Britain and Afghanistan - Part Two

PREAMBLE TO PART TWO
I apologise in advance. I didn't set out to write a book. This was meant to be two short blogs on Afghanistan, but I found it impossible to make the case I wanted to without ranging into wider and wider considerations. In the deadlines I set myself, it is impossible to say exactly what I wanted, and to edit effectively. Please regard this as a piece of rushed journalism - alternatively, ignore it entirely because life is too short.

But I hope you don't, because what I have to say matters, even if I am not best qualified to say it, and even if I have said it inadequately. Scotland is in there somewhere - be patient. If you have got this far, your heart may sink when I tell you that this is not the final part - there will be a Part Three and Last.

I hope you will bear with me, because I believe that Scotland is on the brink of a new significance in world politics, and will speak with a voice that the world will hear, before it is too late, and this is my inadequate but heartfelt contribution to that voice.

THE ARMED FORCES AND POLITICS
An independent democratic state requires three things - an elected body to govern the country, a police force to enforce the law within the country and armed forces to protect the country from external threats to its autonomy.

Everything else flows from these three elements, including the judiciary, the apparatus of law enforcement, the education system, the health services, etc. And these three elements flow from the will of the people, expressed principally at the ballot box, but also through other procedures and mechanisms, including local government, referendums and peaceful demonstration.

I am a democrat, and I am neither a pacifist nor an anarchist - I believe in firmly in all three of these components of a state, including in an independent Scotland.

My independent Scotland will have an army, a navy and an air force, and although their principal role will be the defence of Scotland against attack or invasion of its borders (its coastal borders – I am not envisaging invasion from my friends in England) the armed forces will play their part within the European community, and although Scotland will not be a member of Nato, it will participate within Nato forces, and under Nato command structures where appropriate. (This is the current situation for some countries within the ISF in Afghanistan who are not Nato members.)

The present involvement of Britain in Afghanistan, with the highest commitment of service personnel and equipment by far of any of the countries supporting America, a commitment wholly disproportionate to the United Kingdom’s population and resources, has been undertaken for a complex mix of reasons and motives.

It is not the simple justification advanced by Tony Blair when he took the country into Afghanistan, nor the rather confused and self-serving rationale being advanced by Gordon Brown today.

To fully understand this over-commitment – leaving aside the question for the moment of whether we should be there at all – requires an examination of the complex role of the armed forces – let’s call them the military – in a democracy.

There used to be a pattern in the relationship of a country to its armed forces. In wartime or times of national emergency, there was a natural tendency to give them increased respect, status, and a kind of hero worship. When the war or the emergency was over, that tended to dissipate.

However unfair that might have seemed - and sometimes was - to returning servicemen, either on demobilisation or return to peacetime duties in the regular professional forces, it was probably a healthy, age-old process. There was a threat, the people took up arms, went to war, the threat ended, the people put down their arms and returned to peaceful pursuits, leaving a few professionals on guard.

When I donned the khaki for my National Service just eight years after the Second World War had ended, I remember being disappointed that the uniform didn't impress the girls, it didn't help me when hitchhiking home, and I was regarded at best neutrally, and at worse with suspicion by older people. My recollection had been of the respect and affection show to men and women in uniform during the war.

My older cousins, veterans of The Highland Light Infantry and the RAF, and my uncle, a first-world war veteran, laughed at my complaints.

"The public and the politicians only care about you - are only nice to you - when they want you to die for them, Peter. Be glad of the times when they don't care - you'll live longer that way ..."

THE MILITARY CAREER
The reality is that a soldier, sailor or airman can only rely on the continued, unfailing, unselfish concern of family, comrades and good NCOs and officers - the rest can be self-serving and very, very transitory.

At the moment - and for the foreseeable future - we will have professional servicemen and women. It is likely that we will never again have a conscript army, navy or airforce.

It is worth examining the motives of those who choose the armed forces as a career.

Firstly, there are those who are destined for it by family tradition, often the deeply felt tradition of the regiment or corps. (This has been severely tested in Scotland of late by the loss or amalgamation of ancient Scottish regiments.) This perhaps is the purest form of armed service, not least because those who are serving or have served know all too well the risks that their children and grandchildren will expose themselves too.

One army paterfamilias of my acquaintance said to me many years ago "There is no such thing as a peacetime soldier, there is only a soldier in peacetime waiting for conflict." He offered this as a cautionary maxim to those who might be contemplating a forces career as a safe peacetime option, and he made sure his own children understood it before they signed up.

That takes me to the next category - those with no family or regimental tradition who believe the armed forces offer an exciting, challenging career, with prospects of promotion. This category, by definition must include some who have a genuine wish to serve their country, even though they have no family tradition of such service.

The last category is one that has existed throughout the ages - those who are driven to a career in the armed forces because they have no other viable option, or believe they haven't - the economic volunteer.

But whatever their motivation, all must fight and die if required, and all deserve unqualified respect and full support from the society that endorsed the standing forces and elected the government that places them in harm's way. (Such respect and support does not preclude criticism of the conflict itself - a political and moral judgement.)

