Clear-Eyed View of Defence

 

Oh dear, I spent a 35-year career in the Royal Air Force being encouraged by my Army colleagues to believe that warfighting capabilities such as boots on the ground, concentration of force, overwhelming firepower and mobility were key to winning battles.  I now understand that such shibboleths were merely “shields for sentimentality.”  I am trying to take the Defence Secretary’s advice to remain “clear-eyed” and hope, for all our sakes, that the novel defence proposals work when needed.

The sad truth, which has been apparent for some time, is that the UK could not field and support a fighting division.  That's it - time to pull down the shutters.

Courage Under Fire

 

When Sir Humphrey Appleby praised Jim Hacker’s policy as “courageous” he meant that the Minister was proceeding without regard to the political consequences of his actions. Not the present danger of going over the top against a hail of opposition bullets but rather the enemies his actions would make amongst his own ranks, his rivals ever eager to exploit a political aberration. Perhaps that is what President Biden had in mind when he praised the Duchess of Sussex's “courage" in her interview with Oprah Winfrey, the nearest thing to divine sovereignty in the USA. After all, there is nothing brave in stabbing an unarmed old lady in the back.