In the second of our two-part analysis on North Korea following Kim Jong-il’s death, Left Foot Forward’s Frank Spring argues that history suggests the time for reform time has come

Kim Jong-un is the third generation of leadership in North Korea, and other communist states have generally begun their shift away from hardline government by ideology toward a blended (if frequently tortured) approach of pragmatism and ideology in their third generation of government, if not before.

Nikita Khrushchev and his shestnadsiki (the “Men of the Sixties”) in the USSR, Nguyen Van Linh in Vietnam, and Jiang Zemin (building on the theories of Deng Xiaopeng) in China all attempted, with varying degrees of success, to move toward more practical models of government and away from the totalitarian Marxism of their predecessors.

Kim Jong-un has some inherent advantages if he goes this route – he has a successful and prosperous guide in the form of China to assist with this process, and, if the stories of a purge of the old guard are true, he will inherit/engineer a young leadership hierarchy who may be interested in ruling something other than a desperately poor backwater for the next 30 years.

Countering this, however, is the fact that previous harbingers of change in communist countries were selected through meritocracy (or, rather, a somewhat perverted facsimile of a meritocracy), achieving their posts by being able to both pass as faithful communists and operate as pragmatic politicians.

Kim Jong-un has not had to blunt any ideological inclinations he may possess during a career’s worth of political compromise and manoeuvring; despite whatever preparations his father and he may have undertaken to set him up for power, he has effectively just walked onto the job.

It would be understandable if seeing his two elder brothers disinherited for being dissolute instilled in the young leader a premature sense of discipline and seriousness that mitigates a sense of entitlement, but, as ever, there is too little information to go on.

So, where next for North Korea and Kim Jong-un?

Here are three things he should do:

Let China do the heavy lifting for the moment: If Kim Jong-un is at all reform-minded, China’s leadership should be a godsend to him; here are people who have overseen the transition from Maoism to a more practical form of government.

The Chinese have some credibility with the regime, and are best-placed at the most to bring North Korea into the 21st century – if the new leadership chooses to come along.

Control expectations: One of the reasons progress has stalled on diplomatic initiatives with North Korea has been that the old regime systematically ignored previous agreements, leading former US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to say about re-starting talks: “We don’t want to buy the same horse again.”

This might be a different horse; how Kim Jong-un handles economic reform will tell the tale. Even so, relations with North Korea will not change quickly. If China can help guide North Korea toward a more modern economy, previous example suggests a degree of liberalism will flow with this.

The pace of this could be glacial; there is very little anyone can do about that.

Cultivate intelligence assets: This is easier said than done, but times of upheaval and change produce losers of power struggles and bet-hedgers against future ones. Such people are useful, and any opportunity to shed light on the internal workings of the North Korean regime cannot be ignored.

The burden of this rests primarily on South Korea.

We will have further analysis of the North Korea question in the new year.

See also:

• North Korea: The challenges facing Kim Jong-un – Frank Spring, December 20th 2011

• The cost of Kim Jong-Il – Daniel Elton, December 19th 2011

• North Korea: What is to be done? – Frank Spring, November 29th 2010

• Is Anglo-French co-operation on nuclear warheads illegal? – Capt. Patrick Bury, November 4th 2010

• Should killer robots be banned? – Andrew Gibson, October 16th 2010

In the first of a two-part series, Left Foot Forward’s Frank Spring looks at where next for North Korea following the death this week of Kim Jong-il

The death of Kim Jong-il and the succession of his son, Kim Jong-un, is the most promising moment for regional stability in a generation.

And it’s a shame, really, because that says more about how static and dour the last few decades have been in the region than it does about Kim Jong-un’s real promise as a potential moderniser of North Korea and its relationship with South Korea, Japan, and the West.

The dominant media narrative around Kim Jong-un’s succession is how little we know about him, and for good reason; until very recently, the Western media did not even have a picture of him, and there is still speculation surrounding biographical points as basic as his exact age. The same was true of his father, incidentally, who was either 69 or 70 when he died this weekend – North Korean officials and Western students of the regime differ on this point.

Speculation about the exact trajectory of relations between the North Korean regime and its neighbours is therefore particularly tricky.

