A family tradition

Let’s get this right:

• Prime Minister David Cameron is the great-great-great-great-great-grandson of King William IV.
• William IV was third son of George III, whose elder brothers were the future George IV and … Frederick, Duke of York and Albany.

Taraaah!

Said Prince Fred is generally accounted to have been the Grand Old Duke of York, who:

… had ten thousand men.

He marched them up to the top of the hill

And he marched them down again.

And when they were up, they were up.

And when they were down, they were down.

And when they were only halfway up,

They were neither up nor down.

He earned that reputation because of the futile Flanders campaign of 1799.

Hasten on to the last recent few days.

On Monday David Cameron was belligerent:

We must not tolerate this [Libyan] regime using military force against its own people. In that context I have asked the Ministry of Defence and the Chief of the Defence Staff to work with our allies on plans for a military no-fly zone.

Quite what the brasshats thought of this will doubtless appear in somebody’s memoirs. The nearest British base is Akrotiri in Cyprus, a mere thousand miles away. Even if Britain had the aircraft (which it doesn’t), at that distance grounding Gaddafi’s Sukhois looks a bit of a stretch.

A day later it was time to march back down the hill:

Britain has backtracked from its belligerent military stance over Libyaafter the Obama administration publicly distanced itself from David Cameron‘s suggestion that Nato should establish a no-fly zone over the country and that rebel forces should be armed.

As senior British military sources expressed concern that Downing Street appeared to be overlooking the dangers of being sucked into a long and potentially dangerous operation, the prime minister said Britain would go no further than contacting the rebel forces at this stage.

So today, in PMQs, it was neither up nor down:

1207 Ed Miliband moves onto the issue of the no-fly zone, asking for “clarification” of the UK’s position after he said other countries had “distanced” themselves from the idea.

1208 Mr Cameron says the international community should prepare for “all eventualities” for dealing with the Gaddafi regime and says that this includes a no-fly zone, quoting US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in his answer.

In point of fact, Hillary Clinton seemed less than whole-hearted, and more anxious to protect the defence budget when she appeared before gung-ho Senator John Kerry’s committee:

Mrs Clinton has said the US is still considering the implementation of a no-fly zone in Libya, although she acknowledged there would be drawbacks in such a move.

Defence officials have said the US would have to destroy Libyan air defences in order to establish and enforce a no-fly zone in the country.

“If we were to set it up… we’d have to work our way through doing it in a safe manner and not put ourselves in jeopardy,” chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm Mike Mullen told reporters, referring to the threat posed by Libyan air defence measures.

Others take a more jaundiced view of possible US intervention:

… the push for aggressive action against Qaddafi’s regime is running into surprising opposition from the Pentagon, where senior military officials are urging policymakers to proceed cautiously and warning that any form of armed intervention into Libya could carry unforeseeable dangers and costs.

The upshot is that anyone expecting the U.S. military to take action against Qaddafi in the days ahead is virtually certain to be disappointed. The Obama administration has been steadily escalating its financial and diplomatic pressure on the Libyan dictator, freezing tens of billions of dollars of his assets and joining its European allies in vocally demanding that he step down. Publicly, White House officials insist that “all options are on the table” when it comes to Libya, including military force. In practice, however, there are no signs that the administration is actually preparing for military action inside Libya.

The administration’s go-slow approach has been evident in the limited amount of military assets that have been moved closer to Libya. Defense Secretary Robert Gates ordered a pair of American warships to the Mediterranean Sea on Tuesday, and announced that the U.S. would augment one of the vessels—the USS Kearsarge—with a new contingent of 400 Marines. The ships should arrive in the vicinity of Libya by Thursday.

Sticking it to ‘em

Cameron has been talking loudly, but has not even a fig-leaf to cover his military nudity. On the other hand, engrained in the US mind is Teddy Roosevelt’s pensée from 1900:

Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far.

The “big stick” in this case is the USS Enterprise, currently shuffling around between the Red Sea and the coast of Somalia. Only when the “Big E” is heading through the Suez Canal, is the stick being waved.

Oh, and those ten thousand men! Lest we forget them:

Defence Secretary Liam Fox has been forced to defend the decision to make 11,000 redundancies in the armed forces, insisting that personnel who have recently returned from Afghanistan will not be sacked.

 

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