Ashdown is a Man to Listen To
Paddy Ashdown is not a figure that is widely loved by many Tories, particularly those that find themselves regularly fighting tooth and claw with local Lib Dems.
However, in the area of post-conflicy reconstruction there are few more authoratative figures and his observations deserve to be noted and acted upon. Writing in The Independent yesterday, he makes clear the extent to which the UK-US efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq are under-scale and under-resourced. He notes the lessons of past situations, such as Kosovo, and highlights the lack of recognition Blair’s government pays to the history of such events.
His key point is the level of resources needed after a major conflict, often more than was needed in the war itself. Most starkly, he points out that:
“In Afghanistan, we have 1/25th the number of troops and 1/50th the amount of aid, per head of population, that we put into Kosovo. There is political short-sightedness: a combination of hubris, nemesis and amnesia.”
If that is an indication of what will be required to render anything close to a satisfactory outcome in Iraq and Afghanistan we must acknowledge this now, but we cannot act alone. Sadly, the situation remains as it ever was: without international support we cannot hope to redeem the situation and there is little to suggest that coming together.
However knowlegeable Lord Ashdown might be about post-conflict resolution
is he not simply too late in saying what he does? The tragic reality, surely, is that Western public opinion now increasingly refuses to support a policy of continued war in Asia, however sincere some of its advocates might be. Is it not, therefore, necessary for us here in Britain to recognise that both of these wars have become tragically unwinnable and that we and our neighbours in Europe now urgently need to devise a viable defensive strategy to maintain security around the Mediterranean basin? After all, is this not more or less what the Emperor Hadrian did some 1900 years ago after Trajan had all too similarly overreached himself in Armenia and Mesopotamia?
Comment by Jeremy Thomass — 30 January, 2007 @ 4:20 pm
I think that, while it is clear the situation in Afghanistan is very, very bad, I was still shocked by Lord Ashdown’s statistics in this piece. The scale of our collective under-resourcing is staggering. There is more to this that just a comment on what we have done. It needs to be kept in mind for future conflicts. This has not been a small failure, but a huge one, for all of the heroics being performed by our over-stretched military as we debate this issue.
It may still be that we will face situations in due course where military action is appropriate. While I hope we do not rule out forever the idea of physical intervention, we must understand what that means more clearly.
Comment by Timothy Barnes — 5 February, 2007 @ 11:32 am
[...] was the need to “move fast, do not sit on our hands.” It is interesting to note that Paddy Ashdown made the same observation not so long ago, although Blair and Co do not have seem to be listening when it comes to current [...]
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