The army’s carelessness

In a post here last April, Matt Cavanagh on Labour and the Generals, I commented on two of his articles which shed light on political-military relationships in the years before the 2010 election:

One resource which British defence seems to possess in abundance is a large cohort of senior officers of all three services, serving and retired, unafraid to speak their minds and, when not at odds with each other, ready to criticise the government of the day. (Perhaps the implementation of career average, rather than final salary, pensions in the armed forces, as Lord Hutton has recommended, will eliminate one of the incentives for this top-heaviness). Depending on the robustness of the Coalition, the next election could be at any time up to the planned date of UK’s leaving Afghanistan in 2015. However, when it comes, the dominant issues are more likely to be the economy and the NHS than the extent of Labour’s shortcomings on equipment pre-SDSR in 2009, despite Cavanagh’s misgivings. One can also expect the uniformed Top Kneddies to pipe down despite their dislike of SDSR, given their natural inclinations towards the Conservative party.

The last sentence is now looking difficult to stand up. Today’s Daily Telegraph splashes a story by its defence correspondent, Thomas Harding, Army at war over axing of battalions, reporting a leaked letter from a brigadier to the Chief of the General Staff prior to the army cuts to be announced later in the week. Yesterday Harding ran a related story, At least six 'talented' generals quit Army over defence cuts:

At least half-a-dozen of the most senior officers have announced their departure in recent months as the Army prepares to shrink by a fifth to 82,000. The cuts that will be announced by Philip Hammond, the Defence Secretary, on Thursday are having a devastating effect on morale. The Future Force 2020 reforms are the most significant in a century and will reduce the Army to its smallest size in two centuries. Some of the generals leaving the Army are regarded as the leading thinkers of their generation.

to which a clearly exasperated MoD responded:

Number of Generals leaving the Armed Forces  

Today's Telegraph claims that six Generals are leaving the Army because they are disillusioned. This is nonsense. The article contains a number of inaccuracies and individuals have been misquoted. Several of those named are still serving with no plans to leave before their normal retirement date. The remainder have already left the Army having reached the natural end of their careers. None left because they were disillusioned and this article does those individuals a huge disservice after decades of distinguished and valuable service to the country.  

More than 24,000 people leave the Armed Forces every year, including senior officers who come to the natural end of their careers. The number of senior officers departing early is in line with the historic trend over a number of years. The MOD has long been criticised for being top heavy with too many senior officers and is soon to announce a reduction in senior posts to ensure the Services are balanced, streamlined and effective.

Well good luck with the last – and just how “long been criticised”? Well, here is the late David Hart writing in the Spectator in February 1993 in an article, Not Enough Bang For Our Bucks:

We have a quite extraordinary number of senior officers compared with other nations. The ratio of British general officers (including nursing staff) to total servicemen is 1:420. In the United States and in France it is 1:1,900. In Germany it is 1:2300.

In a post here a year ago, Poor Jack and Harry, I commented on the advantage the army had over the other services in terms of the upper class connections of its senior officers and how this led to “a natural affinity with the Conservative party”. If Labour form the next government, many of its senior politicians will not have forgotten the way they were treated by the army and its friends in the media before 2010. To have fallen out with both main parties “looks like carelessness” on the part of the army which the other two services might not be slow to exploit, when and if the opportunity arises.


UPDATE 16 JUNE 2013

Thanks to the magnificent Spectator Archive, recently made available and going back to July 1828, I have been able to add a link to the Hart article quoted from above.

Homage to a Government

At the last PMQs before the Easter Recess, immediately before the Financial Statement on 21 March, Ed Miliband asked for, and received, confirmation that combat operations in Afghanistan by British troops would cease by the end of 2014. Shortly afterwards, the Chancellor of the Exchequer stated that as a consequence the cost of operations is expected to be a total of £2.4 billion lower than planned over the remainder of the Parliament. British forces deployed under NATO to Afghanistan in 2001 and have suffered over 400 killed and over 5000 wounded there since then. So it isn’t surprising that their final removal is being seen as a significant milestone in British military history.

This departure is overshadowing an event which will take place a few years later later which may well be of greater historical significance for the UK, the final repatriation of British forces from Germany in 2020, 75 years after the end of World War 2. In fact the only years after 1919 in which the British Army was not present in Germany were 1930-1945. There were armies of occupation in the years after the World Wars, and, of course, the extended British presence after World War 2 was as part of NATO’s defence against the Warsaw Pact during the Cold War.

The British have a continuing preoccupation with World War 2, our finest hour, even though living memories of it in 2012 are confined to those over 75 (say 8 years old when it ended). For example, the weekend following the PMQs, BBC1’s The Andrew Marr Show on 25 March ran an interview with Ben Macintyre pushing his new book, Double Cross: The True Story of The D-Day Spies while Five later gave 5½ hours over to two World War 2 films and a Battle of Britain documentary.

