Cameron asks Cowper-Coles to speak about political strategy for Afghanistan. ‘The military campaign is important, but not enough,’ he asserts; and the political strategy has to be given top priority. ‘We also need to talk to our regional partners, India, Pakistan, Russia and Iran. We’ll never solve Afghanistan unless we work with the regional powers.’ At a break, Cowper-Coles confronts Cameron: ‘We are part of an American war, this isn’t our war. You need to talk to Obama.’ Cowper-Coles knows that Obama is sympathetic to a political strategy, and had been disappointed not to have received more support for it from Brown, who had gone public about never talking to the Taliban. Cowper-Coles believes that Britain is making a mistake, as it had in Iraq, in letting the US administration think that its support was unconditional, meaning that it was taken for granted. Rory Stewart also strongly denounces Britain’s existing policy.
The ‘wild men’ depart after the morning session, leaving behind just the cool-headed men and women. They are a diverse crew – too many for Cameron’s liking, as he had wanted more of a free-thinking and less official seminar. Present are senior Cabinet ministers, service chiefs, assorted diplomats, including William Patey, the new ambassador to Afghanistan, and the ‘spooks’ (the heads of MI5, MI6 and GCHQ). At the forefront of their minds is how quickly the Afghan army can be trained to take over the security of the country. There are secondary concerns about what kind of a signal setting a date for a British departure might give to NATO allies, particularly the United States. If too early, it could damage relations with allies, undermine the progress already made, and open Britain up to the charge of cutting and running. If the departure is too late, even more lives and money will be lost.
Cameron chairs the meeting with a hint of irritation in his voice. He is being kept awake at night by the fans in Number 10. The upstairs flat is being renovated and he is not sleeping well. He is particularly testy with the service chiefs. He is very wary about the numbers of troops on the ground and of any talk of ‘mission creep’. He, Osborne and Hague will decide what is to happen with Afghanistan. Osborne recoiled in shock when he was told that the cost of the war in Afghanistan might approach £26 billion over the life of the parliament. To the chancellor, Britain can’t get out quickly enough. Even before they come to power, he and Cameron have reached a secret understanding that Britain will get out of Afghanistan; they have only to decide how and when to do it.
British ambassador to the US Nigel Sheinwald is asked to speak about the thinking of the Obama administration. ‘The president is very, very cautious about Afghanistan and far more reserved than his generals,’ he tells the meeting. ‘Obama isn’t going to dig deeper in Afghanistan beyond the additional 30,000 troops. There will not be a further surge: the direction of travel is they want to get out, without rush, and in an orderly way.’5 Liam Fox says, ‘It is clear that Obama wants to take the US out of two wars, Iraq and Afghanistan, and if that is what they’re going to do, Britain can hardly remain there on its own.’6
The seminar is not intended as a decision-making forum. But it becomes painfully clear to all present the limits of what Britain could still achieve in Afghanistan, and that already some 250 British servicemen have lost their lives since 2001, compared with 179 dead in Iraq. The meeting recognises that there is no ultimate prospect of a Jeffersonian democracy in Afghanistan, as the senior diplomat Simon McDonald puts it.7 Rather, the most that can be hoped for is building up Afghanistan’s military and civil capacity, and avoiding the return of al-Qaeda and the threat that would pose to Britain’s national security. Cameron probes intensely the military’s ‘status quo’ argument, that staying on in Afghanistan will produce solutions where doing so had failed to work in the past. He is at his strongest at this kind of forensic questioning of received wisdom. He winds up the seminar, more convinced than ever in his mind that Britain must leave. He is even clearer than ever of the date: before the next general election.
David Richards is the most vocal of the service chiefs. Setting any kind of time limit will be a big mistake, he says. The politicians must give the military more time and more money. Cameron notes what he says but will not be swayed by him. Richards is in his mind also as he decides who should succeed Stirrup as CDS. He ignores advice from Whitehall in favouring Richards over Houghton, whom he passes over (Houghton succeeds Richards in July 2014). Cameron has just finished reading Andrew Roberts’ Masters and Commanders about Churchill and Roosevelt and their relations with their military chiefs. It affects him; he wants to take on a big figure like Alan Brooke, Chief of the Imperial General Staff during the Second World War. Richards is known to be outspoken and with a media profile, very conscious of his image on the stage. He is exactly the big personality Cameron wants as CDS, rather than a more conventional and retiring officer type, because Cameron’s reassertion of civilian control over defence policy will be much more effective if he can show he doesn’t have a cipher in the CDS slot. In another innovation, Cameron again draws inspiration from Churchill, who was the last prime minister to have by his side in Number 10 an officer in uniform. It is indeed odd that no prime minister since has seen the need for having a serving officer on their personal staff who understands military operations and the thinking of servicemen in the field. Colonel Jim Morris is selected as the military assistant against the favoured MoD candidate because he is independent-minded, and totally trustworthy.
Cameron surprises himself with his confidence taking decisions on defence and foreign policy. His clarity of mind and personal assuredness quickly command the respect of army chiefs, top officials and spooks. On 12 May, a few weeks before the Chequers summit in June, Cameron holds his first Cabinet, and Afghanistan is high on the agenda. Discussions had already begun earlier in the day among the new body, the National Security Council (NSC), a rare Cameron organisational innovation foreshadowed in the manifesto. Andy Coulson briefs that this is the prime minister’s first ‘War Cabinet’. This new structure, including a National Security Adviser (NSA) and secretariat, emerged from Ed Llewellyn’s and Oliver Letwin’s discussions with Pauline Neville-Jones.8 On the advice of William Hague, Cameron chooses the permanent secretary at the Foreign Office, Peter Ricketts, as his first NSA. ‘Come over the road and work with me on setting up the NSC,’ he says to Ricketts on his first day in power.9 It is an inspired choice. Cameron thinks Ricketts a ‘consummate professional’. The brand-new piece of Whitehall apparatus needs a figure of Ricketts’ authority and skill to embed it quickly, a process aided by the political capital of the incoming government. Not the least of Ricketts’ skills is to reassure Whitehall that the new PM is not setting up a PM’s office running foreign and defence policy from Downing Street. He also resists the notion that the NSC should have responsibility – as does its US counterpart – for broader economic issues.
As Ricketts addresses the first meeting of the NSC, he gazes around the Cabinet table at the exhausted faces of newly appointed ministers, weary after weeks of an election campaign and coalition talks. ‘They were both excited and a bit disoriented to sit down as the War Cabinet within hours of walking into their ministerial offices,’ Ricketts recalls.10 Cameron, by contrast, is alert and in command of the meeting from the start. Ricketts opens his remarks with a sobering fact: ‘This is the first time a British government has come into office with the armed forces engaged in major combat operations since the Korean War in 1951.’11
The NSC meets almost daily in the first weeks deliberating Afghanistan. The most powerful voices are Cameron’s – the body is much more successful when he is in the chair – as well as those of Osborne, Hague, Theresa May, Richards, and head of MI6 John Sawers, a voice of caution. More often than not an expert would be invited to brief the meeting before being quizzed by ministers. Indeed, Cameron encourages open debate before reaching a decision. The NSC structure achieves many of Cameron’s hopes of centralising decision-making