Liam Fox raises prospect of British troops starting to leave Afghanistan next year

Defence secretary sets out how government will conduct 'ruthless' and 'unsentimental' review of armed forces and security
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David Cameron speaks to British troops during his first visit to Afghanistan since taking office
David Cameron in Afghanistan last week. Photograph: Getty Images

The defence secretary, Liam Fox, has held out the prospect of British troops starting to leave Afghanistan next year as he set out how the government will conduct what he called a "ruthless" and "unsentimental" defence and security review.

In his first speech on the review, he echoed David Cameron's recent remarks that British troops were in Helmand province "out of necessity, not choice". Their mission was "vital for our national security", he said.

However, Fox described the campaign's aim as creating a "stable enough Afghanistan to allow the Afghan people to manage their own internal and external security". He continued: "By the end of the year I expect that we can show significant progress, consolidating [Nato-led forces'] hold in central Helmand and accelerating the training of the Afghan national security forces".

These are limited objectives open to interpretation and the government's tough language about the importance of the conflict in Afghanistan to the UK's national security is preparing the way for a cut in the number of British troops in Helmand (now about 9,500) next July, the target Barack Obama has set for US troops starting to come home, defence analysts say.

Fox also said in his speech to the Royal United Services Institute today that Britain needed to be "smarter about when and how we deploy power". Both Fox and Cameron are deeply sceptical about New Labour's doctrine of liberal interventionism.

In the defence review, due to be competed by the end of the year, "we must act ruthlessly and without sentiment", Fox said. It must make a "clean break from the military and political mindset of cold war politics".

Promising the end of "salami-slicing", he made it clear that whole projects would be abandoned. However, he warned that decisions were for the medium and long term. "Contractual and structural commitments on personnel and equipment mean that the budget is very heavily committed for each of the next four years, severely limiting our room for manoeuvre," Fox said.

He said the reason why the government had excluded Trident, apart from "value for money" considerations, was that "there needs to be a deterrent at all times". In the current state of technology, Trident was "the most cost effective [system] that we want, a continuous-at-sea nuclear deterrent", he added.

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