The Cold War by contrast gets little attention, probably because, although expensive (at least 3% more of UK GDP was spent on defence during the Cold War than at present), there were no hostilities, in fact no clear declarations of war or peace. Even the dates of its start and end are subjects of historical debate, although good cases can be made for 1947 and 1989 (Baruch’s speech in April 1947, in which he made use of the term to describe US/USSR relations, and the Gorbachev - George HW Bush Summit in Malta in December 1989). On that basis, some “living memories” of the Cold War should be carried by anyone over 40 (say 17 in 1989). But we don’t hear, read or see much about it by comparison with the World Wars - perhaps a little more attention will be given in the media later this year during the 50th anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Once the Cold War had ended, the British presence in Germany was on borrowed time while UK defence policy tried to square the circle of the role in the world aspired to and the resources available for defence expenditure. In 1998 the Strategic Defence Review put in place by the new Labour government concluded:

Basing in Germany. The Government is committed to the principle of NATO Allies stationing forces on one another's territory, which is an important symbol of our mutual obligations. Moreover, although the specific military argument for stationing forces close to the Cold War front line has disappeared, there are still significant military benefits in having capable forces based in continental Europe, where they are closer to many potential theatres of operations and they can train more readily alongside our Allies. There is also the practical and economic question of how much additional military infrastructure and training the United Kingdom could readily accommodate. All these considerations have led us to conclude that the bulk of our current military presence in Germany should remain there.
Some reductions can, however, be made in that presence as part of Army restructuring. Three armoured regiments (including the two to be re-roled) and a number of supporting units will be removed from the front line in Germany and returned to the United Kingdom, totalling about 2,500 military personnel and some 186 tanks.

(Supporting Essay Six Future Military Capabilities paras 34 and 35)

Plans were already in place to withdraw the RAF from Germany by 2002.
In 2010 the new Coalition government completed Securing Britain in an Age of Uncertainty: The Strategic Defence and Security Review and decided to deal with the ‘practical and economic question’ raised in the SDR 12 years earlier:

The UK currently also has a major military presence in Germany, with 20,000 service personnel and their families based there. For more than 50 years the Federal Government has supported the British military presence providing essential training and operational opportunities as well as basing. The presence of the British military has played an important role in demonstrating Alliance solidarity, and has also been a symbol of steadfast UK-German friendship. But there is no longer any operational requirement for UK forces to be based there, and the current arrangements impose financial costs on the UK, disruption on personnel and their families and opportunity costs in terms of wider Army coherence. We therefore aim to withdraw all forces from Germany by 2020.

(Part 2 Overseas Bases)

Philip Larkin’s poem, Homage to a Government, elegiac when it was written in 1969 just after the then Labour government’s decision to withdraw forces from East of Suez, turns out to have been prophetic as well. It ends:

Next year we shall be living in a country
That brought its soldiers home for lack of money.
The statues will be standing in the same
Tree-muffled squares, and look nearly the same.
Our children will not know it's a different country.
All we can hope to leave them now is money.

Poor Jack and Harry

By the time David Cameron made his ‘you do the fighting and I’ll do the talking’ remark about the senior military at the PM's Press Conference on 21 June, he would almost certainly have given his approval to the recommendations in Lord Levene’s Defence Reform report published a few days later.

Descriptions of the proposals as the most far-reaching since Haldane’s reforms to the Army after the Second Boer War, and Fisher’s to the Royal Navy in the same period, are almost certainly overblown, but the changes probably amount to the biggest setback for the three single services since the removal in 1946 of their individual Secretaries of State from the Cabinet. In particular, Levene has recommended what is in effect the merger of the single Service Chief and respective Commander-in-Chief posts and their ‘rustication’, together with hangers-on, to service headquarters. Back in the MoD Head Office in London, a new Defence Board, answerable to the National Security Council, will consist of eight civilians and only the Chief of the Defence Staff to represent the views of the armed forces.

Something like this has been building up for a while. The cover of the Spectator on 11 June led with:

Who’s in command?

Sherard Cowper-Coles says politicians have let the top brass get too big for their boots

although his article was titled:

Breaking rank

Years of timidity from politicians have left our military commanders dangerously overconfident

and ‘too big for their boots’ was not an expression used by Sir Sherard (SC-C hereafter). SC-C was the UK’s senior diplomat in Afghanistan to 2010, and on the basis of his experience, he concludes:

A trend has set in where an overconfident and under-managed military machine fills a vacuum left by politicians, civil servants and diplomats unable or unwilling to provide firm strategic direction. The military is not just doing the fighting, but increasingly it is allowed to decide the overall direction of the campaign. Now that Barack Obama wishes to hasten the withdrawal from Afghanistan, with obvious implications for Britain, the military is protesting. In my view, this is a sign of a deep imbalance in the relationship between the military and the state. ...
Politicians with little or no military experience were being pushed by a confident and enthusiastic military lobby into doing things against their better judgment. War-winning armies need to be incurably optimistic, unquenchably enthusiastic, institutionally loyal, and — to some extent — susceptible to groupthink. The problem comes when the politicians, and the civil servants who advise them, don’t have the courage, knowledge or confidence to push back against pressure from one of the most effective special-interest lobbies of them all. ...
The civil servants in the MoD are clever and courageous, but have great difficulty asserting themselves over their professionally and personally confident colleagues in the uniform branch. The military now have much better academic qualifications than they did in the past. ...
Little wonder the British military are so assertive. They have the media and public on their side, they control the MoD and they are facing a political class that stands in bewildered awe of men in uniform. But with time and money running out, politicians on both sides of the Atlantic are at last starting to take charge, and give the military the firm strategic direction they need — in their own interests — in a democracy.

