By Max Hastings
Tuesday, June 09, 2015
This was an image for our time: aboard a British warship, the amphibious support vessel Bulwark, a sailor shakes hands with one of 1,200 economic migrants rescued from waterlogged boats off the coast of Libya.
Congratulations. The man has made it. Within a month of being set ashore in Sicily, in all likelihood he will have joined thousands thronging the camps of Calais, en route to a new life in Britain.
Here is another proud moment for the Royal Navy. The ship’s captain said yesterday: ‘There are two tales here. The sorrowful tales of these people … telling terrible stories of what they are leaving behind. On the other side is the success. We are managing to save very significant numbers.’
Posturing
At first sight, no one could question the virtue of preserving human lives. Yet I’d wager that a large proportion of British people who saw the photographs from Bulwark asked: is it the rightful function of the Royal Navy to provide a ferry service for migrants eager to come to Britain?
The people lifted from the Mediterranean yesterday were not distressed mariners. Almost all left their own countries voluntarily because they found life there appalling, as indeed it is in large swathes of Africa and the Middle East.
They then paid people-traffickers on the North African coast to purchase a passage to Europe aboard some leaky, overloaded craft, unfit to bear a fishing party out of Ramsgate.
Thousands have already perished on such voyages. Now, several European nations feel obliged to save others from the consequences of their desperation. National leaders would say that to do otherwise is to stand condemned for inhumanity before the world.
Yet the only plausible outcome of this policy is to hasten the flow of people making the journey.
Millions of people in Africa and the Middle East despair of their own societies and seek new lives in rich and peaceful Europe. They are already imposing huge social problems on Italy and Greece, first destinations for most. If this continues, the implications for the whole continent are terrifying.
We cannot blame Bulwark’s commander for speaking enthusiastically about the ‘success’ of his ship’s humanitarian mission. But we can ask hard questions of a Government that simultaneously maintains a bloated foreign aid budget, deploys a warship close to the Libyan shore to assist migrants and cuts the defence budget beyond the bone.
Once upon a time, it was an article of faith that Tory governments adopted prudent defence policies, while Labour ones played fast and loose.
Today, instead, we see the Cameron administration apparently content to breach the NATO guideline of spending a minimum of 2 per cent of national GDP on the Armed Forces. On present policies, that percentage will fall to 1.88 next year and 1.7 by 2020.
Meanwhile, in the last parliament, David Cameron presided over the passage of a law ring-fencing spending on foreign aid, currently £12 billion.
The Government’s Department for International Development distributes much of its budget — taxpayers’ money — through non-transparent aid charities, and to some grotesque beneficiaries, including newly-rich India.
Mr Cameron now says more aid will be channelled to the countries from which Mediterranean migrants come, to help keep those people at home.
Given the level of corruption, waste and incompetence which seems inseparable from aid distribution, it is hard to believe this will do much to halt the flow of refugees from south and east to north and west.
Under the Coalition, the Prime Minister was forgiven for his limp-wristed foreign and defence policies, because he could claim to be a prisoner of Nick Clegg and his Lib Dem partners. Today this fig-leaf is gone. The Tories govern alone, and they need to show a clarity of thought and purpose that has hitherto been absent.
Cameron used to make the case for strong Armed Forces, and at last year’s Cardiff NATO summit reproached some other European nations for falling below the 2pc spending target. He led the 2010 Western charge into Libya. Had not Parliament imposed a veto, he would also have launched a military intervention in Syria.
He uses language carelessly when talking of foreign threats, calling the menace posed by Western African jihadists ‘existential’ and that of IS ‘mortal’, both of which propositions are nonsense.
He said that the only alternative to authorising air strikes against IS was to ‘walk on by’, then seemed content that Britain proved capable of deploying just four old RAF Tornados to fulfil its share of the mission.
Foolish
Today, with Putin rampant in Ukraine, Britain’s Armed Forces are less than half their 1983 size in soldiers, ships and aircraft. The Royal Navy will have no aircraft carrier until 2017, and even then will be stuck with a wildly unsuitable giant, commissioned by Gordon Brown to provide work for Scottish shipyards.
It was reported yesterday that this has forced the Americans to turn to France to fill a hole in U.S. capabilities in the Gulf, because we have no carrier to send in support.
British border patrol officers rescue migrants off coast of Italy
The Army, already down to 84,000 men, is braced for a further reduction in strength following George Osborne’s next round of spending cuts.
Only the replacement of the Trident nuclear deterrent is assured. Most strategic gurus think this foolish, given Britain’s reduced role in the world, but all prime ministers seem to regard Trident as an indispensable symbol of their own importance.
Nobody sane proposes that we should today commit troops to fight Putin in Ukraine. But one of the most vivid lessons of history is that only nations fit to fight can hope to deter aggression.
Britain’s Armed Forces are threadbare, and no amount of sentimental posturing at Tory Party conferences about ‘our wonderful fighting men and women’ should be allowed to conceal that fact.
Powerless
Morale among soldiers, sailors and airmen is low because the evidence suggests they are at the mercy of a Government which cares little for them.
What should Cameron be doing? Army strength ought to remain at least at its present level. The pretence should be abandoned that reservists can substitute for axed regular soldiers. The Royal Navy should have more small, cheap, low-tech ships to address low-level threats, such as Somali pirates and drug-traffickers.
We must spend more to protect Britain against the new peril of Russian and Chinese cyber-attacks — far more likely than a nuclear strike — without cutting our conventional Forces.
Michael Fallon has the makings of a good Defence Secretary, who commands confidence in the Armed Forces as his predecessor, the robotic Philip Hammond, did not. But Fallon is powerless without appropriate backing from the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
We need fewer Downing Street lunges into gesture strategy-making, and we must have a coherent view of where Britain is going and how it will defend its interests at home and abroad.
Professor Malcolm Chalmers, of the Royal United Services Institution, wrote in an authoritative recent study: ‘The UK’s ability to maintain its favourable strategic position is now facing a level of strain not seen since the end of the Cold War.’
Fishing economic migrants out of the Mediterranean is not the rightful duty of the Royal Navy. Such an intervention may create a photo-opportunity, but is unlikely to win much favour from the British people.