Con Coughlin | The Spectator Columnists & Writers

Britain’s armed forces no longer have the resources for a major war

[audioplayer src="http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/civilwarinthecatholicchurch/media.mp3" title="Con Coughlin and Tom Tugendhat debate the state of Britain's armed forces" startat=1561] Listen [/audioplayer]This Sunday, David Cameron will lay a wreath at the Cenotaph to commemorate those who made the ultimate sacrifice during two ruinous world wars. People will say ‘Never Again’ and Cameron will agree. But then, thanks to the drastic cuts he has made to the strength of our armed forces, the Prime Minister need not worry himself unduly about Britain’s involvements in any future conflicts. He need not gnash his teeth too much about MPs’ reluctance to back military intervention in Syria because, as matters stand, Britain would be unable to fight a major war even if it wanted to.

Con Coughlin

Could the Taliban become a useful ally against Islamic State?

Con Coughlin

Could the Taliban become a useful ally against Islamic State?

For the better part of a decade, Nato forces fought a bitter war against the Taliban in Afghanistan, which claimed the lives of thousands of troops - including 453 members of Britain’s Armed Forces – and left thousands more seriously maimed by roadside bombs and other devilish devices. So it is perfectly understandable that anyone who has had the least dealings with this ugly conflict, from politicians to the families and friends of those who participated, should recoil in horror at reports that senior members of the Taliban are now actively participating in negotiations that could ultimately see them become members of the Afghan government. The Nato mission to Afghanistan, which at its height saw in excess of 10,000 British troops fighting in southern Afghanistan, may have faded from today’s headlines, but the conflict continues on its relentless course, with the Taliban already making its mark during this summer’s fighting season by conducting a series of high-profile attacks, including one against the Afghan parliament last month.

Con Coughlin

Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood should have learnt from Nasser

Con Coughlin

Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood should have learnt from Nasser

Egypt used to be good at revolutions. When Gamal Abdel Nasser’s Free Officers overthrew the monarchy in July 1952, hardly a shot was fired in anger, and jubilant crowds took to the streets of Cairo chanting ‘Long live the revolution’. Even the deposed King Farouq seemed to agree that Nasser had done the right thing. As the doleful monarch prepared to sail off into exile aboard the royal yacht Mahroussa from Alexandria, to the resounding echo of a 21-gun salute, Farouq cryptically remarked to General Muhammad Naguib, the head of the Egyptian armed forces, ‘You’ve done what I always intended to do myself.’ The creation of the Egyptian republic was not entirely without suffering. The Black Saturday riots in Cairo that had taken place the previous January claimed the lives of 50 Egyptians and 17 foreigners — including nine Britons.

Con Coughlin

Bribe, Cut and Run: Britain’s retreat from Afghanistan

Con Coughlin

Bribe, Cut and Run: Britain’s retreat from Afghanistan

Retreating from Afghanistan has never been a task at which the British military has excelled. Our first incursion in 1839 resulted in the wholesale massacre of an entire division, save for an army doctor by the name of Dr William Brydon, who was spared only so he could tell the tale. Troops fighting the Second Afghan War of the early 1880s only avoided a similar fate through the exertions of General Frederick ‘Bob’ Roberts, who rescued a British force on the outskirts of Kandahar as it was on the point of being overrun. Now we are about to attempt this tricky business for a third time. Not that you’d know it from listening to David Cameron — whose attention has moved on to Mali and Syria — but the attempt to extricate our army from Afghanistan will be one of the most daunting challenges ever undertaken by the British military.

Con Coughlin

Black flags in Timbuktu

Con Coughlin

Black flags in Timbuktu

The drawback to waging a global counter-terrorism campaign is that, just when you think you have one bunch of Islamist militants on the run, another one pops up to take its place. For all the breakthroughs chalked up by those prosecuting the war against al-Qa’eda, the movement has re-emerged in new guises in Somalia and Yemen. The murderous riots in Libya last week, ostensibly triggered by a homemade American video, were being quickly traced back to what may be the latest and safest home for al-Qa’eda: northern Mali. Those who hoped the war on terror was about to end in Afghanistan have not wanted to think about Mali. But it is growing harder to ignore the fact that al-Qa’eda in the Islamic Maghreb now runs a chunk of territory three times larger than Britain.

