The Facts About Force RHODESIA — 2

By SIMON CLEMENTS

TrTHERE can be little doubt that when, as looks 1 probable, the time comes when it is apparent that UN sanctions are not going to crush Mr Smith into surrender, a vociferous cry will go up from a large number of members of the General Assembly (it has already gone up from the African states) that force must be used to end the rebellion.

But whose force? There are three principal kinds which could be assembled against Rhodesia —a United Nations force, a Commonwealth expedition, and a purely British punitive army. At the moment, the prestige of the United Nations is low; the nations are anything but united and there is precious little money in the till. A Commonwealth force is much more likely to be militarily effective, but who would join it? If any member of the Old Commonwealth is willing to shoot at Rhodesians, Canada is the most likely, but that's not saying much. Would India or Pakistan contribute, with memories of what happens to Asians in Africa when Africans run riot? There remain the African states who are so vocal in favour of force. Maybe they would join us in the line, but how useful would these untried armies be?

There remains a British expeditionary force. But before considering plans for what amounts to another Boer War, sixty years on, imagine again the kind of opposition the British would face. In a European context, the Rhodesians are insignificant, but they have a formidable force for Africa. The Rhodesian army consists of 3,400 regulars, 5,000 active reservists, and another 6,000 territorials whose training is pre- sumably fairly irregular. The air force consists of 1,000 men and its main strike force is one squadron of Hunters, one squadron of Vampires, and one squadron of Canberras. It is fair to say that in the last few months training and morale has been stepped up considerably throughout the Rhodesian armed forces.

The most important point to remember, how- ever, is that in an age when the British have become so sophisticated that their soldiers are only allowed to press the trigger in the last re- sort, and then only when holding in the other hand the regulations imposed by Whitehall, the Rhodesians are less inhibited. Almost all visitors to Rhodesia since UDI have come away im- pressed by the universal willingness of the white Rhodesians—whether for or against Mr Smith —to fight for their country if war came. A British expedition against Rhodesia must, alas, mean all the blood and tragedy of civil war.

Let us now count our friends in Africa, and those not so friendly. Tanzania would doubtless let us use the port of Dar-es-Salaam. The Zambian airfields would be open to us. But there would be no help and less sympathy from the Portuguese—and Portugal is a member of NATO. As for South Africa, the majority of the white Population would be on Rhodesia's side, and there would be much private effort to give aid and support. Mr Vorster is not, however, likely to bring South Africa into a war for Mr Smith. However much of a problem Rhodesia may seem to the British, Mr Vorster knows that South Africa is an entirely different nut to crack. An alliance with the Rhodesian rebels might, how-

ever, conjure up forces with which they could not deal, even jointly, and the whole of Africa might be set alight.

There remains the attitude of the British mili- tary itself. This is a subject of extreme delicacy, involving oaths to the Queen, feelings of blood-brotherhood with Rhodesians, hardly veiled dislike of black African pretensions, and honest suspicion of Socialist motives. All these feelings are set against the long tradition of parliamentary control, and the divorce of the military from politics. Mr Wilson could not, however, proceed on the absolute assurance that every British soldier would be willing to shoot Rhodesians, and he might find himself with another and more bitter Curragh on his hands, with all the international loss of prestige involved.

But let us suppose the best case—that the British are determined, the South Africans neutral, the Portuguese angry but impotent, the Americans benignly avuncular (avaunt the ghosts of Suez and Mr Dulles!), the Zambians and Tanzanians allied, the Commonwealth acquiescent and the United Nations appeased. Let us now plan a force to crush Mr Smith.

That plan would have to take into account all the other plans made since 1945 to exert British military influence abroad, and the first shock would come from the realisation that the Rhodesian situation is one for which no provision has been made. We have envisaged practically every situation, from total nucbar disaster—from which we avert our eyes—to mild unrest in the Maldive Islands—for which we are more pre- pared—but we have not contemplated a distant white colony in arms against us. We also still hold to the lessons of Omdurman, and—whether we believe it or not—act as if a small white force can defeat a large black one, on the (in 1966) largely false assumption that we have the Maxim gun and they have not.

So, leaving future Koreas aside, we have put our money on the ability to quench bush fires in black territory, and formed our forces into a fire brigade. We have made plans for a fairly small fire brigade, at its smallest a platoon of Royal Marines, at its largest a brigade group. The question now is whether such a fire brigade can deal with a fire the size of white Rhodesia : a very different cup of tea from Tanzanian mutinies, or holding Kuwait against non-existent Iraqis, or Communist bands in northern Malaya. In fact, the Rhodesian situation fits into no mili- tary plan, and if those existing plans are brought into play to deal with it, there is a fair chance that the Rhodesians might defeat a brigade group, and then the fat would really be in the fire.

An invasion force large enough to be certain of inflicting defeat on the Rhodesians would be a very cumbersome affair. One brigade of 6,000 men travelling over the rough terrain between Lusaka and Salisbury would have to be trans- ported in a minimum of 200 of the new £20,000 tracked personnel carriers and 200 heavy lorries. In addition a brigade would need trucks to carry field artillery such as an Abbott self-propelled gun, and possibly a tank or two.

Piling one more supposition on top of this already swaying house of cards, and assuming that a brigade group would do the trick, what would it cost, in men, ships, aircraft, withdrawal from other theatres, time, and, in capital and frozen letters, MONEY? Rhodesia has no coast- line and the nearest friendly port, Dar-es-Salaam, is 800 miles away. The navy could at best per- form no other function than water transport. This is a land-and-air operation. Think of the distances involved, the few airfields, the single- tracked railways, the rutted dusty roads, the lack of every military requirement from complicated radar to fresh water. Think of the preparations needed, the lengthening of runways, the siting of dumps, the chartering of merchant ships.

Any invasion force going into Rhodesia would have to have the ground prepared for it by an RAF air-strike against strategic targets. Even this course is fraught with difficulties. When the RAF Javelin squadron was based at Lusaka earlier this year, the planes had to be 'talked down' into Lusaka from Salisbury airport, the air traffic control centre for that area of Africa and the only control tower possessing radio equipment sophisticated enough to handle jet night landings.

There is, of course, one way which offers some hope of bringing Mr Smith to heel without blood- shed, and that is by showing him that we could transport into Zambia the kind of force against which he would not stand a chance. With American help, an army of sufficient size could be mustered. The political slips between that cup and Mr Wilson's lips are at the moment too many to make such an idea practicable. Of course, if we took a deep breath, we could our- selves produce an expeditionary force of a size to daunt the Rhodesians—but that would mean the sacrifice of some very ancient sacred cows of the welfare state to the cost of the military budget. It is doubtful whether such a plan would be considered sane, but mad or not, it would be possible, and it could—at great cost and effort —be done.

So we are back where we came in—the United Nations probably can't produce an army, the Commonwealth probably wouldn't produce an army, and the British don't possess an army of the size to defeat Mr Smith. We are probably in for a decade of distrust and dither.

There is, they say, a proverb in the Foreign Office long hallowed by successful ex- perience: 'When in doubt, do nothing.' The army is more pragmatic and urges people that, if they are determined to do something, to do it now. If something had been done on the day UDI was declared there would be few problems today. Mr Wilson will not be the first Prime Minister to have listened to the Foreign Office, and been left with nothing but doubt.