“Labor has left us with such a car crash that next year the interest on the national debt will be nearly one and half times the defense budget. That is not sustainable.”, I think this sentence is highly remarkable. Why on earth do they think that any military presence abroad is sustainable?

LONDON, July 23 (Xinhua) — British Defense Secretary Liam Fox said on Friday that Britain’s armed forces faced a budget cut which would mean the country would no longer be able to counter every potential military threat.

Fox said, in an interview with the national daily newspaper The Daily Telegraph, “We don’t have the money as a country to protect ourselves against every potential future threat — we just don’t have it.”

Britain has a strategic nuclear weapons system, based on its four-strong Trident submarine fleet, and maintains a shrinking but powerful navy with the capability to fight globally.

It also has an army with an expeditionary capability, as demonstrated in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and still maintains 25,000 troops with regiments of tanks on mainland Europe.

The air force operates with sophisticated fast jets, but Fox’s frank warning comes against the background of massive budget cuts across all areas of British government, except health and foreign aid.

Government departments have been told to prepare for cuts of up to 40 percent in spending, to tackle the record public spending deficit, which this year is set to reach 153 billion pounds (about 240 billion U.S. dollars). Read the rest of this entry »