The contradiction that appears in British public opinion seems to be that we want a strong military and the ability to project force to protect our interests but went don’t like taking casualties or prolonged wars.

So when we feel threatened or are attacked we will back our boys for a quick if even bloody war like the Falklands but if we don’t percieve ourselves to be in immediate danger and we end up in a prolonged war then support falls.

There seem to be two ways for politicians to deal with this;

Advocate a scaling back of our defence capabilities so that we can avoid Iraq’s and Afghanistans by not having the capability to commit forces to distant conflicts like that, or

Maintain the capability but restrict ourselves to short intensive conflicts where the long term stabilisation and reconstruction is done by others.

In a way if we avoid the second we would be gearing ourselves to play a part in the first.

A problem with the short sharp strategy is that if you don’t go unless there are people to take over once the worst is over then you run the risk that either;

There are no volunteers and therefore you don’t go and a regime you would engaged goes unchallenged or,

The follow up forces aren’t up to the job or people pull out and you then have to bolster them or take it over yourself.

No easy answers, but if we are soon to have a defence review we should try to learn the lessons from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Unfortunately I suspect that in the run up to an election no part will want to look weak on defence or be costing jobs, so they will produce manifestos that talk about maintaining our forces when they all know that they won’t be able to afford them.

Such is politics.

There is an adage that you shouldn’t deloy more forces that you are prepared to lose, but if that falls to twenty a month are we moving towards armed forces that we aren’t prepared to deploy.

Peter.

Combine this with a growing feeling that Karzai’s government is corrupt, homophobic and sexist and even the strongest supporter of intervention to keep out the Taliban is going to have doubts.