Hello,
Just a quickie.
A few days ago the Prime Minister announced in the Commons that Britain was 'taking the lead' on the Libyan crisis. This 'lead' included the possibility of enforcing a no-fly zone over the country to counter Gaddifi-loyalist forces bombing the rebels.
As the Ink Spots blog points out though, without the US Navy enforcing a no-fly zone would be highly difficult at best. The UK does not have an aircraft carrier active at the moment - HMS Ark Royal is going to be decommissioned a week today. The next carrier, the Queen Elizabeth class supercarrier HMS Prince of Wales will not be ready until 2020. It's interesting to note that on 26th February the conservative Daily Telegraph was calling on the Prime Minister to help economically isolate the Libyan regime.
As Ink Spots argues, we are increasingly facing a simple fact that was first relayed to us in 1956 - the UK can do virtually nothing militarily on the international with the United States. At Suez we needed their approval. Now it seems we need their help.
Showing posts with label Defence. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Defence. Show all posts
Friday, 4 March 2011
Saturday, 12 February 2011
Defence #6: Tea and Unsympathy
Hello,
While I work out how to make those two posts on Gerry Adams into something worth reading, here's a very interesting article on Tea Party hostility to the US Defence Budget, and the subsequent disagreements within American Republicanism:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/feb/12/us-military-tea-party-movement
While I work out how to make those two posts on Gerry Adams into something worth reading, here's a very interesting article on Tea Party hostility to the US Defence Budget, and the subsequent disagreements within American Republicanism:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/feb/12/us-military-tea-party-movement
Wednesday, 26 January 2011
Bankers' salaries #2: some thoughts upon competition and game theory
Hello,
This is a continuation of the previous post on bankers' salaries. The blog post by Robert Peston that I highlighted touches upon an interesting point that I wanted to consider more fully.
Part of what Peston's post suggests is that the problem with lower said salaries lies with the risk to one's own institution. As I said previously, if you are offering your employees less than what they could get elsewhere, so the theory goes, you risk losing the best and brightest to your competitors.
Now Peston draws a comparison with English Premier League football clubs here and salary inflation that's worth following up upon. His argument is that the average salary for a Premiership footballer is now largely divorced from actual performance. This is what has, for better or worse, created the situation we now see in the EPL: a league of three parts (those who can afford to lead, those who can afford to stay, and those who can with some risk afford to take part).
We can extent this parallel further. Essentially now clubs like Manchester United are the AIG of the footballing world. Despite the level of debt that the Glazers took upon the club when they purchased it, it is in no-one's interest for United to fail. Much the same can be said of Chelsea, Arsenal, Liverpool (increasingly less so there), Manchester City and possibly Tottenham Hotspur and Newcastle.
Yet United, especially, are despite their power trapped by circumstances. To be able to afford to do what they're doing, they need to keep on winning. To afford to win, they need to keep on doing what they're doing.
It's this that interests me. Part of what I'm doing for my thesis involves looking at Anglo-German relations in the early 20th century (1905-1914). Diplomatic relations between countries are complex things; since the advent of Pluralistic International Relations theory (1960s/70s I believe), they have tended to be thought of as happening across multiple levels. What I'm looking at though is defence relations. These were characterised by one series of events: the Anglo-German (naval) rivalry of 1906-1914.
Basically put, British strategic doctrine of the time rested on a loose policy called the 'Two Power Standard'. What this meant in practice is that at all times the Royal Navy should have the capacity to defend the Home Islands and the Sea Lanes of Communication (SLOCs) against the conceivable enemies of the Crown. Especially important was the Home Waters (those around the British Isles). Now in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Germany began to build a major 'High Seas Fleet' that threatened to usurp British domination of the North Sea/Channel/Western approaches region.
This was not the sole cause of the First World War, but it played a considerable part in starting it. Both sides began to build ships up and beyond what was, malcontents argued, necessary for national defence. Efforts were made to encourage a reduction in armaments, but crucially neither side trusted the other enough for it to work.
There rests the nub of the matter. How do you encourage a manoeuvre that both sides will benefit from, but if one side takes independently will threaten their position? I would suggest four possibilities -
1. Do it anyway: And place your money on your potential opposition being brow-beaten by international/domestic pressure into following you.
2. Start small: One of the reasons the 1993 Oslo Accords between the PLO and Israel worked is that both sides started negotiating on relative small details before working their way up to the bigger picture. Thus a culture of compromise is created, and in ironing out the small issues frequently the larger ones are compensated for as well.
