THE SPECTATOR
THE DECAY OF DEFENCE
Even in the week of a party confer- ence, perhaps especially in the week of a party conference, it is important to remem- ber that not everything which is good for the Conservative Party is equally good for Britain. Take defence for example. In the last fortnight Labour and the Liberals have made a free electoral gift of the defence issue to the Conservatives. Labour has unveiled a defence policy so puerile and half-baked that it makes even Mr Denis Healey blush. The Liberals have gaily torn up the fragile paper compromise between their leader and Dr Owen, thus absolving the Alliance's rivals from the necessity of confronting the considerable logic of Dr Owen's personal views on defence. Elec- torally, the Defence Secretary's lot is now a happy one. Yet the infantile disarray of Labour and Liberal security policies exemplifies the collapse of a basic bipartisan consensus on defence which has survived for more than three decades. This is not good for Britain. The collapse of that consensus is partly a result, and partly a further cause, of strains in the Atlantic alliance which are different in degree — and arguably now in kind from those which have troubled Nato ever since its forination. This is a danger not just for Britain but for the whole free part of Europe.
Mr George Younger, the Defence Secretary, ably expounds the basic outlines of established government policy. He makes the conventional case for not aban- doning our semi-independent nuclear de- terrent. He argues, rightly, that even the costly Trident system will probably only take about three per cent of the total defence budget. He argues, rather less plausibly, that it will not mean any major sacrifice in the procurement of convention- al arms and equipment for our other major defence commitments: Nato's second- largest surface fleet, the air defence of these islands, the 55,000-strong standing army on the Rhine, and our small 'out-of- area' capacity. This is all, in the schoolmas- ter's time-honoured phrase, 'good as far as it goes', and it goes down well with a Conservative Conference. But it does not go far enough.
It may just be the case that, if all other things remained equal, Britain might more or less sustain her existing commitments, by pinching and scraping, out of a defence budget which will fall by at least six per cent over the next three years. But all other things are most unlikely to remain equal. In particular, we should frankly Confront the possibility —no, the probabil- ity — that within the lifetime of the next government the United States will signifi cantly reduce the level of its conventional forces in Western Europe. Old Nato hands may say that we have been here before; that the US Congress's bark is always worse than its bite; that when push comes to shove, any American administration will grudgingly sustain its existing commitment. But this is too complacent. Not since the beginning of Nato has there been such a chorus of highly-placed Americans, from all points on the political spectrum, arguing for such reductions. Never before has there been such a huge American budget deficit to push in this direction; and rarely such a chorus of infantile voices from the Euro- pean Left to egg them on. Yes, it is a probability. And if it becomes a reality, then Britain will not be spared any of the new demands on shrinking resources, just because we have been, so to speak, the good boy who kept his Nato promise of a three per cent real annual increase in defence spending.
A Conservative government might con- sider several ways of anticipating this predicament. The simplest and most radic- al is the proposal sometimes floated by the Times: namely, to cut our major continen- tal commitment, the British Army of the Rhine, and revert to the defence of these islands by sea, air and nuke. A standing army on the continent is for Britain an historical aberration. The Germans are grown-up boys now and should be able to look after their own defence. If the French can be Gaullists why can't we? Unfortu- nately, there could be no move better calculated to achieve the exact opposite of the desired effect: to fray not merely the Nato European-American relationship but also the British-German relationship which this government has rightly done so much to strengthen. Moreover, the lesson of two world wars is precisely that the security frontier of Britain lies not in the Channel `It's a map of the Ml southbound.' but in central Europe.
The realistic course is not to retreat from our continental commitment but to make sense of it. Consider the facts. For -all its economic decline, Britain is still the greatest single military power, after the United States and the Soviet Union, in all of Europe. The French have national nuclear forces but are nowhere to be found on Nato's central front. The Germans are Nato's central front; but have no nuclear forces of their own. We have our own nuclear forces and are a full member of Nato and are a major presence on the central front. We spend more on defence in absolute terms than either the Federal Republic or France. Our position is uni- que. If anyone is to lead the way in strengthening the 'European pillar' of Nato it should be us. This means not merely pursuing the cost-cutting possibilities of joint arms development projects. It means systematically exploring all the technical, organisational and strategic ways in which the European members of Nato can do more for their own defence, more efficient- ly, at the minimum increase in cost. It means trying to lure and chide the French into playing their proper part in the de- fence of West Germany — our common front line. It means exploring the possibili- ties of Anglo-French nuclear co-operation, however meagre those currently appear. It means openly discussing the disproportion between the economic might of the Federal Republic and the part it plays in its own defence. It means taking on board, and questioning, the German Social Demo- crats' highly developed — and highly im- plausible --- concept of a 'security part- nership' with the Soviet Union which would supposedly make such increased exertions in our own defence superfluous. None of these are the stuff of Euro- fantasy. They are among the real issues of British national interest over the next five years.
It would be more than a pity if the collapse into incoherence of Labour and Liberal security policy were to reduce Conservative security policy to complacent and sloganising triumphalism. For this very collapse is a token of larger problems ahead. And those problems will become acute within the lifetime of the next Parlia- ment.
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