Kennedy G. Imperial Defence. The Old World Order, 1856-1956

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312 A. Jackson

key economic importance to Britain and its allies. Finally, it is clear that

the British government never intended the East of Suez withdrawal

announcement to mean that Britain abandoned its interests in the region.

When announcing the withdrawal, the British government sought to reas-

sure concerned politicians, at home and in places such as Australia and

Singapore, by pledging the retention of a ‘special reserve’ for deployment

in the region in the event of trouble, and though this was linguistically

demoted to a ‘general reserve’ in 1974, the point was that a commitment

remained, in the subtext rather than the banner headlines, but real

nonetheless.

It is clear that the choices involved in the East of Suez with-

drawal were never as black and white as they have often been viewed;

though the retreat was beat, the march was slow. Contributing to the stra-

tegic debate of the late 1960s, Neville Brown wrote that those advocating a

complete withdrawal from East of Suez were largely ignorant of the ‘gra-

dations that can exist in both presence and commitment’.

The con-

tinuation of both a ‘presence’ and a ‘commitment’ even after 1967 can be

ascribed to the fact that the strategic culture of the British government,

and its deﬁnition of the national interest, ensured that a stubborn eye was

kept on the wider world and the need to send military forces into it.

The ways in which Britain failed to withdraw from East of Suez will now

be examined. First of all, it took a number of years to affect the drawdown

of forces envisaged by the government announcements of 1967 and 1968,

and numerous axed British bases remained functioning until the mid- to

late 1970s. Second, a connection rarely made is the fact that the creation

and development of British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT) was not just

part of Britain’s facilitation of America’s assumption of responsibility for

the Indian Ocean, but was conceived as a way of keeping Britain in the

region if its main bases were closed. Third, even with the termination in

1971 of the central institution of Britain’s presence in Malaysia and Singa-

pore – Far East Command – strong and tangible links remained. Fourth,

Britain formed Australia–New Zealand–UK (ANZUK) Force, which was

stationed at Singapore between 1971 and 1974 and concluded the Five

Power Defence Arrangements intended to contribute to South-East Asia’s

security. Fifth, in 1973 Britain began the practice of regularly sending

naval task groups to the region, in lieu of its former permanent naval

commitment, and in 1979 formed a standing naval patrol in the Gulf.

Finally, exercising military inﬂuence in more discrete ways, British ofﬁcers

remained responsible for leading and training forces in countries such as

Brunei, Mauritius and Oman, and training exercises for British forces

were regularly held in places such as Kenya, Malaysia and Oman.

In fulﬁlment of the government’s decision to be ‘all out’ by 1971, the

Far East Fleet sailed past its last commander in October of that year. The

ﬂeet comprised the destroyer HMS Glamorgan, ﬁve frigates, the heavy

repair ship HMS Triumph and six Royal Fleet Auxiliaries (RFA). Aircraft

from HMS Albion and Eagle joined in the ceremony. At the same moment

that the Far East Fleet ceased to exist, the Far East Air Force also passed

into history. This was, however, not the end of Britain’s standing force

commitment to the region. A ‘transitional’ arrangement meant that as

soon as Far East Command was terminated, ANZUK Force came into exist-

ence. This was a standing force of frigates based in Singapore, com-

manded in the ﬁrst instance by an Australian.

ANZUK Force remained at

Singapore for three years after the ‘withdrawal’. Even with its demise in

1974, Britain still maintained a military commitment to the region.

Exhibiting reluctance to completely abandon global commitments, in the

year before ANZUK Force was disbanded the Royal Navy instituted the

practice of group deployments to the region that continues to this day. A

strong naval task force, usually centred on an aircraft carrier and involving

other surface and subsurface assets, would be dispatched to the Indian

Ocean, South-East Asia and the Paciﬁc on a regular basis. Most recently,

Marstrike 05 saw a Royal Navy Task Group depart for the Mediterranean

and Persian Gulf in January 2005. The carrier HMS Invincible was

accompanied by the escorts HMS Grafton, Montrose and Nottingham (her

ﬁrst deployment since sustaining serious damage after colliding with Lord

Howe Island off the north-east coast of New South Wales), and RFA Fort

George. The task group joined with forces from America, France and

Oman to mount Exercise Magic Carpet in the Oman region.

