Examination of Witness (Questions 40-56)
11 JUNE 2003
GENERAL SIR
MICHAEL WALKER,
GCB CMG CBE ADC
Q40 Jim Knight: I am very interested
in what you have said about the "three-block" war and
shifting the doctrinal approach which seems to be something that
we were better at in the Basra type operation than, for example,
the Americans were when they moved very quickly with their war
fighting and arrived in Baghdad and suddenly found that they did
not have anyone there to do the phase four stuff to create a secure
environment and to rebuild that society there. I do not expect
you to criticise our coalition partners, but do you think the
same shift in the doctrinal approach towards the "three-block"
war is going on with our allies as it is with our own forces?
General Sir Michael Walker: I
know it is. We do not want in any way to underestimate how brilliantly
they fought that war. The divisional move up to Baghdad was amazing.
The other thing we have to realise is that Baghdad is a totally
different kind of problem to Basra. Baghdad is much bigger, it
is the symbolic centre of gravity in Iraq as much as everything
else. It is the heart of the Ba'athist regime; the Ba'athist elements
are still there; crime is, as in any big city, a problem but it
was a particular problem there. I do not think that one wants
to imagine that had that race up to Baghdad been done by British
troops who then found themselves there that the situation would
have been markedly better than it is now. You probably know that
the Armed Forces have been engaged in operations around the world
in strange places ever since the Second World War, I think there
was only one year when they were not. That has given people such
a breadth of experience which has been taken into the doctrinal
way of doing things and there is something about the British character
too that is different which gives all that training the ability
to produce somebody who can stitch very rapidly, take his helmet
off and get on with talking to people. I think that is a particular
characteristic that we want to cherish. I mention that in my training
regime. I suspect operations in the future are going to demand
that sort of approach.
Q41 Mr Cran: Your predecessor was
quoted—we are back to the press again I am afraid—as
saying that Britain could not undertake an operation or war similar
to that in Iraq for at least eighteen months, certainly within
a year, and that we would be hard pressed to undertake any other
type of operation. Is this a proposition with which you agree?
General Sir Michael Walker: I
do not really like commenting on any of my predecessors, but I
will answer the question if I may. Of course there has to be a
period of recuperation as in any war-like happening. One clearly
has to get people, kit and supplies sorted out and back together
again and, of course, we are still engaged down there. This is
not over. We are down to about 16,000 there. When we get to steady
state there for however long it turns out to be, we will be down
to about 12,000. So we have a big engagement there. We do have
a big engagement in Northern Ireland still, we have 14,000. There
is a limit to what anybody can achieve. In terms of recuperating
all of that and getting people back on the road, it is our intention
to get the sharp end of the spear up and running by the middle
of this year so that we have something. We cannot leave the nation
devoid of any response capability. Indeed, we have one now, but
in terms of the way in which we structured it, it does not have
all the capabilities we would wish. I think we would then be looking
to try to develop a medium scale capability, a brigade level capability
over and above our other commitments in about the sort of time
frame that was mentioned, about eighteen months. This is a dynamic
process. The first thing we have to find out is what state the
stores that we are now backloading from Iraq are in before we
can make a judgment as to how long it will take to refurbish them
ready for use again. There is some time to go before we are going
to be absolutely clear what the mathematics says about it. I think
a judgment at that stage was a perfectly fair one.
Q42 Mr Cran: One could have asked
that question for a whole variety of reasons, but the reason I
asked it was simply this, that you have got enormous responsibilities
on your shoulders—which I am sure you are very happy to
shoulder—and that is to make sure that unsustainable demands
are not placed on Britain's Armed Forces. I say that not in reference
to this Government but in reference to any government because
they are all the same, they are all trying to get a quart out
of a pint pot and therefore how are you going to ensure that the
old pressure is not put on you to agree to do the impossible?
General Sir Michael Walker: One
makes it sound as if we are in a rather combative environment
than we are in; it is not. I have to say that our governments
have been remarkable and over the years I have worked with all
colour of government and they have been remarkably good at listening
to the military advice they are given. If we say, as military
men, that we can do something, then that is fine. If we say that
we cannot do something and here are the reasons, I have no experience
of cases where that advice has been overridden. On the commitments
front I do not have an anxiety. Of course there will be aspirations.
Every general wants more soldiers, every admiral wants more ships,
every air marshal wants more aircraft. When one comes into the
resource game then some of the arguments are more finely balanced.
