Britain Losing Military Clout, Worrying Allies

At the Washington Post, "U.K.’s shrinking military clout worries U.S.":

LONDON — With Europe facing its shakiest security environment in a generation, Britain has slipped into a familiar role: Washington’s tough-talking wingman.

British leaders have led the rhetorical charge against the twin menaces of Russia and the Islamic State while browbeating reluctant European governments to wake up to the reality of a newly unstable continent.

But behind the flinty facade lies an unmistakable erosion in British power, one that has reduced Washington’s indispensable ally to a position that U.K. officials, military leaders and analysts acknowledge could leave the United States without a credible partner in taking on the greatest threats to global ­security.

Britain’s diminished military capacity is a product of years of stringent austerity policies that show no sign of easing.

Despite a too-close-to-call election in less than two months, neither major party has stepped up to shield the military from further cuts, reflecting a public weary of foreign interventions after campaigns in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya that are widely seen as failures.

In the two conflicts that most directly imperil Europe today, Britain has been largely ­invisible.

Its contribution to the U.S.-led air campaign against the Islamic State is “strikingly modest,” according to a recent parliamentary report. And as Russia has eviscerated Ukraine over the past year, Britain has often been a bystander while others have tried to stanch the bleeding.

The British withdrawal from world affairs could soon accelerate, with budget cuts likely to take an even greater bite out of an already withered military.

A report issued this week by a respected British think tank, the Royal United Services Institute, found that Britain’s regular army could shrink to just 50,000 troops by 2019 – about half the number of the amount when the decade began and just a fraction of the figure from the height of the Cold War.

“The concern is that we’re going to fall from being a significant player to a bit-part player,” Dannatt said. “The U.K. isn’t of much use to the U.S. if we don’t have a worthwhile military force behind us. Anybody can talk tough. But if you don’t back it up, everyone just laughs at you.”

U.S. officials, normally unwilling to criticize their most stalwart ally, have been unusually open about their apprehension in recent days.

Last week, Gen. Ray Odierno, the U.S. Army chief of staff, said that he was “very concerned” about U.K. defense cuts and that they could result in British troops fighting within American ranks rather than alongside them in any future conflict.

On Tuesday, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power told the BBC that she was alarmed by the “gap between the collective security needs that we all have and the resources we are bringing to bear.”

Although Power did not single out Britain for criticism, taking aim instead at Europe as a whole, she focused her comments on a NATO target for members to spend at least 2 percent of gross domestic product on defense.

The long-standing goal is met by only four members from the 28-nation alliance: the United States, Estonia, Greece and ­Britain...

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