Category Archives: Defence policy

Boris Johnson accused of lying as emails suggest he approved Afghan dog rescue

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PM called claims he intervened to help evacuation of animal charity ‘complete nonsense’

Foreign Office emails appear to contradict Downing Street’s insistence that Boris Johnson did not personally authorise the controversial rescue of cats and dogs from a British animal charity in Afghanistan.

The release of two emails on Wednesday prompted claims that the prime minister lied, while he faces separate accusations about misleading parliament over the Downing Street parties scandal.

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MoD wasting billions with ‘broken’ procurement system, MPs warn

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Commons spending watchdog says out of 20 projects, 13 were running late by a cumulative total of 21 years

The Ministry of Defence’s system of procurement is “broken” and is repeatedly wasting billions in taxpayers’ money, according to a scathing assessment by a watchdog committee of MPs.

The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) said that the oversight in the department was so poor that it was unable to spell out what additional capability the country will get from an extra £16.5bn which was allocated by Boris Johnson last year.

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France cool on efforts by Australia to repair Aukus rift damage

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Élysée says future talks must have substance after Canberra’s decision to cancel submarine contract

France has said any future talks between Emmanuel Macron and the Australian prime minister, Scott Morrison, over the fallout from Canberra’s decision to tear up a €56bn (£48bn) submarine deal will have to be “seriously prepared” and have “substance”.

The Élysée Palace has denied it is refusing to take Morrison’s calls, saying the president is “always available to talk on the phone”, but has admitted it is not in any hurry to resume contact with Canberra.

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Experts say China’s low-level cyberwar is becoming severe threat

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Activity more overt and reckless despite US, British and other political efforts to bring it to a halt

Chinese state-sponsored hacking is at record levels, western experts say, accusing Beijing of engaging in a form of low-level warfare that is escalating despite US, British and other political efforts to bring it to a halt.

There are accusations too that the clandestine activity, which has a focus on stealing intellectual property, has become more overt and more reckless, although Beijing consistently denies sponsoring hacking and accuses critics of hypocrisy.

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Examining Aukus alliance through the lens of history | Letters

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Readers respond to the new pact between the UK, Australia and the US, and its implications

The Aukus pact is not a “new global order” (17 September) but very much an old order; it is colonial gunboats. I do not expect politicians to have read history such as the first Anglo-Afghan war of 1839, but I do expect them to be aware of history in their own lifetimes. Eton may not teach the failures of empire, but China has been very clear about Taiwan since 1950.

When Biden said, “This decision about Afghanistan is not just about Afghanistan. It’s about ending an era of major military operations to remake other countries”, he was committing to another battle in the Pacific. The global dominance of China has been clear for more than 20 years, and yet we are unwillingly signed up to face this new empire?
Simon Allen
St Albans, Hertfordshire

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UK-France defence summit cancelled in Aukus row

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Paris furious at scrapping of Australian submarine contract and new three-way technology pact

A Franco-British defence ministers’ summit due to take place this week has been cancelled as Paris steps up its protests over the loss of a £48bn submarine contract with Australia and its secret replacement with nuclear technology from the UK and US.

Ben Wallace, the UK defence secretary, and his opposite number, Florence Parly, had been due to hold a bilateral meeting in London and address the two-day Franco-British Council, now the latest casualties of the diplomatic row.

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Baptism of fire as Liz Truss heads to US amid submarine row

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As France accuses the US and Australia of ‘lies and duplicity’, new UK foreign secretary faces major diplomatic incident on her first official overseas trip

Liz Truss is heading for a furious diplomatic confrontation with France on her first trip abroad as foreign secretary, as anger mounts in Paris over the cancellation of a £48bn nuclear submarine contract.

Truss, whose appointment was one of the biggest surprises of Boris Johnson’s cabinet reshuffle last Wednesday, will arrive in the US on Sunday before a four-day visit to New York and Washington during which she is aiming to promote the prime minister’s vision of “global Britain” to international leaders.

