Britain cannot expect young people to serve a country that may prosecute them decades later

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Defence analyst Lt Col Stuart Crawford has explored Britain's recruitment crisis

We ask young men and women to join our Armed Forces, obey orders, go where politicians send them and, when necessary, kill Britain's enemies.

Then, decades afterwards, we reserve the right to haul them back before lawyers and investigators and judge decisions made in seconds on the battlefield through the very different standards of another age.

A disturbing new Policy Exchange report into the Special Air Service's role in Northern Ireland should worry anyone who cares about the future of Britain's Armed Forces.

It raises a question which goes far beyond Northern Ireland and the Troubles.

Who in their right mind will volunteer to fight for Britain if they believe they could spend the rest of their lives looking over their shoulder?

I served in the British Army for 20 years. Soldiers understand that they are subject to the law. They understand rules of engagement. They know that wearing a uniform does not give them carte blanche to do whatever they please.

If a soldier deliberately murders someone, tortures a prisoner or commits another serious crime, he or she should face justice. There can be no argument about that.

But that is very different from subjecting soldiers to the possibility of repeated investigations into decisions which were made under fire, within the rules applying at the time, and which may already have been investigated.

Policy Exchange's report examines what happened to SAS soldiers who served during Operation Banner in Northern Ireland.

These were not mercenaries roaming Ulster doing as they pleased. They were British servicemen sent there by British governments.

They operated in support of the police, under rules of engagement and the ordinary criminal law. Policy Exchange says every use of lethal force by the SAS was investigated at the time.

Yet some of those men, now elderly, face the possibility that events from perhaps 40 or 50 years ago can be examined yet again.

Memories fade. Witnesses die. Documents disappear. The political environment changes. Even the legal framework through which events are examined evolves.

What does not change is the few seconds the soldier had to decide whether the person in front of him was going to kill him or somebody else.

This is where the modern obsession with applying today's sensibilities retrospectively becomes dangerous.

Call it wokeness, lawfare, judicialisation or whatever fashionable term you prefer. The practical consequence is the same.

We risk creating a generation of soldiers who hesitate not because they fear the enemy, but because they fear the lawyer who might examine their actions 30 years later.

A soldier cannot operate effectively with a barrister sitting metaphorically on his shoulder.

Imagine being 23 years old, in darkness, frightened, exhausted and carrying a loaded weapon. Intelligence tells you that armed terrorists are nearby. Something happens. You have perhaps two seconds to decide.

Get it wrong the other and you, your comrades or civilians might die.

And Britain's enemies will not suffer from the same inhibitions.

Russian soldiers are unlikely to worry about how a British inquiry might interpret their split-second decisions decades later. Terrorists certainly don't.

We therefore risk imposing an extraordinary asymmetry upon ourselves: our enemies fight to win while our soldiers fight wondering whether their own country will eventually prosecute them for doing so.

Policy Exchange identifies another uncomfortable asymmetry arising from Northern Ireland.

The state kept records. Soldiers had names and service numbers. Orders were documented. Rules of engagement existed. Intelligence assessments and chains of command were recorded.

Terrorist organisations did not leave equivalent filing cabinets conveniently available for investigators half a century later.

The better the records kept by a democratic state, therefore, the easier it can become to investigate its own soldiers repeatedly.

There is a deeper issue here about the covenant between a country and those it sends into danger.

The state asks extraordinary things of its servicemen and women. It asks them to surrender freedoms civilians take for granted. Ultimately it may order them into situations where they could be killed.

In return, there has to be an understanding that the state will stand behind them when they have acted lawfully and followed their orders.

Britain is already struggling to recruit and retain sufficient military personnel at precisely the moment when the international situation is becoming more dangerous.

Russia threatens Europe. China is expanding its military power. Iran remains a destabilising force. The terrorist threat has not disappeared.

Meanwhile Britain wants highly trained soldiers, sailors and aviators prepared to risk everything on our behalf.

We cannot simultaneously tell them: Thank you for your service – we'll let you know in 40 years whether we think you did anything wrong.

Genuinely new and compelling evidence of criminal wrongdoing should be investigated.

If an incident was properly investigated, the evidence examined and no prosecution brought, reopening it decades later should require an exceptionally high threshold.

Policy Exchange warns that watching veterans being investigated over events half a century old will hardly reassure today's soldiers or tomorrow's recruits that their country values their service.

We are steadily changing the calculation made by anyone contemplating a military career.

Once it was straightforward: Am I prepared to die for my country?

Am I prepared to be prosecuted by it for the rest of my life?

If that becomes the perception among the young men and women upon whom our defence depends, Russia, China and our other potential adversaries will not need to destroy the British Armed Forces.