There are a few key boxes that someone in Kim Jong-un’s position would want to tick immediately:

Reassure the military hardliners of his strength in the face of North Korea’s perceived enemies: This may have already been accomplished, as it is rumoured the new leader was behind the rocket attacks against South Korea last year.

Whether he was or not is almost beside the point, as long as he is believed to have slapped South Korea and its allies in the face and gotten away with it.

Cosy up to at least one intelligence service: New leaders in despotic states live and die by their intelligence agencies.

Kim Jong-un’s rumoured friendship with the commander of North Korea’s military intelligence, a hardliner of his father’s generation, would, if true, suggest he has made a good start in winning friends and allies in the military hierarchy, and given him reliable control over a powerful intelligence agency.

Out with the old: As with all reports out of North Korea, details are scarce, but it appears the process of purging potential rivals in the old guard has been underway for several months.

Buy time with the West: When Kim Il-sung died, Kim Jong-il observed a three-year period of mourning before assuming control, during which time relations with South Korea and the West were very quiet, allowing him to focus on consolidating his hold on the country.

Assuming his rumoured involvement in last year’s rocket attacks has established his credentials as a belligerent, Kim Jong-un will likely choose to do the same thing.

Those basics covered, the real challenge for North Korea’s new leader, and for everyone with a stake in the region, will actually commence.

Toward the end of his life, Kim Jong-il became increasingly engaged with the idea of economic reform, making several journeys to China to observe new economic models, actively encouraged by the Chinese. Kim Jong-un must decide whether he wants to continue down this road.

You can read part two of our analysis of the North Korea question later this week on Left Foot Forward.

See also:

• The cost of Kim Jong-Il – Daniel Elton, December 19th 2011

• David Miliband: Attacking Iran would increase the risk of nuclear war – Alex Hern, December 2nd 2011

• Blix says Iran “clearly working towards a nuclear weapon” – yet the UK remains silent – Alex Hern, November 9th 2011

• North Korea: What is to be done? – Frank Spring, November 29th 2010

• Is Anglo-French co-operation on nuclear warheads illegal? – Capt. Patrick Bury, November 4th 2010

In the second of his series looking at what next for Libya, Left Foot Forward’s Frank Spring discusses the idea of Libya splitting into two states

Shortly after international forces began the bombing campaign against Colonel Muammar Qaddafi’s forces, Libyan rebels mounted an offensive to take the town of Ajdabiya from Qaddafi’s army. The loyalists held the town and continue to do so; the rebels have struggled to generate a force with enough mass to overcome the loyalist army, and the international coalition’s ability to provide air support has been hampered by concerns about aggressive bombing in an area with a sizeable civilian population.

While the rebels may yet take Ajdabiya, it illustrates the difficulty the rebels may face in pursuing a military victory over Qaddafi. Both US Admiral Mike Mullen and UK defence secretary Liam Fox acknowledged the possibility that the Qaddafi regime could remain in power – or at least “in existence”, as Fox was keen to differentiate - after this period of intense operations against its military is over.

If Qaddafi and the rebels both conclude that they cannot strike a decisive blow against the other, it is possible that Libya could divide into two states (as predicted in this publication), with a border possibly monitored by a UN peacekeeping force. The international force has some leverage to push the Qaddafi regime to this end if they choose to, as they can offer to lift the freeze on Libyan assets and resume the oil and gas trade that has been so central to the Libyan economy.

This outcome would at least mean a large number of Libyans liberated from Qaddafi’s regime and, one can hope, a further flowering of democracy in the near east.

Unfortunately, it would also mean large portions of Libya’s population would remain under the control of Qaddafi (succeeded, presumably, by one of his sons), in a regime that would likely be even more brutal for its recent trauma, and which might be keen to take revenge on the international community through a renewal of its support for terrorist organisations.

The prospect of a divided Libya, between the Qaddafi-ruled bulk of the country and the rebel state in the northeast is a grim prospect indeed, particularly given the amount of trouble the Qaddafi-led Libya could create and the degree of scrutiny and attention it would require. Divided-state solutions can be sustainable - the Koreas and Ireland come to mind - but they are often characterised by periodic outbreaks of violence.

If Libya splits in two the international community will likely be engaged in keeping peace, one way or another, for decades to come.