They did not choose the conflict, they did not order the invasion - theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do or die, at the behest of politicians, transitory creations of the electorate, sitting safely at home, fiddling their expenses and defrauding the taxpayer, and thereby reducing the defence budget for equipping the forces.

Now there are those who argue that professional soldiers chose their career freely, and therefore accept the risks. But society puts them in harm's way because their role is vital, just as it is with all emergency service personnel who place themselves at risk. It is therefore crucial that they are only asked to place their lives at risk for essential reasons, where there is no other choice for the state, and that they are fully and unstintingly resourced.

The United Kingdom, the Labour Government, the British Parliament and the Ministry of Defence have failed our service personnel on all counts.

Society accepts the all-too vulnerable humanity of the military in respect of their personal safety - their lives - but often forgets other aspects of their humanity, or worse, remembers it and exploits it.

THE MILITARY AS AN ORGANISATION
The military is an organisation - a large, complex organisation, staffed by ordinary people who are asked to do extraordinary things. They have the same need for challenge, fulfilment, excitement, career progression as any professional in any civil occupation. And there are glittering prizes to be pursued - rank, status, power, recognition, even ennoblement. After a successful military career, there are even more glittering prizes in civilian life - industry, commerce, politics.

These prizes are for the few in the military, but a highly influential few. And, just as in any civil or public service organisation, they are facilitated by access to key opportunities to demonstrate competence and the growth of the organisation. Herein lies the problem facing the state, and herein lie the dangers. (More about this threat later.)



The dilemma of the state is this - the military forces maintained by the taxpayer should be the smallest required to the job envisaged for them, and they should be equipped to the optimum standard to do it. That job is primarily to protect the state and its people against external threats, but a secondary requirement is to contribute support to alliances and political groupings that the state has freely entered into.

The United Kingdom is part of the European Union, part of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), part of the United Nations, and sees itself as having a special relationship with the United States of America.

An independent Scotland will be part of the European Community as an independent member state, part of the United Nations, and would see itself as having a special relationship with America.

It would not be a member of Nato (because it is opposed to Nato's policy of nuclear deterrence) but it would judge - as an independent state - whether or not to participate in any Nato-led task force, under Nato command if appropriate, just as it would participate in UN task forces and peacekeeping forces.

Needless to say, the opposition parties try to misrepresent and distort this position.




So the defence forces of a state should be the optimum necessary to defend against threats to the state, and to fulfil treaty obligations. But a key question arises from this laudable objective - how to recognise and respond to threats to the state?

THREATS TO THE STATE
In a simpler, but no less violent world, it was fairly straightforward - a nation was threatened on its borders or in its trade activities, and that threat came from another nation or alliance of nations with expansionist motivations - the impulse to Empire, imperialism - or a nation seeking to recover by force territory and spheres of influence that it saw as its own.

In the 21st century, in an era of global communications, global trade, global finance, dependence on fossil fuels and global warming, the threats are much more complex.

To further complicate matters, an ancient curse has been revisited on the world - the curse of religious wars with an ethnic basis - with a deep, irrational (in the true sense of the word) element at their heart - conflicts rooted in dogma and faith (belief without evidence), not subject to any earthly authority, but to holy texts and the writ of spiritual leaders who claim special access to the minds of the Deity, as defined by their beliefs. There are those who see the world divided into infidels and crusaders, dependent on their ethnic and religious perspectives. And astonishingly, they are all the people of Abraham - Christians, Jews and Muslims - the People of the Book.

The other great world religions, Hinduism, Buddhism and Confucianism - and the secular, humanist world, adhering to no religion - are to some degree reduced to the role of spectators at this internecine conflict, but are sucked in despite themselves.

This is difficult enough, but into the deadly brew is stirred the greed of men - politicians, industrialists, military careerists and religious demagogues who see a route to power and wealth by exaggerating the threat to the state, and creating a situation of permanent conflict, of permanent threat - a kind of global paranoia.

THE PARASITES WHO PREY ON THE MILITARY
No ethical professional soldier seeks war, nor glories in war. Having known a number of professional soldiers over my life, I believe that the vast majority are both ethical and professional, cut from the same human cloth as the rest of us, but prepared to die in the discharge of their duties.

But that very humanity means that they are subject to the same temptations and frailties as the rest of us, and some succumb, as happens in any walk of life - the Law, the Church, government, public life and industry and commerce.

There have always been people in society willing to exploit these frailties, to profit by them. This is the way of the world, but it is a way that now bids fair to destroy our world.

Who are they? How do they profit from conflict? How do they operate?

Firstly, let me say that there are people in politics, in the Church, in the Law, in government, in opposition, in journalism, in the Arts, in industry, in finance, in banking in the arms industry itself who are motivated by the highest standards of ethics, probity and concern for their fellow man. But there seems to be fewer and fewer of them, and those few are becoming dispirited and defeatist.

What I have to say below is addressed to them only in the sense that they are well placed to try and bring a halt to what is happening.

War is hell on earth, a man-made hell. It is a traumatic experience for most human beings who experience it directly, and it is a tragedy for many. War is a last resort, if you believe in the concept of a just war (as I do) and for those who do not accept that concept, it is always a criminal folly.