Another central plank of Britain’s non-withdrawal from East of Suez

was the institution of the Five Power Defence Arrangements (FPDA)

involving Australia, Britain, Malaysia, New Zealand and Singapore. The

FPDA came into existence in the same year as Britain’s Far East Fleet

sailed from Singapore for the last time. Framed in London, the agree-

ments aimed to assist Malaysia and Singapore in deterring external aggres-

sion, particularly from Indonesia. The FPDA provided for regular

inter-governmental consultations on security issues, as well as the creation

of an Integrated Air Defence System (IADS) for the Malayan peninsula.

Another main feature was the staging of regular military exercises involv-

ing the forces of the signatory nations. The FPDA still performs these

functions today. Britain continues to send forces to participate in the com-

bined military exercises and contributes RAF personnel to the IADS head-

quarters at Butterworth (in September 2005, HMS York and RFA Black

Rover took part in Exercise Bersama Lima off the east coast of Malaysia, an

annual war game involving the FPDA nations. Twenty-three FPDA naval

vessels trained together and then split to simulate a naval attack upon

FPDA nations).

The FPDA has survived for so long because it is con-

sidered of beneﬁt to all of the participating countries and is ‘a ﬂexible,

consultative, loose alliance that allows signatories to participate in military

exercises when and how they can’.

Recently, defence ministers from all

ﬁve countries agreed to incorporate non-conventional threat scenarios

into joint military exercises, as security attention shifts to matters such as

terrorism, piracy, and criminal activities, and discussed the exchange of

Imperial defence in the post-imperial era 313

314 A. Jackson

intelligence on terrorism and other security matters.

The FPDA is served

by naval base facilities for oiling and supplies at Singapore.

A further indicator of Britain’s enduring commitment to the East of

Suez region over which it had once been king was the formation in 1979

of a standing naval commitment to the Persian Gulf, which remains to this

day. The Armilla Patrol was intended to contribute to the maritime secur-

ity of the key waterway through the Straits of Hormuz, from which western

Europe imported most of its oil.

Though small, the patrol’s contribution

to maritime security since the 1970s has been signiﬁcant – for example, it

escorted more tankers in and out of the Gulf than all the other Western

navies combined during the Iran-Iraq War – as too was the Royal Navy’s

contribution in both Gulf wars.

Also, when independence was granted to

Bahrain, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates in 1971, new treaties of

friendship were signed.

Though Britain’s two main East of Suez bases, Aden and Singapore,

were closed down, elements of the base infrastructure that had tradition-

ally connected the Middle East to South-East Asia and the Far East

remained open long into the 1970s. An important facility was located on

Gan Island in the Maldives. Addu Atoll, of which Gan formed a part, had

been developed as a secret ﬂeet base at a time when the Imperial Japanese

Navy threatened to break Britain’s historic Indian Ocean pre-eminence

during the Second World War. Its strategic signiﬁcance withered almost as

quickly as it had blossomed, however, when Japanese power was pinned

back by American success in the Paciﬁc and British Commonwealth

success in Burma and the Bay of Bengal. The base was saved by the arrival

of the RAF, and in 1957 RAF Gan was established as a Far East Air Force

station.

The agreement with the government of the Maldives gave Britain

the use of Gan until 1986. The RAF, in keeping the Middle East–Far East

air route open via the Indian Ocean and South-East Asia, also made use of

the runway on the Australian Cocos Islands (another base developed by

the British during the Second World War). As well as serving as an RAF

staging post, Gan acted as a communications facility, and a radio transmit-

ter on the island covered Britain, Cyprus, Mauritius and Singapore.

