Almost every morning here, the nation awakens to a somber announcement on the BBC News about more casualties among the British force fighting in Helmand province; the past six weeks alone have seen 23 British deaths in Afghanistan. As the country’s war dead return, thousands of Britons line the streets to honor them, while newspapers inveigh against the poor equipment provided to the troops and government ministers face fierce questioning over the point and progress of the operation.
Over the past few years, the British public has often seemed shamefully oblivious to the fact that its forces were fighting two wars. When it did think of it, the Afghan conflict was usually the noncontroversial one: In the simplistic dichotomy, Afghanistan was the good war, Iraq, the bad war. Now, the conflict in Afghanistan has suddenly become very real. Yet its most telling comparison is not with Iraq. Rather, it is with the Falklands.
The Falklands War of 1982 represented a resurgent Britain. By contrast, the nearly eight-year war in Afghanistan — in which Britain has lost more troops than in any conflict since the Falklands — reveals a country wavering over whether it wants to remain a front-line, war-fighting nation.
After the Falklands, Britain was no longer a country that could keep the light on only three days a week but one that could fight and win a war halfway around the world. Margaret Thatcher called this shift “the Falklands factor” and declared that “Britain found herself again in the South Atlantic.”
But the imperial resonances set off by the Afghan conflict are very different. As every journalist in search of a cliche knows, Afghanistan is the graveyard of empires, and at times it seems that Britain’s last rites as a global power are being carried out there.
Commentators pompously declare that “the Afghan can never be conquered” and ask why Britain is attempting something now that it couldn’t achieve even at its imperial zenith. For Britain, shaken by financial failure at home and military failure in Iraq, Afghanistan can seem an imperial delusion; especially as the country is questioning whether it can still afford to pay the price of punching above its weight. Several factors are combining to pull Britain away from the front line. The government has failed spectacularly to make the case for the British mission. It has zig-zagged from talking about an anti-terrorist operation to emphasizing women’s rights and democracy promotion and back again.
The simple message that Britain has a direct national interest in preventing the re-emergence of an Al-Qaeda sanctuary in Afghanistan and preventing anything that could further destabilize Pakistan has not been conveyed to the public.
This problem has been compounded by Iraq’s puncturing of the British belief that its military is the best in the world — and far better than the Americans’ — at postconflict operations. In these circumstances, it is unsurprising that a majority of the public favors the immediate withdrawal of British forces. Although to be fair, there is a crucial difference in the debate about the war on terror in Britain and in America. For America, the threat is out there: It was foreigners who attacked on 9/11; for Britain, it is internal: Our own citizens blew up Tube trains and a London bus on 7/7.
In addition, the need for urgent fiscal retrenchment has made the idea of saving money by retreating from the world attractive. Finally, the British political class is discredited: Only 21 percent of the public trusts politicians anymore. A combination of lingering anger — much of it irrational — over how the Iraq war was sold, the failings exposed by the economic crisis and an expenses scandal that revealed how members of Parliament were using the public purse to feather-bed themselves and their families has left the reputation of politicians at an all-time low. Combine this with an unpopular government heading for defeat in next year’s election and you have a situation in which ministers lack the political and moral authority to explain why British troops are fighting in Helmand.
But despite all this, Britain’s global role will not be left on Afghanistan’s plains. The idea of Britain becoming just another medium-size European nation — one that stays in the rear with the gear — is hardly grounded in reality.
This country’s political leaders still have a very distinct view of Britain’s place in the world. David Cameron, the Conservative leader, who will, barring accidents, be the next prime minister, is no different from his predecessors in this respect. During an internal debate among the party hierarchy over whether he should call for a cease-fire during the 2006 war in Lebanon, Cameron was dissuaded from doing so by his national security adviser, who told him that “it was the kind of thing the French would do.”
Britain has long viewed itself as the mentor in the special relationship. British leaders have been explaining to America the role it should play as the new leader of the English-speaking world since Harold Macmillan said in 1943 that the British must be the Greeks in the American’s Roman Empire. Margaret Thatcher told Bush senior during the Persian Gulf War that “this is no time to go wobbly.” And Tony Blair devoted the peroration of his 2003 speech to Congress to telling America that “destiny put you in this place in history, in this moment in time, and the task is yours to do.”
But now, it is Britain that needs guidance. It must be reassured that while it has lost an empire, it still has a role to play. Over to you, President Obama.
