Failure Is Not An Option!

NY POST: "Jihadists have fought not because they hope to win on the battlefield, but to strengthen the antiwar lobbies in the United States and Britain."

We have won in Iraq. The question is whether we will pay the price to keep what we have won.


Tony Blair explains the current situation:

10 DOWNING STREET:

(...)

"What was unclear then but is very clear now is that what we were and are confronted with, is of a far more fundamental character than we supposed. September 11 wasn't the incredible action of an isolated group, a one-off strike masterminded by Osama Bin Laden. It was the product rather of a world-wide movement, with an ideology based on a misreading of Islam, whose roots were deep, which had been growing for years and with the ability to mount a radically different type of warfare requiring a radically different type of response. What we face is not a criminal conspiracy or even a fanatical but fringe terrorist organisation. We face something more akin to revolutionary Communism in its early and most militant phase. It is global. It has a narrative about the world and Islam's place within it that has a reach into most Muslim societies and countries. It adherents may be limited. Its sympathisers are not. It has states or at least parts of the governing apparatus of states that give it succour.
Its belief system may be, indeed is, utterly reactionary. But its methods are terrifyingly modern.

It has realised two things: the power of terrorism to cause chaos, hinder and displace political progress especially through suicide missions; and the reluctance of western opinion to countenance long campaigns, especially when the account it receives is via a modern media driven by the impact of pictures.

They now know that if a suicide bomber kills 100 completely innocent people in Baghdad, in defiance of the wishes of the majority of Iraqis who voted for a non-sectarian government, then the image presented to a western public is as likely to be, more likely to be, one of a failed western policy, not another outrage against democracy. In the months after 7/7, we had a debate in Britain as to whether foreign policy in Iraq or Afghanistan had "caused" the terrorism by inflaming Muslim opinion. The notion that removing two appalling dictatorships and replacing them with a UN backed process to democracy, with massive investment in reconstruction available if only the terrorism stopped, could in any justifiable sense "inflame" Muslim opinion when it was perfectly obvious that the Muslims in both countries wanted rid of both regimes and stand to gain enormously, if only they were allowed to, from their removal, is ludicrous. Yet a large part, even of non-Muslim opinion, essentially buys into that view.
So our enemy will see their strategic advantages as terrorism and time. They are not a conventional army. They can't be defeated by conventional means. This is the enemy our Armed Forces face today. The enemy knows something else also. That when they kill our soldiers, it provokes not just understandable grief and anguish, but resulting from that, a questioning of why we are "there"; what it's got to do with "us"; how can the struggle be worth the sacrifice in human terms.

Yet to retreat in the face of this threat would be a catastrophe. It would strengthen this global terrorism; proliferate it; expand its circle of sympathisers. Given the nature of it and how its roots developed, long before any of the recent controversies of foreign policy, such retreat would be futile. It would postpone but not prevent the confrontation.
So from the perspective of our Armed Forces, how do we define this new situation? The battle will be long. It has taken a generation for the enemy to grow. It will, in all probability take a generation to defeat.

The frontiers of our security no longer stop at the Channel. What happens in the Middle East affects us. What happens in Pakistan; or Indonesia; or in the attenuated struggles for territory and supremacy in Africa for example, in Sudan or Somalia. The new frontiers for our security are global. Our Armed Forces will be deployed in the lands of other nations far from home, with no immediate threat to our territory, in environments and in ways unfamiliar to them.

They will usually fight alongside other nations, in alliance with them; notably, but probably not exclusively with the USA.
Hardest of all, in fighting terrorism embedded in failed or failing states, against terrorists indifferent to their own lives as well as the lives of others, our forces will suffer casualties. Their families will be back home, anxious, worried, never knowing whether it will be them who receive the dreaded call.

The battle will be conducted in a completely new world of modern communication and media.
Twenty-five years ago, media reports came back from the Falklands irregularly, heavily controlled. During the first Gulf war, the media had restricted access and we were mesmerised by footage of cameras attached to the end of Cruise missiles. But now war is no longer something read in dispatches. It comes straight into the living room.

Take a website like Live Leak which has become popular with soldiers from both sides of the divide in both Afghanistan and Iraq. Operational documentary material, from their mobile phones or laptops, is posted on the site. These sometimes gruesome images are the unmediated reality of war. They provide a new source of evidence for journalists and commentators, by-passing the official accounts and records.

The combination of all these different dimensions, as I said earlier, transforms the context within which the military, politics and public opinion interact. For their part, the military and especially their families will feel they are being asked to take on a task of a different magnitude and nature. Any grievances, any issues to do with military life, will be more raw, more sensitive, more prone to cause resentment.

Public opinion will be divided, feel that the cost is too great, the campaign too long, and be unnerved by the absence of "victory" in the normal way they would reckon it. They will be constantly bombarded by the propaganda of the enemy, often quite sympathetically treated by their own media, to the effect that it's really all "our", that is the West's fault.
That, in turn, impacts on the feelings of our Armed Forces. They want public opinion not just behind them but behind their mission. They want the "people back home" to understand their value not just their courage.

