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We all live in a nuclear submarine

Sep 11

Posted by James in Defence, Holyrood, Westminster | 31 Comments

Astute before launchThe SNP are an anti-nuclear party, we’re always told. For instance, they’re notionally against civilian nuclear, although Jim Mather was happy in the last session to back an extension of their life in the last session. And opposition to Trident is billed as almost their second touchstone of policy, after the Holy Grail itself. In fact, some have told me that independence is primarily essential because there’s no other way to get Trident out of Scotland’s waters.

So what about nuclear-powered submarines? The Navy’s Clyde base is now expected to be home to 11 of the new reactor-tastic Astute class of sub, up from 5. As Rob Edwards reports today, the safety risks from these subs are growing as the cuts bite. Surely the SNP would be against this move?

In fact, their submission (word doc) to the UK Government’s defence review states “The decision to base the UK Astute class submarines at HMNB Clyde is a welcome one and is likely to see a significant increase in the number of personnel based there. The Scottish Government remains committed to supporting this through consideration of devolved consequences and a partnership approach to planning for example in terms of health and education.”

Seriously? This is about jobs? Each boat has less than a hundred crew, and supposedly costs around £1.3bn, but if you don’t think there are many more hidden costs there I expect you also believe the final cost of an additional Forth road bridge will be just £1.6bn. That’s a job creation scheme? We could have insulated every single home in Scotland for less money than one of these white elephants.

What’s worse, although they’re currently only holding conventional weapons, Lee Willett at the Royal United Services Institute thinks Astute might be the British military’s fallback Trident launch platform of choice. As he puts it, “Thus, it is reasonable to assume that Astute is big enough to carry strategic weapons if required, with the only changes to the hull coming in the form of the modular payloads. Perhaps Astute was designed with this eventuality in mind?“ Either way, SNP Ministers are laying out the welcome mat and apparently not asking any questions.

Obviously you’d expect a Green comment, as the only other anti-nuclear party at Holyrood, and here’s what Patrick had to say:

“The majority of anti-nuclear and anti-war Scots will be shocked to discover that the SNP are making the case on the quiet for more nuclear submarines to come to the Clyde, despite years of posturing in the opposite direction. SNP Ministers are yet again pretending you can have your cake while also eating it, just as they have done on RAF bases. There’s no credible way to combine a nuclear unionism – for the supposed jobs – with an anti-war nationalism designed to keep the activists happy. The truth is that nuclear submarines are exactly as inefficient at creating jobs as they are for defending Scotland, and it’s time the SNP started speaking with one voice on this issue.”

But more alarming for SNP Ministers will be the way the charge against their position has been led by one of their own – Stephen Maxwell, a former vice-chair of the SNP, who Rob quotes as saying: “On its current direction of evolution, SNP’s defence policy threatens to match the level of incoherence already evident in UK policy”, and that his own party’s policy “is clearly inconsistent with its declared policy of making Scotland nuclear-free” and “seriously compromising” the case for independence. That’s despite the official quote in Rob’s story again making that case – that independence is partly about a nuclear-free Scotland.

I bet there’ll be others at Holyrood thinking the same thing, even if most backbenchers are still afraid to speak out against the leadership. The joke is unavoidable – Alex Salmond’s got where he is today with some astute decision-making, but this looks anything but.

After Libya, the SNP cannot remain anti-Nato

Aug 23

Posted by Jeff in Defence | 52 Comments

This week marks a tipping point in Libya’s future. A tyrant reduced to playing hide and seek with the subjects that he was ruthlessly crushing a matter of weeks ago, a wave of jubilation celebrating decades of oppression finally being lifted and a country ready to be reborn.

Closer to home, this week may also see a tipping point for the SNP. Its judgement over being consistently anti-NATO deserves being called into question in light of recent events, which it surely will by opposition parties and the MSM before too long. An alliance between advanced nations where an attack on one is deemed to be an attack on all can only be a positive thing as, alongside the UN and the EU, it bonds together countries with the resources and the might to ensure global stability is maintained.

