The Fall of Night
Page 54
Yet we persist in making heavy cuts to our military capabilities. Right now, Britain does not have a single aircraft carrier. Furthermore, we have made serious cuts in our infantry, navy and other deployable forces. Indeed, if we were forced to refight the Falklands War, we might well find ourselves incapable of doing anything more than blockading Argentina with submarines. Maybe it would work, but I wouldn't care to bet on it.
Worse, perhaps, we have created a colossal military bureaucracy that has dampened our ability to fight and signed international treaties that cripple our ability to wage war. Despite having (at least at present) the fourth-largest defence budget in the world, our forces have been badly weakened and our ability to take part in campaigns (like the war in Libya) severely hampered.
Worst of all, the military convent has been shattered. Soldiers returning home from the wars, having taken ghastly wounds in the fighting, have had to endure endless torment from government bureaucracies just to get treatment. Some of the unwounded soldiers are getting out, fearing the care (or lack thereof) that they would receive if they are wounded. If that wasn't enough of a problem, the cuts (which are aimed at the soldiers rather than the excessive number of senior officers) leave them in fear of losing their jobs. Morale is badly damaged and civilian leadership seems unaware of the problem.
This is potentially disastrous.
The problem with almost any kind of modern military capability is that it takes time (often years) to build up from scratch. Even something as basic as training the modern infantryman can take months; producing tanks, jet aircraft and naval ships can take years. (The largest aircraft carriers in the world, the American Nimitz-class ships, can take over seven years to construct.) In certain situations, the producer would actually need to produce the production plants from scratch, adding more delays. This is not an unprecedented problem; in mid-2001, the USN was having real problems keeping its aircraft carriers operational, while the US had to buy bullets from Israel and South Korea to fight the wars in Iraq.
What this means, in realistic terms, is that we might find our ability to respond to a military emergency hampered by sheer shortage of supplies.
Ah, the critics will say, but we’re part of NATO, aren’t we? NATO will help.
That too, I’m afraid, is wishful thinking.
The blunt truth is that we cannot trust any other country to uphold British interests in anything, particularly not when they may find it politically inconvenient. Despite clear aggression against Britain (and an innocent civilian population) in the Falklands War, no other member of NATO sent military forces to assist – and this was when NATO needed to remain a creditable force. (Thatcher being Thatcher, they might not have been accepted if they were.) Now, we are more likely to be sneered at by the rest of the world rather than helped. If this seems unlikely, please consider Hilary Clinton’s dismissal of the whole affair as a ‘colonial’ matter, with the obvious implication that Britain is the bad guy in the matter.
Does this seem absurd? Saddam was one of the most evil men to walk the planet. His regime murdered millions of people, committed genocide, wiped out entire cultures, used gas against civilian targets and launched two separate wars of aggression against its neighbours. Yet how many people believed that the US was the bad guy for moving to dispose him? How many nations slipped away from even verbal support for the war? How far have we fallen that we are prepared to support an evil dictator over a country that may be a clumsy giant at times, but has a good heart?
But, even if we could trust another power to handle our defence, we would compromise our independence if we did so. We would be completely reliant on that country. And, if that country changed its mind, we would be abandoned to the winds.
This is why we need to maintain a formidable military force, including nuclear weapons. Quite simply, we cannot trust anyone else to look after us. We have to do it for ourselves.
Having an army is an insurance policy. If you don’t need it, it’s expensive; if you do need it, you’ll really need it.
***
Readers may doubt that Russia can do all I suggested in the novel. It seems to us that the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Red Army put an end to the Russian threat once and for all. But that is far from the truth. Yeltsin’s failures to prevent a colossal economic crash (the inevitable result of poor communist management) ensured that Russia would turn to a strongman to reassert itself. Putin may not be Stalin, but he has been quite successful in turning the Russian economy around and restoring Russia’s power in the world. Indeed, as the recent clash over Syria has shown, Putin recently scored a number of points against President Obama.
Nor is this is only success. Russia’s brief war with Georgia in 2008 demonstrated, quite nicely, that Russia could act as it wished along its borders and outside powers (specifically the United States) couldn't act to prevent it. In addition, Putin has built economic ties with European powers (mainly Germany) that create economic incentives to support Russia and abandon Eastern Europe. Indeed, despite constant civil unrest, it is unlikely that the Ukraine and Belorussia (the latter run by a dictator) will manage to slip out of the Russian shadow, while NATO membership does not protect the Baltic States from Russian interference.
