Statecraft. Margaret Thatcher

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      So I conclude:

      MILITARY PREPAREDNESS – MORALE

      Western politicians have also been failing our armed forces in another important respect. They have either championed, or at least failed to counter effectively, pressures to alter fundamentally the traditional military ethos.

      The tasks of war are different in kind, not just degree, from the tasks of peace. This does not, of course, mean that the laws of commonsense – or indeed Parkinson’s law – are suspended in military matters.* Defence procurement programmes must be efficiently managed. Functions which can sensibly be contracted out should be. Unnecessary non-military assets should be sold. Reviews and scrutinies will be necessary to remove duplication and waste. These concepts were ones which I sought to ensure were applied when I was Prime Minister, and they are of universal application. But, for all that, it has also in the end to be recognised, I repeat, that the military is different.

      One very obvious reason is that the defence budget is one of the very few elements of public expenditure that can truly be described as essential. The point was well-made by a robust Labour Defence Minister, Denis (now Lord) Healey, many years ago: ‘Once we have cut expenditure to the extent where our security is imperilled, we have no houses, we have no hospitals, we have no schools. We have a heap of cinders.’* For this reason, if the Chief of the Defence Staff (or his equivalent) declares that without certain military resources the country cannot be adequately defended only a fool of a politician refuses to listen.

      But the military is also different because service life is different from civilian life. The virtues which must be cultivated by those who may be called upon to risk their lives in the course of their duties are simply not the same as those required of a businessman, a civil servant – or, indeed, a politician. Above all, courage – physical courage – is vital.

      Servicemen need to develop a much higher degree of comradeship with their colleagues. They must be able to trust and rely on one another implicitly. Soldiers, sailors and airmen are still individuals – one has only to read their biographies to understand that. But they cannot be individualists. For those who live under discipline it is duties not rights that are the focus of their lives. This is why the military life is rightly considered a noble vocation, and also why over the years many of those who leave it for civilian careers find it difficult to adjust.

      Soldiers also generally need to be physically strong. It is not enough to be clever – though to be cunning is certainly useful. No front-line forces can afford to have even a small proportion of their number who are not up to whatever tasks they may be called upon to perform.

      So I am opposed to current attempts to apply liberal attitudes and institutions developed in civilian life to life in our armed forces. Programmes aimed at introducing civilian-style judicial systems, at promoting homosexual rights, and at making ever more military roles open to women are at best irrelevant to the functions that armies are meant to perform. At worst, though, they threaten military capabilities in a way that is actually dangerous.

      The feminist military militants are perhaps the most pernicious of these ‘reformers’. The fact that most men are stronger than most women means either that women have to be excluded from the most physically demanding tasks, or else the difficulty of the tasks has to be reduced – something that is evidently easier in training than in combat. But it is, of course, this second course which the feminists demand should be adopted. And all too often their agenda is being accepted.

      When it was recognised that women cannot throw ordinary grenades far enough to avoid being caught in the explosion, the answer was not to let men take over but rather to make lighter (and less lethal) grenades. When it was discovered that women on board warships require facilities that men do not, the US Navy had to ‘reconfigure’ their ships to provide them – on the USS Eisenhower alone that cost $1 million. And when most women (rightly in my view) choose not to take combat roles, the answer, according to one professor at Duke University, is for the military to get rid of traits like ‘dominance, assertiveness, aggressiveness, independence, self-sufficiency, and willingness to take risks’.* Women have plenty of roles in which they can serve with distinction: some of us even run countries. But generally we are better at wielding the handbag than the bayonet.

      And warfare will always involve the use of bayonets, or their equivalents. It is unrealistic to expect that wars will ever be fought without physical contact and confrontation with the enemy at some stage.

      With these considerations in mind, our political and military leaders should: