The consequences of Mr Powell
If we are to spend £2,000 million a year on defence, the least we can do is to see that the assumptions on which our strategic posture is based are not merely politically expedient but actually make sense. The article by Mr Enoch Powell, the Opposition's official spokesman on defence, which we publish on page 364 of this issue, and which chal- lenges the cornerstone of current British defence orthodoxy, is therefore of the first importance.
A number of important and valid con- clusions stem from it. The first is that, since no defence policy makes sense without troops on the ground, properly equipped and in adequate numbers, and since no British goyersaneat is prepared to have a regular army large enough to sustain realistically what is euphemistically known as Britain's peacekeeping role throughout the world, the nation has got to choose where its most in- timate interests lie. We' believe they lie in the defence of Europe.
Secondly, whatever the credibility of an owned deterrent, the credibility of the American deterrent in ensuring the defence of Europe must not only be significantly •less but must now, with the (welcome) emergence of a Russo-American understanding, be steadily diminishing still further_ The logic of this is clear. It is that the deterrent element in any future British defence policy must tie in the existence of a European nuclear force if Britain is to become part of a uniting Europe, and in a national nuclear force ff we are not.
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