Lindley-French's Blog Blast: Speaking Truth Unto Power

Sean Who?

2012-02-16T03:27:00.003-08:00

Alphen, the Netherlands. 16 February. Let me tell you a fairy story. None of it is true. Are you sitting comfortably? Once upon a time a long way, away there was a Yank called Sean, who was not very bright, who wanted we British to hand something he called Lost Mal Virus, or something like that, back to the Argies. Sean was an actor. He was not a very good actor because he spent his days living in a fantasy world so far from reality he could no longer tell the difference. Sadly, not many people went to see Sean's films, which I am told were by and large rubbish because the plots tended to be far too far fetched. Sean was not very bright.

He decided one day to make a new fantasy film which was SO far-fetched it was beyond credulity. In his film a bunch of sad, lost Argie scrap metal merchants accidentally stumbled across a mythical island near the mythical Lost Mal Virus called South Georgia, and which was ruled by an evil prince called William. In the film the naughty scrap metal merchants decide to dismantle the place without the Prince's permission.

Brave to the point of stupidity, Sean was not very bright, our hero defied the evil Prince William by offering Georgia to his fairy Princess La Kirchner. Princess La Kirchner, who was one tango short of a samba, was secretly in love with Prince William. Sadly, Princess La Kirchner felt terribly slighted because the previous year Prince William had married a girl called Kate from Rotherham. So, to make Prince William jealous she pretended to love Sean and start a war.

Sadly, there was just an ever so minor flaw in the plan. Sean, who was not very bright, confused South Georgia with Georgia, which was ever so slightly part of the United States of America, and which was known to be ruled by a big, bad ogre called Borat or something like that, who was known for his short temper and had lots of aircraft carriers. Thankfully, being a Yank Borat was a kind, politically correct ogre who had caught onto a new idea called 'democracy', which was Greek and therefore cost a lot. And, he was not at all happy when the scrap metal merchants started dismantling Atlanta, although many north of the Mason-Dixon line thought this a good idea. Sadly, there were rarely good ideas in Borat's White Castle, but this Greek democracy thing was a real bozo; the people got to decide.

Sadly, for Sean, who was not very bright, after two centuries of trying the Yanks had also at last learnt to read a map. Borat, who had many wise counsellors, realised that Sean, who was not very bright, had not only confused South Georgia with Georgia, but Lost Mal Virus with the Falkland Islands. Now, the Falkland Islands were a real, happy place where a happy, bucolic (and ever so occasionally alcoholic) frolicking people had lived for almost 200 years. Like Borat they also believed in democracy and did not have a particularly high regard for the evil Princess La Kirchner. She wanted to steal their homes and expel them from their tropical paradise and send them to a cold, forbidding and damp island called England where the people are ever so slightly wet. Heaven forbid!

Also, the Falklands did not really belong to Prince William, who visited on holiday from time to time in his magic yellow Sea Prince helicopter. The Falklands belonged to the people, who liked sheep...a lot. So, being the owners of the Falklands the good people of the Falklands decided to have a vote (that Greek thing again) in which all of them (i.e. 100% all of them) decided that whilst Prince William may be a tad evil, going bald and married to some woman from Rotherham, he offered infinitely better life insurance than the very evil Princess La Kirchner, who was one tango short of a samba.

Borat, recognising he too faced this democracy thing, and a tough battle with several really ogerish ogres in the Republican Party, thought for a moment about the Latino vote and then decided that democracy might just be a thing called a political principle. He then tells Sean, who was not very bright, and the evil Princess La Kirchner, who was one tango short of a samba, to butt out of the Falkland Islands and leave the happy people in peace and let then decide their future, which was all their hearts desire. They called it self-detoxication or something like that.

If they heeded this friendly advice they would all have lived happily ever after...except Sean that is, who was not very bright, and, of course, Princess La Kirchner, who was one tango short of a samba.

This was a fairy tale. Let's keep it that way!

Julian Lindley-French

Who Will Pay for Greece?

2012-02-15T02:12:00.003-08:00

Alphen, the Netherlands. 15 February. “Bring your desires down to your present means. Increase them only when your increased means permit”, Aristotle once famously wrote. He could have been talking of Greece today. Eurozone finance ministers should today have been meeting to rubber stamp a €130 billion ($170bn) bailout for Greece from the European Union and International Monetary Fund. Instead the bailout is on hold primarily because Germany and other northern European states are not at all convinced that the Greeks will follow through with the package of cuts demanded in return for releasing the money.

Unfortunately, the cuts demanded by Greece’s Eurozone partners seem now beyond bearable for a Greek people long accustomed to being subsidized by their fellow European citizens. They have a point; under the austerity plan the already small minimum wage will be cut by a further 20% to around €600 ($700) per month as prices soar with some 150,000 public sector jobs due to be cut. Put simply, someone is going to have to pay for the Greeks because if Greece is forced out of the Euro the very stability of Greece will be at stake. Indeed, if Greece were forced out of the Euro on a Friday and the New Drachma started trading on the global capital markets on a Monday it would probably have a life-expectancy of around five seconds. Greece will thus need to be subsidised for many years to come – either to keep the Euro afloat or to prevent dangerous political instability on Europe’s periphery.

Right now the Germans want a written assurance from Antonis Samaris, the leader of the New Democracy Party, which looks likely to prevail in April’s elections, that he will honour an extra €300 million of cuts on top of the €3 billion already demanded. It is a fair question as attempts thus far by Athens to sell off state assets have been derisory. That is why the EU’s Economics Commissioner Olli Rehn has called on Greek officials to “take ownership” of the crisis. Sadly, Greek leaders continue to believe they can get away with promising much and then doing little or nothing. It is an old Athenian game.

Equally, there are other more structural forces at work that suggest many in Germany would prefer Greece pushed out of the Eurozone so that the problem can be ‘globalised’. That seems to be behind the emerging schism between Chancellor Merkel, who still sees the resolution of the Greek tragedy as essentially a European political problem, and her finance minister Wolfgang Schauble who sees the problem as an insoluble financial catastrophe and wants to shield the German taxpayer from the consequences by getting others to pay. Certainly, if Greece remains in the Eurozone the German taxpayer will indeed have to subsidise Greece for many years to come, supported by Dutch, Finnish and other northern European taxpayers (i.e. me). Schauble’s position has been reinforced this morning by news that the German economy shrank by 0.2% during the last quarter.

There is also a wider issue of political philosophy which speaks to the very viability of the European Union. A good friend of mine who is also one of Germany’s leading political commentators once told me that Germans lack any real sense of solidarity. What Germans really want, he said, is more Europe for no more money, so long as more Europe means more Germany. This crisis is revealing his words to have been wise.

This confluence of cost and political philosophy are already stoking tensions between Germany and France. The French want the money released to Greece quickly because French banks are so exposed to Greek debt. France would also be happy to shackle Germany with Greek debt for many a year to come. This would establish a precedent for all future bailouts should the Greek contagion really spread to Italy, Spain and Portugal and to which French banks are equally exposed. Whilst the Germans seem to be shifting towards the idea that Greece could default and the Euro survive, the French still see such an event as an impending disaster. Either way it is one hell of a gamble.

The sad reality is that unless there is a real game-changer Greece is now locked into a death-spiral of excessive debt, economic depression and massive budget holes from which there seems little chance of escape. One possible game-changer is that the Greek diaspora, amongst whom are some of the world’s richest people, step into to take ownership of their ancestral homeland in its hour of need. There is little sign of that happening thus far.

My bet is that Greece will indeed receive this tranche of my taxes to keep it stumbling on within the Euro for another year or so but that the real crisis will come in 2013, when the Greeks have failed to follow through with cuts in the face of mass public protest. By then the Germans are hoping that sufficient growth will have returned to Eurozone economies and with it a Euro sufficiently strong to survive a Greek default. The fundamental question thus remains not if Greece defaults, but when, and of course who Greece takes down with it.

Thucydides writing of the death of that great Athenian Pericles once said, “…wealth we employ more for use than for show, and place the real disgrace of poverty not in owning to the fact but in declining the struggle against it”.

All the Greeks are buying with this bailout is time for Germany.

