This morning’s reports that the nuclear submarine HMS Astute has run aground off the Isle of Skye ends a week of dire news for the Royal Navy, which saw its aircraft carrier capability and its maritime air assets slashed in Tuesday’s Strategic Defence Review (SDR).
Britain’s new National Security Strategy clearly lays out the paradigms within which the Army must conceptualise future conflicts, writes Capt. Patrick Bury.
The decision by David Cameron to appoint Colonel Jim Morris as his new Military Adviser answers some questions, but raises others, reports Capt. Patrick Bury.
Wars, like all violence, tend to pull us towards absolutes. We either win, as in the Second World War, or lose, as in Vietnam or with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The former soldier in me is easily ‘pulled’ into seeing the conflict in Afghanistan as a matter of absolutes, of simple ‘Cause, Effect and Solution’. But the analyst in me sees things differently.
President Obama’s timetabling of the forthcoming withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan has been described as playing into the hands of the Taliban. Retiring US Marine General James Conway yesterday acknowledged that the July 2011 timeframe had given fighters a ‘morale boost’.
Unless there is a change in how it perceives the nature of warfare, the West will lose the war in Afghanistan, despite declaring victory, and spend the next 10 years in splendid isolation wondering what went wrong.
Former Captain in the Royal Irish Regiment, Patrick Bury, writes exclusively for Left Foot Forward on the way ahead in Afghanistan, and the options available for the coalition forces.
Despite all the hyperbole of generals overstepping their constitutional role, no one has asked how such a blatant mistake by one of the U.S’s top generals, Stanley McChrystal, came to pass.
The attributes that make for fine paratroopers do not make them best suited to complex situations, such as containing protestors.
The path ahead remains uncertain and dangerous for the brave British soldiers patrolling Helmand’s dusty and IED strewn roads and alleyways.
