President Barack Obama, in his first major military decision, has authorised the Pentagon to send an extra 17,000 troops to Afghanistan, saying the increase is needed to stabilise a deteriorating situation there.

Obama's Afghan strategy has been discussed at length, including on this blog (most recently about balancing the need for regional support with the demands of countries like Russia for concessions in return, the military challenges of devising an effective counterinsurgency strategy, the views of the Afghan people and Pakistan's own struggles to contain a Taliban insurgency there.)

But here are a couple of recent articles that are worth reading.

In an article in the Washington Post, headlined "Not Even the Afghans Know How to Fix It", writer Edward Joseph says that the Afghans cannot agree among themselves what is the best solution for their country. "And there's the crux of the matter. Because if Afghans don't know, then neither do we," he says.

Retired U.S. Air Force Lieutenant Colonel William Astore asks in TomDispatch why there is so little public concern at home about the fate of U.S. troops - many drawn from poorer and immigrant communities in America -- sent on repeated tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"Instead of collective patriotic sacrifice," he writes, "it's clear that the military will now be running the equivalent of a poverty and recession 'draft' to fill the 'all-volunteer' military. Those without jobs or down on their luck in terrible times will have the singular honor of fighting our future wars."

U.S. military reporter and blogger Michael Yon says he believes the U.S. army is more capable of fighting in Afghanistan than any other in history. But one paragraph in his article stands out with its deep sense of misgiving:

"The sum of many factors leaves me with a bad feeling about all this.  The Iraq war, even during the worst times, never seemed like such a bog.  Yet there is something about our commitment in Afghanistan that feels wrong, as if a bear trap is hidden under the sand," he says.

With Obama's strategy for Afghanistan still under review, it's probably too early to draw any firm conclusions about his decision to send an extra 17,000 troops. But did he have a choice? Or is he walking into a trap?

Who remembers the Google Wars website that was doing the viral rounds a few years back – a mildly amusing, non-scientific snapshot of the search-driven, internet world we live in?

It lives on at www.googlebattle.com where you can enter two search terms, say ‘Lennon vs. McCartney’ or ‘Left vs. Right’, and let the internet pick a winner by the number of search hits each word gets.

As we reported here – the virtual world has become a real battleground in the ongoing Gaza conflict – with all sides deploying significant resources.

For Israel – where hasbara or PR has often been frowned upon as unnecessary pandering to international opinion that never turns in Israel’s favour anyway – the second Lebanon war underlined the need for a coherent media and PR strategy coordinated at the centre of government.

The post-mortem of the month-long war with Hezbollah in 2006 - known as the Winograd Commission - recommended a centralised approach to hasbara to avoid spokesmen from different ministries, the army or the police telling different or conflicting stories to a voracious local and international media.

Notwithstanding the fact that the head of the new National Information Directorate did not make it to a scheduled interview with our reporter on the story above  – as my colleague Dan Williams reported here the strategy certainly seems to be working for domestic consumption.

Sources inside the Israeli government have said they are generally happy with the way the strategy has worked internationally as well despite growing international calls for a ceasefire and increasingly angry protests around the world.

The media strategy has been backed up by zero tolerance within the military and security establishment for anyone going “off message” - field commanders or political insiders who seemed to relish leaking tid-bits to their favoured reporters in 2006 are now keeping mum.

And while the virtual media war has raged – with pro-Palestinian websites like electronicintifada.net or Hamas’ own website http://www.palestine-info.co.uk/en/ ratcheting up the rhetoric alongside their Israeli foes – many in the traditional media (or dare I say MSM) complain that they have been totally defeated by Israel’s media strategy which has prevented them from entering Gaza or a ‘closed military zone’ neighbouring Gaza.

The world’s press has been herded on to a hill-top 2 kilometres from the Gaza Strip - where Israeli political and military spokespeople wander among the satellite trucks and live positions ‘briefing’ journalists with the official view of what’s going on inside Gaza.

As much as the protagonists have been duking it out in the virtual world - online media now has the clout to shape the way war stories are told and delivered.

The most surreal example of this is probably Joe the Plumber - yes, that Joe the Plumber of US election campaign fame - who has been engaged by pro-Israeli US website Pajamas Media to file reports from Israeli towns under Hamas rocket fire.

Joe’s basic premise seems to be that the media is inherently biased against Israel and journalists have no business being in the war zone anyway.

While you might not agree with his point-of-view - Joe is an example of the sort of do-it-yourself journalism with a strong voice that has been empowered by the Internet.

