THE compulsory call-up of Territorial Army troops for peacekeeping duties in Bosnia and Kosovo is, surely, proof positive that the manpower cuts in the country's regular forces have gone too deep.
The end of the Cold War may have diminished Britain's need for a large standing Army.
But we are evidently scraping the bottom of the barrel - though hardly in terms of the calibre or quality of the troops who are our Territorials - when it is having to disrupt the business of their employers and lives of their families in order for them to be sent abroad to act as international policemen.
Britain does not shirk this role, but the difficulty it has in fulfilling it suggests that the difficulties it may have in defending itself, should the need ever arise, should be examined with urgency by the government.
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