In the first of a series of articles this week on Operation Odyssey Dawn, Left Foot Forward’s Frank Spring looks at various aspects of what happens next, starting with an introductory overview of the current situation

International operations against Libyan forces loyal to Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi began last weekend and continue to escalate.

As more partners contributed forces to the coalition, US Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, announced that the international force, led in fact by the United States at the moment and in rhetoric and principle by Britain and France, had established the No-Fly Zone and effectively stymied the advance of Qaddafi’s army on the rebel town of Benghazi.

In the face of this, Qaddafi issued a defiant statement on Sunday promising a “long war”, claiming that he had opened military depots to arm the civilian populace and vowing that his supporters on the ground would ultimately be victorious against the “crusader aggression”.

Qaddafi’s words were in stark contrast to his recent pledge to institute a ceasefire, but the Libyan despot has a strong history of speaking out both sides of his mouth. They do, however, raise an interesting question – if the No-Fly/No-Drive Zone has, in fact, been established and the civilian population of rebel territories preserved from massacre, now what?

The leadership of the international coalition is quite reasonably minding the sequences of its horses and carts for the moment. Admiral Mullen declined to comment specifically on the political resolution of the conflict. UK defence secretary Liam Fox was also vague, emphasising that the coalition’s current priority is simply to deny the Qaddafi regime the ability to use the military against its own population.

That should keep the international coalition intensely active for many days (if not weeks). What happens next is less clear. I’ll address the options in a series of posts this week, starting with Qaddafi’s promised Long Civil War.

As reported in the Telegraph, prime minister David Cameron appears concerned defence secretary Liam Fox has gone off-script with regard to Iran. Fox reportedly informed MPs recently that Iran could have a nuclear weapon next year, a claim disputed by the Telegraph’s sources, who said the official estimate is that Iran is four years away from developing nuclear capability.

The confusion on when Iran could produce a nuclear weapon is understandable; the clandestine nature of the program makes it impossible to know for sure, and CIA Chief Leon Panetta said in June of last year that Iran could have a weapon by 2012 – other estimates say it will take longer.

Fox is not completely off-base; both he and Panetta could be right, although one does wonder why Fox found his own government’s projection so unreasonable that he was compelled to use someone else’s.

Chronology, however, is not the real subject of this dispute. Cameron’s concern, apparently shared by foreign secretary William Hague, is that exaggerating the threat posed by Iran aggrandizes the administration of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, for whom there is political capital to be gained by appearing to be Iran’s defender and advocate against a hostile world.

The incident appears to have inspired Cameron to order a “new strategy for statements” on the subject, more in line with the government’s desire to frame the Ahmadenijad regime as corrupt, ineffective, and weak, while focusing specific criticism on its repressive political system.

This is not completely absurd; Ahmadinejad enjoys the role of international gadfly and is good at generating political heat out of remarks from the “axis of evil” school of rhetoric. Defending his government’s performance to his own people, however, is a less comfortable position for him.

None of this explains why, exactly, the prime minister, defence secretary and foreign secretary were unable to sing off the same hymn sheet before the cacophony went public. This is not the first time Fox has gone off-piste, and it is harder to tell what he hopes to gain on this occasion.

What can Fox have hoped to achieve by “bigging up” Iran, to borrow the prime minister’s phrase? (The derivation of which is anyone’s guess.) What were the MPs in question supposed to have done with this information (or misinformation)?

The truth is there is comparatively little Britain can do about Iran and its nuclear ambitions that is not already being done, short of drastic measures unworthy of contemplation.

Iran might get a nuclear weapon next year. It might get it in two years, or five, or ten. The government has a responsibility for planning changes, if any, to its security posture in the region based on when it thinks Iran will develop nuclear capability.

No part of that responsibility includes accelerating that timetable against the best analysis of Britain’s own intelligence services, nor does it involve making MPs’ flesh creep for reasons unclear; Fox would do well to recall that the public may be less amused than it once was by exaggeration of a Middle Eastern power’s access to weapons of mass destruction, and to explain the incident.

One would hate to think the defence secretary was overplaying Iran’s nuclear ambitions and capability as a way of bigging up the importance of his own portfolio.

An attorney of my experience was involved in a case throughout which the opposing party treated him, his team, and client with remarkable discourtesy in every interaction. At the final meeting settling the case, the arbitrating authority referred directly to my acquaintance’s continued fortitude and courtesy, saying:

“I believe you to be real ladies and gentlemen; you have paid for that, and you will continue to pay it for the rest of your lives.”

