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Transformation Through Training Issue No 7 July 2015 31 detriment of the Atlantic Alliance and national security a further process of civilianization privatization and cuts across the armed forces. The problem with this is that even if the War of the Wastelands were to continue ad infinitum and the dtente with Russia to last the enemy have transformed and so too have the stakes. The colonial tribal and religious conflicts of the past are no longer contained by dictatorial regimes and the borders of yesterday have become todays frontiers. The end of age-old alliances and the collapse of proxy-wars have brought an international conventional and state- like element to the modernity of 21st century political violence that counter- terrorism cannot defeat. Although at present British brigades have exactly the type of manpower resources equipment and experience to engage and destroy the armed forces of Islamic State it would as the threat simply morphed from Iraq and Syria to the Wastelands of Somalia Libya the Lebanon Afghanistan the Maghreb or Aden indeed even to the barracks from which the British marched exhaust the country divide its populace and leave them defeated. The threat today must therefore not be confused with that of yesterday. Whilst to contain the monster of the type of terrorism that was born between the foundations of the modern state and its citizenry a government would of course be best advised to consider learning how to live with it maintaining its more often than not benign malevolence this is only were it content to feast from a Cyclopic cavelike existence. With the threat that Britain faces this is not the case. Britains monster has tendrils beyond the state. The main premise for this is that as national-separatists have a traceable lineage that are inseparable from that of the governments they oppose they remain to all intents and purposes civilians. Al Qaeda and Islamic State on the other hand have a bloodline and an ideology that is soaked not in politics or insurrection but combat. As a result of a shared experience and a shared ideology that stems from the battlefields of Bosnia Chechnya Afghanistan Iraq and Syria a lineage that has enabled them to survive the onslaughts of two superpowers they have arguably transitioned from civilian-terrorists to stateless- soldiers and cannot be appeased. With the stateless-soldiers of Islamic State the hordes of Cyclopses not only help Polyphemus outwit and kill Odysseus but march on to Ithaca for his Crown. Military engagement hence needs to involve the mobilisation of the nation and its communities in a combined offensive a symbiotic ideological advance on the enemy both at home and abroad. Hence what Michael Gove achieved with cadet forces in British secondary schools needs to be viewed with admiration and as a blue-print for a much grander strategy in which the example set by the NHS and Military in Sierra Leone is replicated across not just the institutions of the state but the citizenry tens of thousands of workers commissioned with reserve and regular soldiers into the national and international framework of the countrys security apparatus a Britain and a world in which Her Majestys Armed Forces and Carriers are first on the horizon to provide aid engineering and sanctuary a Britain in which Her Majestys Armed Forces reflect the ethnically and culturally diverse nature of the nation from which they draw their strength and a Britain in which the profound changes that the country is undergoing are shared. A social return on investment in defence and a foreign policy that reflects the might of the countrys inheritance has many precedents and can be seen not just in Goves legacy or the nations response to the Ebola crisis but across the history of the world. Were Britain to strive to lead once again as the worlds first to respond militarily to the needs of those in help the might of her neutrality would be restored and enhance not just allegiance at home and pride in the defence and foreign aid budgets but her reputation and respect as a power- broker abroad. One of the most historic precedents for this actually lie in the remnants of the British Armys regimental system and is a further reason as to why the Armed Forces are a good starting point to rebuilding the countrys allegiances. Given that this is a well-documented example of where the British have failed to take advantage of their past it is sufficient to say that today alongside the Irish Welsh Scots English and Nepalese parade-grounds of the British Army lie the abandoned waste-lands in which the footsteps of the Sikhs of King Georges Own the Punjabis of the Burma Rifles the Bengali Lancers of the Duke of Cambridges Own and the Kenyans the Ugandans and the Somalis of the Kings African Rifles are but ghostly echoes of a forgotten time. The role of Catholic Irish Scots Welsh and Nepalese soldiers needs to be emphasised up and down the country as they along with the Hindu Muslim and Sikh Regiments were they to be revived are an irreproachable example of loyalty to the Crown and the key to both countering the threat and enfranchising the enraged with demonstrable public acts of allegiance and the celebration of historical deeds of incontrovertible and abiding loyalty to the institutions of the state. To conclude defragmenting has not only precedents but established precedents.