Gordon Brown deeply distrusted the British military's conduct of the Afghan war, but was blocked by the military from appointing his own in-house general to advise him on the war, a new account reveals.
He was so scared of military-inspired leaks that he did not dare raise the issue of whether the cost of the war was excessive or proportionate. He also believed the Pakistan government played both sides, sometimes supporting the Taliban, and sometimes the west. Throughout his time in office, Brown struggled to balance his desire to assert civilian control over the military in the war with a reluctance to provoke a break with the military.
The revelations about Brown and the Afghan war come from Matt Cavanagh, his political adviser on defence matters in Downing Street for the three years of his premiership.
In a scathing account of the turf wars that is highly sceptical about the war's successful conclusion, Cavanagh also claims Brown's two defence secretaries, John Hutton and Bob Ainsworth, simply echoed the stance of the military in the war.
Brown's wider political distance from David Miliband, the foreign secretary, made it impossible for him to create common cause and build internal alliances to challenge the military's strategy.
Cavanagh draws close parallels between the battles Barack Obama waged with his military insistence the war could be won and Brown's own scepticism about the army's approach.
The Guardian