Read these two accounts - one from my colleague Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza and this one from another Gaza journalist - and I think you’ll agree that reporting from inside a warzone is important, journalists should be there and the combatants should facilitate rather than threaten this effort.

And by the way - in case you were wondering - a GoogleBattle between Israel and Palestine gives Israel a decisive victory. IDF vs. Hamas, though, has Hamas edging it.

PHOTO CREDITS

Photgraphers take pictures of Israeli tanks. REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun

Massive explosion in southern Gaza town of Rafah. REUTERS/Ibrahim abu-Mustafa

By C. Bryson Hull

Sri Lanka’s army has the Tamil Tigers on the run with a string of convincing military victories. Many people are asking if one of Asia’s longest-running civil wars is near its end after 25 years.

 Sri Lankan tanks patrol near the town of Kilinochchi (REUTERS/Buddhika Weerasingh)

Fresh from capturing the separatist rebels’ self-declared capital last week, soldiers are busy squeezing the last piece of the northern Jaffna Peninsula the Tigers still hold, hitting it from the north and south. The military and analysts say the Tigers are moving their heavy guns and toughest fighters east to the port of Mullaittivu for a final showdown .

 The Tigers say they are confident they will reverse their losses, as they have done in the past. Many also fear the Tigers will carry out more suicide bombings and guerrilla attacks in the south to compensate for the shrinking northern battlespace. 

The Tigers are now confined to a wedge of the northeast, starting to the east of the A-9 road which bisects the north, the ocean on one side and jagged line roughly following the A-34 road that terminates in Mullaittivu.

One challenge that could complicate the military offensive there is the fact that most of an estimated 230,000 civilians are located in poor conditions, which rights groups say are aggravated by both the Tigers and the government.

 Sri Lankan  commandos patrol on a military vehicle near Kilinochchi on Jan. 4 (reuters/Buddhika Weerasingh)

 Sri Lankan  commandos patrol on a military vehicle near Kilinochchi on Jan. 4 (reuters/Buddhika Weerasingh)

 Sri Lankan  commandos patrol on a military vehicle near Kilinochchi on Jan. 4 (reuters/Buddhika Weerasingh)

 Sri Lankan  commandos patrol on a military vehicle near Kilinochchi on Jan. 4 (reuters/Buddhika Weerasingh)

 Sri Lankan  commandos patrol on a military vehicle near Kilinochchi on Jan. 4 (reuters/Buddhika Weerasingh)

Add into this mix President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s apparent plans to call an early election to capitalize on the military success and 2009 is looking to be a monumental year on the Teardrop of India. With so much at stake after 25 years of combat, where do you think the war, Sri Lanka and the Tamil Tigers are heading?

By Benjamin Kang Lim and Simon Rabinovitch

When Chinese President Hu Jintao spoke to the nation this week, an unusual six-second pause may have said more about elite politics in this secretive state than the other 90 minutes of
stolid Communist Party rhetoric. In an address marking 30 years of economic reforms, Hu appeared to lose his place in the middle of a sentence, halting awkwardly for 6.5 seconds — the only such break in his speech and an extremely rare bump for Chinese officials long-practised in flawlessly reading out speeches.

When Hu picked up again, he skipped a chunk of the prepared comments, forming a sentence that appears in none of the official transcripts of his speech, nor any Chinese press report. “One
centre”, he said, then went silent before continuing, “is the lifeline of our Party and our nation.” The official transcript read, “one centre and two basic points are mutually linked,
mutually dependent”, a slogan coined in the 1980s in which “one centre” has a purely economic meaning.

In skipping the second part of the slogan, some thought Hu was using “one centre” in a political sense, referring to himself as that nation’s paramount leader. Hu’s pause could have been a simple verbal misstep. But it came in a passage broaching the touchiest of issues for the 65-year-old president, who also serves as Party chief: how much power does he wield and has he
won the “core” status accorded early leaders. And some observers spied a message in Hu’s silence.

Faced with his stiffest challenge yet as the economy slows sharply, Hu may have been trying to stress to the Party that he was still firmly in charge. Even had he lost his place during the address, the “one centre” phrase leads into a slogan repeated so often by Chinese officials that it would be unusual for Hu to have missed its second part. “One centre is the lifeline. It doesn’t imply another way,” said a Chinese scholar, who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of talking about the top leadership.