3. Agree to trust and verify: The SALT talks between the USSR and the USA in the mid-1980s were underlined by the shared principle to allow observers from each country to report on the other's decommissioning. The initial attempt at trust was underlined by actual verification.
4. Appoint a neutral referee: Switzerland or the nearest relative equivalent is normally good.
Why bother at all? Because if you don't the situation tends to escalate and the entire system in which you're working is threatened.
This is a continuation of the previous post on bankers' salaries. The blog post by Robert Peston that I highlighted touches upon an interesting point that I wanted to consider more fully.
Part of what Peston's post suggests is that the problem with lower said salaries lies with the risk to one's own institution. As I said previously, if you are offering your employees less than what they could get elsewhere, so the theory goes, you risk losing the best and brightest to your competitors.
Now Peston draws a comparison with English Premier League football clubs here and salary inflation that's worth following up upon. His argument is that the average salary for a Premiership footballer is now largely divorced from actual performance. This is what has, for better or worse, created the situation we now see in the EPL: a league of three parts (those who can afford to lead, those who can afford to stay, and those who can with some risk afford to take part).
We can extent this parallel further. Essentially now clubs like Manchester United are the AIG of the footballing world. Despite the level of debt that the Glazers took upon the club when they purchased it, it is in no-one's interest for United to fail. Much the same can be said of Chelsea, Arsenal, Liverpool (increasingly less so there), Manchester City and possibly Tottenham Hotspur and Newcastle.
Yet United, especially, are despite their power trapped by circumstances. To be able to afford to do what they're doing, they need to keep on winning. To afford to win, they need to keep on doing what they're doing.
It's this that interests me. Part of what I'm doing for my thesis involves looking at Anglo-German relations in the early 20th century (1905-1914). Diplomatic relations between countries are complex things; since the advent of Pluralistic International Relations theory (1960s/70s I believe), they have tended to be thought of as happening across multiple levels. What I'm looking at though is defence relations. These were characterised by one series of events: the Anglo-German (naval) rivalry of 1906-1914.
Basically put, British strategic doctrine of the time rested on a loose policy called the 'Two Power Standard'. What this meant in practice is that at all times the Royal Navy should have the capacity to defend the Home Islands and the Sea Lanes of Communication (SLOCs) against the conceivable enemies of the Crown. Especially important was the Home Waters (those around the British Isles). Now in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Germany began to build a major 'High Seas Fleet' that threatened to usurp British domination of the North Sea/Channel/Western approaches region.
This was not the sole cause of the First World War, but it played a considerable part in starting it. Both sides began to build ships up and beyond what was, malcontents argued, necessary for national defence. Efforts were made to encourage a reduction in armaments, but crucially neither side trusted the other enough for it to work.
There rests the nub of the matter. How do you encourage a manoeuvre that both sides will benefit from, but if one side takes independently will threaten their position? I would suggest four possibilities -
1. Do it anyway: And place your money on your potential opposition being brow-beaten by international/domestic pressure into following you.
2. Start small: One of the reasons the 1993 Oslo Accords between the PLO and Israel worked is that both sides started negotiating on relative small details before working their way up to the bigger picture. Thus a culture of compromise is created, and in ironing out the small issues frequently the larger ones are compensated for as well.
3. Agree to trust and verify: The SALT talks between the USSR and the USA in the mid-1980s were underlined by the shared principle to allow observers from each country to report on the other's decommissioning. The initial attempt at trust was underlined by actual verification.
4. Appoint a neutral referee: Switzerland or the nearest relative equivalent is normally good.
Why bother at all? Because if you don't the situation tends to escalate and the entire system in which you're working is threatened.
Tuesday, 2 November 2010
Defence #5: This week's Analysis
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00vkwk8/Analysis_Defence_no_stomach_for_the_fight/
On British society and the British Army - are we living in a post-martial society.
On British society and the British Army - are we living in a post-martial society.
Friday, 22 October 2010
Defence #4: On challenges to your faith in humanity
This week has produced two of these.
On Tuesday Archbishop Cranmer reported on a Conservative Home survey that suggests 70% of those polled opposed increases in the international aid budget if it came at the price of our defence spending (though having read the survey I'm not sure Cranmer is jumping to the right conclusions). Meanwhile today we have the release of the new Iraq War Logs. Including an account of how a crew of an Apache helicopter gunship killed two insurgents attempting to surrender to them as 'you can't surrender to a gunship' (according to the legal advice they received on the spot).
