Another military entanglement

BBC News reports:

An RAF C17 cargo plane has arrived at a Paris airbase to help French military efforts to contain rebels in Mali.

The first of two planes will load up with French armoured vehicles and other equipment before flying to the West African state on Monday.

A second C17 is due to arrive on Sunday evening. No UK troops would be deployed in a combat role, Downing Street said.

France has attacked Islamist militants in Mali in recent days, to support the Malian government.

The first plane flew from RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire to the Evreux airbase where it will be loaded with French armoured vehicles and other equipment before flying to Bamako. It will make just one trip.

The second C17 will shuttle between Mali and France for the next few days.

You might ask what business we have in this conflict, and whether this will all really be settled in "a matter of weeks".  You might also wonder if "no UK troops" is the whole truth, or if special forces are already involved.  And you might think it strange that we're supporting a fight against Islamists in this part of Africa, after having facilitated Islamist takeovers in the euphemistically named 'Arab Spring'.

But there's another aspect to this story that's worth highlighting.  Note that it's a pair of C-17s we've deployed.  According to the BBC,

The C17 has a much greater lifting capacity than the aircraft the French use, the BBC's Hugh Schofield in Paris said.

A helpful side-bar elaborates:

• The RAF has flown C17s since 2001 and now has eight, with No 99 Squadron at RAF Brize Norton providing the crews
• The UK's biggest transport aircraft, also used by the US, Australian and Canadian air force, and the Qataris
• Used for transporting troops and equipment, they can fit helicopters and armoured vehicles, carrying up to some 77,000 kg
• In Afghanistan, used for transporting troops and equipment in and out of Helmand and casualty evacuation from the field hospital at Camp Bastion
• They can take off and land on short airfields, meaning they can be used in remoter places or on very basic runways
• This help for France is part of "pooling and sharing" increasingly scarce military resources, following a defence treaty signed by both countries

All this is very interesting, because I remember an article from Lewis Page about the UK purchasing an inferior Airbus alternative to the C-17:

So we can take it that in fact the A400M costs significantly more than £130m per plane. The UK has been able to acquire much bigger, faster, longer-ranging C-17 Globemasters from the US in recent years for acquisition costs of £70m at most*. A Globemaster carries more than twice what an A400M can and costs half what an A400M does: it is four times better value for money.
...
why on Earth didn't the A400M get cut in the recent Defence bloodbath? We could have bought 25 Globemasters instead, thus obtaining more than twice as much lift, and still saved ourselves something on the order of £2bn - enough to keep the Harrier jumpjet fleet going for several years, for instance.

The A400M project was colourfully described ...

A peer and former defence minister has described the A400M military transport plane - which is being bought by the cash-strapped UK armed forces for a secret but outrageous amount of money - as a "Euro-wanking make-work project" in the written Parliamentary record.

The straight talk came from Lord Gilbert, who held various ministerial portfolios in the 1970s - including a defence one - and did another spell in the MoD as a peer in the first years of the Blair government. Last week he made the following remarks in the House of Lords:

I regard the decision on the A400M as the most bone-stupid in the 40 years that I have been at one end or other of this building. It is an absolutely idiotic decision. We have a military airlift fleet of C-17s and C-130s. We have total interoperability with the United States... six or seven countries altogether will be flying the A400M. Flying the C130, which it is intended to replace, are 60 countries, with 2,600 or so C130Js currently being used. That is the interoperability that we are losing...

Why on earth are we doing this? I once described this rather vulgarly as a Euro-wanking make-work project and I do not resile from that. I hope that this time Hansard will leave that in and not take it out. It was in the next day's version but Hansard funked it and took it out of the Bound Volume. I hope that this is all on the record.

Lord Gilbert concludes:

I can tell your Lordships why we are buying the A400M because I want to pay special tribute this afternoon to the defence Minister of France, who is our new best ally in Europe...

Monsieur Morin said at a news conference on Friday.

"Giving it up would have meant Europe saying it wanted to be dependent on the United States in military transport".

How pathetic. We are spending hundreds of millions of pounds on a plane just to make sure that nobody thinks we are dependent on the United States for military transport.

We must laugh rather than cry. After billions of taxpayers' pounds and euros have been squandered on inferior tech, the French seek assistance from our venerable C-17s.

The worst kind of corporatism

Reading the BBC's coverage of the F-35 debacle, all you see is some tedious political point-scoring:

The government has changed its mind over the type of fighter planes it is ordering for the Royal Navy's new aircraft carrier. ... The cost of the U-turn is likely to be about £100m ... Labour said it was an "omnishambles" which risked "international ridicule".

They can talk!