Julian Lindley-French

Why England Needs a First Amendment

2012-02-14T01:31:00.000-08:00

Alphen. The Netherlands. 14 February. A democracy without a written constitution is always in peril from political law. Three current controversies underline the extent to which England today faces just such peril: the attempt to deport radical Islamist Jordanian cleric Abu Qatada; the Leveson inquiry into Press standards and ethics; and the February arrest and jailing of a woman for a ‘racist rant’ on a London Underground train – the second such action in a month. What all three issues highlight is a simple, sad truth; precedent in English common law has not only become outdated, but is in danger of destroying liberty itself. England therefore needs a written constitution akin to that of the United States and in particular a First Amendment.

The First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States is short and to the point, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances”.

My hero, American journalist Edward R. Murrow, in a famous CBS television editorial once said of Senator Joseph McCarthy (“the junior Senator from Wisconsin”) and his anti-communist witch-hunt that, “the line between investigating and persecuting is a very fine one and the junior Senator from Wisconsin has stepped over it repeatedly. His primary achievement has been in confusing the public mind as between the internal and the external threats of communism. We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law”

Let me set all three controversies against the context of Murrow’s warning. First, Abu Qatada is clearly the “very dangerous man” an English judge once cited him to be. And, whilst the European Court of Human Rights is becoming itself ever more politicized and thus falling into disrepute its refusal to permit Britain to deport him to his native Jordan reflects a simple truth; Qatada has never actually faced English justice. He has thus been denied due process, which is the very essence of a civilized state.

Second, there is no question that sections of the English press have behaved in an outrageous and egregious manner. However, any attempt by the state to restrict Press freedom in the name of Press ‘ethics’ is dangerous in the extreme. Respected journalist Trevor Cavanagh writing yesterday of the arrest of ten of his colleagues at The Sun newspaper said, “…in a quite extraordinary assumption of power, police are able to impose conditions not unlike those applied to suspected terrorists. Under the draconian terms of police bail, many journalists are barred from speaking to each other. They are treated like threats to national security. And there is no end in sight to their ordeal. Their alleged crimes? To act as journalists have acted on all newspapers through the ages, unearthing stories that shape our lives, often obstructed by those who prefer to operate behind closed doors”.

Third, no one can doubt that racism exists in England, but the application of a disreputable law is fast becoming dangerous. In 2008 egged on by pressure groups representing ethnic minorities an unelected leftish Labour Government passed draconian race hate laws. Now, I hate racism and all forms of discrimination, not least because it impacts my daily life. However, this odious law is not only threatening freedom of speech, it has for the first time in English jurisprudence created a situation in which there is a presumption of guilt until proven innocent. Moreover, one minority section of society is now deemed to be superior under law to the majority and can thus accuse without fear of redress.

Sadly, so fearful are the Establishment media of being accused of racism they are complicit in the now daily witch-hunts by the ever more extreme pressure groups that feed off the appalling and corrosive political correctness that is so deforming English society. Indeed, legitimate concerns (however crudely expressed) of the English about the massive social and cultural impact of hyper-immigration are being crushed. Their country is changing before their eyes in ways they do not like and politicians are doing nothing to protect them. No wonder a recent survey found that 59% of English people no longer believe the government acts in their interests.

In July former England football captain John Terry will face criminal trial for having allegedly racially abused fellow footballer Anton Ferdinand. There is little chance Mr Terry will face a fair trial. Indeed, he has already been stripped of the England captaincy. Today, careers and lives are being broken not on the fact of any crime committed but merely on the suspicion of having broken an odious law.

There was a time when English law could distinguish between the criminal and the stupid. That time is long gone. . All it needs today is a stupid twitter or someone with a fancy mobile phone and what was once deemed stupidity is now deemed criminal. Sadly, the anti-racist movement which started out as a laudable effort to challenge racism and discrimination is fast becoming the new McCarthyism - the destruction of freedom and justice in the name of freedom and justice.

A week or so ago I had breakfast with one of the most respected and outspoken of Labour Party politicians and put my argument to him. He not only agreed with me but explained why England is in such peril. “Sadly”, he said, “…my colleagues in Parliament no longer believe in democracy”. In the absence of sound political leadership unelected judges are stepping ever more into the political arena. A country in which the executive, legislature and law have simultaneously fallen into disrepute is a country that is indeed in grave peril...and that is England today.

Ed Murrow, once said; “We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men — not from men who feared to write, to associate, to speak and to defend causes that were, for the moment, unpopular. This is no time for men who oppose Senator McCarthy's methods to keep silent, or for those who approve”.

Good night and good luck.

Julian Lindley-French

Syria: Tragic Epicentre of the New Great Game

2012-02-13T02:07:00.000-08:00

Alphen, the Netherlands. 13 February. Rudyard Kipling’s famous 19th century novel Kim is set against the background of the Great Game, the fight for supremacy over Central Asia between the British and Russian Empires. The book’s hero captures the essence of the struggle with a simple, chilling phrase, “The Great Game is not over until everyone is dead. Not before”. Scroll forward 150 years and the Great Game is alive and well and preying on the people of Syria.

The Great Game is about power and influence and for this most base of strategic reasons the Syrian people can expect no redemption from the world’s great and good. With Damascus having last night “utterly rejected” the latest Arab League peace plan and with it the prospect of a UN-Arab League monitoring mission, the struggle to oust President Assad will be long, bad and bloody complicated as it is by the ambitions of all the great powers both from the Middle East and beyond.

Like many Arab societies destabilising Syria is not difficult. Syria is a ‘mosaic society’ divided into three distinct elements; town, village and tribe. The power of President Assad has been built on a careful system of patronage through the Baath Party and the security services. Indeed, Assad can still count on the support of some 300,000 troops and much of the population in Damascus who have done relatively well under the regime. Moreover, the opposition, such as it is comprises of many different and differing groups that find it hard to coalesce around a single leader. Sadly, in what is now a prolonged civil war outside powers are taking sides as they pursue their own regional-strategic and strategic ambitions at a moment that will shape the twenty-first century.

Iran, Israel, Saudi Arabia and Turkey are the key neighbouring powers. Iran and Saudi Arabia have long been locked in a Cold War for regional-strategic supremacy. There is clear evidence that Mohammed Ali Jafari, the Chief Commander of the elite Iranian Al-Quds Force is in Syria both helping to co-ordinate the regime’s operations and supplying weapons and tactics. The prize for Tehran is clear; enhanced Iranian influence over Syria would further strengthen Iranian influence over Lebanon thus driving a wedge between Israel, Turkey and in time Saudi Arabia. With Iranian President Ahmadinejad about to announce “great nuclear achievements” Iranian activity in Syria is part of Tehran’s much wider strategic ambitions that quite clearly take the region ever closer to war. If war comes, and it is far closer than people think, soon-to-be nuclear Iran and already nuclear Israel will be pitted against each other, with Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States forced to choose between them. It would be a war that could re-write the map of the Middle East forever...and much of the world beyond.

In such circumstances, Turkey will not be able to stand idly by. Indeed, of all the powers both in the region and beyond it is Ankara which seems to have the clearest strategic picture of what is going on and what it could mean. Turkey is thus doing all it can to keep this struggle focussed on the future governance of Syria whilst fully aware of the wider forces at work. If Turkey gets involved in a wider war triggered by the Syrian civil war then NATO will inevitably become involved. Then what?

But here is the crunch; much of the wider struggle implicit in Syria is a function of the West’s retreat from central Asia and the Middle East. The obsession in the West with solving the current budget crisis over a short parliamentary cycle, rather than over a longer strategic cycle, is now destabilising the wider world. With massive defence cuts the high-profile centre of such efforts European security in particular is fast becoming detached from world security to the detriment of both. The West's strategic ambition and unity of purpose is being fatally undermined and with it all elements of statecraft. In Europe's backyard Syria is in the front-line of the most profound of power shifts as the West’s stabilising influence is critically reduced just at the moment when the Arab Spring, and Iran’s regional-strategic ambitions are turning the entire region into a powder keg of competing ambitions and dangerous technologies. Indeed, it is the artificially-accelerated self-decline of the West that is making this crisis so dangerous and turning Syria’s civil war into a proxy war.

