Stand with US as a new nuclear menace looms

LET ME state from the first that I was pleased when Donald Trump was elected.

Now, I’m not going to join the nay-sayers and intolerant ‘liberals’ who make a good living criticising his every syllable, but I have been appalled by much of what has happened since his inauguration in January.

Despite my enthusiasm for him, I was deeply concerned by his pledge to remove US troops entirely from Afghanistan: I thought it was a huge mistake.

But now he’s reversed that and, as importantly, stood up in public and been statesmanlike, telling us that he’s prepared to change both his mind and his policy that when facts emerge and circumstances alter.

When we hear ‘Afghanistan’ from politicians’ lips, we should think ‘Pakistan’. She is riven by the Pakistani Taliban against whom a bloody counterinsurgency is being waged while, at the same time, these very insurgents have penetrated the government and the intelligence services and could, possibly, seize power.

It’s difficult to grapple with this contradiction, but think about where Osama bin Laden was holed up for years – Abbottabad on the soil of America’s friend and ally Pakistan. Yet, we are told that the government knew nothing about it. Really?

But why should the US and the West be concerned? Well, for plenty of reasons, most important of which are the several hundred Pakistani nuclear warheads kept at a dozen or more sites close to the Afghan border.

They are kept there, of course, because this is the furthest point from Islamabad’s mortal enemy, Delhi. Yet, whilst they might be less vulnerable to an Indian strike there, they are smack in the middle of Taliban country.

So, if you can’t secure or seize these weapons directly (which, after all, would be an invasion of an ally’s sovereignty), you put troops as close as you can while providing crutches for the governments in Kabul and Islamabad in the shape of money, advice and political top cover.

That’s what British, US and a host of other Nato countries’ troops have died for. It’s not about the control of the poppy market, schooling for the under12s, equal rights for Afghan women or other convenient veils – it’s about nuclear-tipped

which, if it goes wrong, will provoke terrorism that would make 9/11 look like Guy Fawkes night.

President Obama, of course, made a criminal blunder in 2011 when he broadcast the US-led Alliance’s plans to draw down force levels and all-but abandon Afghanistan within three years. He told the Taliban exactly what he was doing, when and in what numbers – they bided their time, waited for the withdrawal and then came back in mob-handed.

Trump has now got to clean up this mess and it’s refreshing to hear him say that it’s not about nation-building, it’s about killing terrorists. It’s about killing the very people who would kill us in Manchester or London: we provide the fly-paper and these lethal locusts stick to it.

And what of Britain’s response? The Ministry of Defence has clucked a bit and made approving noises, but of tangible commitments there’s nothing. We have 500 or so troops there already who are meant to be in a training and advisory role, but look at these numbers a little more closely and of this tiny force over 300 are there to administer and guard fewer than 200 trainers!

It has to be asked, what combat forces could we send supposing that there is the political resolve to do so?

We might send aircraft and drones, but the US has plenty of both. We might send tough, well-trained foot soldiers whose commanders cut their teeth in Helmand a decade ago – the very thing the Americans need.

But those commanders have mostly left in the face of poor pay and low morale while the government has calmly abandoned its promise to keep the Army even at its dangerously low level of 82,000.

There are now fewer than 78,000 soldiers under arms and turning that around will be impossible as recruiting falters.

There were 96 places available at Catterick for one basic infantry course earlier this year: only 14 men enlisted.

We need a strong alliance with the USA more than ever. We need trade deals as Brexit approaches and we need her intelligence and security resources as terrorism threatens us.

But that alliance has got be sustained: our politicians can’t talk about standing shoulder to shoulder and then spinelessly say that we’ve got no ships or soldiers to do the job.

In 1917, as US troops marched into France, a cynical phrase was coined, ‘Britain is ready to fight to the very last American’. That must never be said again.