The coverage from Lewis Page at The Register is rather more insightful:

It's well known that the F-35B will cost a lot more to buy and more to run than the F-35C catapult version: and it's also well known that the main cost of aircraft carriers is not the ships but the planes. So, right out of the gate, we can see that this is a foolish decision. In fact it's a lot worse than it seems, as the contest in real life was not between the F-35B and the F-35C: it was between the F-35B and - for the immediate future - one or another cheap, powerful, modern carrier jet already in service. This would most most likely have been the F-18 Hornet as used by the US Navy and many other air forces around the globe, but possibly the French Rafale instead of or alongside Hornets. 

I'm not a military expert, but this analysis makes sense to me. It seems like yet another inexplicable decision from the MoD.

once we had some F-18s we would seldom bother using our Eurofighters and Tornados, and we would surely rethink our current plans to massively upgrade them. We might in fact, if we were smart, reconsider having them at all. And this would be terrible news for the company which has those fat service contracts under which those planes are run, the company which built the British parts of them: namely BAE Systems plc. ... A catapult carrier in the Royal Navy, then, is something that BAE Systems passionately does not want to see happen.

Important, then, that such vested interests are kept well clear of the decision making process.

The "fact" that has changed, we are told, is that the cost of putting catapults into HMS Prince of Wales is now thought to be enormously more than had been estimated - it has increased by as much as ten times over, to perhaps £2bn, pushing up the cost of the carrier project by a third or a half. ...

And it is pretty well impossible to avoid noticing that the lead contractor on the carriers - the company which gets to set the price of fitting them with catapults - is ... (drum roll) ... none other than BAE Systems plc, the company which stands to lose many, many billions if the Royal Navy gets catapult ships any time soon.

This is the worst kind of corporatism. The government has only two essential functions: maintaining law and order at home, and defending against foreign aggression. A combination of incompetence and corruption has allowed our defensive capabilities to be fatally undermined. To protect our territory, we must now rely on assistance from the likes of France. Which I'm sure suits some people just fine.

Redwood on Iran

A good post from John Redwood:

The problems for the west are several if the west continues to take a strongly interventionist approach.  Intervention does involve killing a lot of people. It means backing one side in a civil war which may include a number of groups that are no more desirable by western standards of civil liberties and democracy than the groups they are fighting. There is no guarantee for the west that once the task of evicting the old government is accomplished, there will be a smooth passage to a new government which meets with the approval of the west and has sufficient consent at home to be credible and successful.

Libya militias threatening stability

BBC News reports

In the past month, the BBC has seen corroborating evidence of torture in Misrata, Libya's third city, as well as the town of Gharyan, south of the capital Tripoli.

In January, the BBC saw the corpse of a man whose body bore the marks of torture, including beating and electric shocks.

On Friday, there will be celebrations across the country to mark the first anniversary of the start of the revolution that - it was hoped - would usher in a new era.

There is now a real fear that some of the very men who - with the support of Nato - fought the battle to topple the old regime, are now jeopardising the country's future.

As I blogged back in September, this comes as no surprise to me.

Related articles

• How would a libertarian government handle Libya?


• Opposition to intervention in Libya

Give peace a chance

BBC News reports:

Argentina is to make a formal complaint to the United Nations about British "militarisation" around the disputed Falkland Islands.

...

In her address on Tuesday, Ms Fernandez accused the UK of "militarising the South Atlantic one more time".

"We will present a complaint to the UN Security Council and the UN General Assembly, as this militarisation poses a grave danger to international security," Ms Fernandez said.

"We cannot interpret in any other way the deployment of an ultra-modern destroyer accompanying the heir to the throne, who we would prefer to see in civilian attire."

She asked UK Prime Minister David Cameron "to give peace a chance".

Although we have many reasons to question David Cameron's judgement, I don't think he's planning an attack on the Argentinian mainland, or anywhere else in the South Atlantic.

There was peace in the Falklands from 1833 until 1982, when Argentina attacked after nearly 150 years of British rule. On the 14th of June, the islands will celebrate another 30 years of peace. Peace will prevail there until the next act of Argentinian aggression.

I'd like to think that any diplomats repeating Ms Fernandez's absurd suggestions to the UN would be laughed out of the chamber, but I expect a different reaction from that ignoble club.

Clegg: treaty change does not require referendum

From this morning's Andrew Marr Show ...

ANDREW MARR:

Angela Merkel is right, isn't she, when she says that there has to be fiscal union if the Eurozone is going to hold together? ... Which in turn will mean a treaty change.
...

ANDREW MARR:

It would also trigger a referendum in this country about our relationship with Europe, so my next question is: Could the coalition survive a referendum on our relationship with Europe?

NICK CLEGG:

Well I don't think there needs to be a referendum for the simple reason that the change …

ANDREW MARR:

(over) The Prime Minister's promised one. If there is a treaty change, he's promised a referendum.

NICK CLEGG:

No, the referendum will only take place if there is an additional surrender of sovereignty from us to the European Union, to Brussels.

