La Nouvelle Entente Cordiale - Commentary no. 372

One of the first things the new government will be doing once elected will be to have a defence review. We haven’t one for ten years so it’s high time that we got down to some serious thinking about defence.

We know that in the context of the nation’s finances that we are going to be hard put to it to afford, whatever it is decided we need to spend. But let’s put aside for a moment the fact that we can really hardly afford to spend anything, given the state of the nation’s finances. Let’s start instead with trying to answer a simple question, what are our armed forces actually for? Given the fact that we are the proud possessor of our very own nuclear deterrent. Our armed forces are not in the business of acting as our country’s ultimate line of defence. We took the decision over fifty years ago to go nuclear. Having done so it seems very unlikely that we are going to give it up now, unilaterally at that. Having got it, we are stuck with it. This is particularly the case since we have a rather effective way of delivering it, namely, by rocket from a nuclear submarine cruising silently and unseen somewhere out there in the world’s oceans. So if push really came to shove and we were really threatened, in the way we were in 1940, we would presumably turn to our nuclear deterrent.

That being the case then what are our sub-nuclear forces on the strength, for? The answer seems to be that they are there first to support the Americans as in the case of Iraq and now in that of Afghanistan. But that means we are excluding our forces from a Falklands’ type incident. That was the last time we used force in defending our very own British interest. Are we likely to do that again? We have still got one or two very small places which in theory need protection. Presumably the possible order we have in the pipeline for two new aircraft carriers means that somebody clearly thinks they could come in useful for exerting strictly British power, thousands of miles away from these islands. A really modern state of the art carrier could have come in very useful in the Falklands’ campaign. But that kind of capability would come at some cost. A carrier can’t operate entirely on its own. It has to have up to date Destroyers to guard it. Actually it is reported that it would probably cost more to cancel the two carriers than to continue with the project and build them. Furthermore there is the unhappy fact that the last time we proposed cutting our vestigial naval presence in the South Atlantic the Argentinians took the opportunity to invade the Falklands. If we did cancel the carriers you can bet your bottom dollar that some of the old fashioned nationalists down there in Argentina would start planning another, if belated invasion. It could be the same thing with Gibraltar. Anyhow what kind of message would it send worldwide if because we are feeling a bit skint we decided to cut the carrier programme altogether?

Keeping the carriers means committing to buying the airplanes to fly off the deck of the things. They don’t come cheap either. So going ahead with the carriers means accepting that to this extent we are opting for having a small but very modern navy complete with the flying ability of the RAF.

One way of affording the carriers would be to go fifty fifty with France. We may not fully realise the fact, but the French would not be a bad alternative to being wholly committed to American technology. They have got the only serious capacity for manufacturing airplanes left outside Seattle. Furthermore we’ve still got BAE, British Aerospace, which is still a very formidable resource. We could go one step further. We could suggest to the French that we pooled our resources. Ok, we could keep our navies nominally separate, but we could standardise our equipment with the French. We could share the technology and we could introduce some cross postings. Most important of all we could share the planning. If we went this far we could go even further. We could put Sterling into the Euro, then we could finance the joint costs of our navies with a Euro bond issue.

This would reflect the serious truth about our situation, that of Europe and that of the global situation. Whether we like it or not, the world is breaking up into separate blocs. We all know that China is a huge growing power. We also recognise that Europe is punching far below its real potential. If we stepped into the ring starting with these suggestions, we could make a great deal of difference.

Currently we are faced with a challenge. It’s financial, it’s political and it’s a matter of resources. A deal with the French has already been mentioned as a possibility. Ultimately we could bring the Germans into it. Perhaps the three powers should join together and show how it’s done and sell the idea to Europe as a whole.

Just a thought.

Tony Rudd

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