AND ANOTHER THING
If you can't ban the arms, cut off the cannon-fodder
PAUL JOHNSON
here is widespread uneasiness that the end of the cold war is ushering in a period of petty war. With no balance of terror to preserve the existing framework and ensure that lines are not crossed, large areas of the world are becoming more fluid. National, ethnic and tribal antagonisms are rising again, and there is a growing tendency to put issues in dispute to the test of the sword. Fuelling this slide towards petty wars is the availability and cheapness of immense quantities of conventional weapons that have come on to the market as a result of the collapse of communist regimes. In addition to this, many arms fac- tories behind the former Iron Curtain are continuing to produce, principally for export, because their governments dare not aggravate the unemployment problem by shutting them down. Meanwhile, the Matrix-Churchill affair indicates how des- perate even comparatively responsible and law-abiding powers like Britain are to sell arms, irrespective of the moral credentials of purchasers. At no time in history have warlords bent on aggression been able to arm themselves with the latest hardware so quickly and economically. To make things easier for them, the rapid contraction of the armed services of the great powers is unleashing on to the labour market huge numbers of weapons experts, instructors and 'advisers', as well as freelance soldiers. There are probably more skilled mercenar- ies in employment than at any time in history.
There was a moment, at the time of the successful international response to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, when it looked as though a reinvigorated UN Security Coun- cil, operating for the first time as its founders had intended, would present an effective obstacle to the spread of petty wars. Those hopes were lowered when George Bush showed he lacked the resolu- tion to finish off Saddam Hussein and his regime, and they have now been dashed completely by the abject surrender of the United States and the other major powers to the aggressive will of Serbian national- ism. I do not exactly blame Clinton and Co for funking large-scale military involvement in Bosnia, especially since all their military advisers were strongly against it, and public opinion was lukewarm or hostile. Neverthe- less, it looks like a watershed, and a sinister one. Once again, as in the Thirties, deter- mined aggression has been seen to pay, and a signal has gone out to warlords all over the world that the will of the civilised democracies to uphold international order is weak and can be defied with impunity.
What is to be done? An obvious answer is that emphasis should be switched from the agreed disarmament of the great pow- ers, which is taking place anyway, to the control of arms sales. I place little faith in this approach. The United States, Russia, France and Britain have too much to lose by imposing strict curbs on the legitimate arms trade — last year, for instance, Britain collared 20 per cent of the total market — and they can plausibly argue that, if they refuse to sell arms, the gap will be filled by China, which in any event will be a major arms exporter by the mid-decade, and a dozen other manuf,acturers, led by India and Brazil. Arms embargoes have a dis- tressing tendency to promote indigenous arms industries, as the case of South Africa shows (it now exports armoured vehicles all over Africa), as well as to stimulate the trade in illegal arms.
But there is one form of aggression con- trol which has never been tried, and which now looks promising — an international ban on conscription. Despite much effort over the last two centuries, the forces of altruism in the world have secured few vic- tories. But, beginning in 1807 with Britain's decision to ban the slave-trade, they have at least succeeded in virtually ending slavery. Compulsory military service in peacetime is a form of slavery and it is one on which warlords and aggressive dictators are pecu- liarly dependent. The ability of a state to take as many of its young men as it likes, for as long as it likes, put them in uniform, subject them to martial law, pay them almost nothing, and then train them to kill, `I hoped I'd seen the last of Ken Clarke.' is a strong and permanent temptation to use force. The cold war could not conceiv- ably have occurred if Soviet Russia and its satellites had been restricted to armies of volunteers. The project of a Greater Serbia would never have got off the ground had not former Yugoslavia maintained one of the world's largest conscript armies, con- trolled of course by Serbs. The colossal size of Saddam Hussein's army, which made possible his invasion of Kuwait, his plan to seize the entire Gulf and his obstinacy in defying the world, was entirely due to con- scription. The Arab states would long since have made peace with Israel if conscript armies had not held out to them the illuso- ry hope of military victory. In many parts of the world, notably in China, conscript armies enable totalitarian and unpopular regimes to retain power, to bully and oppress ethnic minorities and to frighten their neighbours.
A ban on compulsory military service would not end aggression but would make it far more difficult. All-professional armies of volunteers are expensive and therefore tend to be small. Moreover, being such costly toys, their political masters are less keen to risk them. In the 18th century, the princes of Europe loved to parade their infantry and cavalry, gorgeously attired in peacock colours, glittering steel and gleam- ing pipeclay, but were much less anxious to commit them to wars, especially long ones. It was Bonaparte, earliest of the totalitari- an dictators, who used universal conscrip- tion to unleash the first of the world wars and the concepts of unlimited aggression and unconditional surrender. The 'nation in arms' has been the pattern ever since, and dearly have we all paid for it. In the advanced countries of the West, economics and technology are pushing us towards small, highly professional armies again. One consequence is that we are most reluc- tant to use them except in the most conl" pelling necessity. That is all to the good. We should set about systematically encour- aging, and if needs be compelling, the rest of the world to follow suit, just as we did with slave-trading and slavery itself. That took many decades and I have no doubt abolishing conscription worldwide will be 3 long process. But if we cannot starve aggression of its hardware, we can make a start by trying to cut off its cannon-fodder. Countless young men, and their mothers, will be in our debt.
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