In terms of the commitment of British Armed Forces overseas I
have no anxiety that the advice given by the chiefs of staff to
our Government is going to be freely overridden.
Q43 Mr Cran: Just so that I understand
this, in answer to Mr Jones, you set out the structure of the
Chiefs of Staff Committee and on it is the Foreign Office representative
and so on and out of this comes a consensus. In my own experience
of the spheres I have operated in, life just is not quite like
that. It just does not happen, that a nice consensus is arrived
at and so on. Usually I have found that somebody comes along and
says that they do not want to listen to the problems, they want
to hear solutions, get on with it. What I just want to hear from
you is how, in a difficult set of circumstances, you would deal
with that, and are you absolutely satisfied—so that the
Committee may be satisfied—that you would be listened to?
I was so interested in what you said that I wrote it down. You
said "military advice by and large accepted". I guess
that is correct at one level, but it clearly cannot be at all
levels otherwise chiefs of staff, your predecessors, would not
have said what they have said.
General Sir Michael Walker: I
can give you an assurance that I do not have any anxieties about
military advice that I give to the Prime Minister that we have
discussed in quite lively debates—there is no doubt about
that—but by and large we come to an agreed position. Actually,
the way that military business is undertaken these days most of
these answers are pretty obvious from the outset. We have a recuperation
problem of some magnitude to sort out after Iraq. That actually
means that we are physically incapable of doing certain things
until we have established just how those logistics could support
whatever it is. Some of the answers present themselves. The Chiefs
of Staff Committee is not one in which everyone spends hours rankling
because most of the situations are fairly clear. What we would
get is a clear steer from our Government. They would tell us what
they would like to do and they ask us to say whether militarily
that is possible. I am pretty confident that if I went back and
said it was not possible that would be accepted. We may ask what
else we could do to help, but my experience so far both as a member
of the Chiefs of Staff Committee and as recently arrived Chief
of Defence Staff who has only just taken his "L" plates
off, I can give you that assurance absolutely.
Q44 Mr Cran: If the Government—any
government—came to you and your colleagues and said that
foreign policy dictates that we do this, that and the other and
this will have the following implications for the Armed Forces,
can I be clear in my mind that you would be able to look the boss
in the eye—whoever the boss may be—and say that you
could not do it?
General Sir Michael Walker: I
am obviously failing to get my message across. I think the answer
is absolutely yes.
Q45 Mr Cran: You are not failing
to get it across. I am just seeking to be absolutely clear in
my mind.
General Sir Michael Walker: I
am obviously not producing the right form of words otherwise you
would be writing them down.
Q46 Mr Cran: You have clarified it.
General Sir Michael Walker: I
have, yes.
Q47 Mr Crausby: We have some 13,000
military personnel committed to Northern Ireland. First of all,
do you expect to be able to reduce that commitment in the foreseeable
future?
General Sir Michael Walker: I
jointed the Army in 1964. I first went to Northern Ireland in
1967. Any predictions about that military operation are ones that
I avoid like the plague for obvious reasons. However, in purely
doctrinal terms, if a peace settlement actually does produce both
an act of completion from the IRA followed by a return to normality—and
you need to try to work out what you mean by normality in Northern
Ireland; Northern Ireland never has been like Yorkshire so I suppose
we are saying that it needs to return to what it was when there
were no troubles there—then at that stage we would undertake
a review of all our commitments there, all our structures, all
the infrastructure, to see how we would convert Northern Ireland
to look like the other regions of the United Kingdom.
Q48 Mr Crausby: It is obvious—and
you have already touched on it—that the experience of the
Armed Forces is invaluable in these support operations. As and
when the temple does fall how do you intend to keep hold of it?
General Sir Michael Walker: It
is quite interesting. It is a particularly Army thing because
it is mostly military on their feet on the ground and there is
a thing called the Operational Training and Advisory Group which
lives down on the south coast. That has, over the years, developed
into the Training Organization that captures all the techniques
and procedures that you use in a place like this. When we take
a young battalion which may not have been to Northern Ireland—maybe
it only has 10% of people who have been there before, which is
unusual but let us assume that is the case—filled with young
men who have just joined the Army, what is remarkable is that
those young men, through that training regime, are transformed
into the sort of soldier you would recognise on the streets of
Northern Ireland. What I am saying is that I do not think you
actually have to have been there several times yourself to have
gained the techniques and the practices. Of course that experience
is helpful for people as they go up through the system, but we
have captured the training techniques and I think we can hang
on to them. In addition to that, there are a number of other capabilities
that we have developed, particularly for Northern Ireland, which
we are discovering have much wider utility as capabilities across
all the operations we do. Where they are operating in Northern
Ireland using those capabilities we are embedding those back in
our main structure as well so that we can capture them and use
them in places like Afghanistan and Iraq.
