The Malaysian Insider :: Features
The Malaysian Insider :: Features |
| As Afghan deployment winds down, UK ponders military’s role Posted: 08 Feb 2014 11:21 PM PST When Britain ramped up its presence in Helmand Province in 2006, it was a different story. Afghanistan, current and former officers say, was seen as a winnable war that would showcase Britain's military and rebuild its reputation with US officers underwhelmed by its performance in Iraq. Both inside and outside the armed forces, however, the recent campaign is increasingly seen as a disastrous error, sapping Britain's enthusiasm for using military force just as savage budget cuts begin to bite. Other Western allies are cutting their budgets too. However the bottom line for Britain, analysts say, is that it may be left without the forces or the will to mount operations as it has in the past. Last month former US Defence Secretary Robert Gates (pic right) complained Britain's military could no longer offer a "full spectrum" of military capabilities to act as a full US ally in future conflicts or confrontations. That prompted an angry rebuttal from Prime Minister David Cameron, pointing to new equipment purchases. Britain will launch the first of two new aircraft carriers later this year, having spent several years with none. Defence sources say its first order for more than a dozen F-35 Joint Strike Fighters could come within weeks. Even within Whitehall, however, there is open debate over the military's focus. In a speech to the Royal United Services Institute in December, Chief of Defence Staff General Nicholas Houghton said that concentrating too much on "exquisite equipment" risked leaving a "hollow force" with inadequate personnel. "Unattended, our current course leads to a strategically incoherent force structure," Houghton said. He said that while in his 40 years of service the military has never been held in such high public regard as it is now, "the purposes to which they have most recently been put have seldom been more deeply questioned." Recent wars, he said, had produced a "creeping reluctance" to use force that could prove problematic. Britain lost 447 soldiers in Afghanistan - twice the losses in Iraq or the 1982 Falklands War. In September, when Parliament vetoed British involvement in any US-led strike on Syria, many officials saw the move as setting a precedent that could limit future operations. London's International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) estimates that the 8% planned cuts in defence spending from 2010 would reduce Britain's combat capability by 20-30%. On Wednesday, the IISS's annual global military balance assessment showed Britain has lost its place as the world's largest defence buyer to Saudi Arabia, although it remains the largest in Europe outside Russia. France might have a lower overall defence budget - US$52 billion (RM173 billion) in 2013 against Britain's US$57 billion (RM190 billion), according to the IISS, but it is seen to have greater military reach and enthusiasm to act. A Pentagon-funded report by the US-based Rand Corporation said France had built a more flexible military able to adapt more quickly to conflicts like in Libya or Mali. By comparison, Britain's focus on Afghanistan had left its army ill-suited to other conflicts. In the words of one UK defence source, the British military "is now perfectly designed to support the US in the kinds of wars America has no intention of fighting again." Nor is that the only worry. "The Syrian vote was a big deal," says Nikolas Gvosdev, professor of national security studies at the US Naval War College. "We had always assumed Britain would be there and then suddenly it wasn't." A new strategic defence review is expected in 2015, also the year of Britain's next general election. Interservice rivalries, some say, have long bedevilled British defence planning, as has a political focus on retaining defence industry jobs in marginal constituencies. In addition, Scotland, home to Britain's nuclear submarines, will be voting in a referendum this year that could see it secede from the United Kingdom, although most polls suggest it will not. Cameron's promised vote on Britain's membership in the European Union could also have an impact on military relations with European powers, particularly France. With garrisons in Germany closing, a larger majority of Britain's army will be based within its shores than at any time since the 18th century. On paper, Britain's "Force 2020" - the military it expects to have by the end of the decade - should be able to provide one ongoing "stabilisation operation" with up to 6,500 personnel, ships and aircraft, together with shorter-lived operations with 1,000-2,000 troops. The largest single one-off operation the military could mount, the Ministry of Defence said, would involve some 30,000 personnel, roughly two-thirds of its 2003 Iraq force. However, defence experts say that assumption was based on no further cuts, something seen as unlikely. Britain's military is still broadly respected. Its special forces remain legendary, if small, and the Royal Navy's 15-ship minesweeper force is amongst the world's largest, much of it permanently deployed to the Gulf where US commanders say they would prove vital in any war. The new carriers, although the second may yet be mothballed, will be the largest warships Britain has ever launched, potentially valuable to US and other allies as their overstretched navies struggle to cover the globe. Still, defence chief Houghton warned the Royal Navy in particular, risked losing "critical mass" in personnel. In January, British media reported the country's only available warship was forced to sprint the length of the North Sea at maximum speed after a Russian warship began loitering near UK territorial waters off Scotland. A smaller military is not necessarily less capable. Britain might now have only 230 combat jets against 450 in 1993, but they are more capable, able to launch Storm Shadow cruise missiles without entering enemy airspace. British defence technology is still seen as world-class. There is also no shortage of enthusiasm for new tasks. Houghton said he favoured increasing the number of troops on UN peacekeeping, and others talk of increasing training missions to Africa. Finding those troops could be tough, however. The army will take the brunt of impending cuts, losing 20,000 soldiers from 2010 numbers to stand at 82,000 by 2018. Plans call for reserve forces to grow from some 22,000 now to 35,000 by the end of the decade, but recruitment has been lacklustre, and the number of part-time soldiers has fallen. A new recruitment campaign has begun. Britain's fourth Anglo-Afghan war looks set to end better than the first, an initially successful 1839 invasion that turned into defeat and disastrous withdrawal three years later. Critics say that by going on the offensive in Helmand in 2006, Britain may have made matters in Afghanistan worse, helping kickstart a nationwide insurgency. The operation was launched when a UK general, David Richards, later head of the entire British military, was commanding the NATO force. US officials were unimpressed after a September 2012 attack on the UK-guarded Camp Bastion killed two US marines and destroyed several aircraft. The Pentagon fired two US generals shortly after, but no British officers were punished. The MoD says there was no evidence UK commanders were responsible. "The irony is that Afghanistan was supposed to justify the Army's existence," said one former officer. Instead, "it's ended up guaranteeing its destruction." - Reuters, February 9, 2014. |
