Electronic Telegraph ISSUE 1433Wednesday 28 April 1999
Cuts mean Blair cannot muster enough troops for ground invasion By John Keegan, Defence Editor
TONY BLAIR, we are told, has emerged as the strongest leader in the Nato war alliance and the leading protagonist of using troops. The two positions are not disconnected. Even the least well-informed soon began to grasp that bombing alone was unlikely to bend Milosevic to Nato's will.
Any head of government who persisted in advocating the use of air power for that purpose alone was unlikely to retain credibility, particularly in a country that has reacted with such repugnance to the ethnic cleansing of Kosovo as has Britain. So it is not surprising that Mr Blair was among the earliest, as he is now the most insistent, of Nato leaders to speak of committing ground forces.
This is not to imply that he raises the desirability of a ground involvement for party or personal advantage. It is clear that he takes this war seriously, both as a cause and an operation. He believes in the justice of the mission and is anxious to bring it to a successful conclusion. Hence his shift from belief in the efficacy of bombing to the judgment that the air campaign must be a ground campaign too.
Most strategic analysts would and do agree with him. The trouble is to find the troops. America seems willing to go no further than provide airfield guards. The only European country with worthwhile forces in which voters strongly support ground intervention is France, but the political leaders do not share Mr Blair's willingness to take risks.
That leaves the British Army as the only source of high-quality troops under a strongly pro-war leader. However, as Mr Blair must have been told by his defence advisers, the British Army is too weak to do much more.
It is unthinkable that Britain would act alone on the ground. Even were it to try to set an example, there is too little at home or in the Rapid Reaction Corps in Germany with which to make a show.
Opponents of the extent of the cuts under the Strategic Defence Review said that the Army, and the other two Services, would eventually be "hollowed out". That danger is particularly acute with armies which, unlike navies or air forces, are much more labour-intensive than capital-intensive. The experts' warning has now come true.
The review was supposed to leave the Army with the capability to deploy a warfighting division or maintain a brigade deployed indefinitely on a peace-keeping mission, such as in Bosnia, and at the same time deploy an armoured or mechanised brigade for warfighting for up to six months. The review, despite some after-thoughts, has left the Army with only 114,000 soldiers. Deduct women, trainees and Gurkhas (who cannot be deployed in the Balkans for diplomatic reasons), and the figure comes down to 95,000 at most.
That provides 38 infantry battalions and 11 armoured regiments, enough to cope with one middle-size crisis at a time. When two appear simultaneously, the Army suddenly is overstretched. Twelve battalions have to be in Northern Ireland. Our commitment to Nato's Rapid Reaction Corps in Germany - itself on standby against an offensive threat, which the Balkans does not constitute - takes seven of the armoured regiments and six infantry battalions, though two of these units have already gone to Macedonia.
The 3rd Division, the only field formation at home, has nine infantry battalions and three armoured regiments. This is not to be sent abroad except in dire emergency. Only one armoured regiment and 11 infantry battalions remain. They are either in a training mode or working up to replace another unit in Ulster or Germany.
Army commitments take 80 per cent of a soldier's time, leaving 20 per cent for training and family life. Even the best-motivated soldier needs a rest. We simply do not have enough soldiers to fulfil the policies Britain is pursuing. That deficiency will ultimately apply a brake to Mr Blair's Balkan strategy.
***************** ********************* *********************** Bombing tactics may be flawed, admits general By Ben Fenton in Washington
THE retiring head of Nato's military arm has expressed doubts about elements of the alliance's strategy and said that the bombing of Yugoslavia could set its economy back 50 years behind the rest of Europe.
General Klaus Naumann said he still believed that air power could achieve the political aim of removing President Milosevic's troops from Kosovo and getting refugees back home. However, he admitted in a briefing to American defence correspondents: "Of course, we may have one flaw in our thinking.
"Our flaw may be that we assumed that no responsible man who is at the helm of a country like Yugoslavia can wish to run the risk that his entire country will be bombed into rubble before he complies with the demands of the international community." The Nato commander said Mr Milosevic may prefer to be "the ruler of rubble".
Gen Naumann, whose job has been to act as an intermediary between Gen Wesley Clark, supreme commander of the Nato force, and the political rulers of the 19 alliance countries, expressed some doubts about the decision to rely on air power alone. He said: "So far in military history, we have not seen an operation which was successful by using air power exclusively."
The German general also spoke of his reservations over the decision to escalate the air campaign, which went against doctrine taught in all military academies to attack using overwhelming force and reserve an element of surprise about future tactics. He said: "Coalition warfare means [striking] a balance between the various interests of the different nations and you automatically end up with the lowest common denominator if you want to keep the coalition together."
He described the impossible conditions that prevailed at the beginning of the air campaign when some countries, which he declined to name, had tried to influence the choice of even the smallest targets. Although that situation has changed with the relaxation of restrictions on Gen Clark, Gen Naumann said that there were still tensions within the allied camp. He gave as an instance the striking of Yugoslav troops in Montenegro, where some countries believed strongly that the position of President Milo Djukanovic would be severely weakened by Nato action.
The remarks by Gen Naumann echo those made at the beginning of the campaign by Gen Merrill McPeak, the retired chief of staff of the USAF. In an interview with The Daily Telegraph, Gen McPeak said: "I think Nato tried to fine tune how much pressure it would need to apply to get Milosevic to the bargaining table and they have looked at the Bosnia air campaign of 1995 as a model. They probably should have calculated it as a harder job."
• President Clinton last night approved the summoning of up to 33,000 reservists to support the campaign. It is the largest call-up since the Gulf War in 1991.