Daniel Korski

In a recent conversation with a Cameroon about the Tory Leader’s foreign policy overtures, I was alerted to William Hague’s July speech at the Institute for Strategic Studies during which the Shadow Foreign Secretary said the world faces a "new age of insecurity" unless the brakes are put on nuclear proliferation. In many ways, his concern sits a little uncomfortably with today’s dominant foreign policy narratives. We are meant mainly to talk about home-grown terrorists, climate change and – after Georgia’s buffoonery and Russia’s aggression – the resurgence of Cold War–style confrontation with Moscow as well as the rise of China.

So Britain's soldiers, risking life and limb, fighting in the treacherous Hindu Kush, defending our freedoms and the safety of ordinary Afghans are like our Olympics athletes? Heh? That's what the Prime Minister seems to think. On his visit to Helmand, Gordon Brown said that British soldiers "have showed exactly the same courage, professionalism and dedication" as the British Olympians.  Sure, the achievements and medals of Britain's Olympians should be celebrated. But it is absurd, insulting and inappropriate to compare their courage, professionalism and dedication to that of our men and women fighting in Afghanistan. After all, 116 British troops have lost their lives in Helmand and our forces there are involved in the hardest fighting any person serving can remember.

In Hollywood, there is an award called the Golden Raspberry or Razzies. The opposite of the much-desired Oscar, the Razzies go to those who have most dishonoured the acting, screenwriting or song-writing profession in the past year. If European foreign policy had a version of the Razzies, this year’s award would go to Greece for it attempts at destabilising neighbouring Macedonia and countering the EU’s Balkan policy. Since the break-up of Yugoslavia and the founding of Macedonia, Greece has had an uneasy relationship with its neighbour. At NATO’s Bucharest Summit, Greece vetoed Macedonia's bid to join the Alliance, because of an unresolved dispute over its name. The Greek government objects to its neighbour taking the same name as a northern Greek region.

European Union countries keep half a million more men and women under arms than the United States. But 70 percent of these troops cannot operate outside of their national borders and only 6,000 of them—0.3 percent of the total—are currently deployed on European Security and Defence Policy operations. The problem, as my colleague at the European Council on Foreign Relations Nick Whitney argues, is that European governments are squandering their already small defence budgets on outdated Cold War style-forces. Tony Blair hit upon European defence as an issue where the Labour government could lead, pursuing both prestige and power in the EU. He helped the EU ditch its fantasies about a 60,000 person rapid-reaction force and instead pushed the ingenious battle-group concept.

With the Conservatives ahead in the polls, David Cameron must be using the summer break thinking of whom to place around the Cabinet table. But he would do well to also think of what ministerial portfolios should exist at all. Prime Ministers have the greatest leeway to reshape the government's machinery upon taking office. Then it gets trickier as voters expect results, not tinkering with bureaucratic arrangements. A number of institutional changes are both needed and politically expedient. First, a Tory government should create a new Cabinet-level Secretary of State for Veteran Affairs – with a department underneath – appointing a senior politician, or perhaps a former 4* soldier like General Charles Guthrie to run all veteran-related affairs.