• Military

• WMD Menu                           

• Introduction
• Systems
• Facilities
• Agencies
• Operations
• Countries
• Hot Documents
• News
• Reports
• Policy
• Budget
• Congress
• Links

• Intelligence
• Homeland Security
• Space

Defence cuts adds to UK's international decline in 2010

IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency

London, Jan 5, IRNA -- In his first foreign affairs address at the Lord Mayor’s Banquet in November, Prime Minister David Cameron conceded that Britain had lost 'respect' because of the state of its national finances.

His argument was that the UK needed to be “more strategic and hard-headed” in advancing its national interests to address its decline internationally, while facing a record deficit, severe defence cuts and the rapid growth of economies such as China.

Britain has always insisted upon “punching above its weight” in its alliance with the US on the world stage, but defence cuts announced in November meant its armed forces will be no longer able to mount military operations conducted in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The scale is such that it will also be impossible to deploy the kind of carrier taskforce sent to liberate the Falklands Islands in the war against Argentina in 1982.

The Strategic Defence and Security Review was brought forward by a change of government in 2010 following the country suffering its worst economic recess for generations.

The incoming Conservative-led coalition government pledged to “pursue a distinctive British foreign policy founded on the five themes” led by major reform of decision-making but still based on relations with the US.

One of the first acts was to set up a new national security council, including figures from the armed forces and intelligence chiefs, but there was no change in support for the faltering American strategy in Afghanistan.

Due to the unpopularity of the war, Cameron made a commitment to end combat operations in Afghanistan by the end of his five-year term in 2015 based upon transferring security to the nascent Afghan army.

Although there was no imminent respite for Britain’s 10,000 troops stationed in the country, the US surge did allow for their redeployment from outposts in Helmand province, curbing the number of UK lives lost to just over 100, almost the same as in 2009.

In July, the unprecedented publication of 90,000 US military documents painted a bleak picture of the war in Afghanistan, while exposing similar British techniques, strategies and propaganda used during the height of the years of conflict in Northern Ireland.

The later leaking of more than 250,000 secret American embassy cables offered a unique insight into the murky world of international relations, as well as showing the extent of UK subservience to the US.

Throughout the year, Britain also remained haunted by the Iraq war with more than 100 civilian casualties joining in litigation to seek address over allegation of systematic torture by UK troops.

Government ministers, officials and military chiefs were also called to give evidence in the Iraq inquiry, including former prime minister Tony Blair, who was greeted by a barrage of anti-war protesters when he appeared in January.

Blair was also hounded at the launch of his memoirs in September, when he was forced to cancel his only book signing event in central London as well as hosting a party celebration due to protests.

While questions remain unanswered over the Iraq war, the government took the extraordinary decision to buy off 16 former Guantanamo detainees in an out-of-court settlement worth million to keep secret its involvement in US renditions of terror suspects.

'There was a risk that public confidence was being eroded in Britain's adherence to human rights', Justice Secretary Kenneth Clarke said in November. The alternative was “extremely expensive litigation” against torture allegations, he said.

While much of the coalition government’s foreign policy was on building trading relations with such major economies as China and India, efforts to repair ties with Russia not only failed but led to a renewed tit-for-tat expulsion of diplomats by the end of the year.

Relations with Israel also remained strained by the continuing delay to change the country’s universal jurisdiction laws, which was pledged by both the outgoing Labour and incoming government to limit the risk of visiting Israeli officials being arrested for war crimes.

In March, the former government took the rare step of expelling Mossad’s chief at the Israeli embassy in protest against the cloning of British passports in the assassination of a Hamas official in Dubai.

A further challenge to Britain’s friendly relations was also posed to the new Conservative-led government by Israel’s killing of nine aid activists aboard the Gaza Freedom Flotilla in international waters at the end of May.

In yet another year without any progress in the Middle East peace process, British exasperation was continually expressed by Israel’s refusal to renew even a partial freeze to its illegal settlement expansions.