John Nott

Gracchi is very impressed by John Nott but I'm not so sure. His position on Afghanistan seems to be "hasn't gone well in the past". He argues that the Russians failed, but they were fighting a far more united body of the Afghan population. He argues Britain failed but it was both facing a united Afghanistan and had none of the logistical capabilities of a modern army. All of Nott's logic relies upon the Afghans necessarily rallying to defeat the foreigners. That may happen in the future but is not happening now and assuming it necessarily will is facile.

Things are hard in Afghanistan. To generalise: things went well initially, poorly last year thanks to poor planning, a shortage of troops and a lack of proper pressure for improvement in Pakistan's border region. This year we have more troops and more resources in general. We face a great many challenges and if we get things wrong and, in particular, if a shortage of troops forces us to do too much harm to civilians things could go badly wrong. However, apart from a bizarre historical determinism there is no reason to think that a positive outcome in Afghanistan is impossible.

His opinions on other issues were equally confused. He seemed to want us to retreat from a global role but also wanted more soldiers (in case the French invade?). A retreat from a global, power projection role is a big issue that I won't address comprehensively right now but his argument for it was unconvincing. He argued that the Americans were the only ones capable of playing the 'global policeman' role.

That implies that we can't replace America, that we will usually be acting with the US. It doesn't imply any diminishment of our global role which has been based on acting as an ally of the US for quite some time. Assuming that as the US has carriers ours are useless would also imply that as America has soldiers we needed none of those. To combine his position on the carriers with a desire to keep Trident is utterly contradictory. The question is whether additional carriers are useful to the US-British alliance. Given how central carrier-based firepower has been to recent deployments abroad it seems pretty clear that additional carriers could be helpful. Whether they are more helpful than alternative ways of spending the money is a matter that requires detailed enquiry Nott does not undertake.

He argues that we should prioritise our own local security services. This implies free-riding off the US in terms of global stability. This is a coherent position although morally and, in the long term, practically a bad idea. Given that Nott was an ardent Cold Warrior, he should look to that conflict and why we made the decision not to free-ride then.

I should finally note on the carriers that last time Nott argued for getting rid of our naval power, and carriers, the Falklands were invaded. As he thinks our victory in the Falklands was a great triumph surely he should be admitting that naval power has at least some important uses to us still.