ANDREW MARR:

(over) I thought any substantial treaty change will trigger a referendum. That's what David Cameron said.

NICK CLEGG:

(over) No, no, no. Let me be very clear. The test, which we've legislated on, is if we, the United Kingdom, give up more sovereignty in a big way to the European Union …

The truth, of course, is that any moves to eurozone integration would fundamentally alter the nature of the European Union. As Lord Tebbit noted recently, "the eurozone group can always outvote the remaining member states".

In an article for the Mail on Sunday, Daniel Hannan wonders why we would pass up this golden opportunity to extricate ourselves from a declining regional trading block:

Is it, perhaps, that the Coalition is determined to avoid a referendum? Sources around the Prime Minister are briefing to this effect but I hope they are wrong: few things are as degrading as the sight of an administration that distrusts its own electorate.

Or maybe it is fear of being left out of a Franco-German plan. In truth, though, a regulated Continental bloc offers us huge opportunities. We would be the offshore haven, Hong Kong to their China.

This was the model that Winston Churchill proposed at the outset. In 1946, he called for a United States of Europe comprising France, Germany and their satellite countries.

The full text of that speech, given in Zurich on the 19th of September, is available from the Council of Europe.

Personally, I'm not entirely comfortable with the idea of an anti-democratic Franco-German union on our doorstep, but I don't think today's ordinary Frenchmen and Germans want war any more than ordinary British people do, and the EU doesn't afford any protection beyond what we already enjoy through NATO.

Equally, to the extent that it may be in our national interest to undermine continental moves to full political union, I'm not convinced that our politicians are committed to this goal, nor that the task is easier within in the EU.

We should get out, wish them well, and watch vigilantly.

Libya's rebel forces committed abuses

BBC News reports:

Amnesty International has called on Libya's National Transitional Council (NTC) to take steps to prevent human rights abuses by anti-Gaddafi forces.

In its latest report, the group says that while the bulk of violations were carried out by loyalist forces, anti-Gaddafi fighters have also been involved in torture and killings.

Quelle surprise!

The Effects and Origins of the Great War

Some time ago I read a brilliant quote that I failed to record, which I've been searching for ever since.

I am very grateful to Philip Johnston, who included it in a recent article:

Before the First World War, as A J P Taylor observed, “a sensible, law-abiding Englishman could pass through life and hardly notice the existence of the State, beyond the post office and the policeman”.

The full passage, from Taylor's The Effects and Origins of the Great War, is as follows:

Until August 1914 a sensible, law-abiding Englishman could pass through life and hardly notice the existence of the state, beyond the post office and the policeman. He could live where he liked and as he liked. He had no official number or identity card. He could travel abroad or leave his country for ever without a passport or any sort of official permission. He could exchange his money for any other currency without restriction or limit. He could buy goods from any country in the world on the same terms as he bought goods at home. For that matter, a foreigner could spend his life in this country without permit and without informing the police. Unlike the countries of the European continent, the state did not require its citizens to perform military service. An Englishman could enlist, if he chose, in the regular army, the navy, or the territorials. He could also ignore, if he chose, the demands of national defence. Substantial householders were occasionally called on for jury service. Otherwise, only those helped the state who wished to do so. The Englishman paid taxes on a modest scale: nearly £200 million in 1913-14, or rather less than 8 per cent. of the national income. The state intervened to prevent the citizen from eating adulterated food or contracting certain infectious diseases. It imposed safety rules in factories, and prevented women, and adult males in some industries, from working excessive hours. The state saw to it that children received education up to the age of 13. Since 1 January 1909, it provided a meagre pension for the needy over the age of 70. Since 1911, it helped to insure certain classes of workers against sickness and unemployment. This tendency towards more state action was increasing. Expenditure on the social services had roughly doubled since the Liberals took office in 1905. Still, broadly speaking, the state acted only to help those who could not help themselves. It left the adult citizen alone.

All this was changed by the impact of the Great War. The mass of the people became, for the first time, active citizens. Their lives were shaped by orders from above; they were required to serve the state instead of pursuing exclusively their own affairs. Five million men entered the armed forces, many of them (though a minority) under compulsion. The Englishman's food was limited, and its quality changed, by government order. His freedom of movement was restricted; his conditions of work prescribed. Some industries were reduced or closed, others artificially fostered. The publication of news was fettered. Street lights were dimmed. The sacred freedom of drinking was tampered with: licensed hours were cut down, and the beer watered by order. The very time on the clocks was changed. From 1916 onwards, every Englishman got up an hour earlier in summer than he would otherwise have done, thanks to an act of parliament. The state established a hold over its citizens which, though relaxed in peacetime, was never to be removed and which the second World war was again to increase. The history of the English state and of the English people merged for the first time.

Absolutely superb!

