14 May 07

The relationship between politics and defence was the theme of a lecture given by the Secretary of State for Defence, the Right Honourable Des Browne MP, at the Examination Schools for the Oxford Leverhulme Programme on the Changing Character of War.

On May 9 in the lecture, hosted by the Department of Politics and International Relations, Mr Browne explored how politics and military action were playing out in Iraq and Afghanistan. He said: 'I propose that not only is conflict a continuation of politics but also the reverse: that conflict, or the use of force, can actually enable politics to operate. It can be what clears the ground for politics to begin or to restart, or what holds the ring to stop politics being completely derailed.'

Mr Browne said people had strong views over whether Britain ought to be militarily involved in Iraq in the first place. He argued, however, that now we are embroiled in a conflict where extremists from both sides had risen to the top there was a need for a British military presence. He said: 'It is here that military intervention has true meaning. The military can play a range of roles in this environment to buy time for politics to act.'

He described politics as a 'breathing space in which parties can see that not fighting is better than fighting.' The military, he argued, were overwhelmingly aware of their role in the larger political context, knowing that they alone could not deliver success, but through helping to create a set of conditions in which political progress could be achieved.

Mr Browne moved on to talk about the role of the British in Afghanistan. He said that although the Taliban had been beaten in every engagement and reconstruction work had started to build momentum, the main challenge was the sheer scale of the task. 'Afghanistan is one of the poorest countries in the world, and cannot leap centuries of evolution regardless of how much help we provide,' he said.

Accepting that there was a 'growing unease' with the Armed Forces defending the nation's interests for 'political' aims, he said it could be partly explained by the fact that the war against Iraq was unpopular, He said the reasons were more complex, however, and accused Al Qaida and the Taliban of using the western media to 'lie without hesitation' and asked whether such organisations should be accorded similar status to the voices of elected governments.

Mr Browne warned against 'a new strain of isolationism in public opinion' and told his audience that increasing globalisation meant that isolationism was not an option for Britain. He concluded: 'I am not and will never be the kind of Defence Secretary who reaches for the long screwdriver, determining tactical operations from a desk in Whitehall. That would indeed be wrong. But if we want to understand what our forces do and help them do it and if we want to have a positive effect on the world we live in, then we must see things as they are. We must look for the politics in everything we do, because politics not only starts the world's conflicts, it ends them too.'