Con Coughlin

The defeatists

Con Coughlin

The defeatists

Nato’s leadership is now united in readiness to surrender AfghanistanThe leaders of the 50 or so countries attending Nato’s spectacular jamboree in Chicago this weekend will arrive knowing that they can at least agree on one issue: ending Nato’s ill-fated mission to Afghanistan at the earliest possible opportunity.Normally Nato summits have a habit of degenerating into unseemly squabbles between the 28 member states over important areas of policy. Only last year, there was an open rift among the big Nato powers over Libya, with pro-regime-change countries such as Britain and France falling foul of the more pragmatic Germans, who questioned the wisdom of removing the Gaddafi clan when the West had no clue as to who might emerge as the new masters of Tripoli.

Con Coughlin

The cruellest spring

Con Coughlin

The cruellest spring

Al-Qa’eda has begun to harness the Arab revoltsSince the movement was launched by the self-immolation of a Tunisian street vendor, I have been a sceptic about this Arab Spring and its promise of delivering economic prosperity for all. When it comes to democratic institutions and the rule of law, the Middle East has been locked in a permafrost of repression since most of its states first proclaimed their independence. Which is why no one should be surprised that for all the commitment and sacrifices made by pro-democracy demonstrators in such disparate states such as Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Syria, Bahrain and Yemen, their chances of achieving their goals are fading by the day.Take Yemen, a country that is already riven with half a dozen civil wars.

Con Coughlin

Obama’s war

Con Coughlin

Obama’s war

One of the first things David Cameron will tell Barack Obama when they meet during the American President’s state visit to Britain next week is that hundreds of British soldiers are going to be withdrawn from Afghanistan this summer. Of the 10,000 British troops currently based in southern Afghanistan, around 450 are to be brought home, with the promise of more to follow, as Mr Cameron cashes in the peace dividend he believes will accrue following the welcome demise of the world’s most infamous terrorist. Huzzah, I hear you cry. And about time too. Never understood what we were doing there in the first place. What’s the point of our young men and women risking their lives or, more to the point, their limbs in this godforsaken country where the locals quite understandably take great exception to our unwelcome meddling in their affairs? Which, of course, is exactly the response Mr Cameron is anticipating.

Con Coughlin

Blame the generals

Con Coughlin

Blame the generals

When Dr Liam Fox talks about the ‘ghastly’ inheritance he has been bequeathed by New Labour on the defence budget — which is expected to be butchered further in next week’s spending review, he is not giving us the full roll call of shame.Certainly, there were a succession of clueless Labour defence ministers, who allowed the Ministry of Defence to run up a staggering £36 billion overspend on a variety of contracts. Perhaps some of them believed this financial chicanery was the only way of fighting wars on a peacetime budget, but they must take their share of the blame for the current mess. But so, too, should the service chiefs who commissioned the projects in the first place — knowing full well that there was no money to pay for them.

Con Coughlin

Cameron has given up on Afghanistan

Con Coughlin

Cameron has given up on Afghanistan

A fundamental shift has quietly taken place in Britain’s approach to Afghanistan: the focus is now on leaving, not winning. Con Coughlin asks if we are seeing the return of the politics of appeasementIt is difficult to pinpoint the precise moment that David Cameron gave up on the war in Afghanistan. But the Prime Minister’s indisputable position today is that the Nato campaign is unwinnable, and that the sooner Britain withdraws its 10,000-strong combat contingent the better.Mr Cameron reached this depressing conclusion before the current furore over the leaking of 90,000 pages of low-grade intelligence and situation logs by the Australian anti-war campaigner Julian Assange through his website WikiLeaks, which nevertheless provides a valuable insight into the complexities and challenges of the military campaign.