Philip Johnston's article is also well worth reading in its entirety.

What future for the Falklands?

BBC News reports:

Sir Sandy Woodward, the retired admiral who led the British taskforce which set sail for the Falklands in 1982, told a newspaper earlier this week he feared the islands were "now perilously close to being indefensible".

He told the Daily Mail: "Twenty-nine years ago today, we re-claimed the Falklands for Britain in one of the most remarkable campaigns since the Second World War.

"The simple truth is without aircraft carriers and without the Americans, we would not have any hope of doing the same again today."

Adm Woodward questioned whether the US would continue to support Britain's sovereignty over the islands, pointing to Washington's call last week for negotiations.

The Americans' reference to the islands by their Argentinian name - the Malvinas - didn't "leave too much doubt about which way the wind may be blowing", he said.

The terrible financial legacy of the Labour government does not excuse the Coalition's neglect and mismanagement of our armed forces. They did not need to decommission the Ark Royal. Its Harriers could apparently fly for another seven years, having recently been expensively upgraded, but instead they are being sold to the Americans for scrap. Waste abounds, both within the MoD, and in other departments. If the government thought we needed a few billion more to properly protect British territory, they could have found it. The money squandered on Euro bailouts, international aid, and increased EU budget contributions would probably cover it. And they're not even making the most of the money they have.

Whether the Falklands are worth fighting for is a reasonable question, but our government appears to be setting us up for trouble. We must ask why.

Empire Day

Yesterday, as Daniel Hannan blogged, was Empire Day, known in Canada as Victoria Day (colloquially, May Two-Four).

For a long time, and especially since reading Niall Ferguson's book on the subject, I have shared Hannan's attitude to Empire:

I’m not sentimental about the British Empire: we’d have been better off running trading posts and informal protectorates than assuming responsibility for vast tracts of land. None the less, we can take some pride in our fathers’ deeds. Britain introduced whole civilizations to the rule of law, to property rights, to open markets, to impartial administration. Yes, we took resources from our dependencies, but we also built infrastructure: schools and clinics, roads and law-courts. And, while we fought some brutal counter-insurgency campaigns, we brought many colonies to independence without a shot being fired in anger.

He goes on to relate a distressing anecdote:

I was almost speechless with sadness when, during a question and answer session with sixth formers in my constituency a couple of weeks ago, I asked what the class associated with the British Empire. Their top answer was “slavery”. Yet the British Empire’s chief association with the slave trade – an institution which had existed in every age and every society – was to wage an unremitting and ultimately successful war against it. The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones.

By chance, and in another context, I today received an email with a quote from Herbert Spencer:

Were any one to call me dishonest or untruthful he would touch me to the quick. Were he to say that I am unpatriotic, he would leave me unmoved. "What, then, have you no love of country?" That is a question not to be answered in a breath.

The early abolition of serfdom in England, the early growth of relatively-free institutions, and the greater recognition of popular claims after the decay of feudalism had divorced the masses from the soil, were traits of English life which may be looked back upon with pride. When it was decided that any slave who set foot in England became free; when the importation of slaves into the Colonies was stopped; when twenty millions were paid for the emancipation of slaves in the West Indies; and when, however unadvisedly, a fleet was maintained to stop the slave trade; our countrymen did things worthy to be admired. And when England gave a home to political refugees and took up the causes of small states struggling for freedom, it again exhibited noble traits which excite affection. But there are traits, unhappily of late more frequently displayed, which do the reverse.

He proceeds to denounce British foreign aggression.

How ironic that the New Labour government that so eagerly pursued wars in Iraq and Afghanistan was also responsible for poisoning the Empire in the minds of schoolchildren.

US and EU

BBC News reports

The US and EU have warned of more pressure on Syria over its violent response to anti-government protests.

"We will be taking additional steps in the days ahead," US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said after talks with EU top diplomat Catherine Ashton.

The US and EU have already imposed sanctions on some members of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's government.

(emphasis mine)

Feel like you're living in a superstate yet?

Without being specific, Baroness Ashton said: "There will be a number of moves in the coming hours and days that you will see."

"If the [Syrian] government really does - as it keeps telling us it does - want to see some kind of change, it's got to be now," she added.

Mrs Clinton and Baroness Ashton declined to reveal what measures might be taken against Damascus.

Despite the sanctions on senior figures close to President Assad, both Washington and Brussels have so far stopped short of targeting him specifically.

Whatever kind of foreign policy you favour, there's something very disturbing about it being determined in Brussels by the likes of Baroness Ashton.

UPDATE

To confirm my fears about where all this is heading, I decided to google for "EU military".

Sure enough, Wikipedia has an article dedicated to the subject:

Several prominent leaders, including French President Nicolas Sarkozy, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini and former Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt, have voiced support for a common defence for the Union.^[3][4][5] This possibility was formally laid down in Article 42 of the Treaty on European Union upon the entry into force of the Treaty of Lisbon on 1 December 2009.^[6]
...

