James Fergusson
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Until two years ago, when the army’s senior soldier, chief of the general staff Richard Dannatt, popularised the phrase in a now famous interview in the Daily Mail, most people had never heard of the “military covenant.” Considering that the military covenant does not, technically speaking, exist, this is forgivable. The legal definition of a covenant is a sealed, written contract. Yet apart from an oblique reference or two in army doctrine, the military covenant does not exist in writing, and has no basis in law. Despite this, since 2006 an important national debate about the military’s role in society has coalesced around the phrase.
The covenant means different things to different people but its primary meaning is clear enough: the compact of trust, honour and respect between the government, the armed forces and the public whose interests they serve. Dannatt worries that the military covenant is “out of kilter,” and argues that unless balance is restored, the armed forces could eventually “break,” with potentially huge consequences for Britain, Europe and the world. This summer he renewed his attack, with a stinging comparison between the basic salary of a traffic warden (about £20,000) and a private soldier (£16,277). “I think, given the insecurity in the world today and what the armed forces of this country are being asked to do, then probably a slightly increased share of the national wealth going to defence would be appropriate,” he said. He may have a point. Our military haven’t had to fight on two fronts at once—southern Iraq and Helmand—for more than half a century, and they have been continuously engaged in Afghanistan for longer than the whole of the second world war.
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Marko Attila Hoare
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“Georgia has lost South Ossetia and Abkhazia for good”—one can almost taste the relish in the Guardian’s editorial of 15th August, as it argued against even peaceful, diplomatic measures to punish Russia for attacking Georgia. For a significant strand of left-liberal opinion in the UK, the default position on the Russia-Georgia conflict is that it is payback for earlier western sins in Iraq and Kosovo; that US, not Russian, warmongering is the problem. Yet none of this is true. Russia’s intervention in Georgia and recognition of Abkhazia’s and South Ossetia’s “independence” are not equivalent to western action over Kosovo or Iraq, and we allow them to go unpunished at our peril.
Moscow’s apologists frequently refer to the alleged “Kosovo precedent.” They argue that if Nato can carry out military intervention without UN authorisation against a sovereign state (Serbia), to protect a persecuted ethnic minority (the Kosovar Albanians), then unilaterally recognise the independence of an autonomous entity (Kosovo) which had until then been internationally recognised as belonging to Serbia, then Moscow is justified in acting likewise vis-a-vis Georgia and South Ossetia.
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Daniel J Gerstle
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According to Russia, up to 2,000 people have died in the Russo-Georgia conflict and 30,000 have been displaced in South Ossetia. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees estimates that the crisis may have created as many as 100,000 refugees across Georgia.
The conflict has its roots not only in South Ossetia, where the fighting began last week, but also over the Caucasus mountain border in the southern Russian republics, primarily North Ossetia. According to Russian news agencies, Russia’s federal and interior forces—including those of the southern republics North Ossetia, Kabardino-Balkaria, Karachai-Cherkessia, Ingushetia and Chechnya—participated in a joint military exercise along the Russo-Georgia border in mid-July. Then, on 5th August, three days before the Russian invasion of Georgia began, the leaders of North Ossetia, Kabardino-Balkaria and Karachai-Cherkessia released a joint statement describing their plan for military and humanitarian action should Georgia advance on South Ossetia.
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Ayesha Siddiqa
Nuclear weapons are a matter of great national honour in Pakistan. A traveller driving around will see representations of the missiles on walls and the back of trucks. Since the nuclear weapons programme began in the 1970s, the Pakistani public has been led to believe that the weapons are guarantors of the state’s security. But with the country continuing to suffer civil unrest, some fear that Pakistan’s nuclear weapons might fall into the hands of religious militants. This does not go down well in Islamabad. The government not only claims that it can protect these weapons but also sternly warns the west against any attempt to step in to protect or neutralise them—late last year Frederick Kagan, architect of the US surge in Iraq, draw up contingency plans for US troops to invade Pakistan and secure the nuclear arsenal in the event of the country falling into chaos.
Pakistan’s nuclear journey began at a conference in January 1972 in Multan, in the wake of the country’s crushing defeat by India in the 1971 Bangladeshi war. At the event, chaired by Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, a decision was taken to build a nuclear weapons programme to respond both India’s attempts to build a bomb and to its advantage in conventional weapons. New Delhi carried out its first peaceful nuclear explosion in 1974, after which Islamabad became more active in its pursuit of nuclear weapons. Pakistan initially lagged behind India in terms of scientific and technological capacity, but this gap was filled when the infamous AQ Khan, a Pakistani metallurgist employed at a nuclear facility in the Netherlands, decided in the wake of the Indian tests to provide blueprints and contacts to Pakistan to help create a uranium enrichment facility. In 1976, Khan returned to Pakistan, founding a nuclear research laboratory at Kahuta (subsequently named after him), which ultimately provided the enriched uranium for the six nuclear tests conducted in May 1998.