This is exactly how Beijing and Moscow see it. Forget the false claim to principle made on Saturday by Russia’s ambassador to the UN Vitaly Churkin. Moscow has no interest in early elections in Syria. Russia, like China, is playing the Great Game, as they both move to seize an opportunity to push the West out of the Middle East and strengthen their respective strategic and commercial interests and influence in this critical region. To listen to Ambassador Churkin speak about Syria and the Middle East is eerily reminiscent of the Cold War. Long live the new Soviet Union.

In an ideal world the United Nations would be in the lead to find a solution. However, not only have China and Russia effectively and cynically blocked effective UN mediation, but UN Secretary-General Ban-Ki Moon is simply not up to the job. There was a time when the UN Secretary-General was the world’s top diplomat. For all the failings of the UN Dag Hammarskjöld, U Thant, and even Kofi Annan, had real influence. Sadly, Mr Moon is being eclipsed by events, not shaping them. The failure of the UN will not only hasten the descent into the new balance of power implicit in the Syrian struggle but provide the field upon which the Great Game is to be played, thus setting the terms of reference of international relations in the twenty-first century.

The Great Game is not over until everyone is dead. Not before.

Julian Lindley-French

The Falklands: Don't Even Think About it Argentina

2012-02-08T02:30:00.000-08:00

Rolle, Switzerland. 8 February. Strange week - a bouncy week – England, Germany and now back here inSwitzerland on the frozen shores of the magisterial Lake Geneva. Cold or what? There is a local wind here called ‘la Bise’ which blows directly off theSwiss Alps and drops onto the lake that is less breeze and more arcticchainsaw. In between I was mugged atAntwerp Central Station losing my computer and iPod during an attack by four,fine upstanding members of Belgium’s diverse society. Naturally, none of thepeople around me lifted a finger. What asad society Europe is becoming.

Déjà vu all over again? Last night I watched a rather bizarre,rambling speech by Argentine President Cristina Kirchner to which if there wasa point seemed to be a re-asserting of Argentina’s ridiculous claim over the FalklandIslands. Apparently she is to make aformal complaint to the United Nations citing Britain for “militarizing” the SouthAtlantic, following the deployment of the brand-new destroyer HMS Dauntless,together with an equally brand-new nuclear submarine…and Prince William, in theface of Argentina’s deliberate ratcheting up of tensions.

April 2 marks the thirtieth anniversaryof the Falklands War, which defined my early life and that of manyBritons. Some 3000 British andArgentinian soldiers, sailors and airmen perished in a two month war that shouldnever have been fought but which on 14 June was decisively won by Britain withthe surrender of “…all Argentine forces together with their impedimentia” toCommander, Land Forces, South Atlantic. Inspite of the heroic efforts of Argentine pilots in particular the Argentines weretaught a profound lesson about how to fight a war. Britain’s victory also led to the fall of anevil military junta in Buenos Aires that had killed thousands of its owncitizens. So, why on earth are we hereagain?

Kirchner seems to be falling into thesame trap as her incompetent predecessors. So, to assist Madame President to clear her befuddled mind here are thefacts of the matter. First, Buenos Airesis 1183 nautical miles or 1905 kilometres from PortStanley, the capital of the Falklands. Thisis not far short of the distance between London and Moscow. Even at the closest point Argentina is 437miles or 704 kilometres from the Falklands. Second, there have been British settlers onthe Falklands since 1833. This is beforeArgentina ever existed and before that date no-one had lived permanently on theislands. Today’s population of 3000islanders far from being the ‘transplanted population’ Argentina claims is indigenousto the Islands. Third, Mrs. Kirchner mightlike to pointedly ignore the existence of the Islanders, preferring instead tosuggest the Falklands is a colonial “anachronism”. In fact the Falkland Islands are a dependentterritory of Britain with the Islanders enjoying full rights to and ofself-determination. It is the Islanderswho control their own status and they choose to be British.

What seems to be at the heart of Mrs.Kirchner’s ‘fantasy’ are the natural resources that the waters around the Falklandscould yield. Under international law itis the right of the Falkland Islanders to decide the future of those resources –neither Britain nor Argentina.

So, where is this going? Argentina hasmanaged to corral other Latin American countries into banning from their ports shipsflying the Falkland Islands flag. Ifthat is the case then Falkland Island vessels will be re-flagged with Britishflags. If British ships are then bannedfrom Latin American ports then ships from Latin American ports will be banned fromEuropean ports. If Argentina alsosucceeds in blocking the air link between the Falklands and Chile then suchflights will be deemed as flying between Britain and Chile. If those flights are blocked all Argentine andindeed Chilean flights to Europe could well find themselves blocked.

Ironically, what seems to have promptedthis latest and blatant piece of Argentinian sabre-rattlinghas been the withdrawal from service last year of the Royal Navy’s erstwhileflagship, the aircraft-carrier HMS Ark Royal. Thirty years ago the Argentinian junta was prompted to invade theislands by the 1981 withdrawal of the previous HMS Ark Royal. Mrs. Kirchner seems to be making the samemistake having convinced herself that Britain is far weaker than is actuallythe case. If Argentina even thinks aboutmilitary action the Argentine armed forces will be taught the same lesson bytoday’s British armed forces as their forebears back in 1982. So, let us not go there.

Mrs. Kirchner last night called uponDavid Cameron to “give peace a chance”. It is not Britain that is creating this crisis or winding up the rhetoric. The only threat to the peace of the SouthAtlantic comes from Buenos Aires, not London or Port Stanley. So, be careful, Mrs. Kirchner, Britain willdefend to the end the right of the Islanders to self-determine their own allegiancesand their own future. Any attempts tointerfere in that will be met with robust diplomacy and if necessary force.

It is your call, Mrs. Kirchner. However,if I can offer you a piece of humble advice, wind down the aggressive languageand end once and for all your country’s absurd claim to the FalklandIslands. You cannot win this struggle sodo not start it.

The Falkland Islands. Don’t even thinkabout it Argentina.

Julian Lindley-French

Cameron's Munich?

2012-01-31T02:08:00.000-08:00

Alphen, The Netherlands. 31 January. Is this David Cameron’s Munich? It is not without historical irony that the only other country to stand with Britain over the Fiscal Compact at yesterday's EU Summit was the Czech Republic which Chamberlain sold out to Hitler at Munich in 1938. Last night Martin Callanan, the leader of British Conservatives in the European Parliament accused the Prime Minister of “appeasement”. Other Tory Euro-sceptics have accused Cameron of a “retreat” from his 9 December stand when he refused to permit other EU member-states to use the European Court of Justice to enforce the new Fiscal Compact so beloved of Chancellor Merkel.

2012 is not 1938 and on the face of it a mechanism for enforcing greater fiscal discipline amongst the Eurozone members based on stringent austerity is something over which Britain and Germany should be able to agree. The problem is that Cameron seems to have got nothing in return for his ‘adjustment’ which is either shabby politicking, bad negotiating or both. Concessions are never offered in EU negotiations without something in return. London claims that it has secured German ‘assurances’ that Berlin will not press ahead with any new financial services tax. I spoke this morning to my Berlin contacts and as far as they are concerned Berlin has given no such ‘assurances’. Neville Chamberlain of course infamously returned from Munich with ‘assurances’.

However, Britain should have concerns and at the very least Cameron must understand the wider implications of yesterday’s concession should the new Compact ever become a ratified treaty (big if). A precedent has now been established whereby the powers of a German-led EU can now be dramatically increased without the need for a new treaty agreed by all EU member-states. In principle this means that ‘pioneer groups’ can press ahead in all areas of EU ‘competence’, such as defence with a precedent now established for the bypassing of national vetoes.

Cameron also appears to have accepted the principle of a Britain politically subordinate to Germany and France when they choose to act in the guise of the EU. He has partly justified this on Germany’s “fierce” determination to push through the Compact. Since when did German “fierceness” define British policy? If that is indeed the case then London has changed its position not out of pragmatism or principle, but out of weakness.

What all of this reveals is the lack of a Cameron political strategy for Europe other than to keep his increasingly wretched coalition together. What is he actually trying to achieve in Europe? His belief that Britain can influence the single market from outside the Eurozone is dangerous folly. Fiscal Union will sooner or later close the political space that Britain has hitherto occupied. At some point Britain will have to decide; join the Euro (or its survivor currency) or leave the EU. The alternative is more taxation without representation.