"The common security and defence policy shall include the progressive framing of a common defence policy. This will lead to a common defence, when the European Council, acting unanimously, so decides." (TEU, Article 42) ^[10]

They've even got their own coat of arms ...

Nasty NATO bombs friendly tanks

The commander of Libya's rebel forces has said Nato apologised for mistakenly hitting a column of rebel tanks near the eastern town of Ajdabiya.

Rebel tanks?

It started off so simple. Gaddafi had the overwhelming firepower — jets, tanks, artillery — and was using it against defenceless civilians. In a fit of nobless oblige, Cameron ordered the Royal Navy and Royal Air Force to intervene.

Together with other NATO forces, primarily French and American, they destroyed Libya's air defences, and proceeded to attack Gaddafi's ground forces. News reports showed rebels cheering over charred tanks, praising the Western leaders.

The BBC article continues:

The rebels hit in the air strike had been moving a group of tanks, armoured vehicles and rocket launchers near the front line between the towns of Ajdabiya and Brega in more than 30 transporters.

One rebel commander told the BBC he saw at least four missiles land among rebel fighters.
...
There is considerable anger among rebel troops at what appears to have been a terrible mistake, our correspondent says.

They are asking why rebel units were hit, he adds, when they could be seen clearly advancing in a westerly direction towards the front line.

"It is unbelievable," said one Benghazi resident. "Nato, with all the equipment they have - is this the second mistake? Is it really a mistake or something arranged secretly?"

While I hope for a positive outcome, I remain unconvinced that this intervention was wise.

Retreating rebels and flickers of Al Qaeda

BBC News reports:

Rebels in Libya are retreating from their former strongholds along the eastern coast as they come under fire from Col Muammar Gaddafi's forces.

The rebels have now lost the key oil port of Ras Lanuf and the nearby town of Bin Jawad, and are also in full retreat from Brega.
...
One rebel on the edge of Brega was angered that the coalition appeared to have slowed down its campaign.

"We want two things: that the planes drop bombs on Gaddafi's tanks and heavy artillery, and that they give us weapons so we can fight," 27-year-old fighter Younus Abdelghaim told AFP news agency.

How far will Cameron and friends go to achieve regime change? How many civilian casualties will they allow the rebels to inflict in their attempts to overrun cities held by Gaddafi? And if, with Western assistance, the rebels are victorious, will the people of Libya be better off? Will we? Much depends on the nature of those to whom Cameron has so hastily committed our military support.

According to the Wall Street Journal,

In a Senate hearing Tuesday, U.S. Adm. James Stavridis, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's supreme allied commander in Europe, said intelligence agencies had picked up "flickers" of an al Qaeda presence among Libyan opposition fighters. He also mentioned links to Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed, Lebanon-based militant group.
...
As Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Tuesday, the U.S. is still "getting to know" the rebels.

"So far, they're saying the right things," President Barack Obama said Tuesday on "CBS Evening News" when asked about Libyan opposition leaders. "Most of them are professionals, lawyers, doctors—people who appear to be credible. That doesn't mean that…among all the people who opposed Gadhafi, there might not be elements that are unfriendly to the United States and our interests."

I previously noted the opposition to intervention from Daniel Hannan and Norman Tebbit. Today I discovered James Delingpole's list of "10 Reasons Why We Shouldn't Be In Libya". Here's a selection:

1. We cannot afford it. Liberal interventionism belongs to another era: the era when we imagined we had enough money to prosecute wars. Now our armed forces are so straitened by Cameron’s defence cuts that we don’t even have sufficient trained Typhoon pilots. And as for those bloody silly Storm Shadow missiles at £1 million a pop….

2. The Arabs won’t thank us for it – which kind of defeats the object, given that the sole real point of this misbegotten enterprise was to show the Middle East how lovely and caring we were and sensitive to Islamic feelings. Only once we’d secured the Arab League’s approval did we dare launch the mission. And now, guess what: they’ve decided they think it’s a bad idea after all.

...

4. According to this video from the Cato institute, there are five key questions to be asked before actions of this kind: Is it in the national interest? Is there public support? Have the costs and consequences been considered? Is there are clear military mission? Have we exhausted all available options? The Libya debacle fails on ALL counts.

5. It’s the French’s colonial war, not ours. They sucked us into this. As Jonathan Foreman reports in his superb analysis:

For more than two decades the biggest threat to French dominance of Chad – and other Francophone countries in Central and West Africa has come from Libya. Qaddafi’s forces have battled those of Chad four times since 1978. During the first three invasions, in 1978, 1979 and the winter of 1980-81, the Libyans allied with local rebel forces, supporting their infantry with armored vehicles, artillery and air support. The third invasion resulted in the de facto partition of Chad in 1983 with Libyan forces controlling the country’s northern half, above the 16^th parallel.

