Facing up to the future
The nature of warfare is changing and someone has to plan for the future. Meet the man with that very job – Armed Forces Minister Bob Ainsworth
Armed Forces Minister Bob Ainsworth gave Legion an exclusive interview this spring.
He is an influential figure in defence as his ministerial responsibilities include arms control and disarmament; the size and shape of the armed forces; intelligence and security (including counter terrorism); and the recruitment, readiness, performance and reputation of the armed forces.
You can read here how he thinks today’s forces personnel have as tough a time as any that have taken part in previous conflicts, even during World War II. He also talks about planning for future threats – whether to keep our nuclear deterrent – and what it will take to win the war in Afghanistan. It’s also intriguing to find what left him ‘pulling his hair out’ when planning the Command Paper…
Legion: What appealed to you about taking on
the role of Armed Forces Minister?
Bob Ainsworth: Working with the armed forces is a privilege and, outside the cabinet, it’s one of the big jobs in Government. I was very attracted to the idea of doing it. I snatched the Prime Minister’s hand off, to tell you the truth.
As a keen amateur military historian, how do you think the experiences of soldiers today compare to those in periods gone by? People shouldn’t be any doubt about this – it’s one of the things that I think is unappreciated. What our guys are doing in Helmand now, and were doing in Iraq before, is as hard as anything that the British Army has faced in its history. We were in a battle for national survival during WWII and there were a lot more people involved. But when you look at what people actually involve themselves in, unless you came all the way up with the 8th Army from El Alamein and through Italy, you didn’t do much more than lads are having to do now. If they do six months’ hard fighting in Helmand and then they go back for another year of hard fighting, it stands up to what previous generations have had to do. We should be enormously proud of them. I don’t think people have quite got there, because it’s not the nation being directly threatened with complete obliteration. But there is a national security threat and we don’t give them enough appreciation for the tasks they undertake.
There have been stories in the papers recently about big narcotics swoops in Afghanistan. People are probably thinking ‘this isn’t how warfare used to be– taking on drugs barons and trying to wipe out a drug problem.’ It seems a very different role for the armed forces these days…
Well, war is complicated. Counter-insurgency is how we’ve got to win people over. You’ve got to look after people; you’ve got to protect them. There have been very few times when it’s been black and white. If you were with Wellington in the Peninsular War, he was about maintaining support among the Portuguese, winning support among the Spanish, as well as fighting the French. Those same complexities were there, I just think they are writ large now for people.
Somebody at the lowest level, a Private or a Corporal, can do something, for good or bad; and it can reverberate around the world. These decisions are not all in the hands of Generals and Colonels any more, the guy at the bottom end of the military chain of command could be as significant in these circumstances. One of the things that’s enormously impressive is the degree of decision-making capability that there is right down at the low end. I’m always flabbergasted by it. A 20- or 22-year-old Corporal now has a huge amount of responsibility for his or her age.
You’ve been to Iraq and Afghanistan recently, how are our troops perceived in the two countries?
In Iraq, there has been staggering improvement and I think that many people back here don’t appreciate the grateful attitude there is towards us. If you go around the streets of Basra there is a lot of gratitude and we’ve got to be careful that we take full advantage of it. Talking just on the commercial side, this is an enormously important country and we need to develop that relationship and take the benefit that has been achieved on the back of the hard work of our fighting forces. Afghanistan is enormously difficult, it’s such a dangerous environment, that it’s difficult for ministers to talk to ordinary Afghans. You certainly can’t do that in Musa Qala or Sangin, as you can do in Basra. But when you get this kind of downbeat commentary – that it’s all going backwards and we can’t win as you hear people say – well, they were saying precisely that not so long ago in Iraq. When we came out of Basra Palace, that was an enormous defeat, we were pre-positioning, having agreed with the Iraqis that they would have to take over responsibility for security in Basra, and they did. There’s been a miraculous turnaround so let’s not get so totally downhearted. People can achieve miracles, they have done in the past.
What will it take to end the Afghan stalemate?
