“Nature abhors a vacuum”
Aristotle
Europe’s
Waterloo and the Fearsome Threesome?
Alphen,
Netherlands 18 June. It seems somewhat appropriate to be writing this on the
203rd anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo as I feel close to
having met mine. Waterloo, that is. What
a week – Amsterdam, Stockholm, Rome and Portsmouth. I am knackered. ‘Knackered’
is a colloquial English term that has two meanings. Very tired, as in my case,
or completely failed, as is the case of most of Europe’s leaders for that is
the conclusion I have drawn from my rapid Grand European Tour. Nowhere on my travels did I meet anyone happy
with the situation in Europe, or happy with the way Europeans are NOT being
led. There is a leadership vacuum in Europe
that is undermining the defence of Europeans. Contrast Europe’s ‘leaders’ with
the fearsome threesome who currently hold the whip-hand of power in the world:
Putin, Trump and Xi.
Julian’s
Grand Tour
My week
started in Stockholm watching President Trump shaking hands with North Korean
leader Kim Jong-un. The Singapore meeting
may have been light on substance but it was heavy on symbolism and in
international relations such things matter, so long as they are backed up by
power. Indeed, one may not like the leadership on offer from these three
paragons of power modesty but it is they who now get to decide what Europeans must
endure. Europe? Long on symbolism, short on influence, endlessly talking
values, but no power to defend interests.
From Stockholm, I moved onto Rome where I addressed
NATO senior officers. In Rome, some form of experiment in government is
underway led by a new coalition between academics and populists that will no
doubt lead to a lot of erudite papers about complete nonsense. One only has to
suffer the state of Rome’s roads and see the impact of mass unregulated
immigration on the ‘eternal city’ to see the dangerous reality of modern Italy,
a country that I genuinely love. It is clear to me that Italy will in effect
cease to be a strategic actor of any weight for the foreseeable future. Italy’s armed forces are already under
intense pressure from a lack of investment. It is a situation likely only to
get worse.
Having left
Rome I made my increasingly knackered way to Portsmouth via Amsterdam and
Southampton. My purpose was to give a talk at a conference to mark fifty years
since the first patrol by a British ballistic missile submarine, HMS Resolution. Sadly, the only thing I
could see afloat in the dockyard of any real capability was good old HMS Metaphor. As this week’s new report by the House of
Commons Defence Committee entitled Beyond
2 Percent states, “the Government must break out of the pattern, observable
in past reviews, of strategic direction being lost because the conclusions of
the review are inadequately funded and ultimately unsustainable…” Amen to that!
The May
Government lacks ambition, imagination or creativity and has become dangerously
risk averse. For example, I had
suggested to both the White House and London that President Trump be invited to
give a speech on burden-sharing on board the brand new 70,000 ton aircraft-carrier
HMS Queen Elizabeth. My idea was
initially very well-received on both sides of the Atlantic and as far as I know
is still welcome in the White House. My reasoning was simple: if President
Trump is to berate Europeans about a lack of burden-sharing at or around the
July Brussels NATO Summit then at least put him on the deck of high-end European
‘asset’ so that he could put some positive spin on it. By giving such a speech on ‘Big Lizzie’ the Trump
message could then be hard and fair at the same time: “with the right political
will America’s allies can invest in the kind of high-end military capability
that will help share America’s great burden etc. etc.” Europeans need to realise and fast that
America’s legitimate grievance over burden-sharing goes far beyond, and far
deeper than President Trump.
The symbolism
of such a speech on that ship at this time would have sent a powerful message
about Britain, the Special Relationship and future European capabilities. Sadly, over the weekend I learnt that the
idea has been scrapped because it might be humiliating for Britain if there are
no F-35Bs on board HMS Queen Elizabeth
as yet. First, the reason for any such
‘humiliation’ could only be the strategic illiteracy of Britain’s leaders and
the lack of imagination it engenders. Second, four new British F-35Bs flew across
the Atlantic and arrived in the UK this month.
If they cannot yet land on the deck of ‘Big Lizzie’ at least get them to
do a fly past as President Trump concludes his remarks. Such spinelessness
simply reveals a Government and an elite that lack ambition, lack imagination
and lack creativity. It also explains
why Little Britain is declining fast - the little people who govern it.
In Europe, only President Macron has the vision
needed to prepare Europeans for a challenging twenty-first century world, but without
Germany’s support (which he lacks) Macron’s
ambitions are far bigger than his country. And ‘bigness’ is the nub of Europe’s
problem. None of Europe’s leaders have the vision or the courage to confront
the big problems Europeans must collectively face. Europe faces immense
challenges that for too long have been ducked and which range from the
modernisation and digitisation of the European economy to cope with twenty-first
century globalism, the consequences of mass flows of unregulated migrants into
Europe, Europe’s new and rapidly worsening threat agenda to the urgent need to
modernise Europe’s security and defence architectures.