This interaction comes strongly to mind as North Korea plays the recalcitrant opponent to South Korea and the broader international establishment, expressing its scorn in the form of artillery shells and dead South Korean soldiers, while the regional establishment in general, and South Korea in particular, must simply weather the outrage.

The reasons why this appalling skirmish is unlikely to escalate into a full-scale war have been well-articulated, and are sound; the North Korean military command is certainly belligerent but its colonels are not so mad that they would start a full-scale war that could end with their deaths, or at least a reduction of their material wealth and power, out of sheer bloody-mindedness.

It seems likely that the relevant officers are simply poking the South Koreans (and, by extension, the United States and the regional establishment of Japan, China, and Russia) in the eye.

North Korea is the Land of Bad Options for the international community. The regional powers (and the United States) have almost no coercive leverage on the North Koreans, as the Korean People’s Army is over 1.2 million men strong (South Korea’s, by contrast, is just over 600,000), with a reserve force of almost 8.5 million, and has been improving its defensive position since the end of the Korean War.

Further, while the old saw that North Korean artillery could flatten Seoul in half an hour might not be strictly true, it could certainly wreak terrible devastation on South Korea’s capital in short order in the event of serious hostilities. This means that the international community can undertake no military escalation short of total war that the North Koreans cannot match.

It is possible for the international community to threaten to cut off food aid to North Korea (indeed, one of the motivating factors behind the North Korean attack might be a South Korean refusal to send food aid as a condition of reuniting families separated by the war), but the North Korean authorities have never balked at allowing their citizens to suffer before, and, in any case, it is not clear that starving North Korean civilians is an appropriate response to their government’s aggression.

Instead, there are two courses open to the South Koreans and the international community at large – ignore the North Koreans, or try to motivate good behavior (in this case, ‘good’ = ‘not bad’) by offering the North Korean government something it needs, namely money and food, of which the country is in horrifyingly short supply.

The first option is appealing but impractical in the long run; as the last week has seen, the North Korean government will get attention one way or the other. The second option might be more practical; a resumption of the Six Party Talks (which could lead to an agreement whereby the North Koreans are effectively paid, in money and aid, not to develop nuclear weapons) and escalation of food (and financial) aid on the condition that the regime behave itself could settle things down.

This option seems to fly in the face of moral justice, as it would amount to paying the North Koreans not to do things they should not do anyway, and would have the appearance of rewarding the North Koreans for killing South Koreans (as it would almost certainly be billed in Pyongyang). It would, however, deepen the regime’s dependence on the international community for the elite’s wealth and the basic survival of its people, a condition that strengthens the hand of South Korea, America, Japan, et al., in the long run.

In some respects, managing the North Korean regime is rather like the British government negotiating with Irish republican separatists in the days leading up to and following the Downing Street Declaration and the Good Friday Agreement; talks continued, in one way or another, in spite of attempts to by various elements of the Irish separatists to derail them, in large part because the British government would not be baited into breaking them off, weathering outrage after outrage to keep the process alive.

While the parallel is hardly exact, it is useful to the think of the North Koreans not as a monolithic actor (in spite of their authoritarian regime), but as a rather opaque jumble of actors with their own priorities. Sometimes, dealmakers will be in the ascendant, sometimes troublemakers, with their attendant outrages.

Through it all, the South Koreans and the international community must exercise almost superhuman grace and patience while keeping the negotiation process alive. They have no other real choice.

Two years after Barack Obama swept into the White House, questions are being asked about how the Democrats did so badly in last night’s elections; Left Foot Forward’s Frank Spring reports from the States

The US midterm election ended as predicted last night, with Republicans winning 60 seats in the US House of Representatives, at least six Senate seats, and nine governorships at the time of writing. By any standard, it was a great night for Republicans, and represents a staggering swing to the right for the US, coming a scant two years after the left-of-centre electoral tidal wave that brought Barack Obama to the White House and gave the Democrats comfortable majorities in the House and Senate.

What happened? Fingers are already pointed – directly or by proxy – at the Democratic leadership, headed by Obama. One line of argument goes that Democrats over-promised and under-delivered after 2008.