Since then, Pakistan has twice come close to a war with India (1999 and 2002) in which nuclear weapons might have been used. That prospect terrifies the international community, as does the fear of nuclear material being stolen by Islamic militants. The latter anxiety is reinforced by the fact that Pakistan’s intelligence agencies were deeply involved with establishing the Taliban in Afghanistan in the 1990s. Many people in Pakistan believe that the relationship between parts of the military intelligence establishment and Islamic militants remains intact.
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Lewis Page
All is not well with the British armed services. The head of the army, Richard Dannatt, said publicly last year that a long-term Iraq commitment is a bad idea and that the army is “running hot,” with “only one spare battalion.” There has been misery for the other services too, with warships decommissioned and jet squadrons disbanded. Further painful economies are forecast for the next decade. And yet the defence budget has grown in real terms over the last few years. British defence spending is £32bn a year—2.5 per cent of GDP. That is about half the proportion of the early 1980s, but in gross terms the fifth highest figure in the world. That should be enough to maintain quite substantial forces—but in fact we struggle to cover costs, despite the never-ending economies. And even if the ministry of defence (MoD) can fulfil its current commitments up to 2020 and remain solvent, the Trident replacement costs will then plunge it back into the red.
A popular perception exists that this is a consequence of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. In fact, however, the financial black hole was being foretold—within the services—many years before the twin towers fell. Since then there has been a procession of cutbacks, falling mainly on frontline combat units, making the commitments in Afghanistan and Iraq more painful as a result; but the overseas deployments are not the underlying problem.
So what is the real cause of the trouble at the MoD? Put simply, the armed services have long been compelled to pay wildly excessive prices for equipment in order to preserve jobs in the British arms sector. We must pay double or triple the price, often for inferior products, in order to preserve “sovereignty”: we must buy British to have control over our own weaponry. If an American or Spanish factory produces the spare parts for a helicopter, it is argued, we cannot use that helicopter without the acquiescence of that foreign government. If the Americans or Spanish were to disapprove of a future British military action—which is possible, even among close allies—they might cut off vital supplies. Thus we should buy from British factories, regardless of cost.
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Ian Crawford
The building of high-technology weaponry, much of it for export to parts of the world that could do without it, dominates the business of the western aerospace industry. While many of us may lament this fact, we are faced with the dilemma that these companies are mainstays of the economy, directly employing well over half a million people in the US, and over 100,000 in Britain, with many more employed in supporting industries. The aerospace industry is also strategically important, and a driver of technological innovations with wide commercial and civilian applications. No government can afford to see these industries run down as a result of hostility to arms sales, especially if the jobs would merely go elsewhere and the world would be no better off. Moreover, as we have just seen with the dropping of the Serious Fraud Office investigation into BAE Systems’s dealings with Saudi Arabia, the industry seems well able to use its political influence to protect its perceived self-interest.
For both political and ethical reasons, therefore, it is desirable to identify non-military business opportunities for the aerospace sector. The armaments industry is not well adapted to diversification, largely because of its reliance on government contracts, its large investment in specialised skills organised around highly complex projects and the high unit cost of its products. However, there is an obvious alternative to military production—an expanded programme of space exploration. Space is a viable alternative for the arms industry because the technologies involved are similar, and many companies already have a significant interest in this area. Increased involvement in space exploration would reduce the aerospace industry’s reliance on military production (and arms exports), while maintaining employment and innovation. For example, had Britain not opted out of the European Space Agency’s contribution to the International Space Station (ISS), companies like BAE could have devoted more of their business to building ISS components and less to selling weapons. As it happens, opportunities for greater investment in space exploration will soon be upon us, stimulated by the declared intention of the US to return astronauts to the moon by 2020. This is leading to the emergence of a global strategy for space exploration in which the British scientific community is already involved, and to which, given the political will, our aerospace industry could make a real contribution. Indeed, in early January the government launched a public consultation to inform the UK Civil Space Strategy 2007-10.
The counter-argument will be that selling arms abroad brings money in, while government-sponsored space activities amount to a straight subsidy. However, this ignores not only the fact that the arms industry is itself already heavily subsidised, but also the scientific and cultural benefits of space exploration, which deserve government support in their own right. Why? First, the exploration of the solar system will add greatly to scientific knowledge. Second, space exploration is inherently exciting, and as such is an obvious vehicle for inspiring young people to take an increased interest in science and engineering. Third, space exploration provides a natural focus for international co-operation, and may help to build a stronger sense of global solidarity. And fourth, the development of a space-based industrial infrastructure may one day contribute to the global economy by providing access to essentially unlimited supplies of energy and resources.
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Ferdinand Mount
The naming of cats is a difficult matter, according to TS Eliot in Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats. The naming of wars is just as tricky. Only rarely do we pause to note the political will and imagination that have gone into imposing a title on this or that episode of state-sponsored violence. Yet the war name matters, because it provides the heading to what we now call the “narrative,” the purpose of which is to explain the reasons for going to war and to justify, even ennoble, the bloodshed and sacrifice. Every war needs, as Old Possum says a cat does,
A name that’s peculiar, and more dignified,
Else how can he keep his tail perpendicular,
Or spread out his whiskers, or cherish his pride?
