This week the Guardian newspaper found space on its front page for a history lesson. The year 2015, it reported, is likely to be the first in a century in which the British armed forces will not be engaged in combat somewhere around the world. When troops withdraw from Afghanistan, Britain will truly be at peace for the first time since the outbreak of the First World War.
The names of many of the British battlegrounds of the past century are grimly familiar today – Palestine, Iraq, Pakistan and Yemen. They show that the shadow of the British empire still lingers over many parts of the world. The defence of empire and then its unwinding involved a lot of conflicts, both big and small. One author has calculated that of the almost 200 countries in the world, only 22 – ranging from Guatemala to the Marshall Islands – have never suffered any kind of British armed incursion.
These imperial memories only serve to underline how much has changed in Britain over the past decade. Britain has just slipped to fifth place in the global ranking of defence spending, with the army due to be reduced from more than 100,000 to 85,000 by 2018. A country that used its navy to project force abroad for centuries has no working aircraft carriers at present. Two are being built, though they will have no aircraft until 2020.
But more important is the change of mood in the country since 2003 when the then prime minister, Tony Blair, sent troops into Iraq beside the Americans to topple Saddam Hussein. Politicians and the general public are now united in reluctance to get engaged in foreign wars.
Some cite Britain’s multicultural society, where a Muslim minority opposes sending the army to fight foreign wars of choice that in the recent past have overwhelmingly been in Islamic-majority lands.
But the stronger reason is that a generation of politicians believe their credibility has been undermined by the false pretences under which the Iraq war was launched, namely the destruction of nonexistent weapons of mass destruction. A clear majority of British people now believe the Iraq war was wrong. Britain’s generals are suspected of over-promising and under-delivering in Iraq and Afghanistan, to justify their budgets.
The outcomes of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan certainly offer no encouragement to the war party. Even the campaign to topple Libya’s Colonel Muammar Qaddafi that seemed so successful in 2011 now appears to have bequeathed only chaos and rule by tribal-based militia.
For decades, it has been a principle of foreign policy that Britain must stick with its US ally, to ensure that it would get American help when needed, as in the 1982 battle to retake the Falkland Islands from Argentina. Without that assistance, the war could easily have ended in defeat.
Now, with a president in Washington who is keen to stay out of foreign entanglements, these calculations are outdated. Even more since the focus of US power is likely to be the Asia-Pacific region, where Nato allies have not much to offer.
Now that its military interventionism – more recently disguised as peace-building – is in abeyance, the question of what Britain’s role in the world is being reassessed. At the centre of the debate is the meaning of the parliamentary vote last August rejecting a motion to join the US and France in a missile strike to punish the Syrian regime for using chemical weapons.
Alistair Burt, the Foreign Office minister in charge of the Middle East until last year, believes that the lost vote is a watershed for British foreign policy. By tradition, a British prime minister does not have to seek a vote in parliament to approve military action. By asking parliament to approve such a limited, arm’s length military action, which held no prospect of boots on the ground, he has tied the hands of all future prime ministers.
In effect, Britain will not be able to make any promises to its allies, Mr Burt says, as these will always be subject to the calculations of members of parliament. Military action may be limited to defending old colonial territories close the hearts of parliamentary backbenchers, such as Gibraltar or the Falklands.
There are many who disagree with Mr Burt. They point out that the Syria vote was a special case that, while revealing Britain as a more pacific power, at least yielded a positive result in Syria agreeing to dismantle its chemical weapons. Military intervention, however limited at the beginning, could have aggravated the war, while almost certainly failing to remove the regime.
While the debate continues, allies have drawn their own conclusions, with some praising British restraint while others see a military power tied down by the legacy of Iraq. France, meanwhile, seems to be stepping into Britain’s old place as America’s war partner of choice. The French army is intervening in Mali and the Central African Republic and the French president, Francois Hollande, has just been feted in Washington. France’s refusal to join in the Iraq war is forgotten in Washington.
For their part, British defence chiefs talk of 2015 as a “strategic pause” after a century of war. They point out that there are few European nations apart from Britain and France with the will, training and experience to intervene abroad, and their services will surely be called on again, either together or with the Americans. Germany, the richest and most populous country in Europe, has experimented with foreign intervention, but has pulled back. Sooner or later, they hope, British boots will be on the march again.
That remains to be seen. Domestic concerns – such as the break-up of the United Kingdom if Scotland votes for independence in a referendum this September – are higher up the agenda than slaying dragons abroad.
aphilps@thenational.ae
On Twitter: @aphilps
The specs
Engine: 1.5-litre 4-cylinder petrol
Power: 154bhp
Torque: 250Nm
Transmission: 7-speed automatic with 8-speed sports option
Price: From Dh79,600
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Tips for taking the metro
- set out well ahead of time
- make sure you have at least Dh15 on you Nol card, as there could be big queues for top-up machines
- enter the right cabin. The train may be too busy to move between carriages once you're on
- don't carry too much luggage and tuck it under a seat to make room for fellow passengers
Moon Music
Artist: Coldplay
Label: Parlophone/Atlantic
Number of tracks: 10
Rating: 3/5
Other must-tries
Tomato and walnut salad
A lesson in simple, seasonal eating. Wedges of tomato, chunks of cucumber, thinly sliced red onion, coriander or parsley leaves, and perhaps some fresh dill are drizzled with a crushed walnut and garlic dressing. Do consider yourself warned: if you eat this salad in Georgia during the summer months, the tomatoes will be so ripe and flavourful that every tomato you eat from that day forth will taste lacklustre in comparison.
Badrijani nigvzit
A delicious vegetarian snack or starter. It consists of thinly sliced, fried then cooled aubergine smothered with a thick and creamy walnut sauce and folded or rolled. Take note, even though it seems like you should be able to pick these morsels up with your hands, they’re not as durable as they look. A knife and fork is the way to go.