The SNP sees Nato in a different light, as a nuclear-weapon wielding relic of a bygone age when Russia was supposedly the bogeyman and ‘first strike capability’ was all that mattered. This dark imagining is a sci-fi nightmare that not only won’t happen, but is certainly not any more likely to happen through Nato’s mere existence.

It is testament to how sure-footed a politician Alex Salmond is that the First Minister’s “unpardonable folly” comments back in 1999 regarding the Nato bombing of Kosovo remain his most famous gaffe, one that Salmond himself regrets. However, that famous phrase has only served to regularly harden the belief across Scotland that the SNP is anti-Nato, even if there is strong support within the party to change this policy.

There is hardly a starker contrast between the SNP’s view of Nato and much of the rest of the world’s than the following two passages; the second a speech on Monday from President Barack Obama and the first a 2009 from Scotland’s whiter, younger, more Nationalist version, Jamie Hepburn MSP.

*S3M-3607*♦* Jamie Hepburn: 60th Anniversary of NATO
That the Parliament notes that 4 April 2009 marks the 60th anniversary of the founding of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO); recognises that the continued presence of NATO serves as a destabilising factor in the West’s relationship with Russia; notes that NATO relies heavily on the continued use of nuclear weapons as part of its operational capacity; recalls that the first Secretary General of NATO, Lord Ismay, described the organisation’s purpose as being “to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down”; further recognises that the world has fundamentally changed since the founding of NATO in 1949, and, given that the Cold War is meant to be over, believes that the organisation has no useful purpose in the modern world.

Barack Obama, 22nd August 2011
To our friends and allies, the Libyan intervention demonstrates what the international community can achieve when we stand together as one — although the efforts in Libya are not yet over. NATO has once more proven that it is the most capable alliance in the world and that its strength comes from both its firepower and the power of our democratic ideals. And the Arab members of our coalition have stepped up and shown what can be achieved when we act together as equal partners. Their actions send a powerful message about the unity of our effort and our support for the future of Libya.

The independence referendum may be some way off but I cannot see the SNP winning many friends by remaining so steadfastly opposed to Nato and the strategic options that it provides so soon after the organisation has enjoyed such clear successes, such as the Libyan operations in 2011.

Anyway, an independent Scotland pulling out of Nato is possibly the worst possible example of realpolitik that one could dare to consider. Let’s break down the timeline for how it would go:

– Scotland releases Libyan Lockerbie bomber and convicted murderer of numerous Americans, to outrage from the US
– America funds and organises a successful series of Nato bombing raids that results in dictator Gaddafi being deposed
– Scotland celebrates its independence and, on behalf of the new country, President Salmond says he looks forward to working constructively with the rest of the world and boosting Scotland’s international profile
– Scotland leaves Nato

Seems unlikely, doesn’t it?

In the military, the best course of action is often short and sharp, which is precisely how the SNP’s U-turn on an independent Scotland’s relationship with Nato should be if the they want to avoid this being a harmful distraction to the party’s referendum campaign.

It’s time for the SNP to kill this unnecessary sacred cow and accept Nato for what it is. Anything else is, yes you guessed it, ‘unpardonable folly’.

In defence of a Scottish Defence

Jul 25

Posted by Jeff in Defence | 31 Comments

One of the few strong attractions of independence for me is the chance to backpedal on our island’s collective delusions of grandeur and to better reflect Scottish thinking in our policies – that we don’t rule the world with either a carrot or a stick. I did a calculation in a recent blog post that if the UK reduced spending on defence to Scandinavian levels, putting confidence in the UN/Nato, then we would save £24.4bn a year. Scotland’s share of that saving would presumably be around £2.4bn each year.

So I was initially dismayed by the SNP’s reaction to the closure of Leuchars and Kinloss as air bases. We pay too much for Defence relative to other nations of our size and we can’t have it both ways, we can’t seek to save money from no longer being the world’s policeman while protesting about cuts in Defence. Maybe this ‘grudge and grievance’ charge against the SNP stacks up after all.

