxious not to be left as the only nuclear power in Europe.

To abandon our deterrent in a world where countries such as North Korea and Iran are developing nuclear weapons would be utter madness. A Conservative government will not leave Britain open to nuclear blackmail in a dangerous and uncertain world. We have repeatedly said that we believe in Britain’s independent nuclear deterrent, and that a submarine-based system is the best available.

At the next election, there will be real choice. We can change to the principled realism of the Conservatives, or continue with the discredited cynicism and failure of Labour. It will be a stark choice but, for defence in particular, a crucial one.

Related posts:

1. Election 2010: heading for battle on defence spending
2. Defence Cuts: Something is going to give
3. Defence: the cost of Afghanistan

Already having visited Afghanistan and Jordan, Mr Obama, the US Democratic presidential candidate, and overwhelming favourite in European polls, Mr Obama left Israel having vowed to strengthen ties with the country. Now he is to enjoy a whistlestop tour of Berlin before leaving for France on Friday, where he will meet President Nicolas Sarkozy. He will round up his tour on Saturday in London, where he will meet Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister, and David Cameron, the Conservative leader.

Downing Street has voiced dismay that Mr Obama has chosen to meet Tony Blair in London ahead of his meeting with Gordon Brown.

While in Berlin, he is due to meet Chancellor Angela Merkel, who has said she will tell Mr Obama that there are limits to Germany’s military involvement in Afghanistan.

She said: “I will also tell Mr. Obama that there must be a balance between military engagement and the political expectations of the Afghan government,” adding that she would also talk to Mr Obama about trade, climate change and NATO.”

During his stop in Afghanistan, Mr Obama said that the situation in the country was “precarious and urgent” and urged George Bush to start planning the transfer of troops there from Iraq.

Following a further meeting with the German Foreign Minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Mr Obama will also deliver a speech, expected to attract thousands of admirers, at the city’s Victory Column.

Some commentators have drawn parallels between Mr Obama and President John F. Kennedy, who gave a speech in the city in 1963. Professor Harold Wenzel, of the John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies at Berlin’s Free University, said: “Kennedy was very charismatic, Kennedy represented new horizons and appealed particularly to young people, and we can find that in Obama today, too.”

Related posts:

1. Afghanistan: Gordon Brown hails Barack Obama’s troops pledge
2. Afghanistan: Germany says no to sending more soldiers to help US
3. Afghanistan: Germany says no to sending more soldiers to help US

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Published Date: 14 December 2009
A £150 million package to tackle the threat of roadside bombs in Afghanistan is set to be announced today – after the Prime Minister bedded down in forces accommodation in the country at the weekend.

• Prime Minister Gordon Brown meets British troops from 1 Royal Welsh at the Kandahar airbase in Afghanistan

Defence Secretary Bob Ainsworth is due to announce the three-year spending programme, which will include establishing new training facilities in the UK and an intelligence centre in Afghanistan. The money will come from a “reprioritisation” of existing Ministry of Defence spending.

The government will also announce that a further £10 million will be drawn under “urgent operational requirements” to buy 400 state-of-the-art mine detectors.

Gordon Brown spent Saturday night in a prefabricated, corrugated shed, surrounded by concrete blast walls at Kandahar airfield, the coalition HQ for the region.

At the end of a week in which the number of British soldiers killed in Afghanistan this year reached 100, Mr Brown said: “I wanted to be here with the troops to thank them for what they are doing. I wanted to see what it was like working with them.”

His stay – at the start of an unannounced pre-Christmas visit to meet the troops – was the first time a British premier had overnighted in either Afghanistan or Iraq. Aides said Mr Brown may have been the first Prime Minister to have spent the night in a war zone since Winston Churchill in the Second World War. Previously, Mr Brown – like Tony Blair before him – would fly in and out of Afghanistan in a single day, often staying in nearby countries. Although Mr Brown was given his own room, he had to share washroom facilities. Outside, there was a concrete shelter where he could take cover in the event of a rocket attack on the camp – currently running at one or two a week.

Following talks with President Hamid Karzai, who came to Kandahar to meet him, the Prime Minister said the coming months would be “critical” in the fight against the Taleban and called on the public at home to rally behind the troops. “I know this has been a difficult year,” he said. “I think the next few months are obviously critical. We need to show there is support for our forces back in Britain, which I know there is, and a determination to take on the Taleban.”

Both men denied there was any rift between them, despite recent criticism by western leaders – including Mr Brown – of Mr Karzai’s failure to tackle corruption after his controversial re-election.

Mr Brown emphasised the efforts being made to counter the threat from improvised explosive devices (IEDs) – the deadly roadside bombs which account for most of the casualties. “We have ramped up our counter-IED efforts to give the best protection possible to our troops on the ground,” he said.

Related posts:

1. Gordon Brown meets troops in Afghanistan on surprise pre-Christmas visit
2. Nato will send 5,000 more troops to Afghanistan, says Brown
3. Afghanistan: Gordon Brown hails Barack Obama’s troops pledge

Go to Washington any time in the past eight years and ask what influence Britain has over America’s Afghan policy. The answer is a thumb and forefinger joined in a simple zero. The same was true in Iraq. Ever since Tony Blair kowtowed to George Bush at Crawford in April 2002, Britain has been the patsy, the poodle, the dumb ally in Washington’s wars of ideological empire.