Pkhali
This healthy little dish (a nice antidote to the khachapuri) is usually made with steamed then chopped cabbage, spinach, beetroot or green beans, combined with walnuts, garlic and herbs to make a vegetable pâté or paste. The mix is then often formed into rounds, chilled in the fridge and topped with pomegranate seeds before being served.
Tree of Hell
Starring: Raed Zeno, Hadi Awada, Dr Mohammad Abdalla
Director: Raed Zeno
Rating: 4/5
The specs
Engine: Dual 180kW and 300kW front and rear motors
Power: 480kW
Torque: 850Nm
Transmission: Single-speed automatic
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Teams
Punjabi Legends Owners: Inzamam-ul-Haq and Intizar-ul-Haq; Key player: Misbah-ul-Haq
Pakhtoons Owners: Habib Khan and Tajuddin Khan; Key player: Shahid Afridi
Maratha Arabians Owners: Sohail Khan, Ali Tumbi, Parvez Khan; Key player: Virender Sehwag
Bangla Tigers Owners: Shirajuddin Alam, Yasin Choudhary, Neelesh Bhatnager, Anis and Rizwan Sajan; Key player: TBC
Colombo Lions Owners: Sri Lanka Cricket; Key player: TBC
Kerala Kings Owners: Hussain Adam Ali and Shafi Ul Mulk; Key player: Eoin Morgan
Venue Sharjah Cricket Stadium
Format 10 overs per side, matches last for 90 minutes
Timeline October 25: Around 120 players to be entered into a draft, to be held in Dubai; December 21: Matches start; December 24: Finals
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Schedule:
Pakistan v Sri Lanka:
28 Sep-2 Oct, 1st Test, Abu Dhabi
6-10 Oct, 2nd Test (day-night), Dubai
13 Oct, 1st ODI, Dubai
16 Oct, 2nd ODI, Abu Dhabi
18 Oct, 3rd ODI, Abu Dhabi
20 Oct, 4th ODI, Sharjah
23 Oct, 5th ODI, Sharjah
26 Oct, 1st T20I, Abu Dhabi
27 Oct, 2nd T20I, Abu Dhabi
29 Oct, 3rd T20I, Lahore
Hili 2: Unesco World Heritage site
The site is part of the Hili archaeological park in Al Ain. Excavations there have proved the existence of the earliest known agricultural communities in modern-day UAE. Some date to the Bronze Age but Hili 2 is an Iron Age site. The Iron Age witnessed the development of the falaj, a network of channels that funnelled water from natural springs in the area. Wells allowed settlements to be established, but falaj meant they could grow and thrive. Unesco, the UN's cultural body, awarded Al Ain's sites - including Hili 2 - world heritage status in 2011. Now the most recent dig at the site has revealed even more about the skilled people that lived and worked there.
APPLE IPAD MINI (A17 PRO)
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Main camera: 12MP wide, f/1.8, digital zoom up to 5x, Smart HDR 4
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Biometrics: Touch ID, Face ID
Colours: Blue, purple, space grey, starlight
In the box: iPad mini, USB-C cable, 20W USB-C power adapter
Price: From Dh2,099
Isle of Dogs
Director: Wes Anderson
Starring: Bryan Cranston, Liev Schreiber, Ed Norton, Greta Gerwig, Bill Murray, Jeff Goldblum, Scarlett Johansson
Three stars
Jigra
Starring: Alia Bhatt, Vedang Raina, Manoj Pahwa, Harsh Singh
Company info
Company name: Entrupy
Co-founders: Vidyuth Srinivasan, co-founder/chief executive, Ashlesh Sharma, co-founder/chief technology officer, Lakshmi Subramanian, co-founder/chief scientist
Based: New York, New York
Sector/About: Entrupy is a hardware-enabled SaaS company whose mission is to protect businesses, borders and consumers from transactions involving counterfeit goods.
Initial investment/Investors: Entrupy secured a $2.6m Series A funding round in 2017. The round was led by Tokyo-based Digital Garage and Daiwa Securities Group's jointly established venture arm, DG Lab Fund I Investment Limited Partnership, along with Zach Coelius.
Total customers: Entrupy’s customers include hundreds of secondary resellers, marketplaces and other retail organisations around the world. They are also testing with shipping companies as well as customs agencies to stop fake items from reaching the market in the first place.
Coming 2 America
Directed by: Craig Brewer
Starring: Eddie Murphy, Arsenio Hall, Jermaine Fowler, Leslie Jones
3/5 stars
COMPANY PROFILE
Name: HyperSpace
Started: 2020
Founders: Alexander Heller, Rama Allen and Desi Gonzalez
Based: Dubai, UAE
Sector: Entertainment
Number of staff: 210
Investment raised: $75 million from investors including Galaxy Interactive, Riyadh Season, Sega Ventures and Apis Venture Partners
Napoleon
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Our legal consultants
Name: Hassan Mohsen Elhais
Position: legal consultant with Al Rowaad Advocates and Legal Consultants.
CREW
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TWISTERS
Director: Lee Isaac Chung
Starring: Glen Powell, Daisy Edgar-Jones, Anthony Ramos
Rating: 2.5/5
How to protect yourself when air quality drops
Install an air filter in your home.
Close your windows and turn on the AC.
Shower or bath after being outside.
Wear a face mask.
Stay indoors when conditions are particularly poor.
If driving, turn your engine off when stationary.
Call of Duty: Black Ops 6
Developer: Treyarch, Raven Software
Publisher: Activision
Console: PlayStation 4 & 5, Windows, Xbox One & Series X/S
Rating: 3.5/5