General Alert

This Green and Surprisingly Pleasant Land -straight talk about military spending

Trade union leaders are rank amateurs in protecting their members interests compared with generals who beat them into the ground when it comes to securing manpower and resources for their people.

Moreover although they are in effect civil servants in uniform, supposed to execute policy and not make it, generals can be very vocal in asserting their views.

Political leaders let them get away with it as they tend to be awe of the men (very few women) with their banks of medals and steely stares.

Military chiefs are well aware of this and ruthlessly exploit this knowledge to boost the resources at their disposal. They also tend to have a pretty low regard for their political masters who are easy to bamboozle and seen as woefully deficient in understanding military matters.

And so they make their views known. Most recently we have heard from the head of the British army, Gen Sir Patrick Sanders warning of the possibility of war with Russia and urging the government to put the UK on a war footing with the creation of a citizen’s army and a reversal of cuts made to military spending.

Other military brass have piled in and their loyal supporters in the media echo chamber have ignited a furore of synchronised clapping.

When a union leader, say someone from a rail union, warns of the damage done to the nation’s infrastructure due to poor investment in public transport, that same echo chamber is quick to castigate them for irresponsibility and plotting to empty the public coffers.

The generals are immune from this kind of criticism. And maybe they are right about military spending although the fact is that is increasing in real terms (as if facts matter). A better question however is less about quantity than quality. This is because the nature of warfare has dramatically changed, requiring less boots on the ground and more sophistication up in cyberspace where crucial systems are hacked and the damage from the air, once the exclusive preserve of very expensive jets, can now be wrought by relatively cheap drones. This is not to say that conventional warfare has disappeared but it sure has changed.

Britain’s current exposure to warfare is largely conducted overseas where the UK is increasingly confined to the role of scrappy little brother in engagements where America, and only America leads. As the junior partner Britain has discovered to its cost that while it is good enough to participate, it is often barely consulted by the Americans when a change of course is decided in Washington. This was most vividly seen with the sudden messy withdrawal from Afghanistan, leading to an almighty and dangerous mess that has yet to be sorted out.

Britain can hardly walk from military involvement in a dangerous world and no sane person believes that defence of the realm is not a key priority for the government. It would therefore be nice to think that there could be a proper debate as to how this should be achieved.

Hopefully it will start with a proper assessment of Britain’s mindbogglingly expensive but basically mendacious claim to have an independent nuclear deterrent capability. In theory the UK could launch nuclear missiles without American consent but in practise most of the missiles are housed in the US and their control  is under the US Naval chain of command system headed by the US President but, in extreme circumstances, the UK could circumvent this process.

That begs the more basic question of the strategic relevance of a very small nuclear capability compared with that of Britain’s allies and enemies. Money could be saved here and elsewhere but basic questions are not being asked.

This is because any kind of questioning is constrained by the fear that challenging military orthodoxy will lead to accusations of being less than committed to the nation’s defence.  This accounts for the marked silence from the Labour opposition and for the why those in government live in fear of confronting their generals who they are supposed to command.

Labour has gone so far, and rightly so, to question whether the much revered National Health Service is making the best use of its money but fails to be equally bold initiating a proper debate about the best use of resources in the military budget.

To be fair this unwillingness to challenge the military brass is hardly confined to Britain, most other governments wobble when faced with their belligerent generals. Dictatorships are less squeamish and make sure that the military command is fully under political control with regular purges to keep them in line. This process is underway in China right now although it has not received the attention it deserves.

As for trade union leaders, they have much to learn from the tactics of their military counterparts, the best shop stewards in the world.