Indeed what makes it worse is that contextually one can almost see the point of the advice given to them. Let us say for instance that the pilots of that gunship accepted the surrender of the insurgents. Now that would necessitate the gunship landing and the men staying with the insurgents until ground forces arrived to take them into custody. Now depending on the location and situation of the nearest land forces that could take some time, preventing said gunship from intervening in any other engagement until those forces arrive. All well and good, but if the gunship is desperately needed by Coalition forces engaged in a fair dogfight, then do the pilots leave them to die? It's not a good decision, but sometimes we as a society and species conspire to put ourselves in bad positions.
On Tuesday Archbishop Cranmer reported on a Conservative Home survey that suggests 70% of those polled opposed increases in the international aid budget if it came at the price of our defence spending (though having read the survey I'm not sure Cranmer is jumping to the right conclusions). Meanwhile today we have the release of the new Iraq War Logs. Including an account of how a crew of an Apache helicopter gunship killed two insurgents attempting to surrender to them as 'you can't surrender to a gunship' (according to the legal advice they received on the spot).
Indeed what makes it worse is that contextually one can almost see the point of the advice given to them. Let us say for instance that the pilots of that gunship accepted the surrender of the insurgents. Now that would necessitate the gunship landing and the men staying with the insurgents until ground forces arrived to take them into custody. Now depending on the location and situation of the nearest land forces that could take some time, preventing said gunship from intervening in any other engagement until those forces arrive. All well and good, but if the gunship is desperately needed by Coalition forces engaged in a fair dogfight, then do the pilots leave them to die? It's not a good decision, but sometimes we as a society and species conspire to put ourselves in bad positions.
Tuesday, 28 September 2010
Defence #3
Tomorrow morning the Strategic Defence Review final paper will be presented to the National Security Council. The Spectator and The Guardian both cover what we can expect, and the general answer is 'not much'. From the look of what they say, the new review will be a continuation of the old; gradual reductions in manpower, machines and bases. In fairness with the ending of operations in Afghanistan (probably around 2015) much of the pressure on the defence budget(s) will be ended. Nevertheless there is still, as Richard Norton-Taylor (Guardian) argues, the undecided question - what exactly are the British Armed Forces for? The defence of the homeland? Expeditionary warfare? Both? Or simply what public opinion and the American Government tells us they should be for at any one point?
Let me offer a single point. If the impressively inefficient defence procurement procedures in this country cannot be dealt with, we should scrap Trident. In fact I'm coming increasingly around to the idea that we should scrap it anyway. The fact of the matter is that it is not independent - operationally possibly, but not productively (the rockets are made by Lockhead Martin in the United States. We've been reliant on the Americans to make the missile bits since the failure of Blue Streak in the early 1960s). Is it a deterrent? We cannot out-produce the Americans, and the Soviets had far more missiles aimed at us than we did at them. As the Wermacht showed in 1941-1943, it is substantially difficult too to do damage to a country the size of Russia. Could we damage the Chinese in a similar fashion (more to the point, who are we going to point them at?). Would anyone use them? If memory serves me correctly, James Callaghan (Prime Minister 1976-1979) admitted before his death that he would not, should the Cold War have turned Hot during his premiership. The point of a nuclear warhead is to say to a country that you cannot hurt us without us hurting you in a fashion you cannot easily, or at all recover from. Who is to say that the authors of a nuclear attack will be automatically identifiable though? The Fourth Protocol (Frederick Forsyth) postulated a cover Soviet attack on an American airbase in the UK that would not be identified, and that was written in 1984.
What concerns me is that few of these questions are being openly asked. At a time of serious government cutbacks, our defence is being substantially rearranged without our being able to track how.
Let me offer a single point. If the impressively inefficient defence procurement procedures in this country cannot be dealt with, we should scrap Trident. In fact I'm coming increasingly around to the idea that we should scrap it anyway. The fact of the matter is that it is not independent - operationally possibly, but not productively (the rockets are made by Lockhead Martin in the United States. We've been reliant on the Americans to make the missile bits since the failure of Blue Streak in the early 1960s). Is it a deterrent? We cannot out-produce the Americans, and the Soviets had far more missiles aimed at us than we did at them. As the Wermacht showed in 1941-1943, it is substantially difficult too to do damage to a country the size of Russia. Could we damage the Chinese in a similar fashion (more to the point, who are we going to point them at?). Would anyone use them? If memory serves me correctly, James Callaghan (Prime Minister 1976-1979) admitted before his death that he would not, should the Cold War have turned Hot during his premiership. The point of a nuclear warhead is to say to a country that you cannot hurt us without us hurting you in a fashion you cannot easily, or at all recover from. Who is to say that the authors of a nuclear attack will be automatically identifiable though? The Fourth Protocol (Frederick Forsyth) postulated a cover Soviet attack on an American airbase in the UK that would not be identified, and that was written in 1984.
