UK going global?

[Seth Ackerman]

The Independent
African crisis puts Britain's global vision to the test 
The UK's new willingness to intervene is making the US look isolationist 
By Andrew Marshall 
21 May 2000 
British forces in Sierra Leone are settling in for the third week of what
was initially billed as a mission lasting a few days. The intervention's
ultimate aims seem as misty as ever, but one thing is increasingly clear:
The government is using Sierra Leone as a test case of its new willingness
to intervene abroad. 
The operation is just part of a shift in policy aimed at giving Britain a
pre-eminent position in international security second only to America. This
new globalism reflects an awareness of a post-Cold War security vacuum, but
also Tony Blair's intention to make Britain a "force for good". The Sierra
Leone intervention was initially billed as for the evacuation of British
citizens overseas. But its goals clearly go far beyond that. It was intended
to demonstrate to potential adversaries that where Britain sees an interest,
it will intervene in force and early. And it was also meant to show allies -
especially in the US - that unlike almost every other nation, it has the
resources to project force rapidly; and it has the political will. 
The US, increasingly beset by rising isolationism, a hostile Congress and a
military which shies away from casualities, cannot or will not engage with
new crises. And the formation of a new European security policy gives
Britain an opportunity to bolster its position in Brussels and
internationally. 
In part, the motives for intervention stem from the moralism of the current
government. "We have a responsibility to act as a force for good in the
world," it said in the Strategic Defence Review, the document which
kickstarted the new globalism. The current British expansion is also a swing
of the pendulum as painful memories of the post-colonial period fade. 
Tony Blair's political aims shape the new globalism. His ambitions are
broad, though the Prime Minister does not focus on the details. George
Robertson, as Defence Secretary, also gave momentum to the idea, before he
went on to head Nato, and Robin Cook, the Foreign Secretary, has developed a
broader view of Britain's international role as his term in office has
progressed. But many of the practicalities and much of the vision comes from
the military. 
General Sir Charles Guthrie, the Chief of the Defence Staff, has been very
active behind the scenes in rethinking British policy. He is one of the last
of the colonial soldiers in the British Army, having served in Aden, the
Persian Gulf, Malaysia and East Africa with the Special Air Service, and
being Commander of British Forces in the New Hebrides, now Vanuatu. 
The breadth of Britain's future ambitions was hinted at in a report last
year by the International Centre for Security Analysis at Kings College
London, sponsored by the Defence Evaluation & Research Agency. It aimed "to
identify the means by which the UK can maximise its influence in the
formation and conduct of coalition military operations in the 1998-2015
timeframe." What was intriguing about this vision was that it saw Britain
acting not just with the US, but increasingly independently of it. In the
future, it should have sufficient equipment not just for itself, but for
others as well. And it should aim to be more self-sufficient in
intelligence, since "Britain's reliance on the US for certain types of
strategic intelligence, such as satellite imagery, may constrain Britain's
freedom of manouevre in future European-only coalition operations". 
The ICSA report called Britain "A nexus power between the technology-driven
US and non-NATO, non-European powers." Britain had already demonstrated its
willingness to use its forces in the Gulf and in Kosovo, where it was ready
to commit 50,000 troops to a ground invasion. But the shift to West Africa
shows that the definition of British interests is quite elastic. British
forces might also be committed to Zimbabwe, a return to two old former
colonial battlegrounds. 
This is all quite ambitious stuff; yet surprisingly few questions have been
asked so far about Britain's new military activism. 
There have been rumbling concerns about the implications for resources and
capabilities since the Strategic Defence Review. But only in the last week
have more profound concerns about the purpose of this new globalism started
to be raised, with Conservative and Liberal Democrat spokesmen questioning
the aims of the troops in Sierra Leone. "The Government needs to ensure that
nobody is left in any doubt as to the purpose of their mission," said Iain
Duncan Smith MP, Shadow Secretary of State for Defence. 
Yet there is little that the House of Commons can do. Indeed one reason why
Britain has been able to act in Sierra Leone has been precisely the lack of
constitutional safeguards on the use of force abroad, dating back to the
imperialist state of the last century. In foreign and defence policy, as
Britain's allies will have been reminded, the Prime Minister faces few
limits, unlike his counterpart in Washington.