For the Record

by David Cameron

Part of my job, as I saw it, was to help focus him on making his government work and ensuring that the country was run properly, for example appointing governors, passing basic laws and dealing with rampant corruption. Karzai himself had been dogged by corruption claims in both the 2004 and 2009 elections: Hugh Powell had visited a polling station in Helmand with a turnout of three hundred which had reported 15,000 votes for Karzai.

  One of the reasons some Afghans turned to the Taliban was because they seemed better at dispensing justice and ensuring order than the legitimate authorities. And corruption was so ingrained in the country’s culture that Karzai could never quite accept that we were there because we genuinely believed in the mission as part of an international coalition. In January 2012 I remember him asking me what was it – minerals? mining rights? – that we really wanted from Afghanistan.

  He could be hard work. He would criticise the activities of British and American troops, even though they were making extraordinary sacrifices and were essential for his regime’s survival. And he found it too easy to play the nationalist card and blame all his problems on Pakistan.

  But there was enough there for me to be able to use the relationship I had built up, and the fact that the Pakistanis trusted us more than the Americans, to help build the trust between Afghans and Pakistanis.

  The high-water mark of my efforts came at the Chequers summit in 2013 when Karzai and President Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan spent two days in talks. They slept in adjoining bedrooms, each with a guard outside sitting ramrod-straight and wide awake in his chair. I came downstairs the next morning to find the two presidents joking about which of them had been snoring the loudest.

  We agreed a series of small steps to build confidence: publicly praising each other’s leadership; agreeing visits to each other’s countries; and – crucially – recognising that the security of one was the security of the other.

  We aimed to move on to talk about border security and the import­ance of dealing with terrorist safe havens on both sides of the Durand Line (the controversial border between the two countries). We wanted to get some of their military and intelligence personnel to sit together and work together – even suggesting joint patrols. A further series of coordinated steps would then follow to help deliver a peace process: the release from Pakistani custody of potential Taliban peacemakers so they could carry out talks, hints that Afghanistan would consider constitutional reforms, and so on.

  But Karzai couldn’t bring himself to trust Pakistan. Zardari was often willing, but as we know, it is really the military that makes the key decisions.

  The Americans were supportive and appreciative of our efforts. They took up the cudgels for contacts with the Taliban, but ultimately the distance between the two sides, and their half-heartedness about a compromise, was too great to make meaningful progress.

  This is the agenda I most wish had come off. But I am convinced that it remains crucial today, and that it can be done.

  So, for all the blood spilt and treasure spent, was Britain’s involvement in the Afghan war worth it? Historians say it’s too early to say. It is incredibly depressing whenever the country slips back. Sangin is back in Taliban hands. Their flag flies over Musa Qala. Opium fields still stretch across Helmand. These are painful things to write.

  But at the same time, in 2014 Afghanistan saw its first peaceful, democratic transfer of power, to the anti-corruption academic Ashraf Ghani. It now has its own police force and national army. And more than that. By 2011, 85 per cent of the country had access to basic med­-ical care, compared to 9 per cent under the Taliban. Seven million more children were in school compared to one million in 2001. A third of them were girls. Not a single girl went to school in the Taliban years. As long as we go on funding the Afghan army and police (and the inter­national community remains committed to this), the Taliban is unlikely to win the whole country, and terrorists cannot get the same foothold they had before.

  The agenda is still the same. The Afghan government needs to deliver for all its people. It needs to find a way of bringing at least some elements of the Taliban into the legitimate political sphere. It will only do this if it forges a trusting partnership with Pakistan, where both accept that allowing safe havens on either side of the border for terrorists will end up destroying them both.

  The difference now is that our troops are not exposed to the daily risk they once were. Arguably, it will be easier now for some sort of deal to be done because the provocative presence of foreign troops on Afghan soil is so much less.

  The prevailing views are that this war was either doomed to fail or that it should have been pushed harder. I believe there is a third category, where you do the right thing and keep doing it, but it takes a very, very long time before you achieve stable and lasting success.

  Samuel Beckett said, ‘Fail again. Fail better.’ Foreign troops could only ever provide a breathing space for a legitimate Afghan government to get its act together and deal with the fundamental issues.

  Delivering security and some semblance of uncorrupt administration; getting the relationship between Afghanistan and Pakistan right; achieving a political settlement which demonstrates that all Afghans are welcome. I believe all these things are achievable. The story isn’t over.

  Afghanistan brought me into close contact with the UK’s military chiefs. While there were robust arguments and discussions, they were generally good-natured. However, my relationship with them would come under greater strain when we had to discuss another intractable challenge: how to make sense of the UK’s defence budget in an age of austerity.

  I had read widely about the history of military top brass interacting with those at the top table of government – particularly the blazing rows between Churchill and General Alan Brooke in the rooms I was now so familiar with in Downing Street. I have huge respect for the chiefs of staff who head up the army, navy, air force and the armed forces as a whole. But PMs need to build up their own expertise. Like all my predecessors since James Callaghan, I didn’t have a military background, so I decided to hire a senior military adviser to be in my private office.

