As a Briton, sometimes I get sick of the way everyone always slams the British armed forces. You know, all the usual jokes: "What would happen if the British Army landed in Europe? They'd be arrested." "How do you get the British to win a battle? They lose, then someone else shows up and wins so that they can claim to have won." "How does British English define an army? A navy which doesn't have any ships." "What's the British Army flag? The White Ensign."
However, I don't think this reputation is based on fact. Britain may have lost the American Revolutionary War, but it did win the Seven Years' War and actually defeated France and took lots of France's colonies; and for all that everyone laughs at Waterloo, it really wasn't just Blücher who defeated Napoleon, Wellington had a part in it too. Even as late as the Crimean War, with the charge of the Light Brigade the British were regarded as crazy beserkers and, at the very least, warriors, not incompetent nitwits who either quickly lose or do nothing in every war they fight. Honestly I think that reputation completely disregards pre-20th-century history and is solely due to the poor British military record in the 20th century, losing to the French, the Irish, the Indians et cetera.
So here's the challenge: How is it that you can make the British armed forces widely respected in its popular image, or at least regarded neutrally? I'm not asking for a French-esque reputation—that wouldn't be possible; the British haven't spent most of the last few centuries single-handedly fighting much of the rest of Europe at the same time and often winning; I'm trying to maintain some plausibility here—but at least a reputation as something other than complete pushovers.
I think a good start would be to get rid of the Moroccan War. I know it's counter-intuitive, as that's one of the few wars where Britain was on the winning side, but I think it did real lasting damage to Britain's reputation. For all that some people on this board advance the really interesting argument that Germany might have won if not for the British blockade taking away their nitrates, the popular image of the war is the French and Russians storming into Germany while the British dawdled on their ships, doing nothing, and then were taken unpleasantly by surprise by the decisiveness of their allies' land victory. I think that really added to the general impresssion of incompetence that the British gave out. Also, significant changes in the Moroccan War would change the 20th century enough to butterfly later conflicts; the Moroccan War laid down the foundations of the Rhineland War and we all know what happened then. I know, I know, it was inevitable that there would be some sort of colonial conflict as the great powers divided Africa and Germany arrived late to the imperialist table and wanted more than it could get; you don't have to repeat that to me, I understand, I do remember the last thread. But maybe Britain and Germany, alone, could fight a later conflict, without France. Then the British might have a better later reputation. The difficult part is getting Britain and Germany, without France, to fight a war; if it did happen the British would obviously win, since they'd have to do astonishingly badly to manage to lose a war to the Germans of all people.
So, then, what do people think?