6. President Obama’s heart obviously isn’t in it and given that US provides the bulk of our military muscle, this doesn’t augur well for a happy outcome.

7. What kind of message does it send out to the Middle East generally? That we’ll only intervene in countries where we have no real strategic interest and which are weak enough to knock about, while leaving the really big nasty regimes – Iran’s, say, or Syria’s – to do what the hell they like. As Melanie Phillips reports in a superb blog post, all we are doing is alienating Middle Eastern moderates through our mixed messages and double standards

...

8. Britain, France and the US now run a drastically increased risk of a Lockerbie-style revenge atrocity. Obviously we shouldn’t base our international policy on our fear of being punished for doing the right thing. But, er, being punished for doing the wrong thing?

It will be a long time before we know the full consequences of this intervention, and the true motives of those who insisted on it. If things go well, it will be more luck than judgement.

The Arab League dissents

It didn't take long. BBC News reports,

The head of the Arab League, who supported the idea of a no-fly zone, has criticised the severity of the bombardment.

"What is happening in Libya differs from the aim of imposing a no-fly zone, and what we want is the protection of civilians and not the bombardment of more civilians," said Arab League Secretary General Amr Moussa.

Arab League support was a key factor in getting UN Security Council backing for the resolution authorising the move.

Whether Amr Moussa actually believes the western powers have crossed the line is besides the point. He feels the need to say it, and that says something about the mood in the region. Though unwilling or unable to sort out this mess themselves, the Arabs are likely to resent a protracted western intervention. This is exactly what Gaddafi is promising.

Opposition to intervention in Libya

I've always had quite a low opinion of David Cameron, but he never evoked quite the revulsion I used to feel with Blair and Brown. Until yesterday.

The case for military intervention in Libya is far from clear, but Cameron lectured us in sanctimonious tones about the and the need to "enforce the will" of the United Nations, and how we "cannot allow the slaughter of civilians to continue".

I wonder if he feels the same way about the slaughter of civilians in Tibet, Somalia, Yemen, Sri Lanka, and countless other places.

I wonder if he feels the need to enforce the will of the UN as expressed in "Resolution 38/69 on Israeli nuclear armament". There are many more where that came from.

The truth is that slaughtering civilians and flouting the UN constitute neither necessary nor sufficient conditions for military intervention.

Amusingly, my searches on UN resolutions turned up this story about Eritrea. Resolution 1907 (2009) was adopted "by a vote of 13 in favour to 1 against (Libya), with 1 abstention (China)". Libya? A CNN article from 2007 explains:

Four years after renouncing terrorism and abandoning its WMD programs, Libya Tuesday won a two-year term on the U.N. Security Council.

The U.N. General Assembly approved Tripoli's candidacy for a spot on the 15-member council with 178 votes.

In May 2006, the United States restored full diplomatic relations with Libya and removed it from the list of state sponsors of terrorism, where it had been for 27 years.

Daniel Hannan has consistently opposed intervention:

there have been three moments in my lifetime when, under all the norms of international relations, a case could have been made for military intervention against the Tripoli regime: the murder of Yvonne Fletcher; the Lockerbie atrocity; and the revelation that Gaddafi had been supplying arms to the IRA. As far as I can remember, there was almost no demand for an armed strike on any of those occasions; indeed, Margaret Thatcher came in for a great deal of criticism for allowing US bombers to fly from RAF bases in retaliation for Libyan state terrorism. Yet many of the same people who criticised her are now beating their chests and demanding action. Have we reached the point where military action is thought to be justified only when there isn’t any national interest at stake?

Back on the 3rd of March, Hannan provided 6 reasons not to intervene in Libya. Yesterday, Jeffrey Miron provided his own list:

1. We do not know if intervention will change the outcome;

2. We do not know if a government established by the rebels will be an improvement;

3. We do not how long or how expensive the “appropriate” intervention will turn out to be.

4. We do not know how the rebels will regard foreign “aggression” or how Khaddafi will spin our intervention to his advantage.

Norman Tebbit has also opposed intervention. On the 10th of March, he wrote:

In order to decide what to do in Libya, the first question we have to ask is what is in the British national interest. What is in the interests of Libya is the second question.
...
It is in our interest that there should be a stable government in Libya. That can only be achieved if the change of government is undertaken by the Libyan people. The more outsiders intervene, the more likely it is that whatever regime succeeds Gaddafi will be seen as one imposed by the West.

So, for the moment I would be cautious about a no-fly zone. It is bound to lead to attacks on radar and anti-aircraft facilities on the ground, and if Colonel Gaddafi has any sense he will make sure that this would cause civilian casualties, which would not be in the best interests of the Libyan people

And sure enough, recent events prompted Tom Paine to ask whether we've seen "the fastest mission creep in history":

Libya: Col Gaddafi told to leave now or face the bombers - Telegraph.

