In Baghdad, I had the honour of attending Iraqi Ministerial meetings and US Senate Briefings so I was fortunate to be present at one of the pivotal decisions in 2008 that brought about the withdrawal of US troops from the Green Zone. This was the Iraqi decision to buy Naval Patrol Craft from Malaysia, rather than from Washington. After this multi-million pound deal was announced, a distinguished US Senator was heard to say: “Don’t They Know They Owe Us?”
The two types of delusion that were behind this (Iraqis believing they were free to choose and Americans believing that Iraqis should be grateful for the US occupation) were played out again in Washington between President Trump and President Zelensky this week. But there is a third delusion that has also raised its head and that is the belief that a nation can conjure combat military capability from nothing. It takes years of team practice to build an effective armoured battle-group, but the British Army, with misguided concepts such as Whole Fleet Management and Casualty Aversion Wokery is nowhere near the standards needed for an Operational Readiness Test, let alone a complex peacekeeping deployment.
We need to remember Kofi Anan’s hard-earned wisdom about the best peacekeepers being trained for full-scale war. There is only one answer to this conundrum, but it will be politically unpopular, economically taxing, diplomatically demanding and militarily challenging.
Tank Warfare Is A Lost Art
Rupert Wieloch 