The trouble is that whilst Cameron is usually tactically savvy he is strategically crass. Even on 9 December he sold his stand as being solely to safeguard Britain’s financial industry when the political principles at stake and upon which he should have stood were far, far bigger. He simply does not see the bigger picture. Consequently, there is a danger that even if there is a back-room ‘deal’ with Germany it will be seen by other Europeans as the abandonment of all political principle in the face of German pressure; the worst kind of wobbly weakness.

Publicly Cameron places much emphasis on legal redress. Foreign Secretary William Hague said over the weekend that, “If the use of the EU treaties at any point threatens Britain's fundamental rights under the EU treaties, or damages our vital interests such as the single market, then we would have to take action about that, including legal action”. This morning I went to the web-site of the same European Court of Justice (ECJ) who will be charged with ensuring fair play. Page 86 of the 2010 Annual Report should make for sober reading in Whitehall’s shabby corridors. Under the heading “Actions for Failure of a Member State to Fulfil its Obligations 2006-2010” it shows the UK in breach 21 times, Germany in breach 54 times and France in breach 63 times. Unless the ECJ really places justice above politics (which would be a first) some will be more equal before European law than others.

That said, given the dangers of a catastrophic Euro collapse Cameron’s ‘pragmatic scepticism’ should for the moment be given the benefit of the doubt. However, he must be held to account when he says he will be watching developments “like a hawk’’. Time and again I have heard British Prime Ministers cover retreat with such empty rhetoric. The dangers of a Eurozone collapse are very real and radical action is indeed needed, but not at the cost of turning the Union into an Imperium and Britain into a satellite of Germany.

Sadly, the most worrying of precedents is that henceforth Realpolitik will be the currency of change in the EU and much of it driven by German domestic opinion.

Is this Cameron’s Munich? No, not yet…but it could become so.

Julian Lindley-French

Deterring Iran: The Return to American Statecraft

2012-01-27T00:28:00.000-08:00

Alphen, the Netherlands. 27 January. On the tomb of Tamburlaine, King of Persia, there is a dread inscription, “When I rise, the world will tremble”. Faced with Tehran’s seeming determination to develop nuclear weapons the march towards confrontation this week quickened. After threats from Iran to close the oil-vital Straits of Hormuz an American aircraft carrier was joined in the Gulf by British and French warships. Sabres are rattling. The EU placed a ban on all new oil contracts with Iran and froze the assets of the Iranian Central Bank. Whilst not overtly supporting US and EU moves the Chinese Ambassador to London signalled Beijing’s concern that should Iran not develop nuclear weapons. And, on 29th January, inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Authority (IAEA) will arrive in Iran “to resolve all outstanding substantive issues”.

So, war is imminent. No. Forget the pattern of the last fifteen years. There will be no sudden missile strikes just yet. Deterring Iran will take a lot more than old-fashioned sabre-rattling or Cruise compulsion. Now is the time for the five elements of good old-fashioned American statecraft: the formal and clear enunciation of reasoned and reasonable goals upon which to construct a political coalition; the legitimisation of those goals through the United Nations Security Council, including the use of “all necessary means” if Iran does not comply; the formalisation of process via a grouping that will include the major global and regional players; the crafting of a clear set of criteria for the application of all elements of coercion on the spectrum from diplomatic to military action; and the building of a popular coalition through effective strategic communications, much of it via social media.

However, America is of itself insufficient to prevail. The unipolar moment has truly passed. Hard though it is to believe Europeans must also re-learn the art of strategic statecraft lost in the daily haggle that is the EU. Indeed, whilst the EU may have notched up its sanctions regime, there is little or no appetite amongst European allies to move beyond that. After ten years of Afghanistan and Iraq Europe is retreating behind the thin walls of a rhetorical fortress. Even the most pressing of dangers are unlikely to shift the focus from not-saving the Euro with only Britain and France to any meaningful extent still left in the military business.

The US is moving away from a terrorism-related, global policing mission creep back to a much more traditional strategy of strike and punish. Fortress Europe/Strike America is in essence a new strategic modesty driven by precipitous economic decline and reinforced by the rise of China and others onto the world stage no longer willing to accept Western liberal criteria as the basis for global security governance. Threaten military action too soon and America will find itself isolated. Act too late and the world will have changed for the immeasurably worse. Iran does pose a strategic threat.

However, for credible pressure to be built on Tehran whilst agreement within the West is the sine qua non such a ‘plan’ (I cannot stand ‘road-map’ as they never go anywhere) must also be worked up with an unlikely coalition including China, India, Russia and critically the Gulf States and Saudi Arabia. Israel’s critical stake can of course only be uttered in hushed Washington corridors, but managing Tel Aviv will for obvious reasons be critical to American statecraft.

In short, Iran is the first real test of a new world order in which institutions such as the United Nations whilst important to the legitimisation of all attempts to coerce Iran to desist will be secondary to the great power politics that is driving systemic change. In that context Europe must decide if it still in the game or merely the powerless led. There is a world beyond the Euro.

The alternative is stark. Iran will get the ‘bomb’ steering a course through the wide gap that today exists in credible and effective global security governance. If Iran succeeds then the world will be very different from the instant Tehran announces its membership of the nuclear club. Indeed, it is hard to see either Israel or Saudi Arabia accepting such a step change in Iran’s power. The old rationalism of mutually-assured destruction that suffused the Cold War will have little place in the Middle East. The clock is very clearly ticking towards conflict.

To many Americans this call for American statecraft will sound European, woolly and messy, but it is simply reality; the consequence of the world in which the West must now enact its strategic business - patient politics of give-and-take. For, as Christopher Marlowe writes in his epic Tamburlaine the Great, “Wilt thou have war, then shake the blade; if peace, restore it to my hands again, And I will sheathe it, and confirm the same”.

Julian Lindley-French

Be Britain Still to Britain True

2012-01-25T05:47:00.000-08:00

Alphen, the Netherlands. 25 January. Tonight is Burns Night, beloved of patriotic Scots the world over as they commemorate the 1759 birth of one of Scotland’s most famous sons, the poet Robert Burns. It is for this reason the Scottish First Minister and romantic separatist Alex Salmond has chosen today to outline his plans to hold a 2014 referendum on Scottish independence, the seven hundredth anniversary of the 1314 Battle of Bannockburn. If Salmond has his way he will endeavour as much as is possible to limit the referendum to those who agree with his plans to dismember the United Kingdom, thus denying all expat Scots the right to a vote. Salmond also avoids the irony of citing the Bard; Burns was no Scottish nationalist. As the Bard wrote, “Be Britain still to Britain true, Amang oursels united; For never but by British hands, Maun British wrangs be righted”. As for Bannockburn, it was indeed a decisive 'Scottish’ victory over the English and Welsh and for a time victory strengthened King Robert. However, Salmond's concept of medieval Scotland is pure romantic fiction. Nice story though.

Julian Lindley-French

The Oxford Handbook of War

2012-01-23T00:55:00.000-08:00

Alphen, The Netherlands, 23 January. Have you ever had a Roadrunner/Coyote moment? I step onto my stairs and the next thing I know I am horizontal, paddling furiously to deny gravity and then with a thunderous crash discover that Sir Isaac Newton may have had a point and that I really should have concentrated more in physics lessons. I crash down back first and then bounce down the stairs step by step to the bottom. “Oh, bother (or a word to that effect)” I think. “Something is clearly not right”.

What a strange week. My new Oxford mega-book comes out...and I fall down the stairs. The two are not necessarily connected. Cracked ribs and huge bruises with my reputation for being accident-prone reinforced utterly with my Dutch wife. Being a man it was of course not my fault, but rather the result of a serious design fault in the stairs. As I write this I am laid out on my sofa. I can move but don't make me larf!

My timing as ever was impeccable. I was about to leave for London to attend a high-level meeting with senior NATO officials to discuss the future of the Alliance. Naturally, my enforced absence means that NATO is now doomed. Oh well.