Berlin and
the Loisach Group
This week,
somewhat re-fortified, I will travel to Berlin to attend the high-level
US-German Loisach Group of which I am
a proud member. Organised by the Munich Security Conference and the George C.
Marshall Center the work of the Group is vital, not least because of London’s
refusal to invest strategic ambition or political commitment in the UK-US
Special Relationship. Indeed, if London does not break out of its strategic and
political torpor the US-German Essential Relationship offers the best hope for
a renewed transatlantic relationship that organises democratic power to good security
and defence effect. However, whilst the US-German relationship may be
essential, it is by no means ‘special’, particularly at the moment.
For this
vital relationship to flourish Americans and Germans will need to agree that
the dangers that face both North Americans and Europeans are roughly the same
and that the policy and strategy solutions they seek are compatible. That will mean modesty in leadership from the
Americans and leadership in leadership from the Germans neither of which seem
particularly likely. Worse, in Europe’s
strongest power, ‘leadership’ is
conspicuous by its absence. From being
Queen Angela of Europe a couple of years ago Chancellor Merkel is now in open conflict
with her interior minister Horst Seehofer over migration. She wants a ‘European
solution’, which means no solution, whilst he wants Germany to close its
borders to migrant flows. President Trump, on the other hand, seems more at
home and more comfortable dealing with the likes of Putin, Xi, and dare I say
it, Kim. That Hieronymus Bosch-style photograph of Merkel trying to face down
Trump at the G7 was a picture that spoke far more than a thousand political words.
A West in
Crisis or a Europe in Crisis?
What that
photo revealed was a West that is now mired in deep crisis, or rather a Europe that
is in deep crisis. European leaders like
to blame President Trump for a lot and at times he almost revels in the role of
being European Scapegoat-in-Chief. However, the crisis Europeans face is
entirely of European leader’s own making. Years of refusing to face new
power-realities in the world, years of uttering empty slogans about ‘Europe’ (and
much else), years of talking too much and doing too little have reduced Europe
to the dangerous situation in which it now finds itself.
Against that backdrop, there are eight lessons that I draw
from my grand tour of Europe over the past week:
1. Europeans
must stop talking about some future common defence. The defence of Europe will
be conducted by European states working together. Collective defence is what Europeans should
aspire to and President Macron is right to call for a European (not EU)
Intervention Force.
2. There will be
no common defence until there is a European Government and by the time there
might be a European Government parts of Europe could be speaking Russian…again.
3. Keep all serious
defence away from the European Union.
Brussels is too focused on using ‘defence’ to undermine the European
nation-state so that it can centralise ever more power on its illegitimate
self.
4. A European defence
that is a consequence of yet more defence cuts will afford no defence at all.
All defence cuts are matched by a similar loss of strategic ambition.
5. The future
defence of Europe needs real political leadership. At times of weak government, political bureaucrats take-over power and they are
instinctively risk-averse. Just look at Britain.
6. Given the growing
pressure US armed forces face to maintain their world-wide, high-end defence
and deterrence posture Washington will only be able to afford Europeans a
defence guarantee that is credible if Europeans do far more for their own defence
and for the Americans and focus such an effort on NATO.
7. Before
significant increases in European defence expenditure can take place Europeans
need to collectively agree the capabilities and capacities European future
forces need and begin a sustained programme of reform and re-structuring.
8. If the
European Commission succeeds in its efforts to damage Britain for Brexit there
is a real risk that London will retreat behind its nuclear shield and
effectively abandon its role in the defence of Europe. Worse, London might abandon once and for all
any pretence at being a major power, when in fact it still is.
Which brings
me back to Stockholm where I started my week.
Of all the countries I visited the Swedes were the most clear-headed
about the challenges Europeans face because
they understood one thing very clearly: Europeans will not be more secure by
trying to hide from threat and danger. If Europe is to be defended its leaders must
collectively climb down off the vacuous Euro-cloud upon which they have for too
long been perched and start properly dealing with the real problems ordinary
Europeans face and meet the real strategic challenges Europe and the wider West
must confront together. Read between the lines of a good speech by Dutch Prime
Minister Mark Rutte last week to the European Parliament and at least one
leader seems to understand that European leaders need to do less talking to each
other and more talking to their peoples. If not, ‘Europe’ will continue its
precipitous and dangerous decline into strategic irrelevance and in the process
make not only Europe but the wider world a much more dangerous place than it
need be.
As Aristotle
(and Rabelais) once said, “Nature abhors a vacuum”, but so does power. And, if Europeans do not re-learn ‘power’ and
fast someone else will impose it upon them. Then, like Napoleon, Europe will at
some point face its own Waterloo…which, for the record, was won by Wellington!
Julian
Lindley-French
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