Modest facilities for the Royal Navy survived the arrival of the RAF, for

example RFAs Wave Victor and Wave Ruler serving as refuelling hulk until

the mid-1970s. As part of the run down of non-NATO commitments

resulting from the decision to withdraw from East of Suez, the Labour

government decided to leave the Maldives by 1976. At the time of its

closure the base was still home to over 600 RAF personnel, as well as many

local civilians and contracted workers from Pakistan and Sri Lanka (as

Ceylon became known in 1971). In 1976, Britain ﬁnally withdrew from

Mauritius. A defence agreement signed upon Mauritian independence in

1968 had allowed Britain to retain naval and air force facilities on the

island (a communications centre and a runway). The agreement also pro-

vided for British support in the event of internal unrest (troops were sent

to the island in 1965 and 1968) and for British leadership and training of

the Special Mobile Force, which remained under the command of a

British ofﬁcer until 1978.

Elsewhere in the Indian Ocean, another island remained part of Britain’s

overseas base infrastructure. This was the Omani island of Masirah.

Fifteen miles off the coast, Masirah was a military stopping off point for

British warships and aircraft even before the Second World War, and

during the war it acted as an anti-submarine base and was used by rescue

launches (an RAF railway was also constructed). From 1954 to 1959,

British forces fought in the Jebel Akhdar War (an insurrection against the

Sultan of Oman), and British support included the use of RAF Shackel-

tons ﬂying from Masirah.

The Sultan’s successor, Qaboos Bin Said, came

to power in a British-backed coup in 1970. Thereafter, British forces based

on Masirah aided Qaboos, a Sandhurst graduate and former British Army

ofﬁcer, in suppressing a rebellion in the Dhofar region that lasted until

1977. Masirah had been modernized and expanded as part of the RAF

route from Britain to the Far East via Cyprus and Gan, though the RAF

ﬁnally withdrew from the island in 1977.

The closure of the RAF base on Masirah did not end the relationship

between Britain and Oman. The RAF base became an Omani air force base,

and many of the personnel at the base were either from the RAF or RAF-

trained. Continued links took two other forms: on the one hand, the use of

Omani facilities for broadcasting British radio programmes to the Arab

world; on the other hand, the use of Omani military bases for stationing

British forces operating in the Gulf region. These links were buttressed by

joint military exercises and arms sales. The British Eastern Relay Station was

a BBC international broadcasting facility, which sent its ﬁrst transmission in

1969.

Programming for the station was sent to Masirah on large tapes

delivered by ship and aircraft, and by off-air relays from the BBC station on

Cyprus, until a satellite programme feed from London commenced in

1980.

The ﬁnal broadcast from the station came in 2002, when the

Masirah facility was replaced by a new mediumwave and shortwave station

on the Omani mainland at A’Seela, owned by the BBC and constructed by

Merlin.

The other enduring link between Britain and Oman rested upon the

provision of military facilities.

Oman has been a key ally in Britain’s (and

America’s) continued military activity in the region since the Gulf War of

1991. The nature of Britain’s links with Oman was well captured by the

visit to the country of Alan Clark, then minister of state for defence pro-

curement, in the run up to the ﬁrst Gulf War. Whilst in Muscat, Clark met

his son, Major Andrew Clark of the Life Guards, who was serving as second

in command of the Sultan’s armoured force. When dining with Sultan

Qaboos at the Barakha Palace, Clark met Air Marshal Sir Erik Bennett,

commander of the Sultan’s Air Force since 1974, as well as General

Norman Schwarzkopf, commander of American forces in the Gulf.

Imperial defence in the post-imperial era 315

316 A. Jackson

Clark’s main business in Oman was to discuss the provision of bases for

British forces involved in the liberation of Kuwait (an eventual commit-

ment of over 45,000 service personnel). Even after the war, Oman con-

tinues to play a major role in host nation support for British military

activities in the Middle East, including the policing of the No Fly Zone in

northern Iraq. In the run up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003, Exercise Saif

Sareea saw the deployment of a large British naval force and over 20,000

military personnel for joint exercises in Oman and the surrounding

region.