What concerns me is that few of these questions are being openly asked. At a time of serious government cutbacks, our defence is being substantially rearranged without our being able to track how.
Friday, 27 August 2010
Very Bad Reasons for doing things #2 - another post on defence (Defence #2)
I was watching Sharpe the other night. If you're unfamiliar with the TV series, it's adapted from the books by Bernard Cornwell and tells the story of a working-class man in the Napoleonic-era British Army who, through dint of his soldering skills, honour and trustworthiness, rises from the ranks to end up at the Battle of Waterloo as a Lieutenant-Colonel.
In this particular episode however Sharpe is attempting to secure his promotion to Captain by trying to get command of the Forlorn Hope (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forlorn_Hope) during the Siege of Badajoz. The problem he faces is that as an officer promoted from the ranks he is too senior to be one among the men but too 'common' to be one among the officers. As such he finds himself constantly having to gain new rank by using suicidal acts of bravery to stake his claim. Here Sharpe, recently demoted from being a brevet Captain back down to Lieutenant, has been shunted off from his beloved Light Company to become the Regimental Quartermaster.
Needless to say that Sharpe, a killer by instinct, is less than happy. At one point he strains a friendship with one of Lord Wellington's staff officers to try and get command of the Forlorn Hope, arguing that he is not suited to sending out 'lists' (which he makes it clear he considers a task beneath him). He is sharply reminded that lists are what the Army runs on.
Nowadays, thankfully, we have lost that class-based prejudice in the Army. The first man to rise from Private to Field Marshal did so in 1920 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Robertson). Today the British Army specifically encourages its Non-Commissioned Officers, where thought wise, to try and become officers.
Nor is there a prejudice against logistical work within the Army. For a start, Napoleon's maxim that an 'Army marches on its stomach' is well appreciated. The fighting power of an Army now is also very technologically based, while the end of the British Empire has not rid us of our desire to operate globally (though without now having the bases that used to support such operations).
One of the interesting things in studying turn of the last century politics is the similarities to modern politics. Between 1906 and 1911 the Liberal War Secretary Richard Haldane enacted a substantial series of Army reforms (the 'Haldane Reforms'). As it turns out, very few people could oversee the entirety of what he was doing because few MPs really knew much about the inner workings of the British Army. Plus ca change. In the modern age, where military operations are equally as if not more complicated, defence procurement has nevertheless taken the lead as the truly incomprehensible military topic of our times.I'm not saying that I'm an expert by any stretch of the imagination. I have no idea, for instance, what the Defence Industrial Strategy is* (http://www.talkcarswell.com/show.aspx?id=1550). My point though is that to my mind the British public and its body politic are the modern equivalents of Lt. Richard Sharpe. True, we express genuine concern when we think of our soldiers and servicemen heading over to Afghanistan and Iraq without the proper kit and that our military is being 'overstretched'. Yet we're too often minded to think of the 'sharp end' of the British Army, without being reminded that a lot of careful, and tedious, work has to go in to making sure it is well supplied and well equipped. Unless more people, especially MPs and Lords, take an active long-term interest in the Armed Forces (above all else, in Defence Procurement), then we will continue being the 'Borrowers' that the US Armed Forces know us as.
* A few PSs
PS #1: What I didn't make clear in the above is that a lot of the increased cost of our military is due to the increasing reliance on technology, and to simple inflation ('defence inflation', I'm told, constantly runs over the normal level).
PS#2: While I'm not sure what the DIS is, I'd imagine that the words 'marginal constituency' are involved in some capacity.
In this particular episode however Sharpe is attempting to secure his promotion to Captain by trying to get command of the Forlorn Hope (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forlorn_Hope) during the Siege of Badajoz. The problem he faces is that as an officer promoted from the ranks he is too senior to be one among the men but too 'common' to be one among the officers. As such he finds himself constantly having to gain new rank by using suicidal acts of bravery to stake his claim. Here Sharpe, recently demoted from being a brevet Captain back down to Lieutenant, has been shunted off from his beloved Light Company to become the Regimental Quartermaster.
Needless to say that Sharpe, a killer by instinct, is less than happy. At one point he strains a friendship with one of Lord Wellington's staff officers to try and get command of the Forlorn Hope, arguing that he is not suited to sending out 'lists' (which he makes it clear he considers a task beneath him). He is sharply reminded that lists are what the Army runs on.