So, humour me awhile as I share a moment of pride. The Oxford Handbook of War is unique. It is my fourth book and my second for Oxford University, my alma mater. It has taken five years to research, plan, structure, prepare, write and edit. It is certainly no 'pot boiler' being almost 600 pages in length over some 45 chapters and considers war in all its forms – strategic, historical, political, military, social and economic.

The Handbook has been a joint collaboration with my old friend and co-conspirator Professor Yves Boyer of the Ecole Polytechnique in Paris. Who says the English and French never get on? ‘Research’ of course occasioned many hours sipping excellent French wine in Yves’s wonderful home overlooking the Loire Valley. Yes, I suffer for my art. Vive, l’entente intellectuelle!

In preparing the Handbook we have been supported by over forty leading thinkers, policy-makers and practitioners from across the globe - Brazil, China, Europe, India and the United States. Indeed, the Handbook is graced by chapters from the British and Dutch Chiefs of Defence Staff, as well as a former US Ambassador to NATO and NATO’s Deputy Supreme Allied Commander, Europe. Why did we set out on such an ambitious project? Well, the reason shines through every page; to prevent war through the better understanding of it.

The Handbook has also been nominated for the prestigious Duke of Westminster’s Medal for Military Literature, my second book to be so honoured. The book is also a gift to the Netherlands Defence Academy where I have had the honour to be the Eisenhower Professor of Defence Strategy for the past few years. I hope they notice.

So that’s the plug. Now, let me offer those of you contemplating writing such a book a few words of advice. You do not write a book, you live it. Indeed, a book is rather like a movie in that it needs a cast of many to happen. And, like a movie a book needs commitment heart and soul over many years before that special day when you holds it in your hands. One other thing; you will not become a millionaire.

The active support of an excellent publisher is vital. In this case the support of my publisher Oxford University Press has been invaluable, particularly the utterly professional Dominic Byatt, Elizabeth Suffling and team.

So, if you want to understand war then I humbly recommend a copy of the Oxford Handbook of War because as Plato once so poignantly put it, “only the dead have seen the end of war”. Sadly, there is nothing I can see of this world that convinces me otherwise. There is no glory in war, but sometimes it must be fought.

So, forgive this moment of self-satisfaction. And don’t worry, it will not go to my head – pride after all has come AFTER a fall.

As for the film rights – I see Russell Crowe playing me...or maybe Jeremy Irons.

Julian Lindley-French

Why Britain Can Never Accept German Leadership

2012-01-18T05:45:00.000-08:00

Alphen, the Netherlands. 18 January. Regular followers of my musings will recall that in my blog of last week from the no Snow Meeting in Lithuania I came over all Churchillian and suggested that Britain would never accept German leadership even though Germany will emerge from the European crisis as Europe’s leading power. I stand by that assertion – Britain will never accept German leadership. History is still far too close for that ever to happen. Some of you rightly gave me flak (excuse the pun) over that statement because in isolation it came across as German-bashing. So let me expand on my analysis but put it in a more positive context and explain why a new political partnership between Britain and Germany is vital for both Germany and Europe. Indeed, with another Eurozone kerfuffle about to happen it is important that Berlin accepts and understands that any attempt to shackle Britain will fail. There are three essential factors; economic, political and military.

Economic: Britain is too powerful and too different a European economic actor to accept sole German charge of Europe’s economic future. A range of respected economic commentators, including Goldman Sachs and the Paris School of Economics, suggest that by 2025 the British economy will be significantly bigger than that of France and not much smaller than that of Germany.

Political: Germany, ever haunted by its Nazi past will rightly seek to exercise leadership via the European Union. In such circumstances the European Commission would become a kind of civil service with the European Council reduced to a weak version of the US Senate or House of Lords. So many countries will be indebted to Berlin that German leadership will reach into the national political and economic life of other European countries far more extensively than, say, the Americans during the Cold War. Indeed, the EU’s writ runs far wider than NATO. There must be a loyal opposition to Germany and that can only be Britain.

Military: As Germany becomes more powerful it will become less military – history again. The security and defence of Europe could well be put at risk. This is not least because the US is signalling the beginning of a partial withdrawal from Europe. Thus, the defence of Europe is dangerously weak even as dangerous change takes place around Europe’s borders. As they look beyond Afghanistan both the US and UK will shift away from a continental strategy focussed on Europe towards a maritime strategy that goes beyond Europe. The British for a whole host of military-strategic, intelligence and cultural reasons will follow the Americans whatever happens in Europe. At least this will also mean that at least one European country retaining a commitment to big defence, whatever the short-term cuts to the British defence budget.

Germany will champion a new continental strategy, probably in the guise of a new European strategic culture that will be military-lite in the extreme. The fact and nature of German power will thus cede the defence leadership of Europe to the British. And, indeed the French, if London and Paris can learn to stop scoring ridiculously cheap political points off each other. Germany will thus need Britain to lead the serious defence of Europe.

Therefore, Germany needs London to have the political vision and ambition to forge a political partnership with Germany that would itself legitimise German leadership across much of Europe. That is indeed the private message I am getting from all my trips of late across Europe and why the prospect of Britain disengaging from the EU causes so much concern. Thankfully, there is quite a lot happening behind the scenes that may lead to such a political accommodation.

If not, a decisive shift in the European political balance of power towards Berlin would inevitably push Britain towards the EU exit. Indeed, by accepting German leadership Britain would be tacitly accepting a European Imperium. Britain would over time be reduced to super-Belgium; forced to render unto Caesar what Caesar wanted, not what Caesar deserved nor indeed needed. By Britain standing firm Germany is and must be forced to deal with London as a Great Power, not another European satellite, however irritating that may appear to some in Berlin.

However, to realise such a political partnership London must re-discover grand strategy. In effect, Britain must become to Germany what France has been for many years to the US - difficult but necessary. Whitehall’s acquiescence to Washington might have bought Britain important access to key American defence assets, but it has too often come at the price of strategic subservience and an appallingly risk-averse, astrategic political culture. That must end.

Just for the record some of my best friends are German…really!

Julian Lindley-French

Why the UK is Worth Preserving

2012-01-15T22:19:00.000-08:00

Alphen, the Netherlands. 16 January. Winston Churchill once famously said of US leaders that they could normally be relied upon to make the right decision, but only after every other option had been exhausted. Today he might well have said the same thing about British leaders save for one thing; they make the wrong decision after every other option has been exhausted…and have done now for many years. This serial failure of London’s political class can be seen in Britain’s rapid decline which provides the context for Scottish separatism. With the prospect of a Scottish referendum on independence decline could soon turn into disintegration.

When I was a lad those pressing for Scottish independence were confined to a rather dotty minority known as the ‘lunatic Celtic fringe’. Today, upwards of 30% of Scots apparently want to press the Braveheart button. And, if a majority of Scots did indeed vote for independence I would of course accept and respect that decision even if it meant the subservience of both English and Scots to a Brussels that would rarely if ever act in the interests of either.

However, it is not the Scots that concern me but the English. According to a poll in yesterday’s Sunday Telegraph the group keenest to see Scottish independence are the utterly fed-up English. Why are so many of the English apparently so keen on breaking up the Union?

It all comes down to the dawning realisation amongst the English that successive British governments have put the interests and well-being of minorities, both from within the Isles and beyond, before their own. The political Left is fixated on a hyper-immigration driven effort to recreate the class war they believe gives them power. The business Right would seemingly be happy to see the entire country unemployed if it meant it could import and exploit foreigners. The result is that the hard-pressed English are subsidising everybody, but getting very little back in return. The normally docile English have had enough.

There are a whole host of practical reaons why the Union is worth preserving normally to do with money, but four strategic reasons stand out. First, there is little evidence smaller states do economically better than bigger states, particularly in times of economic crisis. The 21st century will place a premium on big states, particularly as institutions such as the EU fail. Indeed, so profound is the current crisis it is quite simply the worst possible moment for Alec Salmond, the Scottish Nationalist Party (SNP) leader to cut Scotland off from England. He says independence would re-invigorate the friendship and ties between England and Scotland. He clearly has not been to England of late. The English, who make up over 80% of the population of the British Isles, would make Scotland pay.