Britain retains a territorial foothold in the East of Suez region by virtue

of its sovereignty over British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT). BIOT’s

history lies in America’s great reluctance in the late 1960s to see Britain

withdraw from its East of Suez defence commitments, and Britain’s compli-

mentary reluctance to abandon those commitments without providing the

Americans with a base from which to assume responsibility for them. The

only colony to be created during the ‘decolonization decade’, BIOT com-

prised the Chagos Archipelago, until then administered by the colony of

Mauritius and the islands of Aldabra, Des Roches and Farquhar, until then

part of the Seychelles colony (returned to the Seychelles on its independ-

ence in 1976). Diego Garcia in the Chagos Archipelago became the focus

of Anglo-American military attention as BIOT was developed over the years

into one of the most important military facility in the world.

Diego Garcia is well known as one of America’s most important overseas

bases and is rarely considered as anything other than an American military

facility under nominal British ownership. This view, however, obscures an

important strand in the thinking of the British government when the base

was created and developed, and the fact that Britain has always had access to

facilities at the base. Indeed, in creating BIOT and subsequently approving

plans for its development, British policy-makers had in mind the fact that it

would act as a means of keeping Britain in the region if it ever decided to

withdraw from its major facilities East of Suez. In 1965, the Cabinet agreed

that, in the event of Britain ever withdrawing from Aden and/or Singa-

pore, American facilities on Diego Garcia would allow Britain to continue

to operate in the area if it wished to do so.

As has been seen in other

instances, this reﬂected the hallmark mindset of Britain in imperial retreat;

scale down, reduce facilities, reduce costs – but never entirely depart.

Britain participated in the development of base facilities at Diego Garcia,

as well as provided a small Royal Marines garrison to carry out the adminis-

trative and legal duties associated with British sovereignty. Britain took part

in the development of the territory’s monitoring station (including GCHQ

participation), as well as facilities for oceanic satellite surveillance.

Over

the years, British forces have used the facilities at Diego Garcia during

operational deployments. In November 2001, for example, elements of 40

Commando Royal Marines stopped at Diego Garcia en route to

Afghanistan, and in September 2003 the submarine HMS Triumph called at

the island. Sovereignty over BIOT brings Britain other rights and

responsibilities in the Indian Ocean. In October 1991, for example, a 200

nautical-mile Fisheries Conservation and Management Zone was declared

around BIOT.

Another important feature of Britain’s military presence in the East of

Suez region was its standing commitment to Hong Kong, which lasted

until 1997 and involved elements from all three armed services, including

several army battalions. In the 1970s, there was a permanent deployment

of a frigate and ﬁve patrol craft, though the frigate was withdrawn in 1976.

The Hong Kong Squadron had a variety of tasks to perform in pursuit of

the security of the colony and the waters of the South China Sea. For

example, the ﬂow of illegal immigrants attempting to get into Hong Kong

in the late 1970s led to the deployment of the fast patrol and training

vessel HMS Scimitar, along with two hovercrafts, a helicopter force operat-

ing from an RFA and the 3rd Raiding Squadron of 42 Commando.

1984, the new Peacock class patrol boats were dispatched, the last of a

long line of gunboats designed speciﬁcally for what had once been known

as the China Station.

Elsewhere in the East of Suez region, one of the

most evocative remnants of empire is to be found in Britain’s military rela-

tionship with the people of Nepal. The British Army still recruits soldiers

for the Royal Gurkha Riﬂes, and – providing a British presence in a

former imperial domain – one of the Gurkha battalions is leased to the

Sultan of Brunei for local defence purposes, and Brunei continues to

provide a location for British training exercises (which until recently

included a Jungle Warfare Training course).

Kenya, like Oman, provides another good example of Britain’s con-

tinued military presence in the East of Suez region. Whilst in no sense a

‘neo-colonial’ presence, such connections strengthen the commitment of

the British armed forces to a global role (and their ability to perform one).

