British forces’ century of unbroken warfare set to end with Afghanistan exit

War-weariness among the public and wariness among politicians mean next year could be the first since at least 1914 that British soldiers, sailors and air crews are not engaged in fighting

Interactive timeline: Britain’s 100 years of conflict

When British forces pull down the union flag for the last time in Afghanistan this year, it will be a hugely symbolic moment. It is not just that the departure marks the end of 13 years of British involvement in combat in that troubled country. The surprise is that it could also signal the end of a century or more of unbroken warfare by British forces.

Next year is shaping up as the first since at least 1914 that British soldiers, sailors and air crews will not be engaged in fighting somewhere – the first time Britain is totally at peace with the rest of the world.

Since Britain’s declaration of war against Germany in August 1914, not a year has passed without its forces being involved in conflict. It is a statistic that has been largely overlooked, and not one about which the government is likely to boast.

The last 100 years have seen two world wars, large-scale conflicts in Korea and Iraq, and small-scale actions in Africa, the Middle East and Asia. There have been punitive operations in defence of empire, cold war operations, post-9/11 support for the United States, and the Troubles in Ireland.

No other country in the world, even those with similarly militaristic traditions, has been engaged continuously over such a long span. Even during 1968, a year often hailed by members of the British armed forces and some military historians as a year of peace, there was fighting.

The timeline of constant combat may stretch even further back, given Britain’s imperial engagements, all the way to the creation of the British army in 1707.

Britain’s generals and politicians anticipate that 2015 may be a year finally without conflict and are planning accordingly. Senior military staff describe this as a “strategic pause”.

Assuming agreement is reached with the Afghanistan government before the end of the year, a few hundred soldiers will be left behind to help with training at the army academy, and a few others in a consultative role but not for combat. Special forces could be deployed but no one in the Ministry of Defence is going to go public on that.

The potential absence of war is attributed to a number of factors: lack of public support for the Afghanistan and Iraq conflicts; cuts in the size of the army, making it harder to mount similar operations; an increasingly multicultural Britain that could make intervention in Muslim countries more problematic; and antipathy among the present generation of politicians to interventions, as demonstrated by last year’s Commons vote against action in Syria.

A report by the International Institute for Strategic Studies this week showed Britain dropping from fourth place to fifth in the world in terms of budget spending on defence. The army is to be …read more