CentreForum Trident Report

(Shameless self promotion, I know... deal with it!)

Forgive my lack of posting - I've been totally consumed by getting CentreForum Trident paper finished. And now it is - you can get it here - and there's been lots of interesting media coverage. I'm deeply indebted to many people - the acknowledgements are there for a reason - but the one I most liked was from the UK communist Morning Star; only the comrades know the truth. (NB Irony Alert!) We also made the wonderful ArmsControlWonk - with thanks to Dr. Jeffrey Lewis.

Normal service will be shortly be resumed...

Labour Does Defence Cuts(ish): Part One

(MoD Men: Robertson (891), Hoon (2034), Reid (364), Browne (882), Hutton (245), Ainsworth(340)*)

Under normal circumstances, political U-turns are mocked by political opponents and denied by the U-turnee. Occasionally, U-turns are emblematic of a new leaf - classically, Labour's repudiation of Clause IV under Blair in 1994 - and last week we saw something unusual; a Labour shadow Minister in favour of spending cuts, and in particular, defence cuts. Step forward, Jim Murphy MP.

I'll deal with the specifics of the proposed Labour cuts in a future post - suffice to say, they are a long way from both a mea culpa for the damage of the unfunded promises of the Labour 1997-2010 years, but they are a start for Labour to make a credible economic policy.

But in reviewing Labour's record, I thought it would be fun to look at how long Labour's Secretaries of State for Defence were actually in office, and compare that with their Tory predecessors under Margaret Thatcher and John Major - ie, back to 1979. The point is that there is such a steep learning curve as a Secretary of State - especially for those with little or no background in defence - that the first six months or so Ministers will be learning as much as doing, with being really effective from about six months in.

So how did they do?

Two things are striking: first, Geoff Hoon's five-and-a-half years in office was remarkably - and abnormally - long. It wasn't a complete triumph, as Hoon presided over the mini Defence Review known as the "New Chapter" to the 1998 SDSR post the terrorist attacks of 9/11 - and then allowed the UK's forces to become completely over-stretched in Iraq and Afghanistan, whilst presiding over the disastrous procurement performance that would come to dominate the MoD's budget (and with it, everything else.)

 

Second, once you take Hoon out of the equation, Labour Defence Secretaries  served for an average of 65 weeks - suggesting that they may have had about six months cognizant of the issues to drive the change required. (John Reid is probably the honourable exception as he had a good defence background in opposition, but he was still in post for only a year, meaning that he wasn't about long enough to deliver change.) Worse, as the budgets reached breaking point under Gordon Brown's premiership, he was keeping his Defence Secretaries in place for about half the historical average - as well in Bob Ainsworth having picked a singularly unimpressive Secretary of State. More damningly, as Ainsworth was the only one who was promoted from inside MoD, he should have had the best handle on the Departmental challenges, but he was probably the poorest of the lot.

So what does this mean? Possibly not much, but it does point to the comparative lack of importance and oversight that the two Labour governments gave to ministerial stability after George Robertson got sent off to run NATO. And that lack of consistent leadership from the top bears much of the responsibility for the mess that MoD was in by the 2010 Election.

*Number of days in office.

Umm, not the 1st of April yet...

 

(We are here. Infidels are here, here and here. Apostates over there. Good. Points? Questions?)

Those kray-zee Iranians.

Just when Christmas television looked like getting everyone down, up popped the comedy act that is North Korea* to entertain us with their choreographed grief (though believe me, if I were living in Pyongyang, I'd have cried and wailed with the best of them just in case someone decided that I had been insufficiently upset and felt that a little reeducation was in order.)

Not to be outdone by their former colleagues in the Axis-of-Evil, Iranian Admiral Habibollah Sayyari says it would be "very easy" for his navy to shut down the Strait of Hormuz (SoH) if the nasty west (and especially the nasty EU led by the confounded British, whose hand is behind everything bad in the Islamic Republic, I'm reliably informed) has the temerity to impose oil sanctions on Iran for its repeated violations of the NPT, which the IAEA noted in their 18 Nov 11 Resolution. And here's a nice piece from the good people at APM's Marketplace - they do a great daily podcast, too.

Excellent, certainly a move that's all about the spirit of the season, and likely to bring everyone together and allow us all to get along better and all of that. 

But is it feasible?

(Ah. Rather narrow then.)

The strait is about 34nm across at it's narrowest point, and more importantly, the commercial traffic goes through the two 2nm corridors marked on this helpful map. And given the major Iranian naval base at Bandar Abbas is nice and close, in principle Iran's two naval arms - IRIN and the IRGC(N) - could make a stab at "closing" the SoH if they so chose. However, this overlooks a couple of things.

First, legality. Such a blockade would be illegal (states have the right to peacefully sail through straits worldwide) - something established in customary international law and in the 1948 ICJ Judgement in the Corfu Channel case - unless it was an act of war. An Iranian declaration of war against the rest of the world seems somewhat unlikely, and so in the absence of a UNSCR allowing for Iran to close the SoH (inconceivable), then the Iranians would be acting illegally.

Second, actual capability. Does Iran really want to take on the US Navy and her allies in a shooting match in the SoH whether on the water or from shore based missile and artillery batteries (or both?)? I can't see it - the Iranians could get lucky and cause some damage to naval vessels escorting oil tankers or patrolling the Straits - but the risk of retaliation sinking the rest of your fleet (or worse, starting a broader war) is such that you'd have to be nuts to try it. And this blog (at least) doesn't think that the Iranian regime irrational - more than anything else, it is solidly focused on it's own survival.

So, nothing to see here - let's all get back to the Christmas specials on telly. But not a clever move by the Iranians, and I suspect, not one that they're going to enact, irrespective of their domestic posturing.

Finally, in the spirit of goodwill to all men, in the unlikely event that this does kick off, please don't ask the Royal Navy how many spare ships it has to send out to help out in the SoH. You may get an answer similar to asking the RAF how many maritime patrol aircraft they can quickly send. Seen from here, the choices made in SDSR 2010 are looking less clever by the month.

*As long as you don't live in it or near it, clearly.