The British Army presence in Kenya is based upon two main elements, the

British Peace Support Team (BPST) and the British Army Training Unit

Kenya (BATUK). BPST’s mission is to coordinate British military assistance

to armed forces in eastern Africa in order to contribute to Security Sector

Reform and to increase the peacekeeping capacity of East African states.

To fulﬁl this mission it has three main parts: The International Mine Action

Training Centre, the Peace Support Training Centre and a presence in the

Kenyan Defence Staff College. BATUK is a small permanent administrative

element based in the outskirts of Nairobi, which provides logistical support

to visiting British Army units. Under the terms of an agreement with the

Kenyan government, three infantry battalions per year carry out six-week

training exercises, and a Royal Engineer squadron also deploys to Kenya

over the same period to carry out a civil engineering project. The training,

named Exercise Grand Prix, takes place over the winter months and allows

infantry battalions to carry out live ﬁring and experience a wide variety of

climatic conditions, from desert to rain forest.

Imperial defence in the post-imperial era 317

318 A. Jackson

West of Suez

Whilst this chapter has so far concentrated on the continuation of

Britain’s military presence in the East of Suez region long after the decol-

onization decade and the decision to withdraw, it is important to note that

Britain also remained committed to areas of the globe west of Suez. The

Royal Navy’s South Atlantic Squadron was based at Simon’s Town until

the naval base was evacuated in 1975 with the termination of Britain’s

agreement with the South African government.

The squadron had sup-

ported Britain’s extensive interests in South Africa and South America

and contributed to the security of the vital shipping routes through the

South Atlantic. In its ﬁnal years, the squadron deployed Cat class and

Cathedral class frigates which, among other duties, patrolled to the Falk-

land Islands.

There was then the naval base at Bermuda, home to the

West Indies Squadron, which in its ﬁnal years deployed Bay class frigates

(which also patrolled to the Falklands). The West Indies Squadron ceased

as an independent command in 1976 when the senior naval ofﬁcer West

Indies was withdrawn.

The following year, in the time-honoured tradi-

tion of imperial policing, British Army units were sent to Bermuda in the

wake of unrest, and Bermuda remained a base for anti-submarine warfare

operations and surveillance until Britain ﬁnally closed its Bermuda base in

the mid-1990s. Still sovereign in Bermuda, the British government can

choose to reopen military facilities on the island should circumstances

ever demand.

The closure of British bases in the West Indies did not, however,

denote an end to Britain’s defence interests in the region. Britain retained

numerous colonies in the Caribbean, including Bermuda in the Atlantic,

and remained committed to their defence. Britain also continues to con-

tribute to the resolution of other security problems that affect the region,

such as the ongoing war against drug smuggling. One of the main ways in

which these commitments are met is by the Royal Navy’s provision of a

standing force in the region. Due to cutbacks in the number of Royal Navy

escort vessels, this force was reduced in 2005, in the light of which the

Atlantic Patrol (North) was only to include a destroyer or frigate sent to

the Caribbean between July and October, the months when the region is

most at risk from hurricanes. An RFA tanker was to remain on station in

the West Indies between May and November, equipped with aviation

assets to support disaster relief and the ﬁght against drug smuggling.

Elsewhere in the region, the Royal Navy’s Maritime Warfare Centre over-

sees ﬂeet trial programmes at the Atlantic Undersea Test and Evaluation

Centre (AUTEC) in the Bahamas, featuring a 6,000-foot deep chasm

‘bristling with sensors and monitoring equipment’.

British bases remained functioning elsewhere in the ‘west of Suez’

region. Ascension Island houses an air base, a legacy of the Second World

War when it was leased to America as part of the Allied effort to beat the

U-boats and to stage aircraft from North America to Europe and the

Middle East. British forces have access to the base, which they used to

great effect during the Falklands War, when Ascension provided a vital

mid-Atlantic haven for British warships and aircraft journeying south (as

well as the Victor refuelling tankers that enabled Vulcan bombers to

attack Stanley airport). The RAF continues to use the base on Ascension

Island today to support its regular ﬂights to the Falklands. Ascension’s use-

fulness to Britain is augmented by the presence of a BBC transmitter

broadcasting to Africa, and Cable and Wireless is also represented on the

island.

