Turn your back for one moment …

Wednesday, April 01, 2009

Turn your back for one moment …

… and they'll come out with another "daft" idea, this one suggesting that British naval bases should be handed over to Brussels.

The story comes from Justin Stares via Lloyds List, a usually reliable source, also copied out in The Daily Mail, which runs the item big.

The idea is that British (and other member states) naval bases around the world should be at the service of the European Union to protect shipping lanes. For Britain, that would include our bases in Gibraltar, Cyprus and the Falkland Islands, set up as part of an EU "forward presence" for securing vital trade routes. 

Actually, this is something and nothing. It is in a report commissioned by the EU parliament's subcommittee on security and defence, written by two UK-based academics, James Rogers and Luis Simon. It suggests that these installations would provide a formidable asset for the geographical and functional expansion of "EU Grand Strategy".

Trade lanes can be secured only if the far-flung bases belonging to the two main European naval powers are put to common use, the report argues: "As the world moves towards a dynamic multipolar system and US relative maritime power declines as powers like China and India rise, there is a growing and compelling need for Europeans to take responsibility for the Sea Lines of Communication that link them to the farthest corners of the world, particularly those most vital to European trade and security." 

Geoffrey Van Orden is on the case, dismissing the report as "among the most hubristic proposals the EU has yet produced in support of its defence policies." He says he has criticised the EU's military operations as mere exercises in sticking an EU badge on our soldiers' arms. Now they want to run up the EU flag on our ships and even our overseas territories." 

And there the matter will rest – for the moment. It has no legislative status and is not even a formal EU proposal. But, in the history of the institution, the EU parliament is often used as a sounding board, testing the water, so to speak, to see whether an idea will fly. 

It also points to the direction of travel, confirming the long-range intention to integrate the whole of the member states' defence capabilities, no matter how long it takes.

With the focus on G20 and the economic crisis, the idea will quickly disappear from public view, but it will not go away, any more than the idea floated by the commission that in future the EU should represent member states on institutions such as the IMF. This, Bruno Waterfield tells us, is the EU's price for an agreement at the G20 summit. 

Nor will the idea, now well advanced, that there should be a stronger EU level telecommunications regulator. This has now been agreed by the EU parliament and member states, bringing into action in 2010 a new agency which will have the power to reverse decisions made by national telecommunications regulators in the EU – particularly on network access and pricing.

The Naval Base idea gets the attention because it is novel and outrageous. But it will be a long time in the future before it comes to pass. The IMF idea and the telecoms super-regulator are equally outrageous, but so technical and boring are they that they will be given little attention – even of they are also just as dangerous.

Thus, while we each focus on our own pre-occupations, the EU marches on unabated, watched by the likes of the invaluable Open Europe which each day brings us a fraction of the torrent.

It is difficult enough keeping track of what our puppet government is doing. With a supreme government over in Brussels, dipping its oar into virtually every aspect of our lives, it is impossible to pick up everything. 

And that is another reason why we have to get out of the EU. The sheer scale of the operation and its interests defy any effective monitoring. Every time you turn your back, it comes out with another "daft" idea... and most of them get implemented.

COMMENT THREAD

Tuesday, March 31, 2009

The abolition of "defeat"

Another landmark in the British defeat in southern Iraq was reached todaywhen Major General Andy Salmon, of the Royal Marines, formally handed command in Basra to his US Army counterpart Major General Michael Oates.

With that, the Royal Marine flag was lowered for the last time at Basra Air Station, when the flag of the US 10th Mountain Division was raised to replace the Marines’ colours. 

The symbolism of this has been entirely lost on the commentators, but it was elements of the 10th Mountain Division which assisted the Iraqi Army in the recovery of al Amarah last June, in operation Promise of Peace after it had been abandoned by the British Army in August 2006, thus leaving the Mahdi Army free rein to turn the city into the bomb-making centre for the rest of the Shi'a insurgency.

Despite this senior British generals are celebrating the "enormous success" of UK troops in Iraq, having coined yet another term for "retreat". Such is the language of propaganda that the earlier retreats from al Amarah and then central Basra became "tactical moves" while the retreat from Basra Palace became a "repositioning". But the spin doctors have excelled themselves today, describing the current humiliating hand-over to the Americans, as a "Change in coalition command structure in southern Iraq".

