TIN-SOLDIER COUNTRY PROSPECT FACING BRITAIN IF DEFENCE CUTS ARE BIG

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33540, 22 May 1974, Page 12

TIN-SOLDIER COUNTRY PROSPECT FACING BRITAIN IF DEFENCE CUTS ARE BIG

(From the "Economist.") (Reprinted by arrangement) It is one mark of the way things go in Britain today that so many [ people’s idea of a reasonable compromise is to start by saying what they [ believe is indispensably necessary, listen to the other side denying it. and : then think the matter is settled by splitting the difference. I hat i> what happens in the business of paying for Britain's armed sen ices, andthere is reason to be concerned about how the Labour Government is going to run that business now.

The Prime Minister sen-[ sibly broke the stage three; restrictions on wages in.put-; ting up the forces’ pay on[ May 16. But thereby he made | the budgetary problem all; the more difficult for a party I committed to making sub’-j stantial defence cuts. The new Secretary for Defence, Mr Roy Mason, appeared to mollify a lot of people when he told the House of Commons on May 13 that he did not intend to make "enormous unilateral cuts’’ in the defence budget. But it is too soon to be mollified. Mr Mason wants to cut the budget by several hundred million pounds a year, and the way he puts it im-

[plies that that is on top of the £3oom already knocked [off over the past year. From a total defence budget of [something over £3ooom, that [would be a very big cut; and !it needs to be said that it [cannot be done. [ There are two sorts of armies in the world. There are the real armies: the ones that have enough soldiers, with enough modern weapons, to carry out the tasks their governments lay upon them, whether that is defending the homeland, or helping to defend an ally’s homeland, or hunting guerrillas through back streets or jungles. There are also the tin-soldier armies: the ones

that, by conscious decision or budgetary neglect, have [ceased to be able to perform the functions of a fighting army and have become mere ‘ceremonial symbols of statehood. There are already more [tin-soldier armies in Europe [than the Swiss Guards of the Vatican. The armies of Austria and Finland, by the !acquiescence of their governjments in the terms Russia (insisted upon after 1945, are condemned to be little more than symbols which display [their country’s uniform but 'could not keep an enemy out of its territory. The armed forces of Denmark and Ireland, without even that compulsion to plead, are not very far from that condition. Outside Europe If Mr Mason’s several hundred million phrase means what it seems to mean. Britain will be close to the shadow-line that separates a real army from an item of ceremony. There [should be no pretence that anything like that amount can be saved by drawing a largely bogus distinction between Britain’s military operations in Europe and 'those outside Europe, and abandoning the latter. The present cost of the commitment in South-East Asia is £lsm a year, and in Hong Kong £4O-£som a year; but in fact only a small part of that would really come off the budget unless the unit*, withdrawn were scrapped, and since some of them are also committed to N.A.T.O. that would affect Europe too. There are many people, probably including a majority of the House of Commons in a free vote, who believe that the service Britain performs for Singapore and Malaysia and Hong Kong is worth the very small net expenditure involved, but the point is that its abandonment is not going to get Mr Mason very far towards his target anyway. The British presence in Malta, Cyprus and Gibraltar costs £Bom-£9om a year, with the same proviso about disbandment; and apart from the damage a British withdrawal would do to the places concerned, these British forces in the Mediterranean are unmistakably part of the defence of Europe. It is for these reasons and others that Britain’s spending cannot simply be made to match, say, France’s. Basic tasks

The central fact that the opponents of toy-soldierdom for Britain should insist upon is that the sort of cut the Labour manifesto-xalled for, and Mr Mason is still talking about, cannot be made without doing great damage to the two rockbottom responsibilities of the British armed forces; the civil peace of Britain itself, and the defence of Western Europe. It would mean cancelling orders for weapons that the services need to keep themselves as efficient as their possible enemies; or letting soldiers’ pay fall again to a level which, at the present rate of inflation, would rapidly cause another drop in recruiting; or leaving the power of nuclear protection entirely to the United States and France; and quite possibly all three together. If these things happen to Britain’s forces, they will no longer be of a quality to carry out the basic tasks in Europe that, their Government will still demand of them. They will be on the road to a merely representational function. Between that kind of army and one that can do what armies are supposed to do no budgetjuggling can provide a compromise.