Further south, British Antarctic Territory is testament to Britain’s

historic presence in the polar regions, and Britain’s claims are supported

by the Royal Navy’s Ice Patrol Ship HMS Endurance (forming part of the

Atlantic Patrol (South)). A strong army garrison is maintained in the Falk-

land Islands, supported by the RAF, and the Royal Navy’s two Castle-class

patrol ships are dedicated to the security of Britain’s South Atlantic

dependencies (a role to be taken over by the new offshore patrol vessel,

HMS Clyde, in 2007).

At the time of writing, the frigate HMS Portland has

recently returned after a six-month deployment in the South Atlantic,

during which she covered 28,500 nautical miles and visited six countries

and six dependent territories (colonies), including Ascension Island,

Gambia, Sierra Leone, South Africa, St Helena and Tristan da Cunha, as

well as conducting patrols around the Falkland Islands and South

Georgia.

In the Mediterranean, traditionally one of Britain’s most important

areas of overseas interest, bases remained long after the decolonization

decade.

When Malta became independent in 1964, Britain continued to

rent facilities on the island, as did NATO. In 1979, the government led by

Dom Mintoff decided not to renew the agreement. Britain still has base

facilities at two of its other traditional Mediterranean strong points, the

colony of Gibraltar and the Sovereign Base Areas of Cyprus. Gibraltar is a

regular port of call and repair and replenishment base for British and

allied warships, as well as is home to the Royal Navy’s Gibraltar Patrol Boat

Squadron and the Royal Gibraltar Regiment. Cyprus was once the home

of Canberra bombers and conventional and nuclear bombs, providing the

nuclear umbrella for the defence of Britain’s CENTO allies (Iran, Pak-

istan and Turkey). Today, Cyprus houses the largest RAF base outside of

Britain. It also plays host each year to the RAF Aerobatics Team (the Red

Arrows). The Sovereign Base Areas provide important staging facilities for

British (and allied) forces moving between east and west, and communica-

tions and intelligence-gathering facilities. The British Army also retains a

presence in Cyprus based around two resident infantry battalions. In late

2003, the Cyprus garrison also consisted of 62 Cyprus Support Squadron

Royal Engineers, the Joint Service Signals Unit, 16 Flight Army Air Corps

and personnel from various supporting arms such as the Royal Logistics

Corps and Royal Military Police. There is a separate commitment, up to

Imperial defence in the post-imperial era 319

320 A. Jackson

regimental size, to the United Nations peacekeeping mission on the island

(UNFICYP). The British contingent has command of sector two, which

covers the capital Nicosia.

The Royal Navy regularly deploys warships in

the Mediterranean, especially as a contribution to NATO exercises and its

standing force. In 2007, HMS Somerset, for example, served as part of the

NATO Standing Response Force Maritime Group in the Mediterranean,

and in the autumn/winter of 2005, HMS Manchester spent four months as

part of a NATO task group operating in a counter-terrorism role. In the

Mediterranean, the destroyer will conduct three exercises with allies and

form part of an overt presence along busy shipping lanes, keeping an eye

out for illegal trafﬁc.

As a demonstration of the value of bases and

regular deployments in the Mediterranean, the Royal Navy and the Cyprus

SBA played a prominent role in Operation Highbrow, the evacuation

from Lebanon of thousands of entitled personnel during the July 2006

Israeli–Lebanon crisis.

Other links between Britain and its former colonies in the west of Suez

region remained long into the post-imperial years. Belize, for example,

was home to British forces and a site of regular British training exercises

until the mid-1990s. Deployments in Belize gave British forces an

opportunity to undertake valuable jungle training, though the primary

purpose of the deployment was to deter neighbouring Guatemala from

pursuing its historic claim to Belizean territory. RAF units had been sent

to Belize in 1977 in the light of a ﬂare up of the Guatemalan threat and

remained until 1994.