Q49 Syd Rapson: Moving on to international
issues, particularly NATO, the Committee welcome the enlargement
of NATO and are still keen on that happening and hopefully everything
will go straightforwardly. The Prague summit in November 2002
offered real advances in capabilities, especially with the NATO
Reaction Force and co-operation in the war against terrorism.
But leading up to Iraq there were problems between our European
allies in NATO and we remember specifically Turkey's request for
support was turned down. How damaged to you think that NATO has
been as an effective military alliance by the events leading up
to the Iraq campaign?
General Sir Michael Walker: That
is rather like Mr Cran's comment about everything going smoothly
and consensus round the Chiefs of Staff table. There are always,
it seems to me, going to be these sorts of issues. Undoubtedly
there was some difficulty over this. However, what I have seen
even since then is actually people are prepared to let time heal
and to get together to try and do some of these things. If you
look at NATO having decided to take on the running of ISAF 4,
business is moving on. The NATO Reaction Force concept is being
developed; people are making contributions to it. At the Ministry
on Thursday we are about to discuss the new NATO command system.
All of that has moved forward so whilst of course there has been,
if you like, some minor turbulence—a bump in the road and
perhaps quite a big bump in that context in terms of its immediacy—my
belief is that it is such a strong and powerful organ that it
is going to take a heck of a lot to stop it working sensibly.
Actually, I find the new partners quite a catalyst in all that
process; they are very keen to get on with things. They bring
an enthusiasm and a dynamism to these meetings which can only
be helpful. I am an optimist.
Q50 Syd Rapson: I take it that you
are very much in line with our thoughts, that the enlargement
process and the new partners are going to give a new impetus to
NATO to re-establish itself and overcome the previous squabbles
between larger nations.
General Sir Michael Walker: I
do not think you will ever get rid of all the squabbling. Any
international organisation will have a bit of that. However, I
do think that it is a secure enough organisation and confident
in its own right and with a sufficient group of people who are
sensible, reasonable people who man NATO and its internal structures.
I do not think it is going to become a long term issue. I can
see that NATO is transforming to approach the new world. You know
they have agreed the two new levels. They have the old SACEUR
post and they have the Allied Command Transformation—which
was the old SACLANT post—so it is modifying itself to face
up to the new circumstances. I think it will still stay relevant
and I think it still is genuinely the only show in town in that
context.
Q51 Syd Rapson: What is the scope
for further development of the European Security and Defence Policy?
There must now be chances of looking at it afresh and broadening
it.
General Sir Michael Walker: What
we have is an agreement that the European Union will provide essentially
political advice over the top of NATO forces who have been released
by NATO to be used or alternatively for a force to be deployed
without NATO involvement. Indeed, we have a situation like that
at the moment. The Congo, for example, a French framework nation,
having initiated the deployment are now moving it in step by step
to become a European operation so that the PSC will give the political
direction and the forces that take part will be European not NATO
in this context. Equally, they could use the NATO forces as well.
I think we are going to see the very first example of the use
of a European force. There is a little one down in Macedonia but
it has not had quite the same reaction capability. That was a
rather more carefully established one. There is also talk about
Europe taking on the role of the forces in Bosnia at some stage
in the future. So it is developing. What we have to make sure
of is that people feel comfortable with it. I think the French
deployment and the transfer of authority from the French government
to the European Committee will be a good test of the processes
and the machinery.
Q52 Syd Rapson: The prospect of final
completion of capability for the European Rapid Reaction Capability
is supposed to be imminent. Helsinki Headline Goals declared that
in 1999. Is that likely to take place? Are we near to completion?
Although you have indicated we are setting off on operations of
that sort, is the actual completion of the capability ready or
is that going to take a lot longer to arrive?