  Colonel Jim Morris, a Royal Marine, followed in later years by Colonel Gwyn Jenkins and Lieutenant Colonel Nick Perry, advised me in Downing Street, and did so brilliantly. They had all done multiple tours of Afghanistan and Iraq, and were at my side through everything: from hostage situations to those trips to Afghanistan. It was a small change to government that paid dividends – and I believe it will endure.

  Meanwhile, the tenure of the chief of the defence staff, Sir Jock Stirrup, was coming to an end, and it was time for me to choose a successor.

  General Sir David Richards, head of the army at the time, was a swashbuckling, charismatic, can-do character, whose initiative and daring had helped end the bloody civil war in Sierra Leone. I had met David when he commanded the international forces in Afghanistan between 2006 and 2007. He had done an excellent job, and had the respect of the US. He was famed in Whitehall for coming out with clever but infuriating catchphrases to put the politicians in their place. One of his favourites was ‘Amateurs talk tactics, professionals talk logistics.’ As I’ve said, I don’t believe you can separate tactics, logistics and timing from strategy, so my reply was, ‘Well, I’d better get involved in those as well.’

  His promotion wasn’t without risk. I was warned by more than one Whitehall mandarin that David would spend more time briefing the press than briefing me, and relations would become strained.

  They were right. He was an innovative thinker, yet there was no doubt he was a leaker, and that was damaging to the government. And he’d say one thing in private – we should cut the army to 82,000 – and a different thing in public – nothing less than 102,000 was acceptable. I don’t regret his appointment, but if you deal with a swashbuckler, you’ve got to be prepared to get swashed from time to time.

  Another key figure, Liam Fox, had been
one of my rivals for the party leadership, and was delighted when I made him shadow defence secretary back in late 2005. Despite being eager to continue the role in government, he occasionally seemed overwhelmed by the decision-making. It left me having to step in a lot myself, especially because the defence budget was a total mess.

  An eye-watering £38 billion had been pledged to future programmes, which was actually more than the annual defence budget of £33 billion. The previous government had made attractive-sounding pledges for future equipment without a realistic prospect of being able to pay for it. And many of the current projects were wildly over budget. The only way forward was a complete overhaul. Labour hadn’t had a defence review for years, so the changes would be drastic – projects cancelled, spending cut and even jobs lost.

  The Treasury had long wanted to take an axe to defence spending, and was pencilling in at least a 15 per cent cut. The chiefs, the MoD and Liam Fox were reluctant. A letter from Liam to me, leaked on the eve of the 2010 party conference, warned of ‘grave political consequences for us, destroying much of the reputation and capital you, and we, have built up in recent years’ if we made cuts. This would be a very tough fight.

  I was ready to be ruthless, and to go into battle on multiple fronts – against the right-wing press, the retired generals brigade and the rather gung-ho usual suspects in my own party. Better to do something drastic but necessary, I thought, than fudge, fiddle and muddle through as governments had done for years. We were Conservatives: we could take tough decisions about defence and finally sort this mess out. I insisted on a re-examination of the government’s approach to the whole security agenda. So the Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR), as it was known, would be coordinated by the new NSC and the national security adviser.

  The review would be characterised in the immediate aftermath as bungled, rushed and short-sighted. But judging it straight away and only in terms of immediate impact – surely that is short-sighted. The real test of any defence review is to take a longer view, and ask: over the next five years, did the decisions you made jeopardise current needs or future capabilities? Was anything lacking on your watch or since then?

  My answer is ‘no’. We brought the defence budget back into the black, while modernising the services. We reduced the size of the army, navy and air force, while dealing with new and ever more complicated threats. We cut spending by 8 per cent – far less than other departments and far less than the original Treasury ask – while engineering it so that the budget would rise in the future. And, in the end, we retained our NATO commitment to allocate 2 per cent of our national income to defence. This was a benchmark few countries were willing to meet, and although difficult, it was important to our standing in the world that we were able to do so. It is one of the achievements of which I am most proud.

  Yes, there was a period of retrenchment and redundancies, but what would emerge – the so-called ‘Future Force 2020’ concept – was forces fit for the future. This was the beginning of the end of a political orthodoxy that correlated spending and success. Over the coalition years we showed that you could save money and improve services – not just in defence, but in local government, policing, environment – if you spent smart.

  The bottom line of the review was that we would have to make savings. And in doing so, there was a big choice. Was it better to maintain a balanced, albeit smaller, force, with a broad set of capabilities? Or was it better to focus the valuable resources on one type of warfare?

  David Richards championed the latter option. He wanted a smaller navy and a bigger army – for us to be really good at one thing. It was tempting but limiting, and didn’t add up strategically or financially. Nor was it any use to prepare for the previous conflict when the next one will be different. And choosing the former type of armed forces – smaller but balanced and flexible – has proven the right choice given the conflicts we have since engaged in.

  That’s not to say that, along the way, I didn’t feel any regrets. I felt two – one technical, one emotional.