Con Coughlin

Notes from a war zone

Con Coughlin

Notes from a war zone

When Winston Churchill, as a young cavalry officer, found himself fighting the fierce tribesmen who inhabited the imposing mountainous terrain that defined the Indian empire’s northern border, he provided a graphic account of the brutality of the enemy the British force encountered.When Winston Churchill, as a young cavalry officer, found himself fighting the fierce tribesmen who inhabited the imposing mountainous terrain that defined the Indian empire’s northern border, he provided a graphic account of the brutality of the enemy the British force encountered.‘At a thousand yards the traveller falls wounded by the well-aimed bullet of a breech-loading rifle,’ Churchill wrote in his account of the 1897 campaign, The Story of the Malakand Field Force.

Con Coughlin

A special form of disrespect

Con Coughlin

A special form of disrespect

Barack Obama’s increasing disregard for Britain’s views is no way to treat an ally whose troops have fought side by side with America since September 11, says Con CoughlinWashingtonIt says much about Britain’s rapidly disappearing ‘special relationship’ with America that when I happened to mention to some of our senior military officers that I was visiting Washington, they begged me to find out what the Obama administration was thinking about Afghanistan. It is not just that the transatlantic lines of communication, so strong just a few years ago, have fallen into disuse. There is now a feeling that, even if we reached the Oval Office, there would be no one willing to take Britain’s call.For weeks now, President Obama has been deliberating over what the Afghan strategy should be — and how many troops to send.

Con Coughlin

Whatever happened to Hillary?

Con Coughlin

Whatever happened to Hillary?

What’s become of Hillary Clinton? At times of international crisis — and boy, do we have a few — it is customary for the American Secretary of State to take centre stage and work the phones until the early hours sorting out the latest threat to global security.Remember the legwork that James Baker put in to build a multinational coalition to boot out Saddam Hussein from Kuwait in 1990? Or the air miles Madame Secretary Albright clocked up in her attempts to bring the tiresome Serb dictator Slobodan Milosevic to heel during the Bosnian civil war? Even Condoleezza Rice managed to maintain a high-profile international presence during President George W. Bush’s second term at a time when most world leaders were turning their backs on what they regarded as the hectoring arrogance of the Bush White House.

Con Coughlin

Iran will not unclench its fist, Mr President

Con Coughlin

Iran will not unclench its fist, Mr President

On the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Shah of Iran, Con Coughlin says that Iran’s rulers today are devoted to the same militant objectives that drove Ayatollah KhomeiniThe heirs to Ayatollah Khomeini’s Islamic revolution have much to celebrate as they prepare to mark next week’s 30th anniversary of the fall of the Shah of Iran’s detested regime.The last nails were hammered into the Pahlavi dynasty’s coffin on the morning of 11 February 1979 when the makeshift government that the Shah had set up under his reluctant prime minister, Shapour Bakhtiar, finally collapsed.The Shah, who was already stricken with the cancer that would eventually claim his life 17 months later, still clung to the hope that the social unrest that Khomeini had managed to stir up from exile in Paris would subside if he took the pragmatic step of graciously withdrawing from Tehran’s turbulent political scene.

Con Coughlin

Don’t misunderestimate Bush’s record

Con Coughlin

Don’t misunderestimate Bush’s record

Oh, the fun we’ve had. Not since the Reverend William Spooner dumbfounded Oxford undergraduates have we been so entertained by the garbled syntax and grammatical infelicities that have been one of the more diverting features of the eight-year presidency of George W. Bush.‘Tell me, was it you or your brother that was killed in the war?’, a question Spooner asked a former student after the first world war, could just have easily been posed by Dubya to an American soldier fresh back from fighting on one of the many front lines in the war on terror.The debate over the achievements and failings of the eight-year presidency of George W. Bush will last for many decades, but what is not beyond doubt is the fine legacy of Bushisms that will be bequeathed when the 43rd President of the United States finally takes his leave of the White House next week.