Second, the Scots do very well out of the UK. To hear SNP leaders talk of English ‘interference’ is a bit rich. The Scots have for many years been over-represented in both Westminster and influence over England. Indeed, the English have been forced to subsidise/bribe the Scots through the hideously unfair Barnett Formula. Salmond counters that all the oil and gas that has been squandered over the last forty years was in fact Scottish – not according to international law. And, I really wonder whether Scotland would be a big enough platform for the Scottish genius for leadership. Post-independence Scots would be barred from London.

Third, for all the strategic incompetence of Westminster the UK still counts for something as a ‘brand’ in international politics. The collapse of the UK would only strengthen political adversaries. The peoples of the British Isles would thus be ever more subject to the whims and prejudices of others. Ask the Irish what they think of German and French leadership of the Eurozone. Sadly, I am sure there are those in Brussels, Berlin and Paris at this very moment considering how they can advance and facilitate the break-up of the UK.

Fourth, and by far the most important factor, such a split would be utterly artificial and reflective of a particular, peculiar political moment, rather than the underlying facts of contemporary British society. Indeed, who is English or Scottish these days, or indeed Welsh or Northern Irish? My grandmother was a Scot which means I could play football for Scotland, both the spherical and ovoid codes, if it were not for the fact I am old, slow, fat and rubbish.

It is not just a question of the English and Scottish being so interwoven that, given the world of the 21st century makes any call to nationalism on either side romantic twaddle. There is also a question as to who should have the right to vote. Be it as an Englishman with close Scottish antecedents or as a Briton I find the whole idea that a few narrowly-defined ‘Scots’ can decide the constitutional fate of the United Kingdom utterly pernicious. That would be one unfairness too far for the English, Welsh and Northern Irish and that is the essential point.

The greatest danger to the Union is not Salmond’s romantic Scottish nationalism but the reactive English nationalism it could trigger. It would be a nationalism born not only of Scottish independence but of all the other inequities, unfairnesses and frustrations the English have had imposed upon them these many years past in the name of ‘social justice’ – the new discrimination. Sadly, it is English nationalism Salmond seems only too keen to encourage.

Sadly, Britain would not be in this position were it not for London’s repeated mistakes, which represent the second greatest danger to the UK...or maybe the first.

Julian Lindley-French

No Snow in Lithuania

2012-01-13T00:51:00.000-08:00

Trakai Castle, Lithuania. 13 January. The Snow Meeting is famous. Every January Lithuania brings together prime ministers, foreign and defence ministers from across what is increasingly referred to as the Nordic Baltic region, together with senior American, French, and German officials and commentators. The British were of course not there. Shame. Thankfully, Blogonaut Friendly-Clinch was in full Churchillian flow at one point asserting that “Britain would NEVER accept German leadership” (adopt suitable Churchillian tones). The old man would have been proud of me.

As I draft this I am gazing across a wistful winter lake at a real-life, make-believe castle dusted by the late snow of an unusually warm Lithuanian winter. We did the rounds of the usual suspect subjects – one feels the warm breath of Russia always in Lithuania, NATO was no-goed, although for once I may have come up with a good idea for the forthcoming Chicago Summit by suggesting the Strategic Concept be reinforced by a Strategic Contract. The European Onion was peeled, skinned and dissected…again, and much time was spent considering America’s retreat from Europe. The Grim Banker sat silent in the corner.

However, what really struck me was the significance of a Nordic Baltic Grouping. What could it possibly mean? The “Nordic-Baltic 8”, or NB8 as it known in the awful parlance of international wonkery, sounds like a group of wrongly-convicted political prisoners. On the face of it there is little in common between them other than a large expanse of water – the Baltic Sea…and perhaps yet another European idea in search of a bureaucracy. Three reasons:

The first is Germany. All roads lead to Berlin. The many new bridge, road and railway projects discussed all had one thing in common – Germany. To appropriately mix my metaphors Berlin is cementing its political leadership of Europe by hard-wiring Germany into the physical centre of Europe. The Nordic Baltic 8 flank Germany to the north. As such the ‘8’ have very little to do with balancing Russia, which was seen more irritant than threat, but influencing Germany. The old East-West European axis is being replaced by a new North-South axis with Germany the 'pivot' (this month's fashionable word in the strategy boutiques).

The second reason is energy and here Russia will be an issue. Massive oil and gas reserves are being discovered in the Barents Sea and Greenland, still nominally Danish. An arc of energy will soon stretch from Canada to Russia via the ‘High North’. The Nordic region in particular will become the epicentre of the new energy geopolitics. This could also lead to renewed tensions with Russia, both in terms of competition over the exploitation of said resources and because over time Europe could well be weaned off Russian energy. The Kremlin needs high oil and gas incomes to maintain its grip. If Russia sneezes the Baltic States catch cold.

The third reason represents nothing less than a revolution in strategic affairs and will turn the world on its head. As the Arctic ice melts the fabled North West Passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific will become real, linked to a new North East Passage via Northern Norway. This change to global trading and energy shipping patterns will be so profound as to revolutionise the way the world makes money. Norway’s North Cape will become the new Cape of Good Hope. Canada’s Baffin Island will become the new Cape Horn. The Middle East will be by-passed together with much of the piracy-strewn Indian and Pacific Oceans. In time China, Japan, Russia and Central Asia might well look north for their ports and trade routes, rather than south and east.

So, implicit in this modest meeting of modest people in a beautiful place was not just another regional wrangle, but the forthcoming revolution in strategic affairs that will do much to define the twenty-first century world. This makes America’s decision to retreat from Europe all the more silly, just as it makes Europe’s decision to retreat from strategic reality all the more dangerous. Indeed, the world will not just ‘pivot’ on Asia, it will also ‘pivot’ on the two High Norths of Continental North America and Europe; the new Super-Highways for the ‘Global Commons’. A meaningful US-European strategic partnership will be critical to the security of both.

Therefore, the transatlantic relationship will be as important in the twenty-first century as it was in the twentieth and the Nordic-Baltic states will be on the front-line. When I come to the Baltic States I am always reminded why we need NATO and the European Union, which is today little apparent in the old, tired West of Europe. The proud, decent people of Lithuania deserve our support and our solidarity.

Or maybe it is just that the cold, clear air of Europe’s east clears my befuddled strategic brain. Shame there was no real snow though.

Julian Lindley-French

Beaufort: Why We Must Leave Afghanistan Now, Not End 2014

2012-01-09T00:52:00.000-08:00

Alphen, the Netherlands. 9 January. Beaufort is a great film. It tells the story of a platoon of young Israeli soldiers at the turn of this century pointlessly asked to defend an isolated, old Crusader fort deep in Hezbollah-controlled southern Lebanon at the very end of a failed occupation. One-by-one they die, with the only apparent point to their sacrifice being to ease the embarrassment of their squabbling political masters back in Tel Aviv. Swap Lebanon for Afghanistan.

As a professor of defence strategy I know there are times when given the dangerous world in which we live the West must regrettably use force. Equally, I also know that on such occasions people are going to die – enemies, bystanders and our own soldiers. Therefore, I take my profession, my thinking and my guidance very seriously; especially as I am conceited enough to believe my opinion may on occasions count for just a modest something.

On each occasion when our forces are sent into action I ask myself six simple questions concerning objective, strategy, cost and performance. Specifically, I seek to understand the aim and that said aim is properly clarified and weighed against the necessary method and resources - strategy. 1. Is the use of force, the size of the force and its method appropriate to the achievement of a just political objective? 2. Is there a clear strategy for success? 3. Are the minimum conditions for ‘success’ achievable and understood? 4. Is the use of force legitimate in the eyes of the international community and the region to which the force is being sent? 5. Is there sufficient political will and capital at home to sustain such an effort? 6. Are the resources committed sufficient to succeed?

Even back in 2001 none of my six questions could be answered unequivocally in the affirmative. However, such was the impact and gravity of the attacks on New York and Washington and so clearly was Afghanistan the focal point for Al Qaeda activity that a significant response was called for. However, in the wake of the killing of Osama Bin Laden, the US withdrawal from Iraq, the drawdown of forces in Afghanistan, the now decisive shift in US defence strategy away from such types of engagement and given the depth of the West’s economic crisis, and after much careful thought I no longer believe that any of my six questions can be answered in the affirmative.