However, that dismay lifted when I read Jennifer Dempsie’s excellent piece in the Scotland on Sunday. Jennifer makes a compelling argument in favour of a Scottish Army in light of the disproportionate level of cuts and under-spend that Scotland has suffered via the Defence Budget in the past decade.

If people are blinkered to make comparisons between Scotland and England when there’s a whole wide world out there then I for one am equally guilty in regularly citing Scandinavian countries as the perfect place for Scotland to copy, though recent events alone show that they are not insulated from the most unimaginable of horrors. On defence spending however I do believe that they have the right balance in terms of GDP spend and how safe the citizens seem to feel, particularly given how likely (or not likely) an attack on the peaceful Scandinavians would be. Would Scotland be as at risk of a repeat of the Glasgow Airport attacks if it was visibly moving away from the imperialist Britannia of old? We can’t know for sure but there are further benefits that would accrue from such a move.

The UK spends 2.7% of GDP on defence while Sweden spends 1.2%, Norway 1.6% and Denmark 1.4%. Jennifer stated in her article that “the Royal Norwegian Air Force operates more than 117 aircraft from seven airbases, the Royal Danish Air Force, which operates more than 111 aircraft from three airbases, and the Royal Swedish Air Force, which operates more than 187 aircraft from seven airbases.”

Scotland paid too high a price for forays into Iraq and Afghanistan without a sizeable Allied force and Scotland still pays too high a price for holding nuclear weapons in our waters. The numbers above prove beyond reasonable doubt that we can operate more than one measly air base in an independent Scotland if we rearranged our priorities away from playing the world like a board game, away from army boys wanting ever shinier toys, to a more peaceable, Scandinavian model where we involve ourselves in foreign missions in lower numbers and with a broader European/global consensus as to when action is necessary, while still maintaining a strong proud record of air defence and knowledge.

Based on a Scandinavian model, a Scottish defence budget would be less than the Scottish share of a UK budget and consequently would provide hundreds of millions of change leftover after keeping Leuchars and Kinloss as the air bases that the local community wants them to be.

With the debate around independence bizarrely focussing on Britishness in recent weeks, leading to Pete Wishart’s welcome rebuttal on Better Nation the other day, I can only hope that the public doesn’t lose sight of the facts and figures that shows what the pros and cons of a separate Scotland actually are.

The flaws and failings of Armed Forces Weekend

Jun 25

Posted by The Burd in Defence, Society | 74 Comments

AFDIt’s Armed Forces Weekend and it has two purposes, apparently.  It aims to raise “public awareness of the contribution made to our country by those who serve and have served in Her Majesty’s Armed Forces”. But it also “gives the nation (sic) an opportunity to Show Your Support for the men and women who make up the Armed Forces community: from currently serving troops to Service families and from veterans to cadets”.

Helpfully the website suggests ways to do so.  We can see, thanks to a map of Great Britain and lots of little Union flags, where there are flag raising ceremonies, beating the retreats and marches to head along to.  There’s a page with suggestions on the sorts of parties to hold among your family and friends if you cannot find an offical event to participate in – and advice on how to share your photos.  There’s a Facebook page for you to visit to show your support and a AFD Goodies page where you can purchase bunting, hand sized flags and big banners, all emblazoned with more of red, white and blue and big bold statements like “honour our armed forces past and present”.

Is my distaste for all this really so transparent?  Good.

It’s not as though I’m a pacifist.  I was once, borne of natural anti-authoritarian sentiment but affirmed by the study of various wars and their impacts on populations and politics as a history student.  But I do accept that there are sometimes wars that need to be fought and that having a well-resourced armed forces is as relevant to a nation adopting neutrality as much as a pugilistic bent.

And it’s not even the political distortion inherent in the designation of a weekend for Armed Forces, nor in the language and symbols used to sell the concept.  Nope, I can see through their cunning plan.  Let them wrap themselves in the Union flag and attempt to make us all feel like a single nation in the process.

Moreover, I can see through the attempts at cod psychology.  That if we do not get involved or somehow “show our support”, ergo, we are against our armed forces.  That the bigger geo-political issues should not get in the way of acknowledging that these people are brave actors on our behalf, doing a job most of us would baulk at.  To not participate is to imply that we do not agree with these notions.  In some politicians and generals’ tiny minds.

