Intervening & Extracting" - What Future For UK Military Intervention?

 

Its been a difficult week for anyone who follows military affairs in the West. Watching the rapid implosion and collapse of the Afghan Government, and the harrowing scenes emerging from Kabul, it is enough to make any angry, upset and frustrated at what feels like a wasted operation. There is a palpable sense of anger in the air, a sense that ‘we lost’.

At the same time there is the emerging of wider soul searching about the role of the UK and the armed forces. Should we do this sort of operation again, is this our place in the world, or is it time to step back and do things differently. The article in the Times by James Finkel  (“Our Armed Forces Face A Fight For Relevance”)is a good example of this – the beginning of the introspection.

There is a danger that perhaps amid the gloom we rush to make hasty choices, or see ourselves as failing for being unable to do something we never could do. We must be cautious in these difficult hours to avoid making the wrong assumptions because they feel the emotionally right thing to do.

Some will wonder why the UK is not fighting the fight alone, trying to hold back the Taliban – apparently we should be capable of this and are a failure for not doing so. To think this is in itself unhelpful – the UK is not capable of operating solo in Afghanistan to the scale required, anymore than France or Germany is.

There are no countries, except for the US, with the military muscle and logistics power who could do this. It is important we do not self-flagellate for not being able to do something that we would never have been able to do, even at the zenith of our post WW2 military reach.  

At the same time we should avoid leaping to conclusions that somehow the UK military is a denuded beast, unable to do operations anymore and frankly why bother full stop. This may sound a tad hyperbolic, but it is a line that has been seen in some locations. Buying into the myth of either British exceptionalism, or British self-defeatism is neither sensible, nor helpful.

What is needed is a period of both calm analysis and a serious conversation about what an interventionary foreign policy looks like and how interventions end. As a nation we, for the main, enjoy the sense that our armed forces matter, and that they are capable of deploying globally for a greater good.

Wars with a binary ‘good vs bad’ ending are always a relatively easy sell in foreign policy terms. Popular interventions like the Falklands or the 1991 Gulf War result in a straightforward narrative, a clear sense of ‘right vs wrong’ and an undisputed ending (at least in the short term). The public like these operations because they give the sense of victory, of a result and a happy ending.

Where we struggle is that the sort of interventions which more normally occur, and which seem to be interventions without end. If you look at the list of post war UK military operations, many were short, dirty and bloody, resulting in difficult endings or residual presence long after the operation was over.

The withdrawal from Aden was an example of an evacuation where things were deeply difficult. The Korean War did not result in a victory, merely a stalemate and press of the pause button with the sense that nearly 70 years later, we could still find ourselves sucked back in. Operations in the Balkans did not result in a clean operational victory, nor has peacekeeping in Cyprus resulted in tangible reunification of the island.

This is not to do any of these operations down, but more to note that clean victories are relatively rare, and even then result in long term bills. Despite the Falklands War ending 39years ago, there is still an enduring and substantial garrison in the South Atlantic, while the 1991 Gulf War was essentially the opening of a new chapter in the book about military commitments to Iraq, which has yet to be finished 30 years later.

Aden 1960s

What this all means is that interventions rarely end tidily or well, and often commit us long past the point where we expected it to be. All to often we hear the demand “something must be done”, but very rarely do we hear the demand “something must be ended”. Instead we build up a pile of open ended global commitments, often for many decades, as a result of good policy decisions made for well intentioned reasons.

The end of Afghanistan feels more raw because it is so brutal and so sudden. It is likely that had the Government limped on for a few more years, and fell long after the West had left, then there would be anywhere near as much interest. Instead it is the speed and suddenness of this collapse, that happened far more quickly than envisaged that has captured our attention.

Should we use this though as a reason for a national debate on what we want of our armed forces? Arguably the answer is no. What has happened in Afghanistan is a tragedy, but it does not mean that it was not worth it, no matter how raw things feel now.

Too few countries want to play a leading role in the world when it comes to doing difficult things, or taking difficult responsibilities on. The UK is one of those that will. If you look at the map of the worlds trouble spots, crisis zones and flash points, almost every single one has got some form of UK interest or engagement – be it military presence, diplomatic negotiations or aid support.

The UK is a nation prepared to lead, to support, to step up and to enable others to help play their part. We may moan that we ‘only’ have X tanks or Y ships, but we look past the bigger picture. We forget that the enablers like strategic airlift or sealift, high quality logistics chains, excellent communications links and so on all count. They don’t just count for us, they count for our partners who want to work with us too.

By stepping up and operating globally, the UK enables other countries to piggy back on the operation. Some see the UK wanting to operate only as part of a coalition as a sign of weakness – it is not, it is arguably a sign of strength and assurance that the UK can rely on others being there, and not standing alone.

As an internationally focused ally, the UK can easily integrate and incorporate armed forces as part of its deployments – for example the presence of the US and Netherlands on CSG21 as a formed part of the Carrier Strike Group. This international presence helps other countries be able to consider stepping up too and consider participating – because they know they can count on UK practical support to do so.

