Strategic Defense Review

When the Coalition of the Willing won Iraq, one of the many fundamental errors of the transition process from occupation to functioning democracy was the en mass sacking of the Iraq Army and police force, allowing trained men to fall under the influence of the insurgency bringing with them the skills and discipline to wage urban warfare.

I remind you of this as we go into the Age of Austerity.

A grim sort of humour has captured my imagination of late, the Army is planning on losing an entire deployable brigade out of six which if it maintains current operations, will be achieved through the terrible process of waging a war to save a land that cannot be saved by force of arms, only engineering, education and incentive all of which undermine the tribal structure that keeps Afghanistan in constant chaos.

Why is it more expensive to go through with a contract than to cancel it? Does this say something about the balance of power between the private and public sector? I think that we are seeing our military being reorganised around the principles of maximising the profits of the defence industry rather than true flexibility and strategic jurisprudence, happening in degrees that escape the notice of most.

I personally believe that our military would be more effective serving as a compromise between a deterrent to adventurism and with an increased element of rescue and engineering service - more mobile, assistance to disasters, immediate and ongoing relief in any situation than in a traditional militaristic sense - more of an emphasis on special elite units with tradecraft for the militaristic operations and training indigenous allies to police themselves. By this, the bulk of military personnel would move to this new role with the incentive of qualifications that will directly transfer to civilian occupations. Imagine a military that people were glad to see?