CONSERVATIVE PARTY leader David Cameron has made it clear he will be far more reluctant than the Labour Party under Tony Blair was to send British troops to fight in foreign wars.
Sharply criticising Labour’s handling of the Afghanistan and Iraq conflicts, Mr Cameron said: “We’ve got to think through much more carefully whether Britain should get involved in a foreign conflict, and if so, how to cope with the consequences.”
In its national security strategy document, published yesterday, the Conservatives said the UK was “heavily engaged in the affairs of the world” with a “political, cultural and economic authority worldwide which far exceeds our size”.
Such influence needed to be preserved and extended “not out of a sense of nostalgia for past glories” but to cope with present challenges, and the Conservatives in power would be “hard-headed and practical, and sceptical of grand schemes to re-make the world”.
In another signal that the Conservatives would adopt a very different attitude to military action than Mr Blair, the document said the UK would uphold “our own values, not by imposing them on others but by being an inspiring example of them ourselves”.
Directly attacking Mr Blair’s justification for the Iraq war, Mr Cameron said it was hard to over-estimate the damage to public trust caused by the publication of a document partially prepared by Mr Blair’s communication chief, Alastair Campbell, which wrongly claimed that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.
“Let me be clear: the prime minister will determine whether intelligence assessments should or should not be published. Political advisers will not be permitted to change intelligence assessments, and any publication of an assessment should only be done by the joint intelligence committee, with express clearance and approval of the JIC.
“We will end the culture of spin by making sure that decisions about national security are taken formally, not on the sofa but round a table, and with all the right people sitting round the table,” he declared.
Pointing to the redrawing of the global power map in recent years, Mr Cameron said the UK looked “at this changed world through the lens of institutions which fundamentally haven’t changed since the end of the Cold War.
“So we’ve got a defence department which isn’t equipped to deliver homeland security, a development department which has been giving more money to the world’s fastest growing economy [China] than to war-torn, poverty-stricken, drought-hit Yemen, and a foreign office which, despite our historic links with the region and the threads which run through our present problems, has simply not paid enough attention to the Gulf states,” he told international affairs body, Chatham House.
Under the plan, Mr Cameron said he would set up a National Security Council – similar to the one long-established in the White House – and create a military-run force to bring water and basic needs to conflict-affected areas.
Currently, the British efforts run by the Department for International Development to restore basic services in Afghanistan have been hampered because civilian staff cannot be posted to the most dangerous regions of the country.
Mr Cameron’s move has already led to charges that the Tories, who have pledged to act quickly to cut the UK’s mounting debt, will mask defence spending cuts by raiding the overseas development budget.