The Bewilderness

NATO fades into impotence

A report on the future of NATO has recommended that the alliance reform its strategic posture in the face of proliferating threats, including weapons of mass destruction. This involves retreating from the consensual model of decision making and removes the fear that some countries could veto decisive action. First use of nuclear weapons would also be retained to deter other actors from threatening the West.

"The risk of further proliferation is imminent and, with it, the danger that nuclear war fighting, albeit limited in scope, might become possible," the report said.

"The first use of nuclear weapons must remain in the quiver of escalation as the ultimate instrument to prevent the use of weapons of mass destruction."

The document reportedly includes Lord Inge's comments on the controversy surrounding nuclear weapons policy: "To tie our hands on first use or no first use removes a huge plank of deterrence."

This is a rescue attempt for an alliance that is foundering under the stresses of the deployment in Afghanistan. Due to the unwillingness of NATO members to fight in southern Afghaistan, the alliance has come under increasing criticism:

Opening a hearing on Afghanistan before the House Armed Services Committee, Chairman  Ike Skelton , D-Mo., said the planned deployment of 3,200 additional U.S. troops to Afghanistan was designed “to fill the gap in NATO requirements, which remains unfilled by our allies.”

The more active members of NATO will not be impressed by the approach favoured by the more pacifistic members:

State Secretary Espen Barth Eide outlined Norway's proposals for newspaper Aftenposten on Wednesday:

The United Nations should be given clear responsibility for coordination of all operations in Afghanistan.

The UN's work in the field should be coordinated with the regional protection groups.

Military planning should adhere to civilian strategies.

Military planning should be built up around the regional operations.

Concrete steps should be taken to strengthen the regional authorities.

The United States will not pass authority to the United Nations, and Norway's proposals would leave the country in the Taliban's hands. With divisions like this, it is unlikely that NATO will ever deploy troops again.

Consent is a plaything of the state

The debate on 'presumed consent' for organ donors sits ill with the government's more burdensome rules on consent for the use of tissue samples. If a scientist wishes to use tissue samples, he must always require the consent of the donor, especially if they are used in stem cell research and for cloning. Scientists have protested that this will have a detrimental effect on research:

A group of 29 biomedical scientists and administrators, including three winners of the Nobel Prize, wrote to The Times on Monday to raise their objections to the proposed measures, which they said would hold back vital sudies into diseases such as muscular dystrophy, Parkinson’s and diabetes.

As the Bill stands, it would require all tissue used to create cloned embryonic stem cells to have the explicit consent of the donor. This would deny scientists access to valuable banks of tissue from patients who had donated it for medical research but who had not explicitly given their consent for experiments involving cloning.

The Government is unwilling to move very far towards the position of the biomedical sciences. When they are criticised for not predicting the predictable result of their own laws, they are inclined to reach for a protective catch-all:

Baroness Royall added that the Government had also received advice from its lawyers that specific consent was essential under the provisions of the Human Rights Act as it relates to family’s and people’s private lives.

She gave a commitment “to take this [legislation] back to see if there is a way forward that is compatible with the Human Rights Act”.

The rational response is provided:

Lord Patel said: “I don’t understand what human rights section forbids the use of tissue samples, cells and cell lines collected over many years from dying patients who probably died of these diseases, and who would have wished while dying that by donating their tissue it might some day benefit others.”

Lord Patel added that children with some muscle-wasting, brain and immune system disorders had a life expectancy of only a few years and that the proposed law would exclude these conditions from the diseases that would potential benefits from stem-cell research.

So, we know understand that the Human Rights Act is utilised to avoid the embarrassment of U-turns on the part of government: much more important than the actual research, of course. This allows the government to intervene in the private wishes of doners, since their wishes obviously need to be 'clarified'. Yet this does not prevent the state assuming that my organs need to be 'harvested'. Is this not  an inconsistency in my hooman rights?

Europhile evasions

The start of the debate on the European Reform Treaty (Constitution as was) has reinforced some of the key themes that form part of this government: the perception that the Speaker is biased towards the government, the federalist sympathy of many Ministers and the initial charge of the Tories that New Labour's abrogation of their manifesto commitment has brought political institutions in Britain into disrepute.

If one looks at Miliband's speech in more depth, it becomes clear that the support is no longer couched in British but in European terms, with references to  political advocates masquerading as charities.  This is  the third way:  marshalling chosen 'representatives' of civil society as evidence of support  and citing the European political class instead of actually letting the electorate have a vote:

Mr Miliband sought in his opening arguments to portray the Tories in the minority, saying that 27 left of centre parties, 27 liberal parties and 26 conservative parties supported the treaty. Fellow opponents included Sinn Fein, the French National Front, the Portuguese Communists and the Dutch Animals Party, and the Tory strategy would “lead them into the wilderness”.

