Ark Royal might have come in useful

MOST British prime ministers end up trying to cut a dash on the world stage, even if at the outset they forswear such vanities. David Cameron has succumbed to the temptation more quickly than most. Responding to the events in Libya—after his government had attracted awful headlines for its initially cack-handed efforts to rescue British citizens—he grandly told MPs on February 28th that he had asked “the chief of the defence staff to work with our allies on plans for a military no-fly zone”. To many, both at home and abroad, his words sounded hollow—because of the rapid erosion of Britain's military capability that he set in motion by approving the clumsy Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR) last year.

To be fair, Mr Cameron and his defence secretary, Liam Fox, were left a grisly military inheritance by the previous Labour government. It included a £38 billion ($62 billion) black hole in the defence budget, caused by a “conspiracy of optimism” over ordering new kit among senior officers and civil servants, combined with a passivity bordering on negligence on the part of a succession of ministers. The pair can also fairly claim that, compared with the cuts of around 25% imposed on many other departments, the planned reduction in defence spending over the next four years of 7.5% actually represents a reverse of the trend under Labour, which largely excluded defence from the largesse showered on other public services.

But even taking the difficult circumstances of the SDSR into account, there is a feeling among many defence experts (and Conservative MPs) that the government failed to rise to what Michael Clarke of the Royal United Services Institute, a think-tank, describes as Britain's “strategic moment”. The hastily conducted review, presided over by inexperienced ministers and the newly established National Security Council, was preoccupied with the needs of the current counter-insurgency campaign in Afghanistan, and insufficiently concerned about future—and possibly much bigger—threats.

Nor did the outcome suggest much understanding of American strategy, or how Britain should define its own role alongside its most important ally. Speaking to cadets at West Point on February 25th, Robert Gates, America's defence secretary, said that, in the future, “the most plausible, high-end scenarios for the US military are primarily naval and air engagements”. Mr Gates added that any future defence secretary who advised the president to send a big American land army into Asia, Africa or the Middle East should “have his head examined”. Yet, swayed by Afghanistan, the British government has spared the army the worst of the cuts while sacrificing its fixed-wing maritime air power.

Events in north Africa, and the possibility that instability might spread to the oil-producing Gulf, have already made the SDSR look myopic and out of date. It recently emerged that 15 retired commanders and military scholars wrote to the government in late January, urging it to reconsider the maritime component of the SDSR. They argued that the decision to scrap the entire fleet of Harrier jump jets and HMS Ark Royal, the navy's only active aircraft-carrier, represented a risky bet that Britain would not need any carrier strike capability for a decade, “in an uncertain, fast-moving and dangerous world”. The debate over a Libyan no-fly zone makes that criticism look prescient: a carrier would be rather useful in enforcing one.

Dr Fox is adamant that the SDSR will not be revisited. After this week, Mr Cameron might not be quite so sure.