Nowadays, thankfully, we have lost that class-based prejudice in the Army. The first man to rise from Private to Field Marshal did so in 1920 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Robertson). Today the British Army specifically encourages its Non-Commissioned Officers, where thought wise, to try and become officers.
Nor is there a prejudice against logistical work within the Army. For a start, Napoleon's maxim that an 'Army marches on its stomach' is well appreciated. The fighting power of an Army now is also very technologically based, while the end of the British Empire has not rid us of our desire to operate globally (though without now having the bases that used to support such operations).
One of the interesting things in studying turn of the last century politics is the similarities to modern politics. Between 1906 and 1911 the Liberal War Secretary Richard Haldane enacted a substantial series of Army reforms (the 'Haldane Reforms'). As it turns out, very few people could oversee the entirety of what he was doing because few MPs really knew much about the inner workings of the British Army. Plus ca change. In the modern age, where military operations are equally as if not more complicated, defence procurement has nevertheless taken the lead as the truly incomprehensible military topic of our times.I'm not saying that I'm an expert by any stretch of the imagination. I have no idea, for instance, what the Defence Industrial Strategy is* (http://www.talkcarswell.com/show.aspx?id=1550). My point though is that to my mind the British public and its body politic are the modern equivalents of Lt. Richard Sharpe. True, we express genuine concern when we think of our soldiers and servicemen heading over to Afghanistan and Iraq without the proper kit and that our military is being 'overstretched'. Yet we're too often minded to think of the 'sharp end' of the British Army, without being reminded that a lot of careful, and tedious, work has to go in to making sure it is well supplied and well equipped. Unless more people, especially MPs and Lords, take an active long-term interest in the Armed Forces (above all else, in Defence Procurement), then we will continue being the 'Borrowers' that the US Armed Forces know us as.
* A few PSs
PS #1: What I didn't make clear in the above is that a lot of the increased cost of our military is due to the increasing reliance on technology, and to simple inflation ('defence inflation', I'm told, constantly runs over the normal level).
PS#2: While I'm not sure what the DIS is, I'd imagine that the words 'marginal constituency' are involved in some capacity.
Thursday, 12 August 2010
A quick one on defence (Defence #1)
Afternoon all,
It will be brief this one, as I really should be writing, but can I point people towards the debate raging at John Redwood's blog (http://www.johnredwoodsdiary.com/) over defence spending?
The Government tells us that serious cuts are going to have to be made to public spending. Now, I think I'm right in saying that the largest single outlay for any administration nowadays is health and social services. There are substantial costs involved in defence spending though. At the moment the Government is committed to renewing Trident and building two aircraft carriers that will be considerably bigger than the ones we currently operate, along with multiple other defence procurement projects (not counting the questions over our withdrawal from Afghanistan).
I don't agree with elements of what Redwood writes (I think he's wrong on why we might need to keep troops in Germany), but at least there's a debate occurring there. In my humble opinion, the announcement the other day that the renewal of Trident will have to come out of the MoD's budget was one of the most important defence decisions this country has made for some time*, and I can't remember it being comprehensively discussed.
* Not all defence spending comes out of the MoD budget; a large amount of our spending on Afghanistan for instance is paid for out of Treasury contingency funds. Now if the Treasury is going to insist on the MoD paying for Trident, that's going to create huge financial waves within that department - the cost of renewing our nuclear defence runs into the billions of pounds.
It will be brief this one, as I really should be writing, but can I point people towards the debate raging at John Redwood's blog (http://www.johnredwoodsdiary.com/) over defence spending?
The Government tells us that serious cuts are going to have to be made to public spending. Now, I think I'm right in saying that the largest single outlay for any administration nowadays is health and social services. There are substantial costs involved in defence spending though. At the moment the Government is committed to renewing Trident and building two aircraft carriers that will be considerably bigger than the ones we currently operate, along with multiple other defence procurement projects (not counting the questions over our withdrawal from Afghanistan).
I don't agree with elements of what Redwood writes (I think he's wrong on why we might need to keep troops in Germany), but at least there's a debate occurring there. In my humble opinion, the announcement the other day that the renewal of Trident will have to come out of the MoD's budget was one of the most important defence decisions this country has made for some time*, and I can't remember it being comprehensively discussed.
* Not all defence spending comes out of the MoD budget; a large amount of our spending on Afghanistan for instance is paid for out of Treasury contingency funds. Now if the Treasury is going to insist on the MoD paying for Trident, that's going to create huge financial waves within that department - the cost of renewing our nuclear defence runs into the billions of pounds.
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