  The technical regret was that we didn’t move fast enough from Cold War capabilities towards modern-day capabilities. The things I wanted more of were the things we were moving towards. More drones. Chinooks that could be instantly packed into transport planes, despatched anywhere in the world and ready to fly on arrival. More measures to thwart cyber-attack. But moving towards isn’t the same as arriving.

  The emotional regret concerned the saga of the aircraft carriers and their jets – a tale of bureaucracy, bungling, of rocks and hard places.

  When I took office, two new aircraft carriers had already been commissioned. The largest ships in Royal Naval history and the size of three football pitches, they would be a proud national asset. They were also too big. Yet the cancellation penalties were so high it would be cheaper to just carry on building them. Their immediate predecessor, HMS Ark Royal, was due to be decommissioned anyway. So the decision was taken to continue with both the carriers, since one could be undergoing repairs while the other was in use.

  That led to a decision over our fleet of fighter jets, some of which used the carriers. We now had four types in service, which was too many. Our aircraft carriers could accommodate the new F35 Joint Strike Fighters, so the prime candidate to be scrapped was the much-loved Harrier, famous for its vertical take-offs. But that then meant there would be a gap in Britain’s aircraft-carrier capabilities while the F35s were being built.

  Having grown up in the era of HMS Invincible and HMS Hermes, I had a great romantic attachment to the idea that we could fight anywhere in the world to defend our interests thanks to these vast mobile platforms. It pained me to see the Harrier ‘Jump Jets’ retired. I remember, aged fifteen, listening on the radio to stories of their crews’ great daring in the South Atlantic as we retook the Falkland Islands from the Argentinian Junta.

  In practice, there aren’t that many occasions on which we need to project power somewhere that we don’t have a friendly country nearby to base our aircraft in. The only time the absence of an aircraft carrier affected us while I was prime minister was during the mission in Libya, when we had to use a base in southern Italy. But I remember meeting pilots there at Gioia del Colle on the eve of their mission, and they assured me that the new Typhoons flown from an airbase were the best option anyway. ‘Yes, you may have to spend extra hours in the Typhoon. But what an amazing machine to spend them in,’ they said.

  My defence dramas wouldn’t end there. In October 2011 it was revealed that the defence secretary had been taking his friend Adam Werritty into official meetings – often overseas, without security clearance, without any apparent reason. I commissioned a full investigation from the cabinet secretary Sir Gus O’Donnell – and details began to emerge about Tory donors funding Werritty’s company. Before the report was even finished, however, Liam Fox called me and said he was resigning.

  His resignation led to a mini-reshuffle, and I was convinced that the fair and focused transport secretary, Philip Hammond, could get a good grip on the department and deliver the efficiencies we needed.

  One other thing that was stymying us – in fact shaming us as a nation – was the less than adequate treatment of our armed forces. Those people who put on uniform and risk their lives are doing the most any human can do for their country. It is a tacit understanding that we, as a country, do as much as we can for them and their families. For centuries this had been referred to as a Military Covenant, and it came to represent everything we ought to provide – pay, healthcare, housing, schooling, support – for service personnel, veterans and their families.

  In opposition we made a small but important gesture towards our service personnel by launching the ‘Tickets for Troops’ charity which provided them and their families free entry to sporting, musical and cultural events. Since then, it has distributed over a million tickets.

  Oliver Letwin and the Covenant Reference Group brought
the covenant back to life, making sure we delivered for veterans in the way other countries had done but Britain previously hadn’t.

  My visits to the state-of-the-art facilities in Headley Court, Surrey, which was home to wounded and recovering soldiers, brought home to me how important this was. Here were young men in the prime of their lives who had just lost one or more limbs. What they wanted was not merely prosthetic limbs to get around on, but the most modern and capable prosthetics there were. They didn’t want a quiet life, but a full and active one.

  The fact that my dad had lost both of his legs – albeit in very different circumstances – meant that I knew what a mental as well as physical mountain they were having to climb. Talking to former troops made me understand what we needed to deliver for them. They’d fought the Taliban, and we had been by their side during that battle. Now they were engaged in dealing with physical and mental injuries, finding training and employment, and other challenges of civilian life. It was a different sort of battle, but one during which we should also be by their side. The Military Covenant was enshrined in law in 2011.

  The following year we were able to go further. When the news broke about the widespread manipulation of the London Interbank Offered Rate – or LIBOR – over several years by multiple banks we launched a parliamentary inquiry. George announced that the fines collected by financial regulators would be given to military charities. This was the brainchild of his spad, Ramesh Chhabra, and it resulted in tens of millions of pounds being given to the most deserving of causes.

  The final thing I inherited involved our continuous at-sea nuclear deterrent, Trident – four submarines carrying ballistic missiles that are tipped with nuclear warheads. Tony Blair only got the decision to replace the subs through Parliament because our party had supported it in 2007 (eighty-eight Labour MPs voted against). Once again, its continuation needed to be approved.

  Before I did so, I wanted to prove to myself that Trident was the right option for us. Very secretly, and with only the chancellor, foreign secretary and defence secretary knowing, I commissioned a report on the alternatives.