Hang on. I thought the idea (already ill-advised in my view) was that we were authorised by the UN to enforce a no-fly zone to protect civilians from military attacks. Now it's regime change already! Perhaps he really is the "heir to Blair" after all?

Last Wednesday, responding to comments on his previous articles, Lord Tebbit wrote:

On Libya, jastar thought it not unreasonable to arm the rebels but, as the locksmith said, Gaddafi armed the rebel IRA/SinnFein, whom he called freedom fighters, and conormac reminded us that the West armed the Taliban, which seemed a good idea at the time, as they say. Of course many of us would share rogerandout’s puzzlement that Islam has not sorted it all out.

Anyone who has read my previous post on the subject will know that I struggle to decide how a libertarian government should approach countries like Libya.

Our current approach, however, is highly questionable.

Plus ça change

BBC News reports,

US President Barack Obama is lifting the two-year freeze on new military trials for detainees at the Guantanamo Bay prison.

Mr Obama also announced a new process for continuing to hold those detainees not charged or convicted but deemed too dangerous to free.

He said the measures would "broaden our ability to bring terrorists to justice".

Mr Obama had pledged in January 2009 to close the prison within a year.

Whatever you think of Guantanamo, there's nothing like a good hopey-changey U-turn.

How would a libertarian government handle Libya?

On the Eurotunnel back from France I picked up a copy of the FT. It featured this picture of Tony Blair's "hand of friendship", extended to Muammar Gaddafi on 24 March 2004.


I also read Norman Tebbit's latest article, bemoaning the fact that private British companies had to arrange the evacuation of their employees from Libya:

After all, there are plenty of airlines with under-utilised aircraft at this time of year, and if an oil company could find one, why could not HMG?

I found myself wondering how a libertarian government would have handled our relationship with Libya, and the current crisis.

Presumably there would have been no efforts by the government to promote trade with Libya (or any other country). This would have been left to private companies (the primary beneficiaries of such trade).

A libertarian government would not have done "all it could" to facilitate the release of Abdelbaset Al-Megrahi.

If British companies chose to do business in dangerous parts of the world, would a libertarian government deploy our armed forces to rescue expatriates who found themselves in trouble? For that matter, would it rescue British tourists who likewise found themselves in danger? Would it depend on whether the foreign aggressors were openly associated with a foreign government?

Like Palmerston [1], I'm attracted to the idea that

as the Roman, in days of old, held himself free from indignity, when he could say Civis Romanus sum; so also a British subject, in whatever land he may be, shall feel confident that the watchful eye and the strong arm of England, will protect him against injustice and wrong.

In practice, we no longer have this power (if we ever truly did). But is it right, in principle, for our compulsorily-funded military to protect the rights of private British citizens in foreign lands, irrespective of the cost? It seems likely that a strict libertarian government would constrain our military action to defence of the realm.

For the same reasons, a libertarian government would probably not be considering military action in Libya for humanitarian reasons. Again, I have mixed feelings about this, but we don't have the resources to save the world, and nobody would suggest that our past 'humanitarian' interventions have been prioritised according to the severity of the slaughter or oppression. There is always an ulterior motive, and it typically serves specific interests, rather than some hazily-defined 'national interest'.

If the government declines to act, should citizens be free to hire mercenaries? Perhaps with different parts of the British population supporting different sides?

Would a libertarian government allow its citizens to trade with countries that did not respect individual rights? In the extreme, would it allow trade with slave-owners?

Would a libertarian government allow the sale of weapons to tyrants, for aggression against their neighbours, or repression of their own people? What about trade in other goods that facilitates the purchase of weapons from third parties?

Who should decide where to draw the line?

It will be a long time before these questions get tested, but it's interesting to speculate.

[1] 25 June 1850, Hansard CXII [3d Ser.], 380-444

Airforce bug bots - the perfect assassins

The Register reports

The US Air Force is engaged in wacky research on fruit flies manoeuvring within a heavily instrumented "simulation tunnel" in order to develop tiny, potentially murderous insect-sized flying robots.

According to a statement issued yesterday by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR), research underway at in Californian labs will teach military designers how to build tiny robot aircraft which can fly around indoors or in built-up areas the way flies do.

They link to a 4 1/2 minute promotional video for the the Micro Air Vehicles: "Unobtrusive, Pervasive, Lethal".



The scene is set:

tiny military swarm droids scattering across towns or cities to locate or spy on persons of interest to the US authorities. They might even, as shown in the vid at around three minutes, be able to land on the back of your neck and blow your head off using some kind of tiny warhead. Amazing what they can do nowadays.

