Toad comes home
THE CUTS-1: DEFENCE
JOCK BRUCE-GARDYNE
`There are,' according to Lord Curzon, `two constituents of successful diplomacy . . . one is knowing one's own mind, the other is letting other people know it.' It's not a bad definition, even if it is more than forty years old. By this standard it is a long time since this country could be said to have had a successful diplo- macy. We have appeared to our allies as a country with global pretensions we are unable to sustain and European ambitions we are un- able to fulfil, uncertain in our own minds where we are going, or why.
Under the present Government we have evolved what, in Lord Curzon's terms, might best be described as an art of counter-diplo- macy : we have been innocent of an interna- tional strategy of our own, and we have made sure that this innocence has been imparted to everyone else. As the bulk of our defence effort has been concentrated, not on what is properly the subject of defence—the preservation of the integrity of our own territory—but on the exe- cution of a job lot of inherited involvements which we have dignified by the name of a foreign policy, the aching void at the centre of our international activities has been most obviously exposed in our successive statements on defence.
If, on Tuesday, the Prime Minister had been announcing the outcome of a coherent review of our international policies—a realisation of what we wanted to do in the 1970s and a state- ment of our intent to our allies and others—it would have deserved high marks. 'Our security lies fundamentally in Europe': this, surely, is indisputable. There are those who argue that our access to essential raw materials, our over- seas investments, the willingness of countries overseas to retain their reserves in sterling, and the territorial integrity of former colonial territories may be set at risk by the decision to withdraw from the Middle East and Asia. But it is at least as strongly arguable that the reverse is true—that all four will actually be safer for the departure of British troops. What cannot be disputed is that government expenditure overseas across the exchanges has, over the past fifteen years, risen far faster than our ability to sustain it, and contributed in major degree to our recurrent balance of payments troubles. What is also incontrovertible is that if we retain a commitment to defend, for example, Malaysia, we may find ourselves suddenly put back on the escalator which carried the Government's overseas deficit from £227m to £433m between 1959 and 1964. In other words, in extricating ourselves from Asia we are eliminating open-ended spending commitments of uncertain value. It is nonsense to suggest that we are setting our own security at risk—which is what defence should be about.
There are those who are willing reluctantly to accept the withdrawal from the Far East, but who would—like the Government itself in 1966 --draw the line at the Persian Gulf. Here we are accused of leaving a `power vacuum,' and of jeopardising oil investments worth thousands of millions in order to save a modest £20m a year. We are reminded of our success in saving Kuwait from Kassem (though not, of course, of our failure to prevent the cut-off of our oil supplies last summer). Well, this is not the only `power vacuum' in the world: what about Africa? Perhaps General de Gaulle will oblige by stepping in—and small thanks he will get from London-or Washington if he does.
Certainly the current cost of our Gulf bases is small: but so was the cost of our base in Singapore before `confrontation' came along. On the other hand, it seems to be overlooked that when Iraq was threatening Kuwait it was allowing BP and Shell freely to exploit their oil- fields on Iraq's own territory. Would we send in the Brigade of Guards to protect the 1PC concessions from expropriation? And are we really so indebted to General de Gaulle just now that we feel it incumbent upon us to pro- vide a military cover behind which the French companies can take over oilfields formerly belonging to us?
Equally it must be appropriate, if we are to withdraw from the Far East and the Persian Gulf by 1971, to cancel the order for the F Ills. These planes were ordered to enable us to give sophisticated air support to our own troops and those of our allies in the Far and Middle East. Justification for the F III in a European context was palpably an afterthought; and to go through with the purchase in order to pro- tect future offset contracts is like buying a new washing-machine not because you want it but in order to get the coupon for a dishwasher competition which goes with it.
But the drastic reductions in defence expenditure announced by the Prime Minister were not the outcome of a coherent review of our global strategy; nor did they constitute a clear statement of intent to our allies. They were the outcome of three weeks of intensive horse-trading between )he different spending Ministries—swapping 2s 6d on the prescription for total withdrawal from the Persian Gulf. They were presented as the forward cutting edge of the axe to `make devaluation work': yet Mr Wilson admitted that their effect would be to increase defence expenditure in 1968-69, and that the major savings would not arise before the early 1970s, by which time devalua- tion will either have succeeded, or it will simply be recalled as one more milestone on the road to economic collapse.
Fortunately the fact that the defence cuts were totally unconnected with what Mr Wilson should have been doing on Tuesday does not in itself destroy their validity in the context of what the nation should be aiming to do in the 1970s. But a far more serious criticism is that they have been presented to our allies as the outcome of nothing more positive than a series of Pavlovian reactions to conflicting economic stimuli and political pressures.
The result is that even in - the crudest economic terms the value of the decisions arrived at is eroded. Pace Mr Lee Kuan Yew and the Singapore Chamber of Commerce, it was difficult, before Tuesday, to envisage a method of cutting government expenditure overseas which would actually damage what remains - of international confidence in the pound and the British currency. Now it seems we underestimated the Labour government's genius for self-destruction. It has succeeded in presenting the programme in such a way as to convince foreign observers not merely that we were ratting on them (this was both inevitable and, in cases such as Australia, who still spends a lower proportion of its gross national. product on its own defence than Britain does, unjustifi- able) but that we had abandoned any attempt to dominate events and were content to drift rudderless and purposeless before the tides.
The same applies to our capacity for self- defence. Troops repatriated are to be demo- bilised, and if our security lies in Europe we evidently expect it to be guaranteed by others. We are asked to believe that we cannot afford to sustain armed forces of the size of those of Turkey or Italy, or more than half those of France: but at the same time 'that `there is no question of reducing the strength or effective- ness of the Hong Kong Garrison.' So Mao had better have some second thoughts.
Yet although the defence cuts are indefen- sible in motivation and in presentation alike, they could offer us an opportunity. The 1968 Defence White Paper, clue in a few weeks' time, could, at long last, start the process of equip- ping us with a defence policy and capability fitted to our needs. Freed from the prospect of role-ing about the world, punchdrunk on nostalgie de rempire, we could begin to re- discover the technique of defending ourselves. We could move in the direction of a European nuclear deterrent, and of conven- tional forces commensurate with our ambition to be one of the dominant powers of the Euro- pean continent, equipped with weapons of European design and fabrication.
Of course this is not what will happen. Instead the next consumer boom in anticipa- tion of the budget will blow us off course and lead to a gritty, purposeful, frank decision to scrap the Gurkhas altogether.
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