Britain’s military failures in Basra and Helmand, rescued in both by the Americans, increased this subservience. While French and German governments assess their nation’s interest, Blair and Gordon Brown have been me-too kids on the block, panting after Washington’s every wild venture. Despite 412 British soldiers dead, Brown indicated in his speech on Monday night that nothing had changed. The torture continues. London twitches only when Washington kicks.

Almost nothing Brown says on Afghanistan makes sense, and he seems painfully aware of it. He must say that soldiers are dying in Helmand to make Britain’s streets safe, even when intelligence reports say the opposite. He must remain obsessed with “training bases”, as if the 9/11 plotters had learned to fly in Tora Bora. He must believe that building an Afghan security force and ridding Hamid Karzai‘s regime of corruption can be achieved, and that they hold the keys to a British withdrawal. Pigs will fly.

Brown must also know that his Foreign Office thinks the Afghan venture mad, and sets up its hapless boss, David Miliband, to repeat that counter-insurgency is counter-terrorism. It is not. It is counter-insurgency. To equate the two is like the Iranian leader, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, blaming foreign states for what is essentially a domestic threat – in Britain’s case from a tiny fraction of its Muslim community.

The favoured military option said to be emerging from Obama’s agonising review of Afghan policy is to “fall back on the cities”. This seems the only way of marrying the military’s desperation for ever more troops to the raw, bleeding fact that the Afghan war is hopeless. The killing can go on for ever, but the war is lost.

Falling back on cities was the last gasp of the Russians in Afghanistan and the Americans in Vietnam. It can work if you are a native population ceding countryside to an invader. But in Afghanistan Nato is the invader. Cede the country to the Taliban and you cede every city market place and street corner. It will not work. Nato has hi-tech weapons but it forgot to pack its rucksacks with an old-fashioned, mark one historian.

As for the even more desperate idea of “talking to the local Taliban”, what do you say to a tiger in mid-leap? Could you eat just an arm and a leg and leave me the rest? It is on a par with Boris Johnson’s brainless argument that to pull out would be to betray those who have given their lives so far. Nobody dares call a spade a spade. Were Osama bin Laden given to laughter, which I understand he is not, he would split his sides.

The suspense of Obama’s “decision” on Afghanistan is acquiring epic proportions. It recalls the Delphic oracle’s reply when Croesus asked if he should declare war on Persia. If he does, the oracle said, “He will destroy a mighty empire”. It turned out to be his own.

We assume Obama favours withdrawal because, if he had thought more troops would defeat the Taliban, it was criminal not to have sent them a year ago. His decision has thus become a trial of strength between his view and the massed ranks of America’s military/industrial complex, with its $1bn-a-day interest in the continuance of war.

If militarism wins and Obama commences a 10-year battle over the mountains and plains of Afghanistan, it will spell the end of America’s status as cold war victor and putative world policeman. The complex will have him trapped. The Taliban will have him cornered, as will Bin Laden. America’s democratic leadership will have been pitted against American militarism – an informal component of the republic since the founding fathers – and will have capitulated. So will Britain’s compliant party leaders as they continue to utter weekly banalities over the coffins of Wootton Bassett.

If, on the other hand, Obama takes courage in both hands and announces a withdrawal, by hook or by crook, next year, the impact will be dramatic. Enemies at home will declare that America’s first black president has led his country to defeat. But the boil will have been lanced. Afghanistan and its patchwork of tribal chiefs, warlords and Taliban commanders will have to write “the invaders” out of their script. Karzai must cash in the deals of the past seven years. The Taliban, no longer a monolith, would forge pacts and coalitions, as they were doing prior to 2001. Terrible things will happen in many places but, as in Iraq, they were bound to happen from the moment the west intervened.

An American withdrawal would force Pakistan once again to be the power broker and guarantor of regional stability, albeit on new terms. The Pashtun would lose interest in their al-Qaida guests, who in turn would lose their anti-American rallying cry and seek sanctuary elsewhere. The region would regain an equilibrium it can never achieve under western occupation.

Britain and America should demilitarise the war on terror, surely the most counterproductive main-force deployment in recent history. They need no longer rely on grand armies, popinjay generals and crippling budgets; on bringing death, destruction and exile to hundreds of thousands of foreigners in the faint belief that this might stop a few bombs going off back home. They would hand that job to the appropriate authorities; to the police and security services.

The modalities of withdrawal need obvious attention. Only idiots talk of leaving “overnight”, but only idiots make departure conditional on some unachievable objective, such as more European troops or an operational Afghan army or honesty in Kabul. Defeat must be spun as victory. Retreat must be covered by the smokescreen of a loya jirga or “surge, bribe and leave”. But it cannot be conditional on fantasy.

This war was never to be won, any more than that in Iraq. Both were neocon nation-building stunts that ran amok on too much money. Three million Iraqis, including almost all Iraq’s Christians, were driven into exile. The same is starting in Afghanistan and will become a flood as Nato retreats. That nation’s agony is not over yet, but the end cannot begin until the invaders depart. That will happen only when the pain outweighs the pride. The question is, how many corpses will that take?

Related posts:

1. Gordon Brown puts pressure on Pakistan over Afghanistan campaign
2. £150m package for tackling roadside bombs after Brown spends night alongside Kandahar troops
3. German ministers face Kunduz air strike inquiry