1. There is now no clear link between the use of force in Afghanistan and the achievement of something that would look like a stable Afghanistan;

2. There is no clear strategy for success other than the blind hope that the training of Afghan National Security Forces will somehow lead to the creation of a single institutional pillar that can in and of itself sustain a stable Afghanistan post-2014. Forces the paper expansion of which has been so fast that there are clear signs of infiltration by the Taliban and other elements;

3. Some progress has been made on the ground in support of the Afghan people but there is no longer any real chance that legitimate governance, just rule of law and a stable society will be realised in Afghanistan. Far from it – Afghanistan’s venal political class under President Karzai show no signs of getting to grips with the rampant corruption and above-the-law warlords that so corrode Afghanistan’s present and future;

4. With Bin Laden now dead the use of drone strikes is further undermining a failing Pakistan not only critical to the US-led coalition strategy but which is now working to defeat it. And, there is very little meaningful support from the rest of the so-called international community;

5. There is little or no political or popular will back in Western capitals to sustain such an effort. The two key actors, the US and UK, have both made it clear that they need to retrench to fix their ailing economies. The other European members of the coalition never believed in the mission, doing just enough as they saw it to keep the US engaged and paying for much of their own security. All-important unity of effort and purpose is thus a myth. Indeed, the suggestion that some Coalition forces may stay on beyond the end of 2014 is at best fanciful and at worst dangerously misguided; and

6. The gap between the resources available, the use of those resources and strategy-friendly outcomes it generates is now beyond closure.

Therefore, very little that will be done between now and the end of 2014 will make any real difference to the situation in Afghanistan. President Karzai is already doing deals with key Hazara, Pashtun, Tajik and Uzbek ‘politicians’ over a dark future. Afghanistan’s neighbours sit on the periphery like vultures waiting to pick over the bones of a shattered, resource-rich country. Meanwhile, military commanders and their civilian counterparts tick their boxes and file their optimistic command chain reports deluding themselves that they are making real progress. There comes a point when ‘can do’ simply becomes ridiculous. The peace process? What peace process?

And with at least two years to go before all major combat and stability operations end it is likely that hundreds will die and thousands maimed, not to mention the many Afghan and Pakistani civilians who will die alongside them. The Taliban and Al Qaeda? There are other ways to skin those cats.

Afghanistan was always a risk but the essential failing from the outset was to equate ridding the space quickly of Al Qaeda (achieved relatively quickly) with ‘doing good’ by Western liberal criteria and then to organise poorly both the effort and the resources.

Therefore, unless there is a clear reinjection of political capital and resources at the highest levels in Washington and London (forget the rest) to afford our forces all-important mission momentum I can no longer defend the killing or maiming of one more American, British or Coalition soldier.

Failing such a commitment pull our forces out now, politicians. And watch Beaufort. You owe it you our young men and women who have made the supreme sacrifice on your behalf.

Julian Lindley-French

Leaner, Meaner and Weaker. The New US Defence Strategy

2012-01-06T01:32:00.000-08:00

Alphen, the Netherlands. 6 January. Reality dawned cold yesterday on a grey January Washington. The Americans have now followed their British allies in conceding that after a decade of extended conflict the first line of defence is and must be the US economy. Indeed, echoing many a past (and not so past) British defence review the rendering weaker of an already hard-pressed US military was explained away as the maintenance of US “…military superiority with armed forces that are agile, flexible and ready for the full range of contingencies and threats”. Nice try, Mr President.

In his foreword to “Sustaining US Global Leadership: Priorities for 21st Century Defense”, President Obama pointed to the very hard choices America must now make to credibly defend itself in a world very changed since this difficult century began twelve years ago. ‘Choice ‘in defence strategy always means weakness. Two questions stare out from this review like rabbit eyes in headlights. First, will the world permit America such ‘choices’? Second, what does this cold dawn mean for defence-naked Europeans?

Here are the facts of the matter. The US military will become leaner ('cut' in plain-English) with the aim of “maintaining superiority” where it matters for 21st century America – Asia-Pacific. There will be cuts worth at least $450bn, although given the size of the US deficit this could be the merely the harbinger of much deeper cuts and programme delays. Indeed, the defence budget could lose an immediate additional $500bn this year due to the inability of the US Congress to agree deficit reduction. There will likely be a 10-15% cut in the size of the US Army and Marine Corps over the next decade. Critically, US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said that with the Iraq War now over and the Afghan War soon to be declared over the US military, “…will no longer need to be sized to support the large-scale, long term stability operations that dominated military priorities and force-generation over the past decade”. Until now US military strategy has held that the US military must be able to fight two medium-to-large scale wars simultaneously. That strategy is now dead.

Will the world permit America the luxury of choosing which wars to fight and how to fight them? The answer is probably no IF the US still wishes to remain THE superpower. The simple truth is that implicit in this review is a very hard grand strategic realisation by the Americans that they will in time lose their superpower status. Indeed, the President explicitly suggests in the review that the economic is the true font of power. This implicitly suggests an acceptance by the US that China will in time emerge as the balancer of American power. This explains the shift away from Europe to Asia-Pacific and the need for Asian and Australasian allies.

The military-strategic implications of the review reflect that grand strategic judgement and are no less profound. In essence the US is resorting back to a strike and punish posture and away from the grand stabilisation strategy which was the essence of America’s post-Cold War engagement. Partly driven by the nature of post-911 counterinsurgency operations and partly driven by the sensibilities of European allies who can never go anywhere beyond Europe unless they leave a place looking like Europe, the US military was sucked into stabilisation operations for which the US military was not best suited or prepared. The dangerous inference in the new strategy is that henceforth the US will only fight nice, neat and ‘clean’ wars. Oh that the world was so accommodating.

For Europeans this should really be a wakeup call. Sadly Europe’s strategic sleeping Rip van Winkles are far too gone for that. Indeed, the link between defence strategy and military capability was long ago broken in Europe. Until yesterday the transatlantic relationship involved Europeans pretending to be serious about defence and the Americans pretending to believe them. This has left NATO about as hollowed out and militarily robust as an ice cream cone. That must now end.

America will still ‘strategically reassure’ Eastern Europe against those troublesome Russians, military technology permits that and in any case Moscow is not really going to invade any NATO/EU member just yet. Beyond NATO's frontier is an entirely different question. However, the choice for Europeans implicit in the 2011 operations over Libya has suddenly become far more pressing. Either do far more as ‘Europe’ in and around Europe to enable US forces to focus on Asia-Pacific, or in time add some limited capability in support of the US.

My bet that is that as the Eurozone crisis leads inevitably to a tighter core political grouping organised around Germany the EU will become the focus for Franco-German-led ‘European’ security and defence efforts. The British will then join a US-led grouping that includes Australia, Canada, Japan and possibly even India.

NATO? It will be left to focus in its remaining days on maintaining what is called military interoperability (the ability to work together) between forces that increasingly talk a very different strategic language. Indeed, implicit in the new US defence strategy is a world view very different from that of Continental Europeans. Alliances can survive such dissonance for only so long.

Yesterday the world became ever so slightly colder, America ever so slightly weaker and Europeans ever so slightly naked. A new day has indeed dawned. It is time for Europe to wake up.

Julian Lindley-French (Eisenhower Professor of Defence Strategy)

Another Day, Another Race Row

2012-01-05T04:28:00.000-08:00

Alphen, the Netherlands. 5 January. Another day, another race row. Britain really is losing the plot on race. This morning black Labour MP Diane Abbott tweeted that, ''White people love playing 'divide & rule'. We should not play their game''. No sooner had she de-tweeted than the airwaves were full of accusations of racism and calls for her to resign from her position on Labour’s front bench. The country is particularly sensitive to race this week in the wake of the way-too-late sentencing of two racist thugs for the murder of a young, black man almost nineteen years ago, but that does not excuse today's over-reaction. Diane Abbott is an exceptional Labour MP for whom I have a lot of respect, not least because she has the courage of her convictions.

