If the Prime Minister truly wants to confront the threat from Islamists in Africa, he must find the money to increase the defence budget. When David Cameron was elected two years ago, he was expected to draw a veil over the Tony Blair era of military adventure. His decision to cut defence spending by the same amount as he was increasing the aid budget offered a clear sign of his priorities: more schools, fewer bombs. Just before the Libya campaign, he was touring the Gulf with businessmen, scorning the Blair era and presenting his new, trade-first foreign policy. “I am not,” he declared, “a naive neo-con who thinks you can drop democracy out of an aeroplane at 40,000 feet.”
A very different David Cameron stands before us now. He has not been in office for three years, yet is on his third war. He inherited the Afghanistan operation, but chose the Libyan one, deploying British Tomahawk missiles that cruised at about 400 feet before hitting targets in Tripoli (and, yes, clearing the way for a democracy). The speed and nature of his response to Mali, to which he has committed 330 troops so far, has established a new precedent. British foreign policy is being recast, week by week.Read More
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