Statecraft. Margaret Thatcher

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СКАЧАТЬ is always a risk in attempting to make observations about conflicts that are still underway, as is the case of that against bin Laden and the Taliban at the time of writing. On the other hand, if broad conclusions about the conduct of interventions are to be of practical value they must also be applicable in special cases – even one as special as that which now confronts America.

      Moreover, the experience of recent years does indeed help, if only in knowing the pitfalls to avoid. The action against bin Laden and his network and the state that has harboured them is morally just, legitimate and necessary. America does not require anyone’s agreement to act in self-defence against an unprovoked attack on its own people. It needs the support of countries whose territory or airspace are required for the conduct of operations. It may also find it valuable to receive practical help from its allies: Britain has been particularly active, for which the British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, deserves much credit.

      But it is important not to allow ever wider coalition-building to become an end in itself. As we saw in the Gulf War of 1990, international pressures, particularly those exerted from within an alliance, can result in the failure to follow actions through and so leave future problems unresolved. So far, though, I am heartened by the fact that President Bush seems to have concluded that this is an American operation, and that America alone will decide how it will be conducted.

      When democracies go to war, it is natural that they invoke the highest moral principles. That is always especially true of America’s wars. And such principles are indeed truly involved in the present conflict. It is not mere rhetoric to state that democracy, liberty and tolerance are all under threat from violent Islamist fanatics embracing terrorism. But winning wars requires more than moral fervour: it demands clear thinking about targets and timetables, accurate estimates of the enemy’s strength and intentions, pre-emptive action to minimise risks and guard against consequences. That is all the more so in this war against terrorism, because we are primarily dealing with distant lands and, in large part, unknown conditions.

      In such circumstances, the conclusions I drew above about the need to limit the aims of interventions, while maximising their effect, are especially germane. It is doubtless true that the West should have done more in earlier years to prevent Afghanistan becoming a political powderkeg. And we should now supply humanitarian aid. But I would caution against open-ended attempts at nation-building. What matters, above all, is to neutralise the threat which resulted in the outrages of 11 September. That means taking out the terrorists and their protectors, and not just in Afghanistan but elsewhere too – a large enough task even for a global superpower.

      America’s action against bin Laden and the Taliban also demonstrates one other feature about interventions, which we should not overlook. The American people immediately understood that what happened on 11 September was an act of war against them. They responded accordingly. The military commitment by the United States and the willingness of its citizens to sacrifice their lives are testimony to how nations behave when their very survival appears at stake. They remind us that in the modern world only nation states will fight wars at sufficient cost in blood and treasure to achieve lasting victory.

      The question of whether to act in Afghanistan was unusually clear-cut. But, more generally, knowing when and how to intervene is as much a matter of instinct as of reflection, although one does of course also need to reflect. The interesting arguments over foreign policies based on moral imperative versus those based on pragmatic national interest are really in the end only that – interesting. The greatest statesmen in the English-speaking world – men like Winston Churchill and Ronald Reagan – adopted policies that always contained both elements, though in different measures at different times. I should therefore prefer to restrict my guidelines to the following:

       Don’t believe that military interventions, no matter how morally justified, can succeed without clear military goals

       Don’t fall into the trap of imagining that the West can remake societies

       Don’t take public opinion for granted – but don’t either underrate the degree to which good people will endure sacrifices for a worthwhile cause

       Don’t allow tyrants and aggressors to get away with it

       And when you fight – fight to win.

      MILITARY PREPAREDNESS – MATÉRIEL

      Whatever cosy euphemisms we may want to adopt, defending our interests in battle is what our armies, navies and airforces ultimately exist to do. They are not well-suited to act as policemen, aid workers or civil engineers, and they should not be required to do so, except under extreme and temporary circumstances. They need the weapons to deter and destroy any enemy they may be called upon to face. They need to be well-trained, well-disciplined and well-led. And they need to be able to rely on wise and determined governments to see that the financial and other conditions under which they operate are conducive to these goals.

      Democracies are actually quite good at fighting wars – as a series of dictators over the years have learned to their cost. Where democratic political leaderships are weak, however, is in their capacity for continuous military preparedness. Such weakness leads to unnecessary conflicts, because it undermines the will, and can exclude the means, to deter aggression. It also leads to wars being longer and more costly than they would otherwise be, because it takes years to build up the military might required to defeat an aggressor.

      The end of the Cold War was in these respects more typical than the end of the Second World War. The defeat of the Axis powers evoked a huge sigh of relief. But it also brought the West to the very edge of a new conflict with the Soviet Union. Once it was known that the Soviets had the atomic bomb, it was clear to all but the very foolish and the fellow-travellers that military preparedness was the precondition for the West’s survival.

      The end of the Cold War was quite different. International utopianism became the rage. As at the end of the Great War, there was a marked preference for butter not guns.

      The figures for defence spending show this.* They demonstrate that America cut too far and that Europe was even worse. The West as a whole in the early 1990s became obsessed with a ‘peace dividend’ that would be spent over and over again on any number of soft-hearted and sometimes soft-headed causes. Politicians forgot that the only real peace dividend is peace.

      America’s defence budget decreased every year from the end of the Cold War until 1998–99. It now stands at about 60 per cent of its peak of 1985. And this occurred during a period in which public expenditure on all other sectors of the federal budget rose. As a result, American active and reserve military forces in 2000 were more than a million below the levels reached in 1987. The Clinton administration reduced the number of active army divisions to ten, from the eighteen divisions under the Reagan administration. It reduced the airforce by almost half from the Reagan levels. And it reduced the number of naval ships and aircraft carrier battle groups by almost 45 per cent. Moreover, there was a severe shortfall in recruitment of service personnel – the US Navy missed its recruiting goal by nearly seven thousand in 1998.†

      This steep decline in US military spending was more than mirrored elsewhere in NATO. Germany, Spain and Italy spend less than 2 per cent of their GDP on defence, while America spends 3 per cent. Put another way, the United States spent $296 billion on defence in 2000, compared with the European NATO members’ total contribution of just $166 billion. The Europeans have cut defence by 22 per cent in real terms since 1992, and they are still cutting.

      Furthermore, as the International Institute for Strategic Studies notes in its 1999/2000 Strategic СКАЧАТЬ