TNAG-0055-FCO40-91-Defence-review-1977 — Page 105

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securing their agreement, or at least acquiescence, facilitate the process

of carrying out these reductions, including all possible economies which we

can make in our defence expenditure in the short-term. We must not there-

fore start from a position in which we appear to have a firm and dated plan

for phased withdrawal irrespective of the views of our allies, since this

would merely invite concerted pressure on us to modify it to our disadvantage

and there are many means by which they could hamper the process to our

political embarrassment and financial cost. We must also recognise that

however we may seek to ensure that the substance of our consultations is not

publicised, most of it is certain to become known at a very early stage, but

nevertheless we should do everything possible to avoid undue publicity

particularly early in the consultation process.

3. Our starting point in the discussions should therefore be to declare our

proposal to reduce our forces in the Far East with the aim of reducing our forces in Singapore/Malaysia by about half by 1970-71. This should be

presented in such a way as not to impede the continuation of our rundown below defence review force levels, which will be reached in October this year.

We should say that, as we saw it, it would be reasonable to plan on the

assumption that we should have withdrawn wholly from those two countries by

about the mid-1970s. We were consulting our allies so that after taking

their views and interests into account we should be in a position to take

final decisions by the middle of this year as part of a general determination of our defence policy and deployment.

There are a number of good arguments to justify this re-appraisal of our role in the Far East, and we should use them as seemed most appropriate during our consultations. To some audiences we could begin by explaining openly that the re-appraisal was forced on us by the need to strengthen our economy. (we should make this point at one stage or other to all our allies.) We did not conceal that such a strengthening would be partly for our own sake but our allies would recognise that only by so doing could we continue to make our

contribution to general stability in the world. Our economic position demanded a reduction in planned public expenditure and in expenditure overseas, of which defence forms a specially large part. Our present military position in the Far East, which had been originally justified by our position in India

and as a major colonial power, was now out of scale with our political and commercial interests in the area, substantial though these still were. To other audiences, however, it might be more appropriate to lay greater stress

on the growth of local nationalism, the developing strength of the countries

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