Post Segments
Robert Wilkie, leading the president’s transition team at the Pentagon, told BBC, “ you are now on the trajectory to have the smallest navy since Charles the Second. The world is safer when the UK military is more capable.”
Let’s start from simple facts.
Look at the map with the North Pole at its centre and observe the power of geography. A group of islands anchored off Europe holds the keys to the Arctic including Greenland, the Narrow Seas, the North and South Atlantics, the Mediterranean thereby Europe including Russia, plus the sea lanes to Africa and further east – providing we keep our navy, air force and merchant fleet strong.
Angela Merkel describes us as a former sea-faring nation. How little she knows us! Our annual trade last year measured until November created £ 1.699 trillion of our £ 3.45 trillion GDP or £ 4.025 trillion at PPP economy. A deficit of £ 188 billion on goods was largely offset by a surplus of £ 173 billion for services. This trade was global with Europe and North America as our main markets. While Europe was our largest market, North America was 24% of total trade. Inevitably the Far East and Pacific may over-take both. That’s why we need a navy that keeps the sea lanes open to the fast growth economies in Asia and the Far East. Services are worth more than goods these days, secure communications as vital as secure energy. Among the narrow seas we have important infrastructure tapestry and valuable fishing grounds which since Brexit we are once more able to preserve and safeguard. We grow half our food and should support our farmers rather than bankrupt them.
Ninety-five per cent of all goods arriving and departing Britain are moved by sea employing 220,000 people. (The Channel Tunnel carries 4.5% and air freight 0.5%) Even in the age of flags of convenience there are more than ten million tons of ships on the British Register. Many others would seek our protection in a crisis. They should re-flag, fast.
When air freight is measured by value some 25% of our international goods movements travel by air. Heathrow is the third busiest freight airport in Europe and deals with a million and a half tons a year. Britain’s sixty main airports together handle over 5,000 aircraft movements a day.
Defence Common Sense.
There is only one super-power on this planet. Anyone who dismisses the special relationship usually has no experience of working as part of it. I learnt its value in Vietnam where I cultivated my own branch. I enjoy its friendships, candour and trust to this day.
NATO has thirty members on this side of the Atlantic. The EU wants to replace the US as manager of Europe’s defence policy and budgets. This barely camouflaged ambition for yet another commercial monopoly offers Britain no advantage, indeed threatens significant disadvantages.
Apart from Russia the continent suffers no balance of power rivalry. Germany, France and Italy are not only EU members but long-standing NATO allies. The Poles are expanding their army to more than 400,000, becoming the largest of European NATO. We should leave NATO’s Central Front to the people who live there and instead concentrate on NATO’s long flanks and our ocean highways to the rest of the planet. Our army needs double its present numbers but for global deployments and a European focus on Scandinavia, the Baltic and Mediterranean.
A strategic approach likely to trigger wider European war.
According to The Times, former defence secretary and NATO chief, George Robertson, who leads the defence review, warned Starmer that unless he provides more money for defence now, 20,000 people may be cut or our carrier force mothballed. The same January weekend we learnt from The Sunday Times that Rachel Reeves has demanded 5% cuts from all departments – including defence.
Starmer threatens to share intelligence with the EU rather than our Five Eyes partners, our core intelligence alliance with the Americans, Australians, Canadians and New Zealanders which goes back to Churchill and Roosevelt meeting at Placentia Bay, Newfoundland during August 1941.
Such a move could bring about our eviction from the Five Eyes, severely damage our deterrent and submarine service and the Royal Air Force. Starmer resembles an EU Trojan Horse. They treat him as a supplicant and not just for tactics. We don’t need a separate defence arrangement with Europe. The continent has a history of partitioning Poland between Germany and Russia. What makes Starmer think they won’t do it again over Ukraine? NATO has deterred Russia since 1949 until the last Cold War ended. We need NATO with the North Americans more than ever.
Why a massive increase in defence is so urgent.
I’m 84 going on 85 years old this year. I’ve enjoyed an exciting and fascinating life in several wars and plenty of peace to make up. So this is for my grandchildren.
