Dealing with the Indefensible

“This hasn’t been a good week for the Army”.

In a system where messaging is everything, and trying to maintain a positive approach on the news cycle drives so much activity, in a way it was rather refreshing to hear the Chief of the General Staff speak blunt, honest words to his soldiers.

Coming at the end of a week in which two incidents, both of which are under Police investigation and thus not appropriate to comment further specifically on, have had a strong immediate effect on the British Army’s public image,  this video message fromCGS was absolutely the right message to send.

The use of social media to air publicly his concerns, coupled with what could best be described as a ‘damn good bollocking’ is almost unprecedented and sets the tone for his tenure as CGS. There is something very impressive about watching a clearly severely pissed off CGS delivering a reprimand to his Army that reading the same words on paper cannot convey

There is little doubt that this move will reach its intended target audience in a way that a few years ago would have been difficult. The use of social media to get the message across means it will be seen by many more soldiers, and their supporters, than would have been the case had it been sent as a letter or email.

Similarly the public release of the video means that detractors of the Army, or those outside it who are supportive of the Army, and who are aware of the incidents but are seeking to make light of it are left in no doubt of the unacceptable nature of these events.

CGS Speech- Image by Ministry of Defence; © Crown copyright

This effective use of social media continues a growing trend of long term positive engagement by senior officers on twitter and elsewhere. There is a growing list of senior military personnel who make effective use of social media to engage with target audiences, from Generals engaging in everything from communicating good news, to active banter on twitter, through to video interviews with the Army Sergeant Major on channels like ‘Fill Your Boots’.  By contrast, the US Naval Institute has recently posted articles on just how weak senior US Navy leadership engagement is online. In this field at least, the UK is significantly ahead of many of its peers.

While this week marks the first time that a reprimand has been issued so publicly by the Army, it is also a week in which the Army has made effective use of social media to send strong messages of displeasure on other issues too.

The use of the British Army official Twitter account to send a carefully calibrated message of support and displeasure over the recent changes in the law in Brunei marks a clear effort to recognise the concerns many serving personnel may have over the news that the penalty for gay sex in Brunei is death by stoning.

Official Army twr

The British Armed Forces, are rightly extremely proud of their transformation in under 20 years from a place where homosexuality was a bar to service, to one where all three Services are regularly cited as some of the UK’s top 100 LGBT employers (along with wider Civil Service departments).

There are many same sex couples in the military, some of whom are jointly serving and others where only one serves. Brunei is a location where all three Services have personnel – both in the Garrison (which is primarily paid for by the Sultan) and in wider loan service posts supporting the local armed forces. Therefore it is entirely possible that a same sex couple from any service could find themselves posted to Brunei in future as part of their routine career posting.

The challenge is that under these new laws the UK is still trying to seek assurances that British personnel and their dependents are not affected by them. But, even if under the various legal agreements and Status of Forces Agreements that underpin the British presence it is deemed that same sex couples can have sex without risk of being stoned to death, there are much wider personal and mental health considerations to consider.

Any single LGBT personnel or same sex couples based in country will have to worry about the constant risk of problems or challenge with local police, and also the wider concerns about what happens if they engage socially with locals. Will they be followed and monitored, and their friends and acquaintances put under suspicion and possible arrest? While this may sound far fetched in the UK, the reality is many other countries have very different standards and practises, and diplomats and others based overseas often find themselves subject to considerable intrusions in their private life and surveillance.

The sheer mental pressure any same sex couple will be under if posted to Brunei is likely to be enormous, and there are legitimate questions to be asked about how the MOD can meet its duty of care appropriately, while also not ‘career fouling’ people and holding them off from postings there, 

simply because they’ve fallen in love with someone.

While the risk may be theoretical and remote (Brunei not having conducted an execution since 1984 and the burden of evidence required to secure conviction requires multiple witnesses), the fact that this legislation has been passed presents the UK with a considerable policy challenge.

The British Army has maintained a garrison in Brunei since the 1960s, and since 1984 it has been paid for by the Sultan as a means of ensuring external support and security. Formed around a Gurkha force, along with other units including Army Air Corps and a Jungle Warfare School, UK forces in Brunei provide not only security to the Government, but also a useful acclimatised Theatre Reserve for the Asia Pacific region.

