Lt Gen Sir Graeme Lamb: For intervention to work, our forces have to go in early

For many in Britain, the Syrian “No” vote and with it the defeat of the Government on August 29, 2013 reflected the general mood of the country on the question of so-called foreign “adventures”. This week’s Geneva II peace conference on Syria and the Middle East might well reinforce that mood.

Our best efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan have drawn a spotlight on intervention, and rightly so; the Chilcot Inquiry will provide a full report on the consequences and subsequent conduct of one of those interventions — and hopefully raise our collective understanding. No doubt it will seriously dent the nation’s appetite for these kinds of operations. To which I would raise a note of concern that should steer us towards caution, not cessation; for as night follows day, we will be forced to decide on intervening again — if not in Syria, then elsewhere.

Of course we will continue to intervene: our political parties would be castigated if they did not do so following a major natural disaster such as the recent Philippines typhoon. So it is not the concept of intervention that is in question but the manner of intervention and the reasons for intervention. What of interventions in Northern Ireland, Rwanda, the Balkans and Sierra Leone? Even the recent French actions in Mali and the Central African Republic have been cautiously welcomed. Each deserves careful consideration and, for some, may justify British action.

But these considerations of manner and reason all fail to address the most important test — when to intervene. The question we need to answer as a nation is not what is the point of intervention but at what point should we do it?

It is my very strong view, contrary to common practice, that our intervention should be early — the earlier the better. In recent times we have been inclined to wait under the dumb assumption that things will get better, or in order to justify our actions, leaving ourselves blameless when the disaster is nearly upon us. Actress Cameron Diaz says that “my dad always used to tell me that if they challenge you to an after-school fight, tell them you won’t wait — you can kick their ass right now”. Britain should take a leaf out of her book of life.

To be effective means that the national commitment has to be early — or else much later, not in between, in the middle of chaos.

The importance of assigning the whole of government to the task is well established, taking the sum of its parts to solve a complex problem. The difficulty is when those parts, other than the military, be used to best effect: certainly not under fire or in the maelstrom of a civil conflict. They cannot get to where they are needed and they have nothing to work with. Without rudimentary functioning national or local authorities and basic commercial structures, they end up becoming a hollow contribution, unable to leave the embassy compound.

The military, on the other hand, are designed to operate in chaos. They are able to defeat, deny, deter or contain symmetric threats. But their contribution beyond that is at best limited: they simply don’t rebuild nations. The point at which the whole of government can be effective is when the state in which we are intervening sits somewhere between fully functional, fragile and faltering, or when it emerges from the ashes of chaos between recognition and recovery. Attempting to change outcomes when a state is rapidly failing is an act of hopelessness. To attempt to operate with any other force than the military at that time and expect any other outcome than those limited responses the military can deliver is fanciful. Even as the gunfire quietens down, intervention is still dangerous and military actions are limited to containment.

Only with the passage of time and retribution can a comprehensive intervention succeed. Then and only then can you sensibly decide to intervene with the possibility of progressing a nation towards stable recovery. This is the point at which a comprehensive intervention towards betterment can be achieved — though this is not currently how we intervene.

There will, however, be cases where, in spite of our best endeavours to stop wholesale slaughter, we must intervene with military force to contain the violence — and that is all that can be achieved. But to stabilise or rebuild a country requires either early or much later intervention.

To intervene effectively requires both the will and the underlying capability; for the moment, we as a nation have both. Our armed forces have exceptional talent, both in our regular and reserve components, which are now increasingly and effectively integrated. I would not be too quick to side with ex-US Defense Secretary Robert Gates’s view that all is lost thanks to defence cuts, nor would I glibly agree with the Prime Minister that all is well. Instead I believe with Charles Darwin that it is the species that adapts, not the strongest or the most intelligent, that survives.

Under Chief of the Defence Staff General Nick Houghton, adapting to global challenges is precisely the course our armed forces are set upon. It will require the Prime Minister and Parliament to recognise their responsibility in strongly supporting that direction by word and deed. For the rest of us, don’t yet fear for our armed forces: I don’t.