Indeed. Very cool tech in the right hands. Very scary in the wrong ones.

There are a good many fatal poisons in nature, so they wouldn't need to resort to anything as dramatic and potentially incriminating as a kamikaze bomb bot.

Use a sufficiently exotic venom, and a coroner would almost certainly declare death by natural causes. A spontaneous heart attack? These things happen. Or if you're driving a car at the time, an untraceable but powerful sedative would suffice. Or if you're leaning precariously over a well of freezing Arctic water, as in Dan Brown's Deception Point, perhaps all the spybot would need to do is set you off-balance by flying into your eye. So many potential accidents. Dissidents beware.

Entente idiotique?

BBC news reports:

Britain and France are being forced by budget cut-backs and the lack of their own strategic capability to co-operate more closely on defence.

They both want to be global players but increasingly lack the resources to remain so.

A series of measures is being formally agreed at a summit in London on Tuesday between Prime Minister David Cameron and President Nicolas Sarkozy.

This is of course absurd. There was no need for any cuts in the department of defence. In 2009 defence spending amounted to £42bn out of £631bn — less than 7%.

As I commented over at Lord Tebbit's blog,

As bad as our financial situation is, we could easily find a few billion to invest in our national defence. There is so much fat just begging to be trimmed, and so many things government does that it shouldn't.

If we were to roll spending back to 1997 levels, we could eliminate the deficit at a stroke, and have plenty left over to buy and operate top notch military hardware.

The planned cooperation is not a matter of necessity.

According to the BBC,

They will share air-to-air refuelling because Britain might have spare capacity in this in the future. There is scope for joint maintenance work on transport aircraft, and shared development of a drone, mine-counter measures, satellite communications and cyber warfare.

That's all fine when we're getting along, but what when we disagree? If we become reliant on French air-to-air refuelling capability, we could find ourselves in a very tight spot. As Lord Tebbit put it,

To rely on France and America for aircraft is a policy designed by those too young to remember Oran or Suez

The BBC article continues,

British Defence Secretary Dr Liam Fox said: "This is not a push for an EU army which we oppose... It has always been my view that defence must be a sovereign and therefore an inter-governmental issue."

Britain is therefore not taking advantage of the mechanism offered by the Lisbon Treaty. The treaty allows for what is called "permanent structured cooperation in defence".

This is in effect an EU "opt-in" arrangement. It allows member states to get approval from the European Council (the heads of state and government) to organise combat units capable of operating on missions up to at least 120 days.

Such EU-led cooperation was envisaged in 1998 when Tony Blair and President Chirac agreed at St Malo that "The [European] Union must have the capacity for autonomous action, backed up by credible military forces".

The Eurocrats are a patient bunch. If we become accustomed to military cooperation with foreign powers, and reduce our own forces to the point where we cannot credibly act alone, the EU army will seem a much more realistic prospect than it does today.

And once there is an EU army, how likely is it that secession will remain a peaceful matter? The Americans weren't content to see a part of their federation go its own way. Will the federal powers in Brussels take a more relaxed view?

Should we fear the RAF cuts?

The Telegraph reports:

In a private speech for MPs on Monday night, the RAF leadership challenged the Prime Minister’s criticism of “Cold War” fighter jets and questioned the decision to favour the Army in the Strategic Defence and Security Review.

Whitehall sources say the intervention may have come too late. At a meeting of the National Security Council yesterday, the Navy won its battle for two new aircraft carriers. With the Army facing only modest cuts, the RAF is now in line to bear the brunt.

I have to say that faced with a choice, I think we're better off with the two carriers.

Air Marshal Anderson made some absurd suggestions:

“Without such an air defence capability, the UK would not be able to guarantee security of its sovereign air space and we would be unable to respond effectively to a 9/11-style terrorist attack from the air.”

If the far more advanced and numerous US fighters were unable to prevent a 9/11 style attack, how would the RAF would be able to stop one? The USAF can't say that the event was entirely unpredictable; Tom Clancy wrote about a very similar scenario in 1994.

More plausibly, Anderson noted that

“The high level of investment in high-end combat aircraft and air defence systems by, for example, Russia and China … indicates that the essential requirement for control of the air has not been lost on nations whose future interests and political orientation may not necessarily be well disposed to the UK.”

But do we realistically think that invasion of Britain by either of these countries would not escalate to nuclear war? To meet these threats, I'd rather cut the air defence fighters entirely, and build up our Trident fleet.

Moreover, we're not proposing to buy the top-of-the-line F-22; the Americans are keeping those to themselves. Meanwhile, the Russians and Chinese are busy developing jets to rival it. Would the F-35 really be up to the task of stopping them?

I fear that the greatest threat to the UK actually comes from closer to home: the EU. If we continue to run down our defences, a military conflict is not inconceivable, but at the moment it looks like we're going to give up without a fight.