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The Aukus pact is a sign of a new global order | Rana Mitter

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The deal has upset China, but it also binds the US into European security, in a world where Nato may be less relevant

France is furious. Theresa May is worried. The announcement of the new Australia-UK-US alliance (Aukus) and the ditching of a previous French-Australian submarine deal has led France’s foreign minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian, to term the pact “a stab in the back”, while the former British prime minister is concerned about Britain being dragged into a war over the future of Taiwan.

Oddly enough, Beijing’s reaction has been rather muted. Yes, it has accused the west of a “cold war mentality”, and Xi Jinping has warned foreigners not to interfere in the region, but its warning that China would “closely monitor the situation” was close to a “cut and paste” outrage.

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Aukus pact: UK and US battle to contain international backlash

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Nuclear submarine deal with Australia draws criticism from allies and China amid fears of conflict

Britain and the US are battling to contain an international backlash over a nuclear submarine pact struck with Australia amid concerns that the alliance could provoke China and prompt conflict in the Pacific.

Boris Johnson told MPs that the Aukus defence agreement was “not intended to be adversarial” to China. But Beijing accused the three countries of adopting a “cold war mentality” and warned they would harm their own interests unless it was dropped.

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Britain’s military must learn from its mistakes

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Britain’s armed forces are dodging responsibility for failings in Afghanistan and Iraq, argues Prof Paul Dixon. RC Pennington fears military history is doomed to repeat itself. Plus letters from Margaret Phelps, Diana Francis and Jim Golcher

Simon Akam is right, the military does want to ignore its failure in Afghanistan (Britain’s military will want to ignore its failure in Afghanistan. It must face reality, 22 August), but it does so by deflecting responsibility on to the politicians.

There is also a strong reluctance to publish books and articles that are critical of the military, even by those who served. All three books cited by Akam are by journalists who are ex-military.

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Nosedive in UK-US relations is another casualty of Afghanistan’s fall

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Ministers are becoming openly critical of Joe Biden after being left in the dark about major decisions

So much for the special relationship. As the Afghanistan crisis has unfolded, it has precipitated a high-speed deterioration in Anglo-American relations.

What began as a muted disagreement on whether it was right for the US to withdraw militarily has reached the point where UK government sources are openly briefing against President Joe Biden as the situation in Kabul worsens.

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Israel’s shadow war with Iran

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A spate of attacks on one of the world’s busiest shipping trade routes is part of an escalating tit-for-tat conflict playing out between Iran and Israel, says Martin Chulov, the Guardian’s Middle East correspondent

In the last week of July, an oil tanker managed by an Israeli company was making a routine journey from Dar es Salaam in Tanzania to Fujairah in the United Arab Emirates when it was hit by an explosive, believed to be a drone. Two men, a Romanian and a British national, were killed in the attack. The Israeli government immediately blamed Iran who has denied any part in it.

The Guardian’s Middle East correspondent, Martin Chulov, tells Nosheen Iqbal that it is the latest action in what is now a rapidly escalating ‘shadow war’ between Israel and Iran. With both countries under new leadership in recent weeks, there is an added layer of unpredictability to relations that have been tense for some time.

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Hundreds of Afghan security forces flee as districts fall to Taliban

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Militants’ advance continues as Britain nears end of its two-decade deployment to country

The Taliban’s rapid advance through northern Afghanistan continued on Sunday with more than a dozen districts falling to the militants, as Britain entered the final days of its two-decade deployment to Afghanistan.

More than 300 members of the Afghan security forces fled across the border into Tajikistan to escape the militants, and Badakhshan and Takhar provinces are now largely under Taliban control, beyond the respective regional capitals.

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Britain acknowledges surprise at speed of Russian reaction to warship

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Kremlin summons UK ambassador as Boris Johnson says HMS Defender’s deployment ‘wholly appropriate’

British officials acknowledged they were taken by surprise by the speed of the Russian reaction to HMS Defender’s 36-minute passage through Crimean waters on Wednesday as the British ambassador to Moscow was summoned to the Kremlin.

Although a Russian response to the Royal Navy warship’s passage within the 12-mile territorial limit was anticipated, the UK Ministry of Defence did not expect the Kremlin to speedily declare that warning shots had been fired.

