What do we want, monks or robots

Is there something special about Cyprus that sends supposedly disciplined, professional soldiers berserk? Or are the British Armed Forces - particularly the Army - suffering from a major crisis of discipline that reflects a wider cultural crisis? The latest trial of British soldiers for behaving very badly in Cyprus is the result of both, though mostly of the latter. The cultural crisis has far wider ramifications: the Army's recruiting problems, and the allegation by a serving major earlier this week that it is paralysed by an anachronistic class structure. Can this be the Army that combined combat skills with compassion, diplomacy and restraint to such a remarkable degree in Bosnia, and whose recruiting slogan is so unambiguous, and yet so often let down - "Be the best"?

Some sources in the British military believe the breakdown of discipline is because they are being forced to be too many different things - that indiscipline is a result of the erosion of traditional military culture and the draconian system that kept the military in order. Soldiers are no longer subject to the horrific punishments of a generation or so ago - like that meted out to the prisoners in the film The Hill - let alone the Victorian remedy of flogging and the First World War use of the firing squad and "field punishment number one": being crucified, naked on a gunwheel, for hours, preferably between November and March.

The spotlight has been on Cyprus ever since the horrific murder of Danish tour guide Louise Jensen by three drunken members of the Royal Green Jackets two years ago. The British authorities worked very hard to try to restore good relations with the local community. Just as they thought they had succeeded, three Royal Marines who were in Cyprus on "adventure training" were arrested for dancing, stark naked, singing "God Save the Queen". Elsewhere, and at another time, it might have been excused as a high-spirited prank. But the Commandant-General of the Marines - the Navy's formidably disciplined sea-soldiers - took a very dim view, rightly, and banned the Corps from Cyprus.

The British Armed Forces were on the defensive again yesterday as four soldiers from the King's regiment went on trial for assault, occasioning grievous bodily harm on two "tourists" in the resort of Ayia Napa, which was again put out of bounds to British troops. The British Army had met Club 18-30, and, predictably perhaps, Club 18-30 came off worse. As one officer put it yesterday, it was "probably like against like - though that is no excuse".

The two British battalions - currently 1st Battalion, The Light Infantry in Episkopi and the King's Regiment in Dhekelia - are nothing to do with the UN force which separates the Greek and Turkish Cypriot communities. They are there to defend the Sovereign Base areas, and to operate and defend the airfield at Akrotiri. A member of a Greek Cypriot family who was in Cyprus recently summarised the local view. "I don't think they do anything. They just act as firemen - because it's so hot and there are lots of bush fires. There's a lot of resentment between them and the Greek Cypriots - they're just there to start trouble. They walk around like they own the place."

The Greek Cypriots see no reason for the British (as opposed to the UN) presence, and would not mind very much if the British left, especially as they are bad for tourism. The Army says the incidence of bad behaviour involving troops in Cyprus is no worse than anywhere else, and far less than among the same group of young men - 18- to 25-year-olds, by and large of the same class - in the rest of society. Fights between soldiers and civilians may involve an element of provocation. For macho men on holiday, taking on British soldiers may be perceived as a manly thing to do. It is certainly a risky one. Drink has a lot to do with the problem, just as it does in civilian life. In Bosnia, where soldiers are on active service, they are limited to two cans of beer a night, and there are very few problems. But none of these statistics will satisfy the public. The problem is that people expect the forces to live up to their advertising, and to be better than the rest of society: in some cases, even, to turn the other cheek.

Soldiers have always been a rough lot, and have always liked a drink. Wellington was fond of calling his soldiers "the scum of the earth". He knew them well. "The British soldiers are fellows who have all enlisted for drink - that is the plain fact," he wrote. "I don't know what effect these men will have on the enemy, but, by God, they frighten me." It is a sentiment felt by many officers ever since - including myself, as a 19-year-old second lieutenant in charge of a dozen Royal Artillerymen arriving in a one-horse town in the Rocky mountains, hundreds of miles from my unit. (The boys wanted to get down to some serious partying in the local saloon and I, terrified of them and of losing control, was forced to acquiesce.).

The armies of earlier times, and their fondness for drink, were controlled by a discipline that was ferocious, arbitrary, and sometimes unjust. But it was effective. Soldiers were treated like robots, to be turned against the enemy, and were kept out of normal society when not in use.

The problem now is that the Army has to treat its soldiers like grown- ups. The law, both national and European, demands it. By and large, they behave like grown-ups. In a few cases they do not, and those are the cases that make the headlines. There are increasing opportunities for women in the forces, and legal pressures to try to increase recruitment of ethnic minorities. But while the Army is trying to do that, it lacks the old disciplinary mechanisms to enforce its new political correctness. If a racist attack on a fellow soldier or beating up a civilian was punishable by flogging, such attacks would probably cease. But that sanction is not available. Nor can the professional, well-qualified soldiers the Army wants be locked up like criminals.

The soldier of the new world order will have to be a different animal, and the transformation is not complete. The kind of discipline needed for a 21st century army, combining weapons of awesome power with conducting diplomacy and tending the sick might be closer to a medieval order of warrior monks. Our society might find that even more threatening - with some reason. And is that what we want? As General Sir John Hackett pointed out in his 1983 book The Profession of Arms, "What a society gets in its armed forces is exactly what it asks for, no more, no less. What it asks for tends to be a reflection of what it is. The mirror is a true one, and the face it will see will be its own."