We must now look to the next battlefield

Gordon Brown's announcement today that most British forces will be out of Iraq by the end of July will be a relief to most people, not least service families and the military chiefs. But it is not likely to lead to much of a let-up in the demands on the men and women of the fighting services.

Mr Brown and John Hutton, the Defence Secretary, have said that, so far, there are no plans to amass thousands of extra British troops alongside the Americans when Barack Obama launches his new offensive in Afghanistan in the spring. But if President Obama calls for an extra British brigade, it would be hard for any British prime minister to refuse. Given the Americans' dim view of the British military performance in southern Iraq, there is ground to make up with the senior ally.

British forces were thought to have been too soft in confronting the Shia militias which took over the streets of Basra. It took the Iraqi army supported by 1,000 Americans to drive them out in April. And even then, the Americans believe the British reacted too slowly in helping the offensive.

The British will leave behind Iraqi forces that are about to be better equipped than many of their own front-line troops.

Congress is about to approve a $6.4 billion purchase of 140 M1A1 Abrams tanks, the best of their kind, and 800 top-of-the-range Stryker and M1117 infantry fighting vehicles. The British Army could have had Stryker five years ago - but the MoD dithered and decided to make do with what they had got. So the Army has to soldier on with ageing items like the Snatch Land Rover, involved in 37 front-line deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the 430 tracked carriers which first went into service in the Sixties.

Yesterday the Defence Secretary announced that Snatch is not to be withdrawn from Iraq and Afghanistan, despite requests to do so, and even a high-profile resignation over its continuing use.

Things are running hot in the front-line forces, as General Sir Richard Dannatt predicted when he took over as head of the Army two years ago. Funding and procurement seem to be done on a hand-to-mouth basis. The Army is to get £700 million worth of new off-the-shelf equipment for Afghanistan - but these are likely to be used up in the scorching dustbowl of Helmand in a few years.

That the forces are overstretched, being asked to do more than they are funded and equipped for, has become more than a cliché now. But the elastic band of overstretch is getting dangerously thin. The problem is that most planning at the MoD is for today - and what planning there is for tomorrow's wars is for the wrong wars.

Very little attention is being paid to the emerging threats of social and civil disturbance as a consequence of economic meltdown.

The spontaneous communal combustion we have been seeing in Greece and the provincial cities of Russia could come much closer to home quite soon. Would our forces be prepared and able to cope?