More contemptible is the approach of the Liberal Democrats. Their volte face on their manifesto commitment must rank as one of the most unprincipled deviations yet seen. Unwilling to allow the risk of an actual defeat for the Reform Treaty, they retreat to the fantasy of a  referendum that will never be put to the people so that they can 'legitimately' vote for the Treaty. One hopes that the Tories will pin this hypocrisy down by asking whether the Liberal Democrats will  now make such a referendum a continuous manifesto commitment from now on.

With a low number of rebels in New Labour, the Tories know that they will be unable to overturn the Reform Treaty in the Commons or the Lords. This will not be a repeat of Maastricht. Their line of attack will be to accentuate the role of Brown in losing the trust of the electorate and tarring the Liberal Democrats  for the same reasons. As the supporters of the reform Treaty do not have a case, their statements "sounds all too like special pleading and evasion".

Reform Treaty: Barrels of Fun

An outburst of honesty from a pro-European MP sets the stage for the start of the Reform Treaty in Parliament:

Mr Connarty backs the new Treaty because he wants a stronger Europe but said he had decided to speak out because the British and other governments had not told the people of Europe the truth.

On criminal law, immigration and border controls, the Treaty had set up mechanisms for national vetoes to be steadily eroded and authority transferred from British ministers and UK courts to Europe.

It set the European Parliament on course to gain powers at the expense of Westminster as authority shifted from national capitals to the European centre.

The red lines negotiated by Blair are worthless and the Labour party wishes to set them aside, preferring teleology to honesty. Now Brown faces a revolt and the unions may try to end the opt-out from the Charter of Fundamental Rights. Brown is not a parliamentary squaddie. This could be fun.

Quote of the day

"Powerpoint presentations damage your brain - if you look at too many, you become immoral."

Yossi Vardi

Jacqui Smith fails at the first hurdle

Jacqui Smith has given her first speech on terrorism to the International Centre for the Study for Radicalisation and Political Violence at Kings College, London. Her emphasis, copying the laws on paedophilia, is to police and ban extremist behaviour on the internet as she asserted that this was the primary channel of recruitment. The drawback of this approach is that the internet is extremely difficult to police and it is unclear that this will be the primary channel of recruitment for extremism, as opposed to imams and other organisations within Britain. If the difficult challenge is not taken up, then a Minister requiring short-term spin to provide a narrative of action, will take up policing the internet as a counter-terrorist measure. Mark Littlewood provides the necessary corrective:

Mark Littlewood, of Progressive Vision, a think tank promoting classical liberalism, said: “The idea that terrorism can be thwarted by seeking to shut down extremist websites is absurd and dangerous.

''It is easy to host such sites outside of British jurisdiction or to relaunch a website that is closed down, literally within minutes.’’

The government has stated that they will treat terrorists as criminals. This is a laudable aim  and allows Jacqui Smith a liberal primer, before the real agenda becomes clear: the erosion of civil liberties and judicial checks to ensure that the government can succeed in pretending that there is no war on terror. Will we see the day when paedophiles will be held for 42 days, since there seems to be a utilitarian equivalence between their crimes and terror.

NATO's approach to big jobbies

Robert Gates, the US Defence Secretary, has criticised NATO troops for their poor training and lack of counter-insurgency skills. The poor quality of soldiering is based upon a Cold War mentality and an unwillingness to think beyond the Fulda Gap. Such criticisms will not come as a surprise to this blog. France and Germany have the airlift capability that will allow their politicians to escape, no more and no less. However, Gates forgot to add the caveat that he was not including those countries whose soldiers were dying in the south rather than strutting the cakewalk in the north. Cue outrage!

His outspoken criticism, voiced in an interview with an American newspaper, provoked instant reactions from Britain, Canada and the Netherlands, the three most prominent members of the alliance, who have endured much of the fiercest fighting in southern Afghanistan.

The Dutch were so angry at what appeared to be direct criticism that they summoned the US Ambassador in The Hague to explain Mr Gates’s comments. British and Dutch officials refused to believe that the criticism was directed at them, but Eric Adelman, the US Assistant Secretary of Defence, nonetheless had to ring around Nato capitals to give reassurance that Mr Gates was not attacking any individual member.

There are differences between British and US approaches to insurgencies, although it is unclear which will work in the long-term. If you judge by results over the long haul, Britain comes out best due to Northern Ireland, Malaysia and Kenya.

The European NATO members did not respond well to criticism and did not publicly acknowledge their shortcomings:

Mr Gates said most European armies were still trained for the Cold War.

"Most of the European forces, Nato forces, are not trained in counter-insurgency; they were trained for the Fulda Gap," he added, referring to the region of Germany where Soviet tanks were expected to invade.