| Three years after Fukushima Japan’s nuclear plants still not empowered Posted: 08 Feb 2014 09:57 PM PST It's proving a hard slog. A new, more independent regulator is in place, asking difficult questions and seeking to impose tougher safety rules on utilities that were largely their own masters for the past 50 years. The Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) was created in 2012 and set new safety guidelines in July last year. It now has four teams vetting reactors at nine nuclear power stations on a list of those seeking to re-start. A deadline to complete the checks has been missed, as the NRA is still asking for reams of information. No one is able to predict when the first of 48 reactors will be turned back on. The delays are biting the utilities which are having to spend billions of dollars to import fossil fuels to keep the power on, pushing Japan into a record trade deficit and risking undermining Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's polices to end years of stagnant growth. "All the utilities are in a similar situation and, unless outstanding issues are resolved, we can't judge that they are in compliance with the standards," Tomoya Ichimura, an NRA director, told Reuters. The regulator and staff from the utilities and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd, a leading supplier of nuclear plant equipment, are ploughing through mountains of paperwork on the technical specifications of reactors and their vulnerability to natural disasters such as the earthquake and tsunami that knocked out the Fukushima Daiichi station in March 2011. All lack experience in carrying out such detailed safety checks because of the lax regime that existed before Fukushima. "Only the framework of the safety criteria was decided, not the details, so the dialogue between the NRA and power companies to work out the specifics is taking time," said Seiichi Nakata, Project Leader, Department of Policy, Communication and International Affairs at the Japan Atomic Industry Forum. Once the checks are done, reactors must undergo planned inspections, which took as long as two months under the previous regime, as well as get the go-ahead from local authorities before they can be turned back on. The plants are being treated as if they have just been built and are seeking certification to start operating for the first time. Interviews with utility and nuclear industry staff, regulators and government officials reveal a climate of uncertainty, frustration and long hours. A taskforce of some 90 NRA inspectors dispatch orders and requests to hundreds of staff from regional utilities seconded to the capital and camped out for months in business hotels near the regulator's headquarters. As many as 2,800 staff at Mitsubishi Heavy are involved in dealing with utilities' requests on specifications and other data, the company said. Kyushu Electric Power Co, Hokkaido Electric Power Co, Kansai Electric Power Co and Shikoku Electric Power Co say they have each stationed scores of employees in Tokyo to respond to queries from the regulator. A typical working day for them lasts from 8 a.m. to 11 p.m. They stay in cheap business hotels within a quick commute of the NRA headquarters in a leafy district of central Tokyo. One of those, the Hotel Unizo in Shimbashi, a bustling district of bars and restaurants, charges 11,000 yen (RM358) a night. To keep costs in check, some companies offer staff a daily allowance of as little as 1,500 yen (RM49) for meals, and no laundry, said one person close to the safety review process. Any downtime not spent returning home to visit families is used to prepare for more meetings with the regulator. "Everyone involved in the safety reviews is irritated and it is mentally draining," said one staffer at a regional utility, who has been stationed in Tokyo since July and has missed key dates on his children's school calendar. "I can't read books or watch TV. There's no time to relax," he said, adding he rarely has time even to wash his clothes. "I have 20 sets of underwear and socks bought from convenient stores rolled up like sushi in my office," he said. The utilities also rent office space for staff to prepare paperwork for the regulator, said an official who oversees the process at a regional utility. Asked when he expected reactors to be re-started, he replied: "That's what we want to know." Utilities must submit thousands of pages of documents outlining their compliance and readiness on a checklist of 27 main items required by the NRA, covering everything from quake protection to their emergency responses. Kyushu Electric, which has applied to re-start four reactors, has submitted more than 10,000 pages of documents to the regulator, said spokesman Hiroki Yamaguchi. The regulator is still feeling its way and often changes the criteria for compliance, forcing utilities to submit more documentation, people in the industry said. The utilities then take their requests to Mitsubishi Heavy, which is struggling to meet deadlines. "Mitsubishi Heavy basically handles safety assessments of the plants, and the utilities vie with each other to get help from them, creating a bottleneck," said the person involved in the checks at a regional utility. Mitsubishi Heavy declined to comment on claims that it was the reason for some delays. The cost to Japan's economy and the utilities' finances is heavy. Japan imported a record 87.5 million tonnes of LNG last year, at a cost of US$69 billion (RM230 billion), according to customs-cleared import data. Imports of thermal coal were also at record levels. "There's a growing consensus from a purely economic perspective that Japan needs to re-start as many reactors as it can, in order to build out the diversification of its power sources and reduce fuel prices," said Tom O'Sullivan, founder of independent energy consultancy Mathyos Japan. Forecasts that the first nuclear reactor would be back in operation by the middle of this year are misplaced, said Tetsuo Yuhara, a director at The Canon Institute of Global Studies, who previously spent 30 years at Mitsubishi Heavy. "I have no forecast for re-starts. It's the same situation as a year ago, as two years ago. Nothing has changed." - Reuters, February 9, 2014. |
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