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UK-Russian naval dispute: both sides will claim victory

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Analysis: Royal Navy ship sailing near Crimea may also be test of Beijing reaction to territorial reach

British ministers will have been under no illusions that the decision to sail HMS Defender into disputed waters off the coast of Russian-annexed Crimea would provoke a reaction from the Kremlin.

A dispute about whether warning shots were fired or not is beside the point – although if they were, they were miles out of range. Because even if the west considers Crimea, annexed by Moscow in 2014, to be still part of Ukraine, the Russians do not and will act accordingly.

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Royal Navy ship off Crimea sparks diplomatic row between Russia and UK

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MoD and Moscow disagree over whether shots were fired at destroyer near disputed territory

Britain was unexpectedly embroiled in a diplomatic and military dispute with Russia on Wednesday after Royal Navy destroyer HMS Defender briefly sailed through territorial waters off the coast of the disputed territory of Crimea.

The warship sailed for about an hour in the morning within the 12-mile limit off Cape Fiolent on a direct route between the Ukrainian port of Odesa and Georgia, prompting Russian complaints and a disagreement about whether warning shots were fired.

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10 people shot dead in Ballymurphy were innocent, inquest finds

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Report says killings during British army operations in Belfast in 1971 were unjustified

An inquest has found that all 10 people shot dead during operations by the British army in Ballymurphy in 1971 were innocent and that the killings were unjustified, confirming it as one of the bloodiest atrocities of Northern Ireland’s Troubles.

Mrs Justice Keegan delivered her damning findings in a long-awaited coroner’s report on Tuesday. Families of those killed who have campaigned for decades to clear the names of their relatives wept, hugged and applauded.

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Trident could be forced overseas or halted if Scotland gains independence

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Continuing UK’s nuclear deterrent would probably require help of an allied country, defence expert says

Trident could be forced to the US or possibly France if Scotland became independent because there is no alternative port immediately available elsewhere in the UK, according to a retired admiral responsible for Britain’s nuclear policy.

Unless Scotland were to agree to lease back the Faslane submarine base to the rest of the UK, continuing Trident would probably require the help of an allied country or the nuclear deterrent would have to be halted completely, the expert said.

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UK aid cut seen as unforced error in ‘year of British leadership’

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With UK hosting G7 and Cop26 this year, decision threatens Britain’s status as a ‘soft power’ superpower

Boris Johnson is said to be having “queasy second thoughts” about a long-term cut to the UK aid programme, faced both by the surprising unpopularity of the measure with his own backbenchers and the fact that most other G7 countries will come to the British-hosted summit in June increasing theirs – in the process endangering the UK status as a soft power superpower.

The official government line remains not to look at the falls in aid spending but the size of the budget as a proportion of gross national income, which is still in excess of most G7 countries. The reduced £10bn budget still puts the UK third in the aid spending league table and if anyone has doubts about the UK’s soft power status, the foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, likes to cite an Ipsos Mori poll finding for the British Council in 2020 that found the UK was the most attractive country in the G20.

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Boris Johnson says UK wants to work with China, though it poses ‘great challenges for an open society’ – live

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Latest updates: PM says UK’s greatest ally will be US as he makes statement to MPs on defence review

In his Sky News interview Tobias Ellwood, the Conservative chair of the Commons defence committee, said the security and defence review said that the UK could use nuclear weapons to respond to an attack with chemical or biological weapons. That was a “big change” in policy, he said.

He was referring to this passage on page 77 of the document (pdf).

The UK will not use, or threaten to use, nuclear weapons against any non-nuclear weapon state party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons 1968 (NPT). This assurance does not apply to any state in material breach of those non-proliferation obligations. However, we reserve the right to review this assurance if the future threat of weapons of mass destruction, such as chemical and biological capabilities, or emerging technologies that could have a comparable impact, makes it necessary.

Here is the Scottish government’s summary of the latest plans for easing lockdown restrictions in Scotland. And here is a graphic summarising what it says.

Scotland’s indicative route out of lockdown. If we all stick with it and get the virus more under control as the vaccines do their work, there is hope for a much better summer on the horizon ☀️ pic.twitter.com/gTKHtJTNn5

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