In the article, SC-C paid tribute to the bravery and sacrifices of the UK’s armed forces in Afghanistan. Anyone who doubts his sincerity should read the Diplomatic Telegram, Tribute to the Fallen, recording the ‘ramp ceremony’ prior to the repatriation of Corporal Damien Lawrence of the Yorkshire Regiment in 2008, to be found at the start of his recent book, Cables from Kabul. The criticisms in the article were directed at the senior levels of the military, men in their late forties and fifties, who no longer have to engage in combat but have turned to fighting in the corridors of Whitehall.

The word military, either as an adjective or noun, is nowadays applied to all three forces (RN, Army, RAF) although historically it would have been applied to the Army, with the Senior Service being responsible for matters described as naval. While SC-C’s general point about weak political control of the armed forces is probably correct, arguably it is the British Army which should be bearing the brunt of his criticisms. A post here in April summarised the views of a well-placed insider on the relationship between the last government and the top of the Army, and a post in May gave a typical example of the adeptness with which retired senior Army officers lobby using the media. All this is with a greater confidence and assertiveness, to use the traits identified by SC-C, than has been shown in recent years by the other two services. Why should this be?

Obviously, since the end of the Cold War, land operations in Bosnia, Iraq and Afghanistan have been the main preoccupation of the MoD. Also, the Army is larger in manpower terms, top to bottom, than the other two services – see below. But, as always in the UK, there is the issue of class. It has been said of the three services that the Army is led by gentlemen trying to be officers, the Navy by officers trying to be gentlemen, and the Air Force by neither trying to be both. This is unkind, but comes with an uncomfortable element of truth. Certain elements of the Army, the Guards regiments in particular, have always had a substantial intake of officers who come from the highest levels of society. That is not to say that the Navy and RAF are devoid of senior officers with an upper-class background, but not to the same extent. Substance for this assertion was provided by the Public Accounts Committee in 2007:

20. Of the 10 most senior staff in each Service, nine out of 10 Army officers, six out of 10 Royal Navy officers, and three out of 10 Royal Air Force officers were educated in independent schools. … The [MoD] sees the current officer intake to the Advanced Command and Staff Course as providing an indication of the likely composition of the future leadership of the Services: 58% of the intake of Army officers went to state schools; as did 70% of the Royal Navy officers; and 75% of the Royal Air Force officers.

It is hardly surprising that some Generals feel that they have a natural affinity with the Conservative party and correspondingly little identification with Labour. As most senior officers in their outlook are at least a decade behind the mainstream of British society, their vision of the Conservatives probably tends to be pre-Cameroon and non-detoxified, and of Labour, old rather than new. But they should have realised that, whatever their allegiance, Kipling’s observation on ‘The Ladies’, ‘For the Colonel's Lady an' Judy O'Grady, Are sisters under their skins’, could apply equally well to politicians. In the nature of their trade, they are never slow to spot a ‘useful idiot’ and make use of him in pursuit of office, but once in government will take any steps they can to prevent erosion of their own power.

Now, defence in general and the positions of all three services have been weakened because of the way the Army chose to make its case in recent years, though the Army will probably come out of it all in relatively better shape. As James Kirkup blogged in the Daily Telegraph on 28 June: ‘Sacking soldiers makes for bad headlines; the PM is said to be especially squeamish about taking the axe to the posher, shinier bits of the Army.’ Which may leave the other two services like Sassoon’s Harry and Jack, casualties of the General who ‘did for them both with his plan of attack’.

Under the new arrangements, the occupant of the CDS post will be the prime source of advice on behalf of all three services, but will have been drawn from only one of them. The charts below show how this has worked out in practice since the inception of the post in 1957.

The second chart shows the different patterns of occupancy during the Cold War and afterwards. The RN's predominance in the Cold War period is largely due to Mountbatten’s exceptionally long period of service as the second CDS. Since the end of the Cold War, the Army has provided the CDS for the majority of the time (the charts assume the present incumbent remains in post for 1000 days).

Following the Levene reforms, it might be expected that the MoD will attempt a more balanced rotation of the CDS post, as was the case in the later part of the Cold War. If so, as the next chart shows, the proposed Defence Board Appointments Committee will be faced with a marked imbalance in the backgrounds of the senior service officers from whom it will have to make its choices.

  (See Daily Telegraph for source data (April 2011) and explanation of *s and ranks)

In the corporate world, which will presumably be familiar to some of the Non Executive Directors on the Defence Board (one of whom will be chairing the Appointments Committee), it is now common practice to look for top talent internationally. While it seems inconceivable that an overseas national could become CDS, the prospect of a Canadian or Australian, let alone someone from the US Marine Corps, even being considered, might concentrate 'assertive' minds wonderfully.