But war is also profitable for some, and of those, some - not all - consciously and deliberately profit from war's horrors by exploiting them and manipulating the frequency, scale and duration of conflicts.

War (I use the term in the sense of any armed conflict against another, under whatever name, on whatever pretext and whether or not there has been a formal declaration of war) requires supplies, equipment and arms, and companies exist - and must exist - to fill these requirements. Some of those supplies and equipment are to clothe, feed, house and transport personnel.

But some of that equipment is designed to destroy physical objects and some is designed to kill human beings, sometimes both at the same time. They are machines and weapons of death - the death of people.

No other legitimate industry faces the moral and ethical problems of the arms industry - they are unique, although related problems exist for any supplier of equipment and/or services that depend on armed conflict, and similar problems exist for those engaged in reconstruction work after the conflict is ended. (Only criminal organisations marketing an illegal product or service have such factors present, and by definition, they don't have moral and ethical problems. Ethical dilemmas are experienced in other legitimate industries, but they are not central to the supply of the product or service.)


The arms industry's sales volume is directly proportional to the number and scale of conflicts, or the perceived potential of conflict in the world at any given time. The industry therefore has a direct vested interest in war, conflict, in mutual suspicion between states, and, to put it bluntly, rampant imperialism and aggression, and rampant paranoia.

In America, the paranoia of the individual citizen about personal and domestic security, accompanied by a superficial and self-serving rationale about the right of the citizen to bear arms under the Constitution - expertly fostered and exploited by the National Rifle Association - has created a society in which the paranoid fantasies have become real, because of the number of individually owned firearms in the country. Many concerned Americans and many American politicians know this, but few are prepared to take the electoral risk of challenging it frontally, of grasping the nettle of gun law.


This domestic paranoia, almost peculiar to American society, is mirrored in American foreign policy. It is increasingly infecting the world, and the Britain of Blair and Brown has taken the UK well down this road.

As things stand at the moment, the special relationship, originally rooted in shared heritage and culture, and gratitude on Britain's part for America's role in the Second World War, is now increasingly rooted in a shared delusion.

But there are two America's - and Barack Obama's election as president offers a ray of hope. For the next four years at least, the other America, the life-loving, generous, open-hearted, pragmatic America holds power. At this unique moment in history, the world must hold its breath and pray to whatever God's it believes in.

The arms industry has no trouble finding - if it wants to - others within the state who profit directly from war and conflict. To say that they profit from it is not to say that they necessarily want to profit from it, or rejoice in the death, dismemberment and incineration of their fellow human beings, but profit they do.

In previous times, this fact was recognised more openly and less hypocritically. Anyone who has read the wonderful historical novels of Patrick O'Brian - the Aubrey/Maturin chronicles, set in early nineteenth century, can experience vicariously the frustration and relative poverty of naval officers in peacetime, and their eager embrace of war and conflict as a route to fulfilment, promotion and riches.

These were good men, brave men, infinitely human men who accepted whatever situation the politicians sent them into, men who were willing to fight and die for their country, but were equally ready to accept and enthusiastically embrace the rewards and advancement that fate might also bring them.

Such men and women exist at senior level within every branch of the armed services - they are, in the vast majority of cases, of high integrity and personal values, but they have a career, and they seek advancement and material security like any other professional. They can rarely be openly corrupted, but their moral benchmarks can become less defined, less certain - they can be seduced, especially when those who control or can influence their promotion and advancement and their income are experts at seductive argument.

If you doubt this, take a look at the number of senior officers and former officers on the boards of companies directly engaged in the arms trade, or related to it. Take a look at the lucrative consultancies on the same companies.

Examine the former offcers and senior officers now in politics, and examine the register of members interests. Consider the revolving doors that exist between the miltary, the Ministry of Defence and senior appointments in arms and arms-related companies, in companies specialising in military equipment, in companies engaged in the supply of mercenaries and temporary personnel to combat zones.

Of the three main categories of persons who might allow their vested interest in war and conflict to blur their motives and their values, the military comes way behind politicians and arms dealers, but they are there, nonetheless. Britain is currently comparatively free of another, fourth category - the fundamentalist religious leaders who advocate conflict, and profit handsomely from it, but their day is coming if things don't change, and sinister forces from America and from the Middle East are already insidiously spreading their poison - a perversion of their religions' teachings - in the UK.

END OF PART TWO

In the final part, I will try to pull together these arguments and relate them to Afghanistan and Scotland. Wish me luck - I'll sure as hell need it ...



THE MILITARY/INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX
Eisenhower warned, almost fifty years ago, against the dangers of the military industrial complex. This famous general, a professional soldier of the highest order, who led the Allied force to victory in the greatest invasion the world has ever seen, President of the great nation of America, was also a wise, brave and far-seeing man. I commend the full text of his speech to you, but at least consider these key parts of his prophetic message.

DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER, President of the United States of America
Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of ploughshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defence. We have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defence establishment. We annually spend on military security alone more than the net income of all United States corporations.

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Now this conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual -- is felt in every city, every Statehouse, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet, we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources, and livelihood are all involved. So is the very structure of our society.

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In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defence with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.