That said, what the latest row has revealed is just how dangerous the elite’s obsession with race is to British democracy and community relations. One cannot turn on British radio or television these days without some worthy lecturing us on the evils of racism and implying that all we white people are racists simply by the fact of ourselves. Sadly, I was never conscious of my colour nor indeed that of others before Britain’s PC madness started. Like many of my 'race' (I find the whole concept awful) I believe all are equal under the law and all and everyone worthy of my respect until they prove otherwise.

Unfortunately, many ordinary, decent white people now believe that race laws only apply to them. And that their just concerns about the changing nature of society due to the hyper-immigration that governments have either encouraged or failed to control are being not just ignored, but suppressed. If a law is perceived by a majority to be unfair not only the law falls into disrepute but the system which created it, especially if that same majority believe government is failing them.

The essential problem is one of political philosophy. I know I have used De Tocqueville’s quote a couple of times but his suggestion that political liberty is easily lost because democratic peoples want equality even if it means losing liberty sums up Britain today. Indeed, Britain’s ever more desperate search for the appearance of absolute equality all the time in all circumstances to mask the failure of policy is slowly but surely eroding liberty. The 500% increase in the number of laws on the statute since 1997 is concrete proof. It is as though the Establishment has been turning slowly Marxist without anyone noticing…until now.

I do not agree with what Ms Abbott said, nor do I like what it implies about her views, although I still like and respect her. Hers is a voice that needs to be heard. However, I defend her right to say it. It is called freedom of speech and the whole point of such freedoms is that whilst one has a responsibility to consider what one says within reason one also has the right to say it unless it is directly inciting an act of violence or hatred. Ms Abbott was certainly not doing that. The alternative is the policing of thought. Do we really want to go there? Perhaps we do in which case Britain will no longer be my country.

By the way, the normal PC suspects are strangely quiet on this occasion. Now there’s a surprise! So much for principle.

Get a grip, Britain!

Julian Lindley-French

Welcome to the Twenty-First Century. It Starts Right Now!

2012-01-02T01:32:00.000-08:00

Alphen, the Netherlands. 2 January. It was the best of times; it was the worst of times. My 2012 started here in my beautiful little Dutch village chatting with my nice Dutch neighbours amid the clatter of many thousands of burning Euros being shot into the sky or exploding in brief, bright and brilliant suns.

On New Year’s Eve Alphen seemed a million miles from reality in that fleeting moment when the New Year illuminates the old and casts it to mature into the giant whisky vat of history. And yet even during the brief truce in reality between Christmas and New Year change was regrouping. And, as the smoke clears the strategic landscape has subtly but most profoundly changed. Ten years late the old century has finally passed and the new one is finally upon us.

On 24 December the second round of voting began in Egypt’s parliamentary elections. These elections are crucial not only because of the importance of Egypt in the Arab world, but also because they illuminate the political direction of travel of the Middle East. Specifically, if the Islamist parties do well, as seems likely, Egypt could become the pioneer of a new twenty-first century phenomenon – the legitimate Arab Islamist state. Critical will be the extent to which Islamism embraces democracy and whether indeed it can. One man (or woman), one vote once would simply mark yet another false Arab dawn. Egypt will be central to the stability of the Middle East and its political identity.

On 25 December German President Christian Wulff said that Germany would offer “solidarity to Europe” in “a spirit of unity” to point the way out of the Eurozone crisis. A close ally of Chancellor Merkel President Wulff said that Europe is “our common home,” the values of which must be defended jointly. 2012 will indeed be the true test of German leadership in Europe as Berlin grapples with the Eurozone crisis…and the British. For Europe much will depend on how much Germany is willing to pay for this ‘spirit of unity’ and the leadership of Europe it confers.

Beijing announced on 27 December that the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) would begin looking for oil in Afghanistan’s Amu Darya Basin which is estimated to hold around 87 million barrels of oil. As the West prepares to leave Afghanistan having spent huge amount of treasure and at the cost of many lives China and the neighbours are preparing to exploit Afghanistan’s estimated $1 trillion of mineral and fossil fuel reserves. Much of the first half of the century will be about China’s rapacious search for energy. Indeed, only sustained economic growth will offset the marked absence of political liberty in China. China’s move into Afghanistan also marks another step on the road to a new bipolar world that will be dominated by Beijing and Washington.

On 29 December economists at the Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR) announced that Brazil had overtaken Britain as the world’s 6th largest economy. They also predicted that India and Russia would enjoy surges in growth as the old West stagflates in what the CEBR called Europe’s ‘lost decade’. The only consolation for the British was that the CEBR confidently predicts that by 2020 Britain would have a significantly larger economy than that of France. Here we go again. In fact Brazil will find it very hard to turn such paper wealth into power but Britain and France really do now need to decide the extent of their strategic ambitions and how on Earth they can act together.

On 1 January Iran announced that it had successfully test-fired a medium-range surface-to-air missile equipped with the “latest technology” and “intelligent systems”, during military exercises in the Gulf. This followed reports that the West was intending further sanctions against Tehran aimed at Iran’s oil and financial sectors because of Iran’s seeming determination to build nuclear weapons. Ten days of Iranian naval exercises in the Straits of Hormuz signalled Tehran’s response; the closure of the world’s most important oil shipping lane in the event of a future confrontation with the United States and its European allies. Behind all of this posturing lies Persian Iran’s strategic ambitions to dominate its Arab region.

Put simply the power state is back. Unfortunately, the European West in particular seems incapable of thinking big enough to cope with this new/old reality. First, the Eurozone crisis is of such severity that rather like heroin addicts many European leaders would sell their peoples’ futures for a short-term political fix rather than deal with the real problem. As Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker put it over Christmas, “We know how to solve the problem, we just do not know how to get re-elected afterwards”. Oh, for just one truly great leader! Second, Europe only recognises as much strategy as it can afford…which is not a lot. Third, the foreign and security departments of European states are today brim full of counter-terrorism experts and aid and development specialists who skew the focus of national strategies towards failed states and civil strife. Such parochial ambitions are funded at the expense of balanced defence efforts. This is old strategy for an old world.

The twenty-first century will be a big power, big state century. Power will be organised either around big states via informal regional groupings or though institutions such as the new European Union with one such state at its core.

Welcome to the twenty-first century. It starts right now!

Julian Lindley-French

In Shadows Deep

2011-12-30T02:17:00.000-08:00

Alphen, the Netherlands. 30 December. Just before Christmas I received an email from a friend of mine for whom I have great respect and have known many a year. He is a fifty-something and like me a tired British social democrat and one-time believer in the great idea that was Europe. His email came as a shock. He suggested that I was ‘right’, the Eurozone crisis had parted the waves of Euro-speak to reveal Germany and France for what they have always been, Britain’s natural and irreconcilable enemies. I beg to differ.

My friend had been following closely my strident defence of Britain in the teeth of the Eurozone crisis and my critique of Germany and France for their flawed and self-assumed ‘leadership’ in the name of ‘Europe’. Not a natural ally of mine the Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Junker summed up the flawed strategy perfectly when he said, “we know how to solve the problem, we just do not know how to get re-elected afterwards”.

French political thinker Alexis de Tocqueville wrote in the nineteenth century that political liberty is easily lost because democratic peoples want equality even if it means losing liberty. Germany and France are trying to achieve something much more ambitious - leadership, equality and democracy in crisis. That does not make Germany and France enemies. Yes, it is a fairly fundamental squabble about who is in charge of Europe and how it should be organised but my objection has not been in principle to the leadership of Berlin and Paris, but rather their attempts to exclude London.

My friend's email also touched on much deeper issues that all of us in our fifties and beyond are forced to consider. None of us can expect to die from the land into which we were born. Change happens. However, since my 1958 birth the change that has taken place in my land of Europe has been so revolutionary – for better and for worse. Like him and millions of my fellow time-travellers I do indeed feel alienated not least because much of the change has been imposed upon me. He is also right that ‘positive’ discrimination does indeed condemn many men in their fifties to the wastes of ‘freelancery’ (unemployment without benefits). But we are where we are.

Weak governments Europe-wide are now forced to make difficult choices to manage the dangerous consequences of their previous inactions. Youth unemployment is soaring, populations are rising seemingly uncontrollably and social and cultural diversity now challenges old concepts of society. Britain is a case in point. One only has to look at