BOTH David Cameron and George Osborne have stated at various times that the defence of the realm is the first duty of any government. Despite this and despite the PM’s urging fellow Nato leaders to spend the required minimum of two per cent GDP on defence, the Government has announced that the UK’s fast-shrinking and demoralised Armed Forces [Read more…]
On foreign policy and defense, David Cameron’s UK is behaving like a second Belgium. LONDON — During the British general election Ed Miliband scored a hit that few noticed. In a speech at Chatham House he accused David Cameron of pursuing an “isolationist” foreign policy that has led to the “biggest loss of influence for our country in [Read more…]
Why We Lost: A General’s Inside Account of the Iraq and Afghanistan WarsBy Daniel P. BolgerEamon Dolan/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 544 pages The shooting wars may be drawing to a close, but the war about the wars continues to rage. The latest salvo is Why We Lost, a provocative book by Daniel P. Bolger, a U.S. Army lieutenant [Read more…]
American Sniper is easily the most authentic looking and sounding movie that Hollywood has made about American troops at war since Black Hawk Down. You can tell within minutes of its beginning that the filmmakers cared to get the details right, that their military consultants weren’t the usual Vietnam veterans that the studios often turn to, [Read more…]
Happily, the Air Force has failed again in its crusade to kill off a great plane This December saw the climax of one of the more peculiar conflicts in Washington. It was a battle over an Air Force plane. But it was not one of those standard-issue Washington procurement battles in which congressional bean counters seek [Read more…]
It took more than a dozen years for the Afghan and NATO forces to really understand each other, but all that will soon be history. KABUL, Afghanistan — One of the first things you notice at an Afghan National Army training base is that there are roses everywhere. There are lovingly tended flower beds along each [Read more…]
It’s not too late for the president to rethink his arbitrary end date Kabul With less than two months to go until the end of the mission, the International Security Assistance Force headquarters in Kabul can feel a little forlorn. You still encounter an amazing mix of uniforms, headgear, ethnicities, and accents, with Macedonian troops brushing [Read more…]
The Case For a Major New US Military Base It is not clear at the time of writing if Turkey will or will not allow the United States to use the NATO air base at Incirlik for airstrikes against ISIS forces in Syria and Iraq. On October 13, national security adviser Susan Rice announced that Turkey [Read more…]
One of the less attractive characteristics of the Anglo-Saxon powers is their post-war habit of betraying third world allies, whether they are Vietnamese Montagnards, Afghan interpreters or belong to one of several less well-known minorities that have paid a grim price for trusting Britain or America to reward their loyalty. The Kurds of Iraq are the [Read more…]
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Aid is no substitute for defence - as Michael Fallon knows (Spectator Coffee House 30 June 2015)
It’s been obvious for a while that the Prime Minister is exasperated by the way American and other allied officials – including President Obama himself – keep expressing concern about Britain’s rapidly shrinking defence capabilities and the prospect of yet more defence cuts. David Cameron also dislikes being reminded that he lectured other Nato leaders about meeting the alliance’s [Read more…]