Lets go back to Britain's history of warfare and the role of the British army/SAS, soldiers through out this century and the impact it has had on the british public.
Men of the 8th Battalion, East Yorkshire Regiment going up to the line near Frezenberg during the third Battle of Ypres, on 5 October 1917. Photograph: IWM/Getty Images/IWM via Getty Images
After Britain's drawdown from Afghanistan last year it may be the first since at least 1914 that British soldiers, sailors and air crews will not be engaged in fighting somewhere – the first time Britain is totally at peace with the rest of the world.
Members of the 1st Lancashire Fusiliers on 1 July 1916, during the first world war. Photograph: Hulton Archive/Getty Images
Since Britain's declaration of war against Germany in August 1914, not a year has passed without its forces being involved in conflict. It is a statistic that has been largely overlooked, and not one about which the government is likely to boast.The past 100 years have seen two world wars, large-scale conflicts in Korea and Iraq, and small-scale actions in South America,Africa, the Middle East and Asia. There have been punitive operations in defence of empire, cold war operations, post-9/11 support for the US, and the Troubles in Ireland.
British Special Forces - UKSF during the first Gulf war
No other country, even those with similarly militaristic traditions, has been engaged continuously over such a long span. Even during 1968, a year often hailed by members of the British armed forces and some military historians as a year of peace, there was fighting.The
timeline of constant combat may stretch even further back, given Britain's imperial engagements, all the way to the creation of the British army in 1707.
An Argentinian bomb explodes on board the Royal Navy frigate HMS Antelope during the Falklands war. Photograph: Martin Cleaver/PA
Colonel Richard Kemp, former commander of British forces in Afghanistan and a participant in many other interventions, from Northern Ireland through to the Balkans and Iraq, said the Syria vote suggested "a higher threshold for British engagement in combat operations in the short term following our experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan".
British soldiers in Afghanistan
But the British public is getting warry of wars: Senior MoD figures told the Guardian in January that they believed a reluctance among an increasingly multicultural British population to see troops deployed abroad would influence the next two strategic defence reviews.
British soldiers in Korea: The British army suffered about 5,000 casualties during its involvement in Korean war
A senior British defence official described a year without military action as a problem. Recruiters were already struggling and the prospect of no action in 2015 would not help. "You want to join the army to do stuff," he said.
He anticipated action in the future: "I think after the election the prime minister will have the appetite to get on to the horse again, though we have to make sure it is the right horse. I would be surprised if nothing happens a year and a half or two from now." It could be joint action with the French rather than the Americans, he added(its already happening again in Afghanistan and Syria