This position is technically indefensible – the Obama White House and Democratic Congress have had one of the most active and successful two-year stretches in history – but the appearance of inaction, particularly in Congress, had credence with the electorate.

Outgoing Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell said this week that the problem was that Democrats had not done a good job explaining or emphasising the scale of their achievements. It is certainly possible that a lack of awareness of Democratic achievements hurt progressive candidates, but it fails to account for the defeat of Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold, a Democrat who ran almost exclusively on recent progressive achievements.

The heart of the problem lies in the nature of Democratic achievements. Credit card regulation, financial reform, student-loan help, and the Ledbetter Act in pursuit of equal pay for women – these are real accomplishments, but they are marginal in the face of 9.8 per cent unemployment. Even the two titanic accomplishments of this Congress and White House – the economic stimulus and health care reform – do not lend themselves to political messaging in a staggeringly difficult economic climate.

The full benefits of health care reform have yet to be realized – some will not come into effect until 2014 – and the best pro-stimulus argument ultimately boils down to “things would have been much worse without it”, which, while reasonable, is cold comfort indeed to an electorate in the grip of financial terror. Eighty six per cent of voters told pollsters that they are worried or very worried about the future of the economy in the next year; this is an electorate afraid not for the distant future, but for tomorrow.

It is also true that many of the seats lost last night were conservative constituencies reasserting their nature. Of the 26 seats Democrats took from Republicans in 2008, 22 were in districts that had either been Republican for decades or gone Republican in 1994 and stayed that way even through the 2006 Democratic landslide – essentially, districts that went Democrat only in the progressive tidal wave of 2008. Only four of them were either swing districts with frequent party shifts or historically Democratic seats coming home.

Of the 22 historically Republican seats that went blue in 2008, four of them stayed that way in 2010; of the four swing or progressive districts that changed to Democrat in 2008, three stayed. In some respects, the Dems emerged slightly ahead in this two-year tug-of-war, holding on to seven House seats in swing or conservative areas and reclaiming their traditional seat in Louisiana’s second district, lost in 2008.

While the bad news was almost entirely for Democrats, Republicans have to face some failures as well. The GOP spent millions of dollars and committed untold energy and air time to bringing back the biggest scalp available to them – that of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada. The story of the campaign is a tale worth telling in great detail, but the result is simple – they lost, Reid won.

Republicans were also fended off in California, driven from the Governor’s Mansion (Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger was term-limited out and replaced by Democrat Jerry Brown) and defeated in the Senate race, where Democrat Barbara Boxer (another Republican bête noire) bested Carly Fiorina’s $142 million campaign to unseat her. And, as of this writing, it appears that the GOP fell short in a winnable Senate race in Colorado.

If “it could have been worse” does not work as a balm to American voters regarding the stimulus package, it is unlikely to do much better with Democrats in the face of a very bad result. They can, perhaps, take some solace in the fact that, while the party and candidates are not blameless, they are largely being punished by a panicked electorate for failing to clean up a terrible and complex mess not of their making in an unrealistically short time, as well as suffering the consequences of a natural political realignment as Republican seats went home.

The dissections will continue for some time, but next week, victorious candidates of both parties will pick up the phones and start raising money for 2012.

The Ministry of Defence has agreed to cuts of around 8 per cent in the department’s £37 billion annual budget, the BBC revealed today. The Army has to cut about 7,000 personnel over the next five years; the navy will have fewer new aircraft and its overall fleet will be reduced – though it will get two new aircraft carriers; and RAF bases will close, with the Joint RAF/Fleet Air Arm Harrier force set to face the axe while some RAF Tornado jets could be saved.

The agreement, on the eve of the Strategic Defence Review, came as the Chief of the General Staff warned the prime minister he could not accept cuts in Army numbers and training which would hamper the Afghan operation – forcing Number 10’s hand, Downing Street sources last night saying David Cameron had blocked Treasury demands for 10 per cent cuts in the MoD’s budget.

Writing in The Daily Telegraph last month, Con Coughlin had warned that Britain’s Strategic Defence and Spending Review was in danger of turning into an “unseemly squabble between the rival Services”; this was fair enough, but hardly comprehensive – the squabble over the defence budget has escalated to the highest levels of the coalition government in recent weeks and has now jumped the Pond, with both US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates inveighing against stark cuts in the British defense budget.

