Cuts not only risky but downright foolish

12 April 2012

In the light of this week's news, the daring special forces rescue of oil workers from the desert, and the strong possibility of some form of intervention in Libya, today's cuts look not only risky but downright foolish.

Any kind of security operation in the Mediterranean is bound to involve military operations and contingency provisions - backing up garrisons in Cyprus, naval patrols in the Arabian Sea, RAF planes and helicopters to the Gulf, even.

Defence Secretary Liam Fox, like his US predecessor and spiritual buddy Donald Rumsfeld, thinks crisis management can be done with "forces lite". Remember Rummy thought that Iraq would be a six-week job. The Americans are still there, and the British Army spent six years in Basra and pulled out less than gloriously, in confusion and regret. To be cutting forces and military capability now is bizarre. We are in the middle of an unfolding crisis which few seem to understand, and almost no one in Whitehall foresaw. Both the defence review and the National Security Strategy of last October paid little attention to what was blowing up in the Gulf, the Middle East and the Mediterranean.

The defence cuts and the contingency planning for the new crisis produced by the Jasmine Revolutions from China to Morocco are the responsibility of Mr Cameron's new National Security Council. So far it has shown itself less than fit for purpose.

Historically the role of Britain in the commerce of oil, arms and dodgy regimes in the Middle East is undeniable. Any intervention, even imposing no fly zones over Libya, means, as Colin Powell recognised in Iraq, we become co-owners of the crisis. To stick to a rigid isolationist dogma of disarmament and cuts puts Britain, not to mention those we should seek to protect, in danger.

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