The governance issues are the hard part. But then the governance issues were enormously problematic in Iraq as well. People talked about the three different communities and their ability ever to come together. But if you talk to our people on the ground in Afghanistan, they don’t accept that we’re going backwards and the evidence doesn’t show that that’s the case. A year ago, the Taliban was in control in Musa Qala and we didn’t have a presence in Garmsir, we now have both. Over Christmas, we cleared out the area of Nad-i-ali just to the west of Lashkar Gah, Governor Mangal is now able to go in there and talk to people, talk to them about narcotics, about poppy growing in a way that he was not allowed to do before. So, in terms of on-the-ground in Helmand, we are going forward. The big hard piece is the justice system, the police and the corruption, so it’s not only got to be the Americans with their 17,000 more troops, a military surge on its own isn’t going to sort this out. We have to grapple with governance issues as well.
The nature of warfare is clearly changing. Many
feel that terrorism is a greater threat than a direct attack by another country. That being so, do we still need a nuclear deterrent?
This is the big dilemma. Money’s tight, everybody knows that. We have got people fighting a hard war in Afghanistan and there is this balance between how much resource you put in to this current operation and how much you cover the bases for the uncertainties we face in the future. There’s no easy answer because the uncertainties are not becoming less complex. The possibilities of the threat that we might face in five or 10 years time can’t easily be foreseen.
But that is your job… so what do you do?
That’s why I would say it’s not as simple to give up the nuclear deterrent. The world can change, we’ve got North Korea, which has been reaching for a new nuclear capability. We’ve got Iran, claiming that it is developing civil nuclear power, although one wonders why, as it is sitting on the biggest oil reserve in the world. If it does, who else will follow? If the Iranians have a nuclear weapon, will the Turks want one, will the Saudis and the Egyptians? It would change the whole balance of the world. I don’t think that anybody feels threatened by the British nuclear weapon but giving it up unilaterally wouldn’t, in my view, add to stability. We ought to be talking to people in a multi-lateral way about reducing nuclear stockpiles, non-proliferation and eventually together by agreement, getting rid of nuclear weapons if that is at all possible. But unilaterally giving it up? I don’t think that helps. The other story that goes around is that if you give it up you could spend more on defence. I’m not sure that that’s a given. I don’t think the Treasury would just say: ‘you can keep all the money.’
What’s been your lowest point to date?
I remember ripping my hair out over the Service Personnel Command Paper. It was a one-off opportunity to sort out a lot of relatively small things that drive our armed forces around the bend. Do we properly cover their families with regard to dentistry? What about the compensation levels for injured personnel? Have we got the educational offer right? There was a one-off opportunity and I got a bit of ‘yes minister’, if I’m being honest. I got ‘you can’t do this’, and ‘it’s got to be written in a rather bland form’, but I wanted a piece of paper that actually said something, not just something to sit on a table and not be enacted. So I ripped a bit of hair out and I bent a couple of people out of shape.
What were the problem areas?
Money is always the problem. In a lot of these things, we were getting other Government departments to make a contribution. It was them paying for it. So it was just making sure that people fully appreciated the one-off chance that we had to get these things sorted out and I think we got there in the end. But it was interesting. I was pleased when the Legion put out a press notice that said with the publication of the Command Paper, ‘the Covenant is being brought
back into balance,’ and I thought, ‘Yes, good. Superb.’ That was a pat on the back.”
When you meet the service personnel, what do
they say about their kit?
The one that stands out now is the Jackal armoured vehicle.
I was in Helmand just before Christmas and I had guys coming up to me saying that vehicle is absolutely fabulous and they want more of them. It’s true we have lost a couple of people in them – as it’s a high vehicle with high visibility. People are not totally enclosed, but if you actually ask the people who are doing the job, Jackals are what they want. They’ve got good levels of armour underneath, a high platform that can resist a degree of mine blast and yet they have got great manoeuvrability, so it’s flavour of the month.
Is there anything they don’t want?
The biggest moan that we get – and it’s quite justified – is that we prioritise new pieces of kit. So when we first got Mastiffs, we had to ship them out there. This was a fantastic vehicle in terms of soldier protection, but we didn’t have any in training, so there were instances where people bumped into a Mastiff for the first time having arrived in Iraq or in Afghanistan. Now we are backfilling as quick as we can. Are we right to prioritise in this way? Yes we are. Does it drive people around the bend? Yes it does.
Do you have a message for Legion members?
The Legion has a very special part in society. Let me tell you – and this is a personal thing – I don’t wear the badges that you see all kinds of MPs wearing. They get asked by this organisation and that organisation to wear a ribbon, or a this or a that or the other. The only thing I ever wear is the poppy. I’m just not a badge person, they make me feel like a Christmas tree and I don’t think I should be decorating myself, but the poppy is very, very significant.