The Garrison is subject to a five yearly agreement which governs its administration and activity, and is up for renewal next year. The challenge facing the UK is what to do here. On the one hand the presence of the Garrison provides a very potent tool to negotiate with and secure access to the Sultan to discuss this law. Threats to withdraw it may carry significant weight and focus attention on what could be done differently.

Discrete engagement can, and does, pay dividends. The UK is particularly good at quiet diplomacy, maintaining discrete channels and whispering soft words into ears to shape behaviour, and not megaphone diplomacy which gets peoples backs up and often achieves little tangible outcome. The best way to shape an outcome is to make both parties feel it is to their benefit. Public threats to withdraw the Garrison and walk away over a difference of opinion may land well with a domestic audience, but may backfire spectacularly in Brunei.

The challenge then is whether the Garrison is something that can be used as a negotiation tool, or if it is deemed too sensitive. The risk for the UK is that a collapse of the agreement means having to withdraw the British Army from Brunei, losing access to excellent training facilities and potentially having to find considerable extra fund to pay for the forces that were previously paid for by the Sultan.

While the Sultan may be very close to the West, he is also thickening links with China, and much as nature abhors a vacuum, China rarely misses an opportunity to extend its influence. While there may not be a physical garrison presence established, it is worth asking if Chinese verbal guarantees of support would be enough to reassure the Sultan in the event of a British departure. China has already notably improved its relationship with Brunei in recent years, and any loss of UK support is likely to be quickly replaced by China.

For the UK the question is whether it wants to step back from its position of considerable influence in Brunei and walk away from the Garrison and its undoubted benefits in protest over these laws. The risk is that  the short term power of the threat to withdraw is that if the bluff is called, the UK will have lost considerable influence and access, and find itself without a base in the region.

Were the UK to lose basing rights in Brunei, then the question of where they go is not easily answered. While many internet commentators will talk blithely about opening bases in various countries, the reality is that foreign basing is a fiendishly complex morass of legal issues and treaties that take many years to resolve.

Were the UK to approach a country hoping to open an entirely new base somewhere to replace the Garrison in Brunei, then all manner of questions would need to be addressed. What is the legal status of troops in the country – how do they interact with the host nations laws? If the host nation has the Death Penalty, would UK troops be exempt from it if found guilty of committing a crime that carries it, or would they be sent to the UK to face justice?

What are the rules for deploying and using these troops – can the UK send RAF transport aircraft in to move their troops onto another operational environment and put the troops onto operations – for instance in Brunei the Gurkha unit was routinely deployed to OP HERRICK. What happens if the host nation doesn’t agree with the UK operation – can it prohibit UK deploying troops on the op? Also, what happens if the UK wants to use assets or capabilities based in  the country to support another operation – would this need permission of the host nation to do so?

This may sound deeply theoretical, but poses a lot of issues. For example, if the Royal Navy were to base a frigate and small Royal Marine detachment in (hypothetically) Singapore, what happens if the UK wanted to launch a maritime interdiction operation using these troops to board a freighter believed to be smuggling drugs? Where would the detained crew and drug smugglers face justice – UK, Singapore or somewhere else? What happens with handing people over to Singapore who may face the death penalty in Singapore for an offence that may warrant a short custodial sentence in the UK?

All of this needs to be considered and worked out in detail and tested to ensure that when the UK puts military personnel into a country, they can work effectively and do their job daily, and also operate on a legally sound agreement. This can take a long time to work out – as this link notes, it is taking a long time for the UK and Japan to agree the principles of how to co-operate and sign a Visiting Forces Agreement.

Were the Brunei Garrison to be withdrawn, then it could have a significant impact on the long term ability of the British Army to maintain an effective presence in the Far East, potentially taking many years to recover it, if at all.

This difficult issue highlights the dilemmas faced by policy makers in the FCO, MOD and elsewhere. National Security policy is rarely clear cut and for every seemingly straightforward moral choice that must be made, there are often a variety of factors that can cloud decision making.

For the UK the Brunei case is a difficult mixture of how to call out a law that is utterly at odds with the values and standards of modern Britain, but which also reflects the challenging strategic situation in the South China Sea. Should the UK take a strong line on gay rights, condemning an outrageous law and risking its military position, but do so in the knowledge that the long term repercussion could be to destroy influence, and swing Brunei out of the Western sphere of influence and into the hands of China? Is the short-term gain worth the long term price and potential pain?