The setting for Hu’s speech, given before ranks of senior officials, retired and in office, seated in the huge Great Hall of the People magnified the potential significance of his comments. The highest-ranking Party officials sat on the stage behind Hu and directly to his rear was Jiang Zemin, Hu’s predecessor as president who still wields huge influence. Hu had paid tribute to Jiang earlier during his speech, using an officially sanctioned phrase to call him “the core of the Party’s third generation of leadership”. The assembled Party members gave Jiang a strong round of applause. Hu, the paramount leader of the so-called fourth generation, is still not referred to as its “core” despite having ascended to the presidency in 2003.

The “one centre” phrase also recalled comments reportedly made by army officials in 2003 when Hu was consolidating his power but Jiang was still chairman of the Central Military Commission. “One centre is called loyalty. Two centres strung together is trouble,” two military delegates to the National People’s Congress, or parliament, told Hu and Jiang, according to the Liberation Army Daily newspaper.

Speculation that the omission in the speech may hint at cracks at the top of China’s leadership pyramid is officially denied and also dismissed by many observers. “Take what is in the People’s
Daily as accurate,” the State Council Information Office, the media arm of the government, told Reuters. The People’s Daily transcript included the text skipped by Hu in his speech, effectively erasing his one-centre-as-lifeline comment.

Jin Zhong, publisher of Hong Kong’s monthly Kaifang, or Open, magazine, said Hu may simply be trying to alter Deng’s “one centre” slogan, looking to replace the second half that he left out with his own views.

What do you think?

BASRA - It may not be the end-game Britain was hoping for when it ventured into Iraq, but it’s the end of the game nonetheless.

By the end of next May, almost exactly six years after 42,000 British troops joined the U.S.-led invasion and overthrew Saddam Hussein, Prime Minister Gordon Brown says Britain’s remaining 4,100 troops will be out of Iraq and his country’s role in the war over.

The overwhelming question, after 2,200 days of conflict and 178 soldiers killed, not to mention the thousands seriously wounded and the vast sums of money expended, is clearly: was it all worth it in the end?

Brown, who inherited the conflict from his predecessor Tony Blair and has never been entirely comfortable with taking on the mantle of ‘conquering commander-in-chief’, has been at pains to say it was, and spent Wednesday reiterating that point.

Making his fourth trip to Iraq as prime minister, Brown emphasised the training Britain’s troops had provided in Basra and the southern region, helping put 42,000 Iraqi police and soldiers onto the streets to maintain security for themselves.

Insurgent groups in and around Basra, a vital oil hub that at one stage looked liked falling into the hands of the Shi’ite militia known as the Mehdi Army, have been defeated, Brown said.

And as well as plans for another round of provincial elections at the end of January — a sign that democracy is taking root — the economy in the south is showing steady signs of growth, with inflation sharply down, oil exports up and the port of Umm Qasr busy hauling in much-demanded foreign goods.

But compare those outcomes — which remain tentative — with what Britain (and the United States with its claims of weaons of mass destruction) set out to achieve in Iraq, and ask Iraqis what they think, and a very different picture emerges.

Six years on, Iraqis complain about the persistent lack of electricity, which in some areas has still not reached the same level it was at before the invasion. They lament the number of civilians killed in military operations, and the number of Iraqis still languishing in military prisons.

The insurgency may have died down, they say, but it always threatens to return and security on the streets of Iraq is far from guaranteed. Economically, things may be improving, but jobs are few and far between and corruption is rife. The oil wealth the country is beginning to enjoy is not widely distributed.

In terms of politics, the successful staging of national and provincial elections has given Iraqis a feel for the process of democracy, but Iraqis often say they do not feel they have benefitted from the process — politics is a power game played way above their heads with little visible trickle down.

And then there are the persistent threats of internal breakdown, with the Shi’ite majority facing off against Sunnis, the Arab population nervous of Kurdish strength, and Iraqi nationalists fearful of the growing influence of Shi’ite Iran.

Those concerns, as well as the fact that any of the gains are easily reversed, leave many Iraqis (at least in the south) deeply ambivalent about the role that Britain has played.

Come mid-2009, when the last British military convoys are likely to be pulling out of Iraq, even British diplomats admit they don’t expect Iraqis to lay on parades in their honour.

It may not quite be good riddance from Iraq, and Britain may not have to leave with its tail between its legs, but by the same token it may be difficult for the military to leave with its head held high knowing the job had been well done.

(Pool photo of British Prime Minister Gordon Brown with troops in Umm Qasr port in Iraq)

It's not often that economists turn their attention to military hardware, but Deutsche Bank has done just that in its latest world outlook. The subject is aircraft carriers and what it sees as the strange desire among a number of countries to build them.

