The Ministry of Defence is plunged into a grim process described as a "mini defence review". Teams of service officers and civil servants are exploring every aspect of spending and procurement plans in a desperate effort to save money. Current year sums have been made to add up only by creative accountancy, pushing back some big bills to 2010. Whoever becomes defence secretary after an election that year will face a pile of yellowing, unpaid invoices.
Everybody knows that a major defence programme must be cancelled. The navy's cherished aircraft carriers? These would be the first choices of most soldiers, but because the ships mean jobs in Labour constituencies, they are almost certainly safe. Some frigates and destroyers? At least two planned escorts are likely to be axed. The army is fearful about its next-generation armoured vehicle. Several headquarters will have to go. General Sir Richard Dannatt, chief of the general staff, has failed in his attempt to persuade ministers to increase the army's numbers.
Dannatt's case is founded on the fact that his soldiers are attempting to fight one major war, in Afghanistan, with inadequate resources, while 4,000 troops are in another theatre, Iraq, to appease American sensitivities. The army also maintains a significant peacekeeping presence in the Balkans. It was announced last week that another infantry battalion is to be sent to Kosovo.
Yet the deep instinct of the government, and even more so of the parliamentary Labour party, is that Tony Blair's wars have brought Britain only embarrassment and grief. The last thing they want is to throw good money after bad by recruiting more soldiers, never mind deploying them in combat.
The scepticism is understandable, but the conclusion is mistaken. Many people, myself included, are dismayed by the huge mistakes made in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet it remains essential for Britain to possess a credible army. A strength of 100,000 is insufficient. Whether we like it or not, the 21st century will produce new conflicts in which we are obliged to participate or at least provide peacekeepers.
Britain cannot alone fill the yawning gap in Afghanistan left by other Nato countries that refuse to do their share of fighting and supporting humanitarian reconstruction. But we can never hope to win this conflict, or any other, without more boots on the ground. Mass matters. It is not enough for western powers to announce in a given crisis: "We are committing troops," then to dispatch three men and a dog. No strategic purpose is attainable unless soldiers are deployed in sufficient strength, with convincing humanitarian backup.
I argued on these pages two years ago that the force that Tony Blair and the then defence secretary John Reid were sending to Afghanistan's Helmand province was entirely inadequate for its role, and represented gesture strategy. So it has proved. Western defence policy will remain rooted in tokenism until all the European nations, and indeed the US, can field sufficient foot soldiers - who are far more relevant to "wars among the people" than tanks and stealth bombers - to fulfil policy objectives.
The shortfall is not exclusively the fault of governments. Part of the problem stems from our changing culture. It is becoming progressively more difficult for western societies to recruit infantry. Most British infantry regiments are under establishment, and Scottish units especially so, not only because of Treasury parsimony, but also because recruiting languishes and retention is difficult.
For centuries, armies have largely consisted of young working-class men, often with poor qualifications. They opted for a life of adventure and comradeship, accepting both the duty to kill and the risk of their own deaths. The army was seldom their career of choice, but many prospered in uniform.
Today, however, a lot of parents and schools recoil from seeing young men embrace the warrior ethos. They find repugnant the notion of arming teenagers and dispatching them to fight, whatever the cause. Thanks to the internet, a radio exchange between a female interviewer and an Australian general named Peter Cosgrove has passed into contemporary legend. Cosgrove, as head of the Australian army, described on air a scheme to introduce Australian boy scouts to the exciting life on offer to a soldier by inviting them to bases where they could try climbing, canoeing, archery and rifle-shooting. "Shooting!" exclaimed the appalled interviewer. "That's a bit irresponsible, isn't it ?"
"I don't see why," said the general. "They'll be properly supervised on the range." The interviewer was unconvinced: "Don't you admit that this is a terribly dangerous activity to be teaching children? You're equipping them to become violent killers." Cosgrove remained unabashed: "Well, ma'am, you're equipped to be a prostitute, but you're not one, are you?"
A lot of people share the interviewer's instinctive revulsion towards guns, as well as other aspects of soldiering. Some British schools are unwilling to welcome army recruiting teams. The Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust recently caricatured itself by publishing a report arguing that the army has a duty more frankly to warn recruits in its advertising about the prospect that they may have to kill or be killed.
Overlaid upon such fastidiousness is the problem of many teenagers' lack of fitness for service life. The British army is striving to reduce the high dropout rate in basic training among new entrants who either find discipline unacceptable or cannot contend with the physical demands. Teenagers who have never walked if they could ride, and define enthusiasm for sport by watching it on telly, find assault courses tough going.
The result is that all western nations are struggling to identify enough young men able and willing to carry rifles on battlefields. It is hard to foresee social trends that will make it less so. The armed forces as an institution still command public respect. But this is of limited worth unless it translates into a willingness by the young to sign up and do the business.
It is paradoxical that Tony Blair, who sought to use Britain's armed forces more ambitiously than any modern prime minister, inflicted deep damage by associating them with some unpopular and perhaps unwinnable causes.
Britain's three services are now so small that, if current policies and difficulties continue, it will be almost impossible to reverse the process of decline. Relations between senior officers at the MoD have become rancorous, amid fears and recriminations about budget cuts, real and threatened.
Unless one is an outright pacifist, rejecting military commitment anywhere, in any cause, it is necessary to recognise that the national interest must suffer if the services become tarnished and are penalised for a prime minister's political misjudgments. The old cliche is often trotted out that our armed forces are still world class. In truth, it is no longer valid. However high their quality, they are now too few to fulfil many of the tasks they are assigned. Even if ministers try to delude us otherwise, the public should not be fooled.
Max Hastings