He said he had received no support from Nato defence ministers when he raised the inadequacy of training during a meeting in Scotland last month.

The Ministry of Defence said it was assured by American officials that Mr Gates was not "in any way" referring to the British.

NATO responded anonymously that armies learn from 'training by doing'. To which, one would point out that an alliance which does not concentrate on the doing has lost its purpose. Alternative structures to NATO are now appropriate with a move away from the Europeanisation of defence.

Hain hides out

The morning press are reporting that Hain is now expected to resign from the cabinet before he is pushed. Brown has given 'support' but backbenchers are calling for the hapless Minister to resign.

The Electoral Commission has denied that it will call in the police to ensure that a criminal prosecution can take place. However, the timeline of both inquiries does not favour Hain's survival:

The parliamentary commissioner for standards, John Lyon, formally told Hain yesterday that he will conduct an inquiry that is likely to take weeks rather than months. The Electoral Commission is due to publish an interim report - possibly within days - into the legality of the source of his donations. Hain insisted he was cooperating fully with both inquiries and had nothing to hide.

The Labour party institutions are rallying round. His constituency party in Neath is expected to provide full support and he will gain backbench cries at his appearance in Parliament as Secretary of State for Wales. Both Brown and Hain will attempt to ride out the storm unless the reports provide incrovertible evidence of his 'sleaze'. As stated previously, Brown refuses to lose even one minister, as this is a test of his government's strength.

Hain cowers between the blades of the inquiries

Despite a foolish attempt to divert attention from Hain's problems with George Osborne's funding questions, the continued presence, in office, of the chaotic amnesiac is causing damage to Brown's adminstration. On Andrew Marr's show, Cameron accused the Prime Minister of "dithering", a strong charge after the events of last autumn. Unwilling to lose Hain to the press campaign, like its Blairite preecessors, Brown is now forced to support his Minister yet shows his displeasure by sending Hain to Coventry. This choice is further complicated by the damage that he may cause to Harriet Harman and Wendy Alexander.

Hain will face a full inquiry on his donations by the Parliamentary Commissioner on Standards. The Electoral Commission is also deciding whether to forward Hain's details to the police and recommend a prosecution (As an aside, Ian Lucas MP was defending Hain on Newsnight and believed that he could continue as Minister if he was under police investigation).

Mr Hain’s prospects of clinging on to political office darkened last night as he was accused by an authoritative source of showing “contempt” for the laws on political funding. The Electoral Commission began an investigation into the Work and Pensions Secretary after he admitted last week that he had failed to declare properly £103,000 in gifts to his failed deputy leadership bid.

The watchdog now faces a stark choice between letting him off without punishment or recommending a criminal prosecution if it finds that he broke rules on when donations should be reported.

The scale of the donations, as well as Mr Hain’s claim that he was too busy to ensure that the rules were followed properly, have increased significantly the likelihood that it will seek to make an example of him.

Brown has stated that Hain's fate will be decided by the two inquiries. As the other funding scandal is curently snaking through the long grass of the inquiry, we can expect that this will join the line of postponed resolutions that will only prolong this government's agonies.

Vaz pours votes on troubled waters

The Home Secretary, one of Gordon's closest allies in the Cabinet Committee structure, haplessly continues to destroy the relationship between the Government and the Police Federation over backdated pay. A comparison with those accounting practices where  savings made in monetary terms pale  when the overall damage   by false economy is considered. The political damage from this stance is becoming clearer by the day.

The Police Federation plans to march through the streets of London next week and ballot its members on the right to strike. The backbench Labour MPs are squirming in their seats as they realise that they may have to deny emergency forces the  right to strike  for the  sake of a small sum of public expenditure. When scaled against the rescue of Northern Rock, Jacqui's Smith's arguments on pay restraint are unpersuasive. Keith Vaz, chairman of the Home Affairs Select Committee, is now asking for an early day motion.

Officers will hold last-ditch talks with Jacqui Smith to avert next week's protest march by up to 20,000 officers.

But more than 200 MPs, most of them Labour backbenchers, have signed the Commons motion protesting at Miss Smith's decision to withhold three months' backdated police pay, effectively reducing this year's award from 2.5 per cent to 1.9 per cent.

Jan Berry, the chairman of the Police Federation representing rank and file officers, said she would meet Miss Smith on Wednesday to try to find common ground. But she said that only a commitment to reinstate the 2.5 per cent rise would stop the march.

The march, the force's biggest demonstration since 1919, is planned through Westminster and central London on Wednesday January 23.

There is a parallel with the military covenant. Longstanding and honoured agreements were abrogated by the government as they were unable to measure the potential damage of this action against a short-term political advantage. As the reaction spiraled out of their control, their sole response was to dig in and defend their course of action as their special advisors had not modelled any alternatives. Perhaps they will be able to negotiate their way out....