Russia has suggested it may build up to six carriers, DB notes, while China plans one and Britain and France three between them. Like the true economists they are, DB first questions the need, saying such boats are vulnerable, make no sense for coastal defence and are for projecting offensive power over long distances. Then comes the cost:
  

"To build a serious aircraft carrier costs well above $5 billion. But then you need to build half a dozen escort vessels and the aircraft to produce a battle unit that will require upwards of 10,000 sailors. Since it is for distant power projection, to keep a single aircraft carrier group on constant deployment requires at least two and more likely three groups."

It reckons China can afford this because it only plans to build one. But Russia, even with a recent surge in wealth, is unlikely to launch a programme soon, it concludes.

The thought of Russian warships cruising the waters of the Caribbean instinctively revives memories of such Cold War episodes as the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.

Russia is sending a heavily armed nuclear-powered cruiser and other ships, aircraft and troops for a joint naval exercise with Venezuela, its first big manoeuvres in the United States’ self-declared backyard since the end of the Cold War.

It is extremely unlikely the deployment will provoke a crisis as dangerous and dramatic as 1962, but it is still an irritant to Washington.

Venezuela under President Hugo Chavez has replaced Fidel Castro’s Cuba as its chief bugbear in Latin America.

Spouting anti-imperialist rhetoric, Chavez has led a socialist revolution aimed at countering a century of U.S. influence — some might say meddling — in the region. He counts as allies leaders such as Bolivia’s Evo Morales as well as many poor people. 

He has backed up his actions with largesse from Venezuela’s oil wealth. Ironically, a lot of those dollars come from the United States. Venezuela is its fifth-largest oil supplier, a trade relationship which has hobbled Washington’s reactions to Chavez’s adventures.

Venezuela has already bought fighter jets, submarines and guns from Russia. And add to the equation Venezuela’s burgeoning friendship with Iran, another bete noire for the Americans.

Chavez seems to enjoy goading the Bush administration almost for the fun of it. He has variously called President George W. Bush a donkey, a drunk, and in a U.N. speech, the Devil.”

The naval exercises with Russia will not be as easy for Washington to brush off as the name-calling.

Relations between Washington and Moscow are tense because of Russia’s intervention in Georgia in August. The Kremlin was angered by the United States’ sending a naval flotilla to the Black Sea to show support for Georgia.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev even asked how Washington would feel if Russian sent aid vessels to the Caribbean.

During the Cold War, Russian had a substantial military presence in Cuba and was involved behind the scenes in the Central American wars of the 1980s. With the Soviet Union’s collapse, all that ended.

But Russian officials have made it clear recently that Moscow is ready to play a role on the world stage again.

Meanwhile the United States’ Fourth Fleet this year began patrolling Latin American waters for the first time in 50 years, a move that Chavez denounced but that has also concerned moderate countries such as Brazil.

The Venezuela-Russia exercises are due to take place days after the U.S. presidential election - an event that will complicate any response from Washington and at the same time divert world attention.

The people of South Ossetia and Abkhazia were celebrating on Tuesday after Russian President Dmitry Medvedev signed a decree recognising the independence of the two regions. 

Western leaders responded with harsh words. U.S. President George W. Bush said it increased world tensions and Britain called for “the widest possible coalition against Russian aggression in Georgia,” where the two regions lie. 

But what can the West do to punish Russia or discourage it from any similar acts in the future? 

Military action has never been a realistic option since Russia sent tanks and troops to halt Georgia’s assault on South Ossetia. United Nations sanctions are also out of the question because Russia ihas the right of veto on the U.N. Security Council.

Major powers are also reluctant to do anything that might encourage Moscow to withdraw its help with U.N. sanctions against Iran over its nuclear programme and transit support for NATO forces in Afghanistan. 

Retaliation could involve Russian membership of the big international clubs: excluding Russia from the Group of Eight (G8) top industrial democracies or blocking its bid to join the World Trade Organization (WTO). 

But any action will be carried out with the nagging thought at the back of Western leaders’ minds - Moscow is no longer the economic basket-case of Soviet times and, riding a tide of petrodollars from soaring oil prices, western Europe depends on Russian oil and gas.

Russian leaders have signalled they are not troubled by the Western reaction, partly because the Kremlin sees strong public support at home for its actions in Georgia and in the stand-off with the West, and partly because of the wealth it now has from its natural resources.

