January 10, 2025 - 7:00am
The recruitment crisis in the Armed Forces has reached new heights (or rather depths). For whatever our previous difficulties in recruiting adequate numbers of soldiers, sailors, and airmen, Britain has to date at least been able to find someone to be in overall charge of things.
No longer, apparently. General Sir Gwyn Jenkins, a former Royal Marine and the leading candidate, faces questions over his knowledge of alleged summary executions by special forces troops in Afghanistan. Meanwhile Admiral Sir Ben Key, the other most obvious candidate, isn’t planning to apply: he’s said he “can’t fix the Navy” given resource constraints and is apparently going to resign next year. The Government is therefore casting about for old hands.
We may thus soon be graced with the absurd sight of General Sir Nick Carter — Britain’s very own Comical Ali, bigging up the heroic Afghan resistance to the Taliban even as it failed to materialise — being called back to service, like Cincinnatus from his plough. More serious than vacuous PR blunders, Carter is also heavily implicated in much of the gross mismanagement of the military in recent decades.
General Sir Patrick Sanders, a former head of the Army, seems a more sensible choice, if only because he’s been very frank about the extremely challenging circumstances facing it. But while such honesty is an essential first step towards finding a solution (and more than some of his peers can manage), it is not enough.
British commanders operate within two hard constraints. The first is that grand strategy (or if that flatters the politicians too much, grand ambitions) is set by the elected government. The second is that so too are the resources assigned to the military to meet those various ambitions.
The core problem is that, as in so many other areas in modern Britain, there is a wide and growing gulf between what the politicians expect the military to be able to do and the means they provide to do it. Decades of steep cuts since the end of the Cold War have not been accompanied by any clear-eyed re-assessment of what role we want the Armed Forces to play.
A nation that spent a 1980s share of GDP on defence could maintain a strong blue-water navy and a capable, albeit expeditionary rather than mass, army. A country spending what we spend today could possibly do one of the two.
But we refused to make the choice, and so now we can do neither. On paper we have an impressive two-carrier navy; in practice, we can’t field an independent carrier group, less than half our ships are operational at any one time, and we’re divesting of critical capabilities such as marine amphibious assault ships.
The Army is in an equally poor state, beset by hiring shortfalls and grossly mismanaged procurement. But its situation is made worse by the changing strategic situation. Traditionally, the UK has operated a relatively small “expeditionary”-style army, capable of global deployment and (relatively) well suited to decisive wars against inferior opponents, such as Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.
Yet following the onset of the Russo-Ukrainian war and Donald Trump’s vocal scepticism of Nato, Europe is having to face the prospect of large-scale conventional warfare between peer militaries — a prospect for which we are neither materially nor psychologically equipped.
Whoever ends up becoming the next Chief of the Defence Staff will have an impossible job, because the most important decision for their tenure has already been taken. The previous government had earmarked around £20 billion in real terms, over six years, to boost defence spending; Rachel Reeves cancelled it.
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SubscribeI hope that they can work things out.
It’s insane to bring gas to Europe in the form of LNG.
Cheap gas is never a bad thing. Cheap energy means cheap everything.
(though personally, I’d want lots of nuclear, with fuel stockpiles to last decades)
Mr Micwaber put it best
‘”Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds nought and six, result misery.“”’
And Rachel Reeves has it as
”Annual income one Trillion Pounds, annual expenditure 1.2 Trillion Pounds, result happiness. Annual income One Trillion Pounds, annual expenditure 1.6 Trillion Pounds, result even greater happiness. Annual income One Trillion Pounds, annual expenditure 2.3 Trillion Pounds, result even more and huger and greater happiness.”
I side with Micwaber and cheap gas….
LNG will still play a part.
””Ultimately, the fate of Nord Stream 2 and any future energy relationship between Europe and Russia will depend on the coercive powers and decisions of Trump and Putin.””
Haha… No – it will depend on the Germans, Europeans, and British people deciding their corrupt leader’s self appointed path to National self destruction is going to destroy them all.
It will just take one person to say ‘The Emperor Has No Clothes!’ and the MSM, and the 100% corrupt Uniparty Political Class to allow those words out – and the people will demand affordable gas – Knowing the other choice is poverty and complete social breakdown and basically Mad Max to overtake their stupid continent.
I sincerely hope UK and EU have the good sense to develop more nuclear power very rapidly so that we never have to rely on Russia, the Middle East or America again. Furthermore, taking the route to Thorium-based fuel (not Uraniulm) would make raw materials plentiful and enable virtual independence in rare earth minerals.
Last thing needed is dependence of Europe on Russian gas, as is still partially the case,with or without Nord Stream, unfortunately.
Since Norway’s swivel towards the German market post-Feb 2022, the dependence on Russian gas will still be there, but reduced. Poland has had its Baltic Pipe from Norway via Denmark running since late ’22. There are also other pipelines from Russia supplying gas to central Europe and Italy that have not been disrupted .