Lines of Force
Why do successive British governments feel obligated to join the USA in its adventures? Is it, as numerous commentators have argued, that the two countries share inseperable values? The trace memory of anglican exceptionalism? Are they united in morality as Boris yeltsin noted, the 'steel backbone of NATO'?
Well, I leave you to your own conclusions. I would just note something which I am not sure that I have seen anywhere else. Critical British army, naval and air force supplies are now supplied by the £13-billion pound company BAe. It used to be British aerospace but changed its name to gain more from the USA, where it now operates in more than 30 states and receives billions in pentagon contracts. These help to make it the third largest defence company in the world and the largest in Britain and Australia. If BAe were ever to lose American contracts, to supply equipment, develop new weapons, or resupply troops, Britain would find 118000 jobs, £3 billions in exports, and over two and a half billions in tax revenue gone.
The British armed forces would then be almost wholly dependent upon a company with a hole in its accounts. Armies stretched from afghanistan, the middle east, western africa and europe would be without resupply. Theyd have to, oh gosh I don't know, nationalise the arms industry and work with the europeans.
I thought of this the other day when watching Margaret Thatcher feted by Gordon Brown at Downing Street. Remember the Westland affair? It was presented as an attempt to promote (reluctant) British attempts to join a european consortium that would produce a new european attack and transport helicopter, the eh101, by the then-Defence Secretary, Michael Heseltine. Heseltine wanted Europe to have an independent military capacity. Thatcher and her cabinet wanted Sikorsky, the American company, to take over the Yeovil works of Westland. The local MP, Paddy Ashdown, agreed, and hoped in the future that BAe would come to its senses and pursue American business. He ended up being proconsul of NATO's armies in Bosnia. And Heseltine--who had also supported British NIMROD airborne radar over American AWACS systems, found himself pushed out of the cabinet.
Old news. But the crisis, which almost brought down Margaret Thatcher, is in retrospect much more important than that. In some fashion, it marked Britain's decision to become dependent unpon the US in conventional forces.
This had become true in nuclear matters in the previous political generation. Though Britain tried to develop its own nuclear missile technology, it found its Blue Streak rocket programme undermined and its defence spending undermined by its incapacity to hold the pound to an insane peg to the dollar. Harold Macmillan was eventually forced to beg President Kennedy for obselete American missiles at Nassau in 1961, and Wilson's later attempt to develop Chevaline was again undermined as surely as Harold Holt's attempt, as Australian PM before he disappeared, to step away from the US and get closer to the UK again. The Minister who promoted UK independence in nuclear and procurement matters, and sure next PM in Macmillan's time? Jack Profumo.
Perhaps some irrational lesson was learned by a young backbencher then, who also saw Labour trying to break by the Chevaline nuclear system from America, and find itself broken? Was that one of the reasons Margaret Thatcher backed Trident? Or the massive Saudi Al-Yamamah/BAe contract in the 80s from which my own family prospered in a bizarre way?
The arms industry makes one think. When the Queen talked of a trip with Churchill down the Thames, she noted how he thought of it as a silver thread connecting England's history and she saw it as a muddy filthy river. It would be interesting to know how she characterised the long train of ministers who fell to one side coincidentally with challenging the British military-industrial complex and how she would compare them to the ones who prospered who embraced it.
Why do successive British governments feel obligated to join the USA in its adventures? Is it, as numerous commentators have argued, that the two countries share inseperable values? The trace memory of anglican exceptionalism? Are they united in morality as Boris yeltsin noted, the 'steel backbone of NATO'?
Well, I leave you to your own conclusions. I would just note something which I am not sure that I have seen anywhere else. Critical British army, naval and air force supplies are now supplied by the £13-billion pound company BAe. It used to be British aerospace but changed its name to gain more from the USA, where it now operates in more than 30 states and receives billions in pentagon contracts. These help to make it the third largest defence company in the world and the largest in Britain and Australia. If BAe were ever to lose American contracts, to supply equipment, develop new weapons, or resupply troops, Britain would find 118000 jobs, £3 billions in exports, and over two and a half billions in tax revenue gone.
The British armed forces would then be almost wholly dependent upon a company with a hole in its accounts. Armies stretched from afghanistan, the middle east, western africa and europe would be without resupply. Theyd have to, oh gosh I don't know, nationalise the arms industry and work with the europeans.
I thought of this the other day when watching Margaret Thatcher feted by Gordon Brown at Downing Street. Remember the Westland affair? It was presented as an attempt to promote (reluctant) British attempts to join a european consortium that would produce a new european attack and transport helicopter, the eh101, by the then-Defence Secretary, Michael Heseltine. Heseltine wanted Europe to have an independent military capacity. Thatcher and her cabinet wanted Sikorsky, the American company, to take over the Yeovil works of Westland. The local MP, Paddy Ashdown, agreed, and hoped in the future that BAe would come to its senses and pursue American business. He ended up being proconsul of NATO's armies in Bosnia. And Heseltine--who had also supported British NIMROD airborne radar over American AWACS systems, found himself pushed out of the cabinet.
Old news. But the crisis, which almost brought down Margaret Thatcher, is in retrospect much more important than that. In some fashion, it marked Britain's decision to become dependent unpon the US in conventional forces.
This had become true in nuclear matters in the previous political generation. Though Britain tried to develop its own nuclear missile technology, it found its Blue Streak rocket programme undermined and its defence spending undermined by its incapacity to hold the pound to an insane peg to the dollar. Harold Macmillan was eventually forced to beg President Kennedy for obselete American missiles at Nassau in 1961, and Wilson's later attempt to develop Chevaline was again undermined as surely as Harold Holt's attempt, as Australian PM before he disappeared, to step away from the US and get closer to the UK again. The Minister who promoted UK independence in nuclear and procurement matters, and sure next PM in Macmillan's time? Jack Profumo.
Perhaps some irrational lesson was learned by a young backbencher then, who also saw Labour trying to break by the Chevaline nuclear system from America, and find itself broken? Was that one of the reasons Margaret Thatcher backed Trident? Or the massive Saudi Al-Yamamah/BAe contract in the 80s from which my own family prospered in a bizarre way?
The arms industry makes one think. When the Queen talked of a trip with Churchill down the Thames, she noted how he thought of it as a silver thread connecting England's history and she saw it as a muddy filthy river. It would be interesting to know how she characterised the long train of ministers who fell to one side coincidentally with challenging the British military-industrial complex and how she would compare them to the ones who prospered who embraced it.
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