Some of the concern may be based on numbers. NATO members are expected to spend 2 per cent of gross domestic product on defence, although in practice Britain has been the only NATO member besides the US to regularly meet this standard; current cuts would bring British spending in at below 2 per cent.

Both Clinton and Gates, however, understand budgetary constraints, and the percentage decrease in British spending is comparable to that of the US, where spending could fall from 4.9 per cent of gross domestic product to 3.5 per cent. Many of the cuts in the American defence budget, however, have come from procurement – weapons-systems and platforms like the F-22 Raptor and the Future Combat System manned vehicles have been scrapped, while others, such the Littoral Combat Ship, have faced cuts in order to avoid future abolition.

Where possible, the cuts have been made according to a sense of what the US’s future defence needs will be – the F-22 was a Cold War relic, for example, while the utility of the FCS was always up for debate. The Littoral Combat Ship, by contrast, is designed for, among other things, near-shore surface warfare against small boats, useful against Somali pirates or violent extremists in coastal or islanded areas, and for protecting major assets like aircraft carriers against swarming boats, yet even it might not survive the cuts. Spared from the axe was the Joint Strike Fighter, seen as an asset in multinational coalition operations such as the one in Afghanistan.

Anticipating the nature of future challenges has been a responsibility for every major national power’s defence chief for as long as such posts have existed, and no prediction can be absolutely accurate. Making allowances for that, however, the cuts in UK defence have been strangely out of sync with the kind of conflicts Britain is likely to face in coming years and does, in fact, face now, and it is this that should have US officials concerned.

While British defence policy should in no way be determined by the needs of the United States, interoperability is the order of the day and looks likely to be the order of tomorrow. What, then, would be of utility both to Britain’s own independent interests and to its joint operations, and would not sink the financial ship?

The first answer is easy: well-resourced, highly-trained, mobile infantry and special forces. It is hard to imagine a conflict in which such a force would not be of the first value to Britain or a NATO coalition, and, indeed, British troops continue to distinguish themselves in Afghanistan. Yet, as has been covered here at Left Foot Forward, the coalition government has threatened to reduce the British infantry by a brigade or more, including scrapping the Gurkhas.

What else would be of independent and cooperative use? Naval forces capable of engaging in anti-piracy and near-shore support operations – essentially, frigates, the kind that Coalition has scrapped to allow for supercarriers.

What of the plans that are going ahead? The biggest procurement is, of course, the supercarriers. Carriers, and their attendant battlegroups, are primarily useful in state v state wars, where an enemy has fixed terrestrial or naval assets to be bombed. One wonders what country on the other side of the world the coalition government imagines it will need to fight in the coming decades. From an interoperability standpoint the carriers’ value is questionable at best – an extra platform here and there is always handy, but the US has carrier battle-group capacity of its own.

Of even greater expense is, of course, Trident. The coalition has not renewed Trident yet; indeed, it has bravely thus far not taken any position at all on the £97 billion question. Apparently, the notion that to govern is to choose was wrong all along.

So US officials are left with this: a close ally cutting or scrapping capacities they both need today – and will likely need tomorrow – in favour of major procurements of questionable value and indecision on the biggest procurement question of all. It is no wonder Clinton and Gates felt moved to voice their concern; it is to be hoped that someone, perhaps even David Cameron, might be listening.

The Coalition’s rumoured delay on Trident renewal has sparked contrasting reactions on all sides of the political spectrum. Conservative backbencher Bernard Jenkin has described the decision if affected as “the maddest decision of them all” whilst shadow defence secretary Bob Ainsworth tweeted:

“Trident delay. Unsafe, risks Continuous At Sea Deterrent. Huge industrial costs.”

Labour leadership candidate Ed Miliband, however, again called for Trident to be included in the Strategic Defence & Security Review (SDSR) and urged the government to consider how best to maintain “the minimum deterrent that Britian requires”. Mr Miliband further criticised the Coalition’s weak decision-making on the matter, saying:

“This decision by the coalition looks worryingly like a government putting off the difficult political choices because they are too weak and too divided to take them, rather that showing the leadership and strength to make tough choices in the long-term interests of our country.”

