story-type: ForcesWatch comment

The Military-Entertainment Complex

War films populated our video collection as a child. My dad would watch them regularly. Oliver Stone’s Platoon was a favourite. Hamburger Hill, another, more down-market Vietnam movie, featured prominently. Heartbreak Ridge, which had a grizzled Clint Eastwood whip a group of errant marines into shape in time for the US invasion of Grenada, was virtually always on. Iron Eagle, a slightly budget Top Gun substitute with a powerful coming of age narrative, was wheeled out occasionally. And of course Top Gun itself, which would often be playing on a Sunday.

I was born in 1982 and watched these films during the early 90s. None of these movies were remotely political artifacts for me at that time. They were simply stories, and exciting ones at that, absorbed without any acute judgment at all. Three decades on I am far better informed. And with a long-awaited sequel to Top Gun in cinemas, it is worth examining both the implications of militarism in movies and why military intervention in culture is so prevalent.

The second coming of Maverick

Released in 1986, Top Gun was an action-packed Cold War story which centred US naval aviators and provided a vehicle for Tom Cruise, Val Kilmer and Meg Ryan to launch their Hollywood careers. … Read more

The Qatari Connection

The announcement that the Royal Air Force (RAF) and Royal Navy will take part in counter-terrorism operations during the 2022 FIFA Men’s World Cup in Qatar caused relatively little stir when announced at the end of May. Perhaps many in the UK are numb to Britain’s relationships with violent Gulf monarchies and the merging of international sports events with militarist values. Whilst our relationships in the Gulf may vary, there is one constant between them: British military support and huge deals for UK defence companies.

Unsurprisingly, the relationships are riddled with inconsistencies. Britain claims to hold itself as a guardian of human rights and a notional international order based around the rule of law – but on Qatar, as with other Gulf allies, this claim falls apart. Even more so when we take into account the UK’s pursuit of an exclusive deal for Qatari natural gas and how this has, in the past few months, been framed as the answer to reliance on Russian gas in the wake of the Ukraine invasion. Given these conditions, the military relationship between Qatar and the UK has a number of unique and interesting features that warrant closer examination. We decided to take a deeper look at how the two countries have been, and increasingly are, intertwined on matters of war, security and trade.… Read more

Thinking through ‘Lethal Aid’

The term “lethal aid” has come to the fore of public discourse since Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine began on 24th February. Unable to intervene directly for fear of an escalation into a wider conflict between nuclear powers, the NATO and non-NATO nations which back Ukraine settled for channeling arms and military equipment to the beleaguered country’s military forces. Yet, British, US and other NATO member support for the Ukrainian armed forces predates the current invasion, stretching back to the aftermath of Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014. As a result, Ukraine has, in some ways, become the epicenter of a proxy-war between certain NATO countries and Russia over the past eight years. What has changed is the nature of that support, morphing from the training of the armed forces to providing an ever increasing arsenal of weapons. ForcesWatch took a brief look at the notion of lethal aid, the varied nature of its form, and what its potential implications are for the future.

UK leading the logistical support for weapons to Ukraine.

The British government has certainly tried to position itself as a key provider of lethal aid to the Ukrainian state since the invasion. As early as 23 February – a day before Russian forces crossed the border – Boris Johnson was promising packages of support which would include ‘lethal aid in the form of defensive weapons and non-lethal aid’. 

… Read more

Location vs Doctrine: hybrid warfare and the grey zone

In March 2021, the UK Defence Secretary Ben Wallace penned an opinion piece for the Daily Telegraph ahead of the release of his department’s Command Paper Defence in a Competitive Age. For Wallace, the paper represented the greatest shift in British defence policy since the end of the Cold War because, with the rise of China and the technology revolution, Western states were now perceiving a totally different threat landscape. If anyone wanted to understand what he meant, they only had to read the news pages of the Telegraph that day. The SAS, according to the paper’s Defence and Security Editor, were soon to deploy across the globe to disrupt “Russian meddling”. And, in what was being termed as a modern-day Battle of the Atlantic, a new spy-ship would come on line in 2024 to stop Vladimir Putin’s submarines from sabotaging underwater internet cables.

For both Wallace and the Telegraph, these moves were vital responses to the new reality of modern conflict. An era in which Britain’s adversaries were using new tactics to operate in the so-called “grey zone” between total peace and kinetic warfare. Or, as the Defence Secretary argued, those ‘aggressive actions below the threshold of open conflict’.… Read more

Pushback? How Britain is militarising the Channel

In recent years the maritime movement of refugees and asylum seekers to the UK has become a touchstone topic across the political spectrum. One expression takes the form of moral panic, rooted in a language of invasion, that has allowed Britain’s militarised political culture to predictably position the armed forces as problem solvers. This came to a head in mid-January, when it was announced that the Ministry of Defence would assume oversight of policing migrant crossings in the English Channel – effectively putting elements of UK Border Force under military command and raising the possibility of regular naval patrols in the world’s busiest shipping route. However, military involvement is not new. Rather we are seeing an escalation of armed forces involvement that was catalysed by a Home Office request for MoD support in 2020.

Within days of sending its request, the Home Office also announced the creation of a new Clandestine Channel Threat Commander within Border Force. Tasked with overseeing plans for detering small boat crossings was Dan O’Mahoney, an ex-Royal Marine who served in Kosovo and Iraq. Now a civil servant, O’Mahoney most recently worked as Director of the Joint Maritime Security Centre (JMSC), an operation based in Portsmouth that monitors the UK’s territorial waters, and from which he would continue to work in his new capacity.… Read more

Soldiers of the Future?