At present our only credible defence of the British Isles is a second strike nuclear attack after this country’s destruction.
We are at war with Russia now, a low intensity war against NATO through misinformation and sabotage. There are simply too many footprints and fingerprints for any other conclusion: poisonings in mainland Britain, Russian spy ships cruising through our territorial waters charting under-water power and communications cables. Our nuclear submarine shipyard at Barrow suffered a fire, a missile factory and a munitions factory in Wales were also targets. Short of war, only dramatic restoration of the Royal Navy and Royal Air Force with tactical nuclear weapons will scare Russia enough to back down.
We have three years, possibly five to make our armed forces once again strong enough to deter Russia. I’d prefer them strong enough to defeat Russia on our terms, not theirs. Apart from taxing the country into recession, Starmer intends to squander this life raft of time by delaying any increase to the defence budget until 2030. Last month The Times spoke to a senior government source who confirmed that Starmer will not raise defence spending before next General Election because that would require cuts in other budgets. In other words our people and country are less important than his vanity.
Yet he’s ready to pay billions to Mauritius for their taking over British Indian Ocean Territory – a deal cooked up by the Chinese and Russians.
Thanks to Gordon Brown we recovered our carrier strike force. Possession of aircraft carrier strike groups armed with stealth fighters straight away gives Britannia a lever that places her in the premier rank of naval powers. Moreover, if we rebuild an arsenal of tactical nuclear weapons, one almost as dangerous as our Trident armed submarines.
A Swiss friend put it this way – as an officer of a landlocked country it strikes him as odd, that a seafaring nation would scrap their lifeline.
If I were George Robertson, I would be guided by Palmerston.
Concentrate on the skills we have and which few other NATO nations can match or even possess on this side of the Atlantic – global naval and land based airpower, nuclear deterrence, nuclear attack submarines, long range intervention forces, and heavy tanks with British rifled guns. Ask the Ukrainians – who say their Challenger’s have British guns like sniper’s rifles that can take out heavy tanks. All four special skills take some of the enabler burden off the Americans.
We need a much bigger navy including two more carrier strike groups and three times as many destroyers, frigates, nuclear attack submarines armed with drones for anti-submarine patrols and another drone fleet for mine clearance. The RAF needs several squadrons of maritime patrol, airborne early warning and aerial command aircraft. We need the Royal Fleet Auxiliary – the fleet’s logistic train – once more at sufficient strength for a global power. Next year we’re borrowing a support ship from Norway to send a carrier group on a blue water voyage to the Indo/Pacific.
The RAF lost its fleet of tactical transports, both fixed wing and rotor. That fleet needs rebuilding fast.
Defence of the British Isles from air attack.
At present our air defences are utterly inadequate. We should speed up development of the Tempest fighter, purchase our full order of F 35 stealth fighters and triple the number of fighter squadrons. We should also look at reviving the Royal Auxiliary Air Force.
At the same time we should recruit a volunteer reserve of nerds armed with lasers and High Powered Microwaves (HPM) plus air defence drones armed with air-to-air missiles. In effect, we need a modern version of what we did during the 1940s and 1950s when the Territorial Army grew to over 100,000 strong with many Light Anti-Aircraft regiments. Weekend fighter pilots of the Royal Auxiliary Air Force were supported by the Royal Observer Corps as well as radar. That’s where the nerds come in.
North America
The USA voted for Donald Trump. America has another draft dodger as Commander-in-Chief. Did they vote for isolation? I hope not, last time it didn’t work.
Even with sunk battleships still smoking in Pearl Harbour, Franklin D Roosevelt knew that destruction of the Axis in North Africa then Europe was the safe path to allied victory in the Pacific. Since 1941 American leaders have regarded a secure, free and friendly Europe as fundamental to American interests because that gives America the freedom to project power globally. The defence of democracy is the core of this relationship.
During a long list of foes and grievances as his inaugural address, Trump made no mention that America has friends. Though I suspect Mark Rutte, NATO Secretary-General, heard that figure 3.7% of GNP from someone with a desk in the White House.