My issue is with the need for it at all.  I grew up honouring the contribution made by those who go to war on our behalf.  It’s a bit of a tradition in my family for starters, so I have close up and personal accounts to inform me.  And even as a teenager, in some kind of anti-rebel rebellious stance, I always made sure to attend the Remembrance Sunday service and silence at the local cenotaph.  Somehow, it seemed like the least I could do, for all those holders of familiar surnames imprinted immortally on its walls.  So many of them, far too young.

We do not need an Armed Forces day or weekend to honour their contribution;  we have Remembrance day for that.  And because of its attachment to the Armistice of World War One, we are encouraged to place our remembrance in its proper context.  That the greatest thing to celebrate and honour – always – is peace and the ceasing of battle.

The thing that really sticks in my craw?  The idea that by purchasing a little bit of plastic tat and waving it enthusiastically at marching ranks in a parade, we are honouring these men and women.  The whole concept of this weekend is designed to seal over the cracks and hide the inconvenient truth.

That still we allow our politicians to play fast and loose with people’s lives by sending them into illegal, inappropriate and ill-thought out conflagrations.  That we are quite content to destroy people’s lives, homes and communities – not here but in whatever amphitheatre we have chosen for the purpose of flexing our muscles – because the greater global good somehow demands it.

Far from here, it is easy to forget that the biggest casualties of war, no matter how just, are women, children and old people.  Needless to say, we pull out when reconstruction is still a planner’s dream and invest little in repairing the physical, emotional and mental damage inflicted on civilian populations.  No amount of the handing out of sweeties to weans repairs the trauma caused by fear and loss dominating your life over a sustained period.

Neither are we particularly mindful of the trauma sustained by our armed forces.  Oh, they get better NHS treatment than before but still it is down to charities to attempt to repair the obvious and hidden damage.  And this veneration of everything armed forces is double-edged for them.  Sure, the media are more willing to promote their stories and their cause but a whole host of new charities has sprung up spreading the jam of their fundraising efforts still further.  Even big business has jumped on the bandwagon -  Tesco is currently running a goodies parcel initiative, whereby you pay and they get the credit.  Ultimately it results in less funding from all our pockets for vital recovery and rehab work with veterans.

There is something distasteful too at the very idea that we – a richly resourced kingdom in so many ways – should be supporting our armed forces by sending home comforts to the front line.  There is little honour in paying people a pittance for doing the most dangerous job there is, of wrangling with them over pension and benefit entitlements when they return, broken, and of expecting their families and communities to make their sojourn in dangerous places bearable by regular supplies of shaving foam, jam and batteries.

No, if you truly want to honour our armed forces this weekend, ignore the artifice of the official celebrations. Instead, take yourself off to your local memorial and spend a moment or two saying thanks.  Then come home and write to your MP demanding that the money being spent on this weekend’s charade is diverted into the reparation and restoration of lives and communities laid waste by recent activities.  At home and abroad.

Libya – A line in the sand

Mar 18

Posted by Jeff in Defence | 17 Comments

So action shall be taken against Libya by the UN with a broad church of nations intending to assist with personnel and artillery. It is for individuals to decide whether this is an unavoidable step borne out of principle or unpardonable folly. Or something inbetween.

I hope that Iraq has taught us that we should not involve ourselves too heavily in shaping the destiny of another sovereign nation but I don’t see anything wrong in giving a helping hand to the side that we are rooting for from the sidelines. If a no-fly zone and even aerial strikes on strategic targets can help reach this objective then I for one have no problem with it.

There is oil involved, there is regime change and there will be a poll bump for the coalition. However, I hope that, for a change, this will be seen to be the right decision for the right reasons and if Gaddafi, despite his promises to “get crazy”, can be removed swiftly, then I hope Libya can soon follow into a transition to democracy as orderly as Egypt’s has seemed to be.

It’s a crazy mixed up world out there, more full of baddies than we would like; sometimes the goodies need to do more than just watch on passively.