If only Lt-Gen Percival had been so agile with terminology in February 1942, he would perhaps have gained his knighthood instead of ignominy, and gone on to greater things.

Certainly, the Orwellian decay of the language does not allow for the use of the words "surrender" or "defeat". We have achieved a glorious "change in coalition command structure" and now our troops can be "repositioned" elsewhere, where they can repeat the process all over again. Now that the word "defeat” has been abolished, there can be no stopping them.

COMMENT THREAD

Can't resist this

The good news is that I am working on setting up a parallel blog that will deal with all the subjects that are only tenuously related to the main themes of EUReferendum. When that happens all my postings here will be EU related. How lucky can you be!

In the meantime, I have to diverge from the main theme from time to time. Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit has, for some time, been using the words "the country is in the very best of hands" as a kind of refrain. I was going to plagiarize it for the postings about our own bunch of bozos, whether in London or Brussels. Luckily we have just been reminded both by Instapunditand Powerline that we are all plagiarizing or quoting the late great Johnny Mercer from a less well known musical "Li'l Abner".

The Treasury says the national debt is climbing to the sky
And government expenditures have never been so high.
It makes a feller get a gleam of pride within his eye,
to see how our economy expands,
The country's in the very best of hands...

Enjoy.

Biter bit

Defence questions yesterday brought up a rash of questions on the A400M, but first in the offing was a question on the "air bridge" – the RAF shuttle service between the UK and the operational theatres. That brought an intervention from Conservative shadow defence secretary which had him walking into a bear trap, eyes wide closed.

Launching into the attack, the egregious Fox demanded that defence secretary John Hutton admit that the main reason for the constant delays experienced in the service was "simply that the TriStars we are using are clapped out, with only 44 percent of the fleet fit for purpose".

Actually, that is not the problem. In terms of airframe hours – by which aircraft age is measured – the TriStars are relatively youthful machines. But we shall let that pass as this was but a launch pad for Fox's substantive attack. Directing all his guns at Hutton, he thus charged:

The future strategic tanker aircraft, which is the replacement aircraft for both troop transport and the re-fuelling tanker, was supposed to be in service in 2007 initially: we are now told that it will be at least 2011. On top of the Nimrod delay of 92 months, the Astute submarine delay of 47 months and the Type 45 destroyer delay of 42 months, is not defence procurement another fine mess Labour has got us into?

Hutton – no fool he, with something of a reputation as a military historian – evidently knew his recent defence history better than the shadow secretary. "No," he said, "and the hon. Gentleman should be very careful citing those examples, because those were all contracts let by the former Government. They were not let on proper terms, and that is especially true for the Astute contract - and he should know that."

Unabashed – or perhaps not hearing the answer – Fox launched his next salvo, demanding: "Is not the prevarication that we have seen exactly what we are now seeing with the A400M military transport fiasco? If that project is cancelled, and we are the last to pull out, we may be at the end of the queue to buy the necessary alternative capabilities - losers yet again."

The last point is well made. If we leave it too late, then indeed we are at risk of being at the end of the queue, as other buyers – in a worse state than us – rush to sign up with Lockheed for replacements, leaving the RAF stranded with its ageing fleet of C-130Ks.

Hutton tells us that the MoD will make a decision on the A400M in July, but you can bet that, behind the scenes, frantic negotiations are taking place to overcome what Fox calls the "A400M military transport fiasco".

Here again, though, Fox's triumphalism might be a tad misplaced. Although the A400M was ordered on the Labour watch, the project gestation stretches back into the mists of time – placing its genesis very firmly with the previous Conservative administration. In fact, after years of the very "prevarication" of which Fox complains, where the then government had been blowing hot and cold for some many years, on 16 December 1994 the UK rejoined what was then known as the Future Large Aircraft project.

This was announced by the then defence secretary Malcolm Rifkind, lodging the UK firmly in the programme. Thus, when Tony Blair in May 2000 finally agreed to order 25 A400Ms, he was merely setting the seal on a process initiated by the Conservatives those six years earlier.

Hutton could perhaps have reminded Fox of this, but – presumably – chose not to. But the fact remains that neither Labour nor the Conservatives have clean hands on this project and, if it had not been John Major's enthusiasm for remaining at "the heart of Europe", we probably would not be in this current mess which even has the New York Times scratching its head in amazement.