On British General Strategy and Defence Cuts.

On the defence cuts outlined in the past two days, Richard Norton Taylor writes in the Guardian ( Defence Cuts Don't Go Deep Enough ),

The navy gets two large aircraft carriers – the biggest ships it has ever had – at a cost of more than £5bn. The first one, the Queen Elizabeth, is due to enter service in 2016 yet, because Britain's Harrier fleet is being scrapped and the expensive US Joint Strike Fighters (JSFs) due to replace them won't be ready in time, by 2020 the ship will be mothballed – or sold – without ever having planes flying off her.

By 2020, the second carrier, the Prince of Wales, should be ready but adapted to take cheaper, catapult-launched JSFs, or French Rafale planes. So, for the next 10 years, Britain will have no carrier-based strike force. The obvious question, which has not been satisfactorily answered by the government, is why such a threat needing such a force will suddenly face the UK in 10 years' time.

The reason is that US foreign policy is British foreign policy and Britain a key bridge between the USA and Europe. Hence the continued overexpenditure has little to do with threats but in maintaining credibility as an auxiliary force "doing its bit" for the Atlanticist block.

The political elites in Britain are members of the same think tanks as fellow US Atlanticists and Britain's role is to divide Europe from forming any counterweight to NATO independent of the USA. Trident is part of the USA's global geopolitical strategy and the so-called missile shield.

Obama's continued zeal for the missile shield in order to deal with"the Iranian threat" is actually part of the same strategy that explains why the Afghanistan War is being fought for at least the next 4-5 years. To isolate and contain Iran from extending its has pipelines to the east.

This is why Britain has spent £12bn already and is willing to spend another 15bn in the next four years to ensure the completion of the TAPI pipeline and the diversification of Turkmenistan's gas supply away from Russian and Chinese control.

Getting Russia back onside was one reason for Obama dropping the missile shield in Central Europe. Ultimately, the New Great Game for global hegemony through controlling the Eurasian Heartland is to be stepped up in other ways. Collusion between Russia and Iran and China is the spectre feared.

This is the stark reality behind why Britain is footing the bill for "Defence". The fact that even excluding Trident the projects and operations will cost more than £26bn is a price considered worth paying to maintain vital interests in controlling diminishing supplies of oil and gas

The question is one of strategic overstretch because of strategic desperation: the cuts to the Defence budget necessary to a second rate economy such as Britain's cannot be taken due to the need to control oil and gas, a major driving force behind the costly invasions of Iraq and important with Afghanistan too.

The idea that Britain has ramped up expenditure on Defence merely due to pork barrel politics ( though important with the aircraft carriers ) is absurd. Reality has hit Britain hard but the strategic review has in mind that Britain can and must act more effectively as an auxiliary force with the USA.

The most flattering illusion is less that of those spouting guff about "projecting power" or punching above our weight". This is routine political cliche. The worst one is that the over spending on defence is merely due to incompetence, imperial delusion and vainglory.

It is not. It is due to a precision calculated geostrategy that has as its design the maintenance of the Great Car Economy and energy intensive lifestyles that all British consumers demand, need and that would be politically hazardous for politicians to admit must change in order to avoid being dragged into conflicts.

After all when politicians put up the price of petrol, the whinging from British consumers about it and the lack of investment in public transport by Britain still struggling to finish Crossrail indicate the utter ineptitude of a political and economic system based on emulating the USA.

Yet the lure of bountiful petroleum that can be controlled as a means of preserving Western US global hegemony and hence preserving the USA's status as the world's leading petrocurrency has been seriously undercut by the Iraq gamble and the 2008 crash.

Though defence cuts reflect a strategic overstretch and diminished world standing, the temptation will be to deploy forces in areas vital to maintain oil and gas supplies with ever greater desperation in a way that could precipitate an epoch of devastating resource wars.