British army

Leave the US to it Sir: I was struck by the dichotomy of your 21 March issue. Christopher Caldwell describes President Donald Trump’s world-affecting miscalculation in attacking Iran (‘The end of Trumpism’), while the editorial exhorts us to climb aboard this runaway train to ‘finish the job’. The conflux of multinational involvement in this fiasco is already reminiscent of the tumbling dominoes of August 1914. Underlined by three colliding religions, the scale is now much larger and touches the entire planet. The Americans, for whom the ‘special relationship’ is skin-deep, made this bed and should lie in it, not us. J.B. Cowper Taplow, Bucks Net loss Sir: I fear Michael

The seemingly endless debate about the hollowness of our armed forces has concentrated on size, technical capability and sustainability – never more so than in recent days when the UK’s unreadiness for war, or even to defend its own bases overseas, has been exposed. But there has been no mention of the moral component of fighting power (morale, spirit, will), which is the most important element of combat effectiveness. Napoleon is often quoted as saying that in war, ‘the moral is to the physical as three to one’, and history is littered with examples showing this to be true. The most recent was the evaporation, within days, of the Afghan

If Keir Starmer resigned tomorrow, the Labour party would be thrown into confusion. None of its factions has an obvious candidate to replace him. Yet some Labour MPs and commentators think they have found a solution. Why not send for Al Carns, minister for the armed forces, a former Royal Marines colonel, and MP for Birmingham Selly Oak since 2024? Carns, 45, who was briefly a candidate for the party’s deputy leadership last year, has built up a modest social media profile, posting videos of himself hiking, working out at the gym and training with reservists. One video saw him challenge a fireman to an impromptu pull-up contest, which Carns

Last month, in a two-page letter to colonels of corps and regiments, the Deputy Chief of the General Staff, Lieutenant-General David Eastman, inadvertently exposed the moral confusion, panic even, possessing parts of the British Army. Invited to dine by retired and serving officer members of the private London club Boodle’s, Eastman was dismayed to discover that there were ‘restrictions on the rooms that can be accessed’ by women. In his subsequent letter, he expresses concern that, even in mixed clubs, ‘rules, policies or cultural practices may not align with the army’s commitment to inclusivity’. And so, like Widmerpool in his pomp, he calls for corps and regiments to review their

Blood on our hands Sir: Paul Wood asks if anyone will be punished for the bloodbath in Syria (‘Massacre of the innocents’, 15 March). But where does one start? What we have seen most recently are the dreadful consequences – as also in Iraq and Afghanistan – of selfish western meddling in the Middle East for our own ends. I was on sabbatical in Syria at the end of 2010 interviewing Syrians of all religions and political persuasions. Well over 90 per cent and especially women saw the Assads as the only plausible bulwark against an Islamist theocratic nightmare. There was freedom of religion, freedom of association, the freedom for

Democracy rules Sir: I share the sentiments of both Rod Liddle (‘Trump displays weakness, not strength’, 8 March) and Douglas Murray (‘How MAGA turned on Ukraine’). I am one of those peculiar political animals who finds himself in agreement with certain elements of the right, including those represented by Donald Trump, on just about everything except Ukraine. Nevertheless, I see his election as an essential antidote to the poisonous ideology of the woke that has all but conquered the rest of the West in terms of the manner in which we live and are governed. Nor is the US immune. Without wishing to quibble with a courageous and eloquent speaker

Military farce Sir: Your leading article (‘The age of realism’, 1 March) argues that the government must invest in the UK’s ‘thinned-out infantry ranks’. This is certainly true, but it does pass over, in my view, the more fundamental issue of the broken recruitment system. My own application to join the Royal Air Force was rejected on the basis that my mother is Polish. Given that Poland is an ally, this seems a curious justification for disqualification. I was born and educated in London, my mother having moved to the UK with my English father 30 years ago. Clearly I am not a security threat, but because ‘computer says no’,

In 1943 the music critic Desmond Shawe-Taylor placed an advertisement in Exchange & Mart offering a pair of trooper’s breeches for sale. A number of men replied, one asking ‘Have they been worn by a trooper or just yourself?’, while another observed: ‘It is always good to see the boys pulling themselves into tight troopers and then admire the “smashing finish”.’ Members of the Household Division of the British Army, in their figure-hugging breeches and scarlet coats, had always held a particular appeal for homosexual men. It was therefore fortunate that, though the military authorities publicly denied it, there was a long tradition in Guards regiments of combining ceremonial duties

Like it or not, and many in high places will loathe it, what we may now call The Blackman Affair is not going to go away. It will be recalled as a shambles and a glaring miscarriage of justice. Also remembered will be the ferocious, self-serving and vindictive role of the establishment in permitting this injustice to occur. Posterity will say that a Royal Marine sergeant on an exhausting assignment in Northern Helmand, Afghanistan, in the late summer of 2011, shot and killed a Taliban terrorist who, though undoubtedly dying and wholly unsaveable, was not yet quite dead. A more expanded account might add that a nearby corporal, secretly filming

My favourite quote of all time comes from John Stuart Mill: ‘War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.’ The willingness of the British armed forces to sacrifice their lives on a daily basis – not for their country these days,

I once went mad in Africa and it was no fun at all. I was snorkelling off the coast of Zanzibar and I dived a little too deep, and something in the middle of my head went click. And then I came up and fell on to a boat that took me back to the paradise sands, and when I got there I couldn’t walk straight and everything started to fall apart. In fairness, that might not have been madness. That might have just been a problem with my inner ear. At the time, though, it was all bundled together. I’d been sub-Saharan for about nine months by this point,