Our soldiers are the ones who need foreign aid
AMID the excitement in the papers this week over england qualifying for the World Cup finals, not to mention Kate Winslet’s pregnancy and Abbey Clancy’s latest frock, one story was all but ignored. And yet it could not have been more poignant — or important.
lance Corporal James Brynin, of the Intelligence Corps, was killed by enemy fire on Tuesday when his patrol was attacked near lashkar Gah. And while too many people have forgotten that our soldiers are still fighting a thankless war in Afghanistan, for his family, friends and comrades, forgetting is, sadly, impossible.
His loss is a harrowing reminder that even as the Government continues a programme of deep cuts to the Armed Forces, the conflict which has long since faded from the front pages continues to claim lives.
In a dangerous and increasingly unstable world, the Services are a necessity, not a luxury, and reducing them so dramatically in size and scope only makes Britain more vulnerable.
We were assured by the Government that a cut in the Army’s strength from 102,000 to 82,000 would not be risky.
The Territorial Army, some of whose personnel had distinguished themselves in Iraq and in Helmand, would take up the strain. Sadly, it isn’t working like that. A memo leaked from the Ministry of Defence this week, written by senior officers, says the Government’s highly cavalier treatment of the Army has created ‘a hostile recruiting environment’ for the TA, which is being renamed the Army Reserve.
The memo adds that this difficulty in recruiting reservists means the Army faces an ‘increased risk to its structure and operational capability’.
In layman’s terms, that means we face being unable to defend ourselves — and it shows how reckless ideas about intervening in other countries’ conflicts, such as the recent notion of interfering in Syria, really are.
The Territorial Army is currently 19,000 strong. The Government planned for it to grow to 30,000, claiming this would compensate for much of the lost regular Army. However, between April and June, only 376 people joined the Reserve, against a target of 1,432.
The memo admits the Army will struggle to get half the number of reservists it hoped for, and also expresses fears ( widespread among senior officers to whom I have spoken) that the dependence on reserves to replace so many full-time professional soldiers is in any case highly dangerous.
Potential recruits have many negative perceptions of the Army, including fears for their mental health if they see combat. However, the most negative factor of all seems to be the idea among otherwise keen and well-motivated young people that politicians really don’t care about the Army, or the soldiers in it.
Although labour, rather cynically, introduced an Armed Forces Day to try to counter a collapse in service morale, and politicians make sincere statements of regret whenever soldiers die for their country, such gestures are not enough.
Stories about heroes returning from Afghanistan to be given their P45s demonstrate one aspect of the perceived disregard in which the Services are held.
There have also been accounts of soldiers’ wives visiting charity food banks to feed their children while their husbands are on active service — because of the high cost of child care while they go out to work.
And, as we saw when Defence Secretary Philip Hammond was heckled at the Tory conference, there is anger among veterans at the disbanding of regiments, to which there are strong loyalties. none of this encourages recruitment. And the problem of underresourcing goes beyond the Army. The RAF saw squadrons disbanded and highly trained combat pilots laid off. The surface fleet of the navy, meanwhile, is smaller than at any time since Alfred the Great founded the service more than a millennium ago. our maritime nation now has 40 admirals and 260 captains, but only a pathetic 19 warships.
even before the leaked memo emerged, the new Chief of the Defence Staff, General Sir nick Houghton, had admitted that many service personnel felt ‘cynical and detached’ as a result of the Government’s treatment of the Services. He also warned Britain to ‘lower its expectations’ of what the Armed Forces can achieve in future.
That last observation should gravely worry Mr Hammond and the Prime Minister. This is not about combating the disparate tentacles of Al Qaeda, but about what big, unstable powers such as Russia or China might do against our interests.
our dependence on America for our defence simply won’t work unless we are prepared to make a serious contribution, in terms of men and hardware, to the alliance. And defence experts agree we are close to being unable to do that.
THIS week, I attended a lecture by Falklands hero MajorGeneral Julian Thompson, after which he said not only that he thought it quite possible Argentina would attempt to re-capture the islands in the next decade, but that we would be hard pushed to stop them if they did because of our lack of fully-equipped aircraft carriers.
That would be a massive humiliation. But we delude ourselves if we think it’s the worst that could happen as a result of the determination to cut defence spending so that we can, for example, maintain our £11.5 billion-a-year overseas aid programme — equivalent to a quarter of the £46 billion defence budget.
Cutting the Services so deeply while men such as l/Cpl Brynin are still dying, and hoping the Army can manage on more parttime soldiers, remains a reckless policy. And since that policy now appears to be deterring new recruits, too, only a fool would not take urgent steps to reverse it.