General Sir Michael Walker: It
is not entirely ready. What we have said is that the European
Operating Capability is capable of carrying out some of the Headline
Goals but it is constrained by not having all the capabilities
it needs to do those at the upper end of the spectrum. Those are
developing. We, amongst others, are trying to put a great deal
of pressure on our European allies to fill the capability gaps.
They are essentially reconnaissance, command and control, a bit
of airlift and so on. There is a variety of things and until all
those are in place we, as a nation, are not prepared to sign up
to the full Capability statement until we have all those capabilities
in place.
Q53 Syd Rapson: Have you any guess
at how long that will be? Presumably there is a road map for this.
General Sir Michael Walker: I
think we have reached the point where we now need to get somebody
to say that they will give us this capability as part of their
contribution. I think we will now have a good old battle to try
to get the people to deliver what they have undertaken at the
capability conferences. You did ask if I could give you a judgment.
The answer is that I cannot, really. What I think would happen
is that as more use is made of the EU force and the political
process that will help develop it as well.
Q54 Jim Knight: Just to pick up on
the capability gap, there is a danger, is there not, that we strive
to keep up with the US—and with our desire to prevent them
drifting off into unilateralism we need to have forces that can
work with them—but in doing so we leave the Europeans behind
because they are not spending enough on defence? Is that a bleak
scenario?
General Sir Michael Walker: I
think it is a real risk. We are not going to be able to match
the American investment in network enabled capabilities that they
may have. So what do you do? You ask how we can gain a degree
of inter-operability across the piece. I would claim that both
within the air piece and the maritime piece we are not bad. We
operate consistently alongside each other's ships all over the
world. Our air power has been integrated consistently into American
command and control. As we speak at the moment that is not bad.
The land piece is the more difficult bit. What you have to decide
is whether you are going to integrate absolutely with your allies,
in other words have Britain and America standing side by side
with their tanks working together, or whether you are going to
select a level at which you wish to engage with them. For example,
let us make an assumption—this is not defence policy, I
am thinking aloud here—that you would have a British division
as part of an American operation. Your inter-operability problems
at that level—and particularly for NEC—are different
to if you want to go down to the brigade level of integration
or the battalion level of integration. Yes, you can make those
judgments and so we are never going to be able to deliver what
they can deliver in NEC, but what we have to do is to make sure
that we have the key bits in place. Actually, that should be all
manageable for quite a lot of our European allies. What we need
to do then, if they want to participate in these things—which
they do—is to start developing them. The Scandinavians are
putting quite a lot of effort into network enabled capabilities.
I think we will see the Dutch coming in. Indeed, in the maritime
and air pieces, quite a lot of it is there already. It is really
putting it all together and coming up with a coherent package.
There is a risk that some of the other allies will not be able
to do that.
Q55 Jim Knight: It seems that the
UN is moving away from direct involvement in peace support operations,
preferring to provide the mandate under which other groups, for
example the EU in the Congo, can operate. Do you think that is
a welcome development or does it reflect a failure of the UN and
its members to generate any capacity to do the job themselves?
General Sir Michael Walker: I
would not say moving away. There is a trend for some of that to
happen, but there are something like 14 or 15 UN operations going
on around the world with quite a lot of peace keepers involved.
Indeed, in many cases the sort of things that we find ourselves
doing in support of the UN are to do that ab initio involvement
to create the conditions for a UN peace keeping force to come
in.
Q56 Jim Knight: We punch above our
weight within the P5 countries and the Americans, for example,
do very little.
General Sir Michael Walker: That
is true, but at least they pay now which is quite helpful. There
are so many different groupings now which you can turn to try
to help solve problems involving military armed forces, that it
does seem to me that we are going to have to come up with a very
clear international view about what are the best bits to solve,
which particular problem at a time. I am a great supporter of
the UN. We do a lot to try to work with them on the peace support
operational side because that is their métier really. We
are not talking about them fighting intense wars. If we have difficulty
in the decision making process in our little groups within NATO
and the EU, you know how much more difficult is that at UN level.
It is true to say that it has been a very interesting process
watching the development of a mandate for Iraq over the years.
From the military point of view we would still regard it as absolutely
essential that we should give all the support we can to the United
Nations.
Chairman: Thank you very much. The interest
of the press I am sure was to see whether you were prone to gaffs.
The lack of writing indicates that you are not, I suspect. We
wish you the best of good fortune in the years ahead and we greatly
appreciate your evidence.
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