Con Coughlin

Gordon Brown has a new plan to beat terror. This is what he should do

Con Coughlin

Gordon Brown has a new plan to beat terror. This is what he should do

Do you feel safe? Every time you go to the airport do you worry that you might be blown up by Islamist militants? Do you avoid using public transport, or frequenting louche nightclubs, for fear of being targeted by fanatical suicide bombers?While the 7 July bomb attacks against London’s transportation system in 2005 have rightly dominated the public’s consciousness in terms of the tangible threat posed by Muslim terror groups, there have been many more foiled attacks that would have created far more carnage had they succeeded with their deadly designs.Just imagine the appalling loss of life that would have occurred if the plot to blow up a number of transatlantic flights departing from Heathrow in the summer of 2006 had not been foiled.

Con Coughlin

Musharraf may now be the last best hope of Pakistan

Con Coughlin

Musharraf may now be the last best hope of Pakistan

Forget Iran, forget North Korea, forget the emerging Chinese superpower and forget the resurgent nationalism of Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Even before Benazir Bhutto’s assassination, Pakistan was the country that arguably posed the greatest challenge to the West’s security. Now it is an even greater challenge. Pakistan is the first Muslim country to have acquired nuclear weapons. Her nuclear arsenal was developed in the 1970s by Benazir’s father, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, to protect the country from the possibility of attack by India. Whether Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal is maintained purely for self-defence could now become a moot point, particularly if the Islamists make a strong showing in the forthcoming Pakistani elections — assuming that President Pervaiz Musharraf holds true to his pledge to return his troubled nation to democracy.

Con Coughlin

The big Russian bear just wants to be loved

Con Coughlin

The big Russian bear just wants to be loved

MoscowThere’s no reason to be afraid. The growl of the Russian bear is worse than its bite. Forget the new generation of ballistic missiles that can punch a gaping hole in Washington’s defensive shield before it’s even been built. Ignore all those creaking Tupolev-95 Bear nuclear bombers testing the response times of the RAF’s Typhoon interceptors over the North Sea. And fret not about plucky little Putin’s heroic foray into darkest Persia, where he defied an assassination plot so that he could scheme with that crafty Iranian apocalyptist, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.At heart the Russians just want to be like you and me, easy-going, consumer-driven Europeans whose idea of the good life is paying off the mortgage, buying lots of designer clothes and watching football — preferably at one of those Premiership clubs they’ve bought up.

Con Coughlin

Meet the next Saddam – minus the torture

Con Coughlin

Meet the next Saddam – minus the torture

BasraNo one’s elected him, he flourished as an army officer under Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship, and by the strict standards set by Washington’s neoconservative ideologues for turning Iraq into a beacon of Western democracy, General Mohan al-Furayji, the Iraqi commander in charge of Basra, should have no role to play in the country’s reconstruction after decades of misrule.Yet talk to anyone in Basra, whether Shia militiamen, Sunni tradesmen or British infantrymen, and all you hear is praise for the uncompromising way in which the new strongman of Basra has managed to impose something approaching order on a city that until recently was a byword for inter-factional Shia strife.His rise to prominence began in the late summer when he was credited with negotiating a ceasefire between the warring Shia factions that were threatening to tip the city over the abyss into full-scale civil war.

Con Coughlin

A bittersweet birthday

Con Coughlin

A bittersweet birthday

On 20 March, the Iraq conflict reaches its third anniversary. Con Coughlin defends the decision to invade, explores the impact of Blair on Bush’s second term — and reveals what Condoleezza Rice thinks of David CameronSquabbling generals, political score-settling and a country reportedly on the brink of civil war. The third anniversary of the onset of Operation Iraqi Freedom this week — which coincides with kidnappings and explosions in Gaza and the West Bank — hardly seems a cause for celebration. The painful and challenging task of rebuilding Iraq after 35 years of Baathist tyranny is far from complete, but that must now take second place to the increasingly bitter battle that is being waged over history’s judgment: whether the war was justified in the first place, and whether postwar Iraq could have been handled better.