In March 2021, the MoD released its Defence Command Paper as part of the British Government’s wide ranging Integrated Review. Of the three services, the Army had perhaps the most attention and contributed to the process by releasing a 16-page briefing called Future Soldier outlining how it planned to respond to modernisation targets from the MoD. Ostensibly an internal facing doctrine aimed at civil servants and politicians it became the basis for a public facing – and much longer – Future Soldier Guide released eight-months later.

ForcesWatch have analysed the two documents to unpack these major proposals for the new-look British Army. It’s apparent that certain elements are updated iterations of processes already in motion: the new line on military diversity; the military’s claims of an environmental commitment; and increased integration of the military and private sector.

It also includes newer developments from the past 12 months, adding to our knowledge on the Ranger Regiments announced in the Command Paper and giving fresh insight on the incorporation of robotics and autonomous systems. There is also strong emphasis on the military’s planned role in shoring up the Union and the themes of sub-threshold warfare and Whole Force Approach dovetail with a desire to further integrate and expand the Reserves.… Read more

Britain’s dystopian (and less accountable) military future

At the end of November 2021, the UK’s Ministry of Defence released Future Soldier: Transforming the British Army. The document is the culmination of a series of announcements and reforms emanating from the department during the pandemic, and critical analysis of these developments suggests they could be a recipe for a more violent and militarised future. A future in which the armed forces become less accountable and further entangled in matters for which there is no military solution.

Rangers

Future Soldier finally saw the announcement of the army’s new “Ranger Regiment”, adding to fears that hundreds of previously moderately accountable troops could be subsumed under the opaque “special forces” umbrella. Whilst there has been talk of the regiment since the release of the Government’s Command Paper in March 2021, it is Future Soldier that marks its arrival. Their categorisation as special forces would likely mean the new units are impervious to freedom of information requests and that parliamentary questions will be met with the archaic “no comment” convention that covers all special forces.

The lack of transparency is exampled in a 2018 report on secret warfare by the Oxford Research Group’s now-closed Remote Warfare Programme:

‘Currently, UKSF are the only part of the British defence and intelligence community that are not subject to parliamentary scrutiny of any kind.… Read more

Day One, Week One: Veteranhood

Tom (anonymised) describes the shock of capture that accompanies the early days of military training:

‘I remember lads who were MMA fighters and rugby players, tough kids, fit enough, but they put their chit in [left training]’.

Tom was in an elite infantry unit but he recognises that the intial processes by which we are trained are experienced broadly similarly across the military. I was not in the infantry, for example, but most of my military instructors were. There may have been a difference in the length of basic training from service to service, or between reservists and regular personnel, but the methods and aims are the same, at least to the degree that it matters for our understanding. Tome joined nearly a decade after me but he describes the same breaking-down processes:

‘Things like the mental stuff, change parades [where you are forced to change uniforms again and again as punishment] and all that, they would have done that in all the units, there’s that mental aspect’.

This breaking down is accompanied by a stripping away of civilian identity:

‘They made you shave your head but it’s not like a shaved head. It is a number three, so you have that awkward length, so you all look like fucking idiots, and that was one thing that looking back on, when you all look the same, I always had a bit about me, soon as I had that number three I was like I’m fucking no one now’.… Read more

Beyond Emissions: the military and climate change

‘We need a vast military-style campaign to marshal the strength of the global private sector. With trillions at its disposal’. Prince Charles evoked a wartime footing when making this statement to the press in November 2021.

As COP26 enters its final stages there will be many who echo these sentiments. Many others will contest the notion that private capital can produce an answer to climate change. And some would rightly point out what Charles, who will one day become symbolic head of Britain’s armed forces, must know: militaries run on oil.  The carbon emissions that their fleets of tanks, ships and aircraft produce – and those created during production of these vast arsenals – are a key topic in the debate about our threatened climate and a talking point in Glasgow after the launch of the military emissions campaign.

Understanding how the military, and defence and security interests, have contributed to environmental degradation and soaring emissions is a vital part of addressing the increasing urgency of the climate crisis. Scientists for Global Responsibility (SGR) estimate that the US military produces 339 million tonnes of CO2e (carbon dioxide equivalent), 3% of its national emissions, while closer to home the UK military accounts for 13 million tonnes of CO2e, 6% of the nation’s total.… Read more

What lies behind Parliament’s military cosplay scheme?

A picture of MPs sitting in the Houses of Parliement where they are currently debating legislation on The Troubles.

Over the last five to ten years it has been increasingly common to see MPs playing soldiers for the camera. Usually this kind of martial dress-up garners a few laughs on Twitter, letting MPs play the patriot for a few hours and get some good snaps for their election campaign leaflets.

The truth is less clear cut. The Armed Forces Parliamentary Scheme (AFPS) fits into a broader and older pattern of militarising democracy, involving not only the military, or MPs eager to be photographed riding in tanks, but some of the world’s largest arms firms.

The Scheme

The AFPS was founded in 1989 by then Conservative MP, and former TA colonel, Sir Neil Thorne. Thorne had divined a problem in Parliament: that there were fewer and fewer politicians coming into politics with military backgrounds. As a 2011 speech by Lord Astor, for which Thorne and other supporters of the scheme were present, explains:

‘Our armed forces have been a professional, volunteer force for many years while the older generations have inexorably dwindled. Public understanding of our armed forces has declined as a result. And this matters hugely. Our armed forces rely on the support they receive from the public. They look to you, as Parliamentarians, as a weather vane’.… Read more