Sometimes this means that the two sides to a conflict adopt different names for it. The southern states of America preferred to remember the civil war as “the war between the states,” because to call it a civil war was to accept the north’s opinion that it was a war within one nation from which a group of slave-owning states had no legal or moral right to break away. Stalin preferred to call the second world war “the great patriotic war,” in order to highlight the heroic defence of the motherland and relegate to the shadows the Nazi-Soviet pact.
The title of “cold war” for the east-west hostility that occupied most of the second half of the 20th century has a disputed origin. American historians assume that the term was first used either by the presidential guru Bernard Baruch in 1947 or by Walter Lippmann, who published a book called The Cold War in that same year. But the first use that the Oxford English Dictionary can track down comes from a piece by George Orwell in Tribune nearly two years earlier, entitled “You and the Atom Bomb.” Orwell set out a vision of a “horribly stable” future in which the world was divided into superpowers, each of which was “at once unconquerable and in a permanent state of ‘cold war’ with its neighbours.”
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John Keegan
What is civil war? The question is often raised about the disorders in Iraq. Does the violence between Iraqi religious and political factions amount to civil war, or is it best described another way? The US-led coalition’s spokesmen, echoing the views of the White House and Downing Street, refuse to call the disorders civil war. Presumably they believe that to do so would be to admit defeat in their project to set up a stable, legitimate new Iraq.
To assess the situation in Iraq, it is helpful to understand how a civil war differs from an inter-state, cross-border war. There are three principal defining aspects of a civil war, each with numerous subsidiary requirements. The basic formula is simple: the violence must be “civil,” it must be “war,” and its aim must be either the exercise or the acquisition of national authority.
The “civil” part of the definition means the struggle must be conducted within a national territory, and that it must be carried on largely by the people of that territory, fighting between themselves. It must also involve a significant degree of popular participation.
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Lewis Page
The most desirable quality in a soldier is loyalty. Skill at arms, leadership, intelligence, all are useless—even dangerous—if their possessor is not true to his salt. Still, only a handful of countries have managed to place their military leaders firmly under civilian direction, and even among that happy group the principle is sometimes quite recent. French generals, for instance, plotted to overthrow their government less than 50 years ago. In most nations, the process has scarcely begun. For a majority of the human race, political power still grows from the barrel of a gun.
Against this background, it is possible to feel concern when the head of the British army gives broad hints that he and his fellow generals strongly disagree with the policy of the elected government. General Sir Richard Dannatt is not a bluff military simpleton: he knew precisely what he was doing when he spoke to the Daily Mail in early October. But some suggested that Dannatt was acting unconstitutionally by saying what he thinks.
In fact, that isn’t true at all. By his oath of attestation, Dannatt is loyal to the Queen, not to Tony Blair or the Labour party. As a practical matter, unwritten like so much of the British constitution, this means that his true superiors are the British public. He has done nothing wrong by giving a professional opinion to his real bosses.
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Mark Fitzpatrick
North Korea’s nuclear test alters the balance of power in northeast Asia. In every other field—economics, culture, diplomacy, biotechnology and IT, to name a few—the gap between the impoverished citizens of Kim Jong-Il’s regime and their world-class southern kinsmen could hardly be greater. The north’s ageing conventional military capabilities have also fallen far behind the south. But now North Korea boasts of possessing the ultimate equaliser. The suggestion that the explosion was merely a large quantity of TNT cannot be dismissed entirely without air sampling data, but it is implausible that North Korea would fake what was a technical failure judging from the sub-kiloton yield—eight to ten times less bang than what would have been planned.
Despite the successful test, it is questionable whether North Korea has the means of delivering a nuclear weapon. Miniaturising the weapon for delivery with a ballistic missile is no easy task. The bomb design that Libya received from the AQ Khan network, which North Korea may have bought as well, would not fit on North Korea’s Scud, Nodong or Taepodong missiles. North Korea had trouble enough getting the bomb to work at all, let along miniaturising it. Any plane or ship that North Korea outfitted with a nuclear weapon for a suicide attack would be detected and stopped before it reached its intended target. The only way North Korea today could deliver a nuclear weapon would be overland to the 38th parallel border with South Korea, an unlikely scenario in which casualties and fallout would affect as many Koreans in the north as in the south.
The test will strengthen the new Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe’s push to give Japan’s Self-Defence Forces a proper military role that would be normal in any other country but that is unfairly cast as “remilitarisation” by many Chinese and Koreans. The key question is the extent to which North Korea’s test will strengthen those inside Japan who argue that the country should consider its own nuclear weapons option. The answer is probably that going nuclear will remain a minority preference as long as the Japanese believe they are covered by America’s nuclear umbrella. The Japan-US security alliance is stronger than ever and America is speeding up delivery to Japan of Patriot missile defence systems that can provide protection to individual locations.
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