When NATO suspended activities with Russia, Moscow responded with a shrug of the shoulders, saying it was also freezing activities with the defence alliance. Moscow also plans to halt visits by senior NATO officials and joint military exercises with the alliance.

The European Union could, in theory, send in peacekeepers or break off talks with Russia over a wide-ranging strategic partnership, or even announce economic sanctions such as curbing existing trade arrangements. Moscow has shown no sign of concern over this - such moves would risk Moscow cutting energy supplies to Europe.

“Nothing scares us, including the prospect of a Cold War, but we don’t want it,” Medvedev said on Monday. “In this situation, everything depends on the position of our partners.”            

Does Russia have the upper hand? Perhaps. But despite the talk about a Cold War, there are also reasons to believe it is not about to start and that conflict can be contained.

Moscow’s confidence and strength rests largely on high prices for energy and other natural resources and it is still a far cry from the military force it was in Soviet times. Moscow also no longer controls large swathes of eastern and central Europe and no longer has the huge influence it once enjoyed in other parts of the world. The Kremlin is also likely to be concerned about investment flows into Russia, which ratings agency Fitch says could be affected by the rising tensions. 

Mikhail Kasyanov, a former Russian prime minister turned Kremlin opponent, was quoted by Interfax news agency as saying Moscow’s decision was “one more step towards the self-isolation of the Russian Federation from the international community.”

But Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov believes isolation is not looming for Russia: ”I don’t believe this should really be a doomsday scenario. I believe common sense should prevail.” 

There can be few countries where the art of the coup is so finely honed as in Turkey, adapting as it does constantly to the spirit of the age, spawning over the decades its own enigmatic lexicon – the “Coup By Memorandum”, the “Post-Modern Coup”, the “Judicial Coup”, the ill-starred “e-Coup”.

Now newspapers (largely pro-government newspapers it should be said), gorge on tales of coup plots dubbed ‘Glove’, ‘Blonde Girl’ , ‘Moonlight’ and devote pages to a shadowy militant group code-named “Ergenekon”. Two retired military commanders, supposed members of the group, have been arrested at their homes on military compounds; a bold step by civilian authorities against an army that jealously guards its privileged status. Critics of Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan call the arrests, also netting businessmen and journalists, a ‘revenge action’ for moves by the conservative judiciary to shut his AK party on charges of Islamist subversion.  Ertugrul Ozkok, editor of Hurriyet, a newspaper critical of the government ,  suggested authorities were riding roughshod over judicial processes. If  things are as they seem, he said, “none of us can feel comfortable any more. Any one of us can be taken from our homes and held in custody.”

Erdogan, facing a possible court ban from party politics, might also rest uneasily these sultry July nights.

Some coups have shaken Turkey to the core, others brought more subtle change. All have dealt a blow to democracy. A 1960 military putsch sent a prime minister and two other ministers to the gallows (as well as testing the unity of the forces themselves), four in the last 50 years have toppled governments. Turkish political folklore is rich with other conspiracies supposedly involving the “Deep State” – a nebulous fraternity of militant nationalists in the security services, military, judiciary and civil service.

Why such a rich “coup culture” in Turkey?

Perhaps it’s something to do with the way the rails of Turkish democracy snake along so narrow a ledge. To one side the abyss, the fear of division and chaos many Turks seem to carry within. To the other side the forbidding, towering heights of a powerful and distrusting Pashas, or generals. At every tight turn the train will scrape against the granite face of one or teeter precariously towards the edge of the other.

Now is such a turn.

The Pashas, through their Turkish military optics, see a nation seduced by Tayyip. Critics say the judiciary, civil service, universities, even the presidency and security services, are being opened to infiltration by Islamists. AK’s move to allow the Muslim headscarf in universities only underlines the perils.

Erdogan denies any Sharia ambitions. His party, embracing economic liberals, centrists and nationalists as well as religious conservatives, has steered a soundly pro-Western course (arguably far more pro-Western than that of the ‘secularist’ parties AK first swept from office in 2002 polls), winning international profile, building a strong economy and gaining support across the population.

And here, in Erdogan’s success and popularity, lies the Pashas’ dilemma.

In all their interventions and coups, the Pashas, for many the trusted safeguard of the secular order, have never acted flagrantly against popular will. The 1971 “Coup by Memorandum” came as a relief to millions after months of political violence and strikes. The armed forces chief handed what amounted to an ultimatum to the prime minister to restore order or it would “exercise its constitutional duty”. That did the job, memories of the bloody 1960 coup still being fresh. The premier stepped down and a provisional cabinet under military supervision duly restored order.