And from the Liberal Democrats, former leader Sir Menzies Campbell welcomed the prospect of a delay, saying it would provide an opportunity to look again at other weapons systems. He told the BBC:

“We are in the midst of a wholesale defence review. You simply cannot proceed upon assumptions that had their origin in the Cold War…

“It seems to me that it makes a great deal of sense to allow us a breathing space to consider whether a like-for-like replacement – four boats, 192 warheads – is what is necessary for Britain’s defence when we know there are other alternatives available.“

With the Conservative chaired House of Commons defence select committee warning that the SDSR is being rushed at “startling speed”, in marked contrast to Labour’s 1998 review which took nearly a year to complete, pressure on defence secretary Liam Fox to review Britain’s strategic defence and security options in a more measured and holistic fashion continues to grow.

Meanwhile, the Financial Times has also offered an analysis as instructive as it is amusing on the contradictions of a Coalition defence policy that cuts frontline troops whilst spending significant sums on long term defence procurement contracts.

Additional reporting by Left Foot Forward’s Patrick Bury, a former captain in the Royal Irish regiment who has fought in Afghanistan

With the murder of three Gurkha soldiers by an Afghan National Army (ANA) counterpart and news last night of another British military fatality in Sangin, the media is again questioning the credibility of the Coalition’s only exit strategy. This is exactly what the Taliban who planned the attack will have hoped for.

While incidents like Tuesday morning’s are extremely rare, and British trainers do have increasing trust in the ANA’s capabilities, the death of comrades at the hands of a renegade Afghan soldier, unlike November’s murder of five British soldiers at the hands of the notoriously corrupt Afghan National Police (ANP), will raise some serious questions.

The first of these must be about the rapid expansion of the Afghan security forces and the ignorance of quality for quantity. In the race to expand the ANA and ANP, vetting procedures have not been rigorous enough, and this has had evidently deadly consequences.

Another question is that of payment. With ANA soldiers earning as little as $200 a month, soldiers who are constantly based on the frontline can easily be induced to turn rogue for financial reasons. Add to this religious and social pressures Afghan forces are subjected to and incidents of infrequent Coalition fratricide seem set to continue.

Meanwhile, in London, NATO secretary-general Anders Fogh Rasmussen provided the latest instalment of the public dispute amongst Western leaders about withdrawal from Afghanistan in his recent interview in The Daily Telegraph, criticising prime minister David Cameron’s declaration that Britain’s troops will be out of that country by 2015.

Rasmussen argued that the Taliban might increase the frequency and intensity of its attacks if it feels that the coalition’s will is weakening, and that a declared date of withdrawal will encourage the insurgents to simply wait NATO out.

This is essentially the same ground trod by defence secretary Liam Fox’s similar criticism of the deadline, and that underlay the outbursts that got former US commander Stanley McChrystal relieved of duty. General David Petraeus, now commander in Afghanistan, has attempted to walk the line between the two arguments by saying he agreed with the Obama Administration’s timeline to begin withdrawing troops in July 2011 and, at the same time, hinting that operations might take far longer than expected, a dichotomous position with which he has so far gotten away.

It is not entirely clear what Rasmussen hoped to achieve by his remarks. He was at pains to note that “the Taliban follow the political debate in troop-contributing countries closely”, which, presumably, would argue against exacerbating the withdrawal-timeline debate afresh. His point that setting an end-date in a battle of endurance risks conceding defeat is not without merit, but surely this could have been conveyed to Cameron privately.

Rasmussen also expressed concern that defence cuts in Europe could damage European/American interoperability, resulting in America someday finding the Transatlantic relationship “less relevant”. This echoes former security minister Sir Alan West’s 2007 complaint that the British armed forces were becoming a “tinpot gendarmerie”, but it does not take into account the fact that defence cuts are also on the agenda in the United States; indeed, the US has already cut one unilaterally applicable defence program – the F-22 Raptor – in favor of an interoperable system, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.

It would be of interest to know what Rasmussen would recommend as an alternative to the defence cuts he decries; surely he is not arguing that NATO would be better served by member-states with full defence budgets paid for by shredded critical services or taxes the population cannot afford? There is a serious question about the relevance not of the Transatlantic relationship as such, but of the kind of high-cost, Cold War-era interoperability Rasmussen fears will become impossible in the upcoming years of austerity, a question which he may yet be forced to answer.