Though Britain’s permanent deployment in Belize

ended, British forces continued to train there, and in 1994 the British

Army Training Support Unit Belize was established to support Land

Command exercises. Annual infantry exercises take place, including

water-based exercises, and a detachment of the Army Air Corps is sta-

tioned in the country to support them. Recently, HMS Cumberland has

tested her 4.5-inch gun against shore targets, whilst Exercise Green River

was mounted, featuring Royal Marine in fast inﬂatable boats ‘attacking’

the frigate in a simulation of the kind of attack that damaged USS Cole at

Aden in 2000.

In the past twelve months, No. 34 Squadron RAF Regi-

ment has also undergone training in Belize.

Just happened to be sailing by: the habit of global

deployment and involvement

Despite the contraction of the empire and the increased importance of the

military commitment to NATO, Britain never lost the habit of positioning

its forces worldwide; there was always a British battalion on exercise in a

steaming jungle somewhere, a warship cruising in a polar region or an RAF

detachment exercising with an ally in some distant tropical zone. This

global presence, and the preparation for operations in different climates

and links with allies that it inevitably brought in its wake, has meant that

British force has been available and capable of taking part in a host of mili-

tary actions around the world, from war ﬁghting to peace support opera-

tions and disaster relief, and has allowed the government the luxury of

considering a military option. The fact that British forces maintained a

routine presence in places such as the Indian Ocean and Persian Gulf, for

example, made it easy to mount operations, and interoperability with other

nations’ forces – a key element in most modern interventions – has been

facilitated by the practice of exercising with the armed forces of other

countries throughout the world. Good examples are provided by both the

recent Gulf Wars. As soon as Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990, Prime

Minister Margaret Thatcher was able to order British warships on either

side of the Indian Ocean, at Penang and Mombasa, to join HMS York in the

Gulf. When Iraq was invaded in 2003, British forces that had remained in

the region were well placed to intervene. The RAF, which had policed the

No Fly Zone since the ﬁrst Gulf War, had over 1,000 personnel and twenty-

ﬁve aircraft already on station in 2003, a pre-existing nucleus around which

a signiﬁcant build up of British air power could take place.

British forces have been involved in a plethora of humanitarian opera-

tions, often because they happened to be near to hand.

Thus, for

example, when volcanoes erupted on the British island of Montserrat in

1997, the Royal Navy’s standing commitment of a West Indies guardship

meant that forces were instantly available to help with evacuations from

those parts of the island rendered uninhabitable. Similarly, in 2005, HMS

Chatham and RFA Diligence were on hand to provide aid in the wake of the

tsunami disaster, whilst HMS Scott, a hydrological survey vessel operating

in the Indian Ocean, provided graphic evidence of the tsunami’s effects

on the ocean bed.

British forces have frequently been involved in

humanitarian operations around the world (in addition to peace support

and peacekeeping operations). In the thirty years after the withdrawal

from East of Suez, the RAF, for example, sent units to East Pakistan

(1970), Nicaragua (1972), Nepal (1973), Mali (1973), Ethiopia (1984),

Chile (1991), Turkey (1992), the Caribbean (1992), Somalia (1993),

Holland (1995), Montserrat (1995), Cyprus (1995 and 1998) and Mozam-

bique (2002).

Another cause of Britain’s continuing military engagement with the

wider world has been its strong links with former colonies, often lasting

long after the transfer of power. The end of empire, far from severing mil-

itary links with overseas territories as might reasonably have been

expected, could actually be the cause of military operations and new

defence commitments. This could come in the form of a military inter-

vention to support a ﬂedgling former colony entering the uncertain world

of independent nationhood either to suppress an internal rebellion (for

example, Kenya, Mauritius, New Hebrides, Oman, Tanzania, Uganda) or

to repulse a foreign takeover (Belize, Kuwait, Malaysia); it could come in

the form of defence treaties granting British forces the use of bases or

Imperial defence in the post-imperial era 321