The 1980 “September 12 Coup” followed a resurgence of streetfighting between leftists and nationalists. The tanks rolled this time, the streets returned to calm, politicians were rounded up and left to cool their heels at detention centres on the Aegean coast.

By the 1990s, rolling tanks along the streets was less acceptable. The Pashas, however, again saw themselves compelled to act to defend the secular state of Ataturk against a government espousing Islamist ideas.

This was the genesis of the 1997 “Post-Modern Coup”.

Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan fell cleanly to a well-orchestrated campaign of pressure from the military in conjunction with business, the judiciary, media and political leaders. If a column of tanks did roll down a mainstreet somewhere, it was only by way of a salutary reminder of pre-post-modern days. Democracy might have emerged that much stronger though, some say, if the Pashas had kept their nerve and allowed Erbakan to fall under the weight of his own folly.
Erdogan’s hold on power is, in any case, surer.

Erbakan enjoyed only about 20 percent support when elected and his popularity had slumped in office. Erdogan garnered 47 percent support at the 2007 election after a tense wrangle with the General Staff that became known as the “e-Coup” affair. Just before midnight on April 27, the armed forces General Staff posted a declaration on its website cautioning Erdogan, in so many words, against putting up his right-hand man, Abdullah Gul, as president. Erdogan did the unthinkable and publicly, if courteously, admonished the military the following day. His gamble then in calling the 2007 election greatly strengthened his position. Gul was duly installed as president. Breathtaking events.

History suggests the greatest fear haunting the military at such times is that of division; division – ethnic and political — in the country and division in the armed forces themselves. The image of the police officers encroaching on military domain to arrest two generals was poignant, even if entirely within the law.

Conspiracy theorists in Turkey – and there are very many — would see the only way out for the “Deep State” in first robbing Erdogan of his supreme weapon, his popularity.

This, then, is where the Ergenekon allegations, regardless of facts yet to be established, have for many the irresistible ring of truth.

Newspapers speak of a plan to unleash a campaign of mass protests, bombings and shootings this month pitching the country into chaos and turning the population against Erdogan. Today brought an armed attack at the United States’ Istanbul mission that killed three policemen and three gunmen.

The military would then be relieved of any internal debate and forced to intervene to rescue the country. Erdogan would be gone, the country saved from an Islamist threat and the military effectively restored to the position of privilege which has been eroded by democratic reforms in the last six years. The risks would be enormous for Turkey, the outcome a tragedy for Turkish democracy and the country’s European mission.

Appropriately, the name “Ergenekon” goes to the heart of Turkishness.

In Turkish mythology, Ergenekon was a deep valley in which the ancient Turks lived, trapped and isolated from the world for four centuries, until a grey wolf led them out through a hidden pass. Free then to thrive, they went on to defeat their enemies and take their rightful place as a noble nation.

Erdogan will know that if he abandons caution and submits too much, too recklessly, to his Islamist wing, the population, those rising middle classes, will almost certainly turn against him. The game will be up. The Pashas’ instinct and their role is to suspect the worst of the politician, but while they seek to ‘guide’ events, they know confrontation could devastate the economy and leave them with a chalice they don’t cherish. Beyond the General Staff, in the darker recesses of the Deep State, there may be those less temperate. Government and military, courts and commentators might do well to stay their hand and keep a cool head these summer months; and remember the long years in Ergenekon.

It should all be music to the ears of top military brass in Brussels, Washington and at the United Nations, who have long been struggling to fill gaps in under-resourced peacekeeping missions from Africa to Afghanistan.

Although the total number of mission-fit French forces will fall to 30,000 from 50,000 under the plans, the idea is that they will be better equipped, more mobile and better able to respond to everything from terrorism to cyber-attacks.

That is what defence wonks mean when they talk about “transformation” of the world’s large but mostly lumbering standing armies built up during the Cold War.

Paris promises a win-win deal for NATO and the EU. Not only will it play a bigger role in the transatlantic alliance whose military structures it quit four decades ago, but it also sees scope for more pooling of Europe’s scarce defence resources.

Too good to be true? Perhaps.

Who gets priority if both NATO and the EU come knocking on France’s door for soldiers? Will the British agree to a French call for the EU to have its own military planning cell?

It is all very well for Sarkozy to revive an nine-year-old dream of the EU to have a 60,000-strong reaction force on call for crises around the world. But that came to nought the first time because nations didn’t cough up the troops — who is to say they will be any keener to do so this time around. Britain’s The Times newspaper has its doubts.

Have your say.