And the politicians? I believe the risk here is quite the opposite of what most people would think. The parody of people in my position is of leaders who, gung-ho, launch their nations into ill-advised adventures without a thought for the consequences. The reality is we are those charged with making decisions in this new and highly uncertain world; trying, as best we can, to make the right decision. That's not to say we do so, but that is our motivation.

The risk here - and in the US where the future danger is one of isolationism not adventurism - is that the politicians decide it's all too difficult and default to an unstated, passive disengagement, that doing the right thing slips almost unconsciously into doing the easy thing."

The risk here - and in the US where the future danger is one of isolationism not adventurism - is that the politicians decide it's all too difficult and default to an unstated, passive disengagement, that doing the right thing slips almost unconsciously into doing the easy thing.
Many countries are already in this position. But the consequences for Britain are hugely significant. Before we know it and without anyone ever really deciding it, in a strategic way, the "hard" part of British foreign policy could be put to one side; the Armed Forces relegated to an essentially peacekeeping role and Britain's reach, effect and influence qualitatively reduced.
The irony is: the one group of people who I am sure do not want this to happen, are the men and women of our Armed Forces. They would be horrified by such a thought. The important thing for public opinion and therefore for politicians is at least to comprehend the choice.

There is a case for Britain in the early 21st Century, with its imperial strength behind it, to slip quietly, even graciously into a different role. We become leaders in the fight against climate change, against global poverty, for peace and reconciliation; and leave the demonstration of "hard" power to others. I do not share that case but there is quite a large part of our opinion that does. Of course, there will be those that baulk at the starkness of that choice. They will say yes in principle we should keep the "hard" power, but just not in this conflict or with that ally. But in reality, that's not how the world is.

The reason I am against this case, is that for me "hard" and "soft" power are driven by the same principles. The world is interdependent. That means we work in alliance with others. But it also means problems interconnect. Poverty in Africa can't be solved simply by the presence of aid. It needs the absence of conflict. Failed states threaten us as well as their own people. Terrorism destroys progress. Terrorism can't be defeated by military means alone. But it can't be defeated without it.

Global interdependence requires global values commonly or evenly applied. But sometimes force is necessary to get the space for those values to be applied: in Sierra Leone or Kosovo for example.

So, for me, the setting aside of "hard" power leads inexorably to the weakening of "soft" power. This is especially so given the very purpose of the threat against which today, force is exercised. This terrorism is an attack on our values. Its ideology is anti-democratic, anti-freedom, anti-everything that makes modern life so rich in possibility. When the Taleban murder a teacher in front of his class, as they did recently, for daring to teach girls; that is an act not just of cruelty but of ideology. Using force against them to prevent such an act is not "defence" in the traditional territorial sense of that word, but "security" in the broadest sense, an assertion of our values against theirs.

So my choice is for Armed forces that are prepared to engage in this difficult, tough, challenging campaign, to be warfighters as well as peacekeepers; for a British foreign policy keeps our American alliance strong and is prepared to project hard as well as soft power; and for us as a nation to be as willing to fight terrorism and pay the cost of that fight wherever it may be, as we are to be proud champions of the causes of peace in the Middle East, action against poverty, or the struggle to halt the degradation of our environment.

However, if we make that choice, then, recognising this is a new situation for our Armed Forces, there are new commitments necessary to make it work and make it fair. The covenant between Armed Forces, Government and people has to be renewed. For our part, in Government, it will mean increased expenditure on equipment, personnel and the conditions of our Armed Forces; not in the short run but for the long term.

On the part of the military, they need to accept that in a volunteer armed force, conflict and therefore casualty may be part of what they are called upon to face.
On the part of the public, they need to be prepared for the long as well as the short campaign, to see our participation alongside allies in such conflict not as an atavistic, misguided attempt to recapture past glories, but as a necessary engagement in order for us to protect our security and advance our interests and values in the modern world.

Indeed, for Government, domestically and internationally, our commitment has to go beyond our Armed Forces. In truth, this is a hearts and minds battle as much as military one. Reconstruction and reconciliation, development and governance are every bit as crucial in Iraq or Afghanistan as military might. Indeed the might is only effective as a means of making possible the political progress. We do this better than most countries, perhaps better than any. But even we have immense challenges to overcome; and in terms of international institutions capable of helping build a nation, the international community woefully short of where it needs to be. The answer to this should be the subject of another whole lecture. But here is where hard and soft power have to combine within one country or situation, so that the one reinforces the other. Military alliances, forged in circumstances of urgent danger, tend to work. Nation-building alliances are altogether harder; but completely critical to the military success.

It is not easy to have this debate with the swirl of recent publicity about the conditions of our Armed Forces - however wrong or exaggerated it might be; or when we are in the middle of two deeply controversial engagements of our troops. Yet this is the right time to debate and decide it precisely because of such stormy argument.

The reason for the storm is not this or that grievance or conflict. Its origin is the new situation we face. The post Cold War threat is now clear. The world has changed again. We must change with it. I have set out the choice I believe we should make. I look forward to the debate.