In fact, Russian influence has reached quite alarming levels. Russian agents have been caught spying in America and Europe, Russian operatives murdered a former Russian officer in London - Alexander Litvinenko – and may well have been involved in the death of Anna Politkovskaya. European and American businessmen who invest in Russia have often found themselves economically raped by Russian bureaucrats (the government is often a large part of the problem) and anti-Russian parties outside Russia have been harassed by Russian spies.
And, in Russia itself, those who oppose Putin find themselves in deep trouble. This is often petty – witness the treatment of Pussy Riot, a punk rock band – but has a numbing effect on free discourse. The shadows of oppression are falling over Russia once again.
In short, we are faced with a Russia that is growing more and more assertive ... and confronted with an increasingly weak and divided Europe, one that is growing apart from America. Will there come a time, I might ask, when the military balance will fall towards the Russian side to the point where Russia’s leaders will consider a military invasion of Europe?
But invasions are so passé nowadays, aren't they?
The world can change. It can, in fact, change at terrifying speed. And when it does, we have to be ready.
Christopher Nuttall
Manchester, 2014
Table of Contents
Author’s Note
Prologue
Chapter One: Raging at Infinity
Chapter Two: Armageddon Rising
Chapter Three: They Also Serve…
Chapter Four: Storm Warning
Chapter Five: Sleepers
Chapter Six: The Lords and Masters
Chapter Seven: To Be in Poland, In the Summertime
Chapter Eight: Special Purpose Units
Chapter Nine: While Europe Slept
Interlude One: Tick…tick…tick…Tick…tick…tick…
Chapter Ten: Cry Havoc, and Let Slip the Dogs of War, Take One
Chapter Eleven: Cry Havoc, and Let Slip the Dogs of War, Take Two
Chapter Twelve: Cry Havoc, and Let Slip the Dogs of War, Take Three
Chapter Thirteen: Cry Havoc, and Let Slip the Dogs of War, Take Four
Chapter Fourteen: Picking Up The Pieces, Take One
Chapter Fifteen: Picking Up The Pieces, Take Two
Chapter Sixteen: I Told You So!
Chapter Seventeen: State of Play
Interlude Two: The Price of Inaction
Chapter Eighteen: A Day That Will Live In Infamy, Take One
Chapter Nineteen: A Day That Will Live In Infamy, Take Two
Chapter Twenty: A Day That Will Live In Infamy, Take Three
Chapter Twenty-One: Strike from the Sky, Take One
Chapter Twenty-Two: Strike from the Sky, Take Two
Chapter Twenty-Three: Prisoner of War
Chapter Twenty-Four: The Long Way Home
Chapter Twenty-Five: The Advance on Warsaw
Chapter Twenty-Six: A Stillness Upon the Sea
Chapter Twenty-Seven: The Fall of Warsaw
Interlude Three: Blitzkrieg
Chapter Twenty-Eight: Standing Alone
Chapter Twenty-Nine: Reds Under The Bed
Chapter Thirty: Back on the Streets
Chapter Thirty-One: War in the Air
Chapter Thirty-Two: Backs to the Wall
Chapter Thirty-Three: The End of the European Dream
Chapter Thirty-Four: Stockholm Syndrome
Chapter Thirty-Five: Rats and Sinking Ships
Chapter Thirty-Six: The Way Home
Chapter Thirty-Seven: Breaking the Back
Chapter Thirty-Eight: Dunkirk, Round Two
Chapter Thirty-Nine: The Battle of France
Chapter Forty: Alone
Interlude Four: The End of Europe
Chapter Forty-One: Covenants without Swords, Take One
Chapter Forty-Two: Covenants without Swords, Take Two
Interlude Five: Nightmare
Chapter Forty-Three: Mr Luong Goes to Washington
Chapter Forty-Four: Waiting
Chapter Forty-Five: The Final Countdown
Chapter Forty-Six: Operation Morskoi Lev, Take One
Chapter Forty-Seven: Operation Morskoi Lev, Take Two
Chapter Forty-Eight: Operation Morskoi Lev, Take Three
Chapter Forty-Nine: Consolidation
Chapter Fifty: The Second Battle of Dorking, Take One
Chapter Fifty-One: The Second Battle of Dorking, Take Two
Chapter Fifty-Two: The Fall of Night
Epilogue
Afterword