UK military cuts to hurt NATO: US general
The UK should stop making more cuts to its armed forces before hurting its position in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), a top US general has warned.
Speaking to BBC on Wednesday, Lieutenant General Ben Hodges, the commander of the US Army in Europe, expressed concerns about the British Ministry of Defense’s plans for making £20 billion of efficiency savings.
If the UK "can't maintain and sustain the level of commitments it's fulfilling right now, then I think it risks kind of going into a different sort of category," the general said. "I don't see how you could maintain those global commitments if you got any smaller.”
The government has already reduced the Army regular troops from 120,000 to 82,000. However, due to the difficulty of recruiting new staff, that number has further decreased to just over 78,000.
The American general made the remarks ahead of new UK Defense Secretary Gavin Williamson’s meeting with James Mattis, his American counterpart, during his first NATO Defense Ministers meeting in Brussels.
All three branches of the British armed forces have been asked to come up with a list of options for cuts as part of the Ministry of Defense’s struggles to control spending through an overall review.
The Royal Navy's cuts are expected to impact the Royal Marines forces and limit the force’s ability to carry out offensives on beaches. The Navy's two amphibious assault ships, HMS Albion and HMS Bulwark, might also be axed.
"I'd hate to lose that particular capability... Whenever you take something off the table unilaterally then you've just made the job a little simpler for a potential adversary," Hodges said.
The US general is known for consistently urging NATO allies to do more to meet what he calls a threat posed by Russia.
The US-led military alliance decided last year to deploy an Enhanced Forward Presence force to the Baltic States—Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia—as well as Poland, following Russia's reunification with Crimea.
Under the current plan, over 800 British troops and nearly 300 French troops are expected to be stationed in Estonia and form one of the four battalions the NATO is putting together near Russian borders.
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