Brown’s Battleground

The woes extend to everyday issues at home. In June the Army's commander, Gen. Sir Richard Dannatt, publicly criticized pay levels for junior soldiers, claiming some received less than traffic wardens. Others have complained that the government is in breach of "the Military Covenant," the unwritten agreement that promises generous treatment of servicemen and their families in return for their willingness to sacrifice their lives. The largest of the service charities, the Royal British Legion, last year launched its Honor the Covenant campaign, calling for higher compensation for the wounded and better treatment for veterans and their families.

The plain truth may be that cash-strapped Britain can no longer afford its self-appointed mission. At the very start of his time in Downing Street, Tony Blair proclaimed his belief that Britain's best hope of exerting influence on the world stage lay in working alongside America as a military power, a position restated in a lecture delivered in his final months in office. "There are two types of nation similar to ours: those who do war fighting and peacekeeping and those who have effectively, except in the most exceptional circumstances, retreated to the peacekeeping alone. Britain does both. We should stay that way."

But it's his successor, Gordon Brown, who must now pick up the tab as the financial outlook darkens. Finding extra money for the military will mean robbing another department such as education or health—hardly a vote-winning strategy for a government sinking fast in the polls. Instead, further cuts look very tempting. In June, the government drastically scaled back plans to provide the Navy with a fleet of new destroyers at more than £500 million a piece. Even the Conservatives, historically champions of stronger defense, are refusing to promise extra funds ahead of an election.

With hindsight the origins of today's problems may lie with the early and swift successes of Blair's interventionist line. Back in 2000, for instance, it took only a few months for British troops to help restore some form of order in Sierra Leone. By contrast, they've been fighting in Iraq for five years, and counting. "Blair had an easy ride in Kosovo and Sierra Leone," says Charles Heyman, editor of the authoritative book "The Armed Forces of the United Kingdom." "But there are limits to the application of military force, and before Iraq he never came up against them." As any good general knows, those limits aren't only on the battlefield; they're in the Treasury, too.

© 2008