When we consider if it is really our fight or operation, we should think about what it would mean if we stepped back from being prepared to step in. In those circumstances it is realistic to assume that other smaller nations, with far less military capability than our own would equally not be prepared to deploy. The result of a diminished more home focused British armed forces would almost certainly be a wider reduction in countries prepared to step up and deploy, knowing this was no longer feasible.

For the UK, it is as much about being able to work alongside the US as a peer partner, as it is about being able to take on the leadership to build the wider coalitions that can be built even when the US doesn’t want to participate. Leadership here and the ability to take on a coalition role results in the UK playing a decisive and influential role, not being condemned to an isolated bit player status.

At the heart of this debate is a question about whether we as a nation want to be a global leader, or a hermit kingdom. Wanting to say ‘its not our fight, we should leave them to it’ sounds easy, right up until you see scenes of suffering and the demands to ‘do something’ begin to ring out. As a nation we are international by design – we have a population which is truly global in its outlook, heritage and views, and that drives how we see the world.

To step back from interventions because they are difficult and unpleasant will not make the need to intervene cease. If you look at where British expatriates, or UK nationals live abroad, you will see an enormous global diaspora, who want and expect as passport holders to know they will be rescued.

If you pulled up the drawbridge and said ‘no more’ then so much would be switched off that could not easily be reactivated. How would we feel if having turned off the strategic air transport fleet, we could no longer get troops to Africa to conduct a NEO in the event of a coup? Stepping back from responsibilities often means watching on as a helpless bystander and hoping that others will take pity on you.

Such a move is, of itself, a strong argument for the Union. While the decision to remain or leave the UK is in the hands of the voters, could you imagine the difficulty if in the event of a NEO after Scottish independence, Scotland was unable to rescue Scottish citizens abroad, while the RAF could rescue British nationals, leaving Scots at the mercy of there being spare seats on British jets as a last resort? This may sound farfetched, but is an entirely possible scenario to envisage.

Of course there is an alternative approach, which is to take on a far more cold hearted view on the world. Retain military capability, but only engage as part of a force to intervene to end wars or extract people, and step away from a campaign approach that brings all of Government capabilities together, and instead simply do military operations.

Such a move may be popular in some quarters, stepping away from engagement, dialogue and aid, but in doing so it is likely to cause more instability and conflict. The armed forces cannot exist to operate in isolation – they must be used as part of a truly cross government spectrum of capabilities and plans.

Instead we should perhaps focus on the wider benefits that come from possessing this sort of reach and capability. A key lesson from PITTING is that the UK possesses a genuinely world class strategic airlift capability – the fact that the UK has been able to shift a large number of aircraft into theatre at short notice, supported by ground troops to hold the airfield and conduct ground operations is a good reminder of the potency of British forces.

Being able to quickly turn around, ramp up and deploy significant military power across the planet in a matter of hours and days is a real sign of how capable the UK military is. Internet debate, or puerile media articles often look at the metrics of other militaries and go “oh but they have X thousand troops more so they must be better” or other such nonsense. 

Yet when push comes to shove, the UK has once again shown that it has a reach and capability unsurpassed by most nations to deploy and do the job at hand. Other nations with larger militaries than the UK have struggled to deploy one or two aircraft, let alone large ground forces and sustain them.

This is not the time for self-congratulations, or nationalistic prattling – but we should rightly reflect that this is only possible due to sensible decision making on force structures, investment in less glamorous areas like logistics, and spending years working to make global joint operations a reality. Pitting owes much to the work of unsung heroes in Northwood, Brize Norton, Colchester and other locations working hard to ensure that the troops are properly supported.

Perhaps the key thing we should learn from this all is that we need to have a difficult national conversation about how wars, interventions and operations end. They rarely finish neatly, tidily and with a good surrender and VE style rejoicing. All too often they end like this – with a ragged evacuation, violence and insecurity.

The price of being able to do something is that it all too often results in lengthy commitments, or operations in far off places leading to a rushed and unseemly end. This is the reality of operations – there is no button marked “PEACE” which sees a nation slide elegantly out of conflict. Interventions can and do end like this because that is the nature of things.

How we sell this to those who serve, those who served there, their families and the public is difficult. To those who gave life, limbs and health fighting an enemy that was surprisingly tenacious, aggressive and evil for a bunch of ‘country boys with an honour code and a surprising level of commitment for a truly inclusive Afghanistan’, seeing the images on TV will be hard.

The challenge for future operations is ensuring that people understand that wars do not end cleanly, tidily or with surrender ceremonies. Their sacrifices will not have been in vain though, because they helped force or change conditions in a way that did matter and will make a difference.

Perhaps the ultimate question that should be asked before committing British troops to a new military mission is not “what should be done and how soon can we do it” but “how do we stop doing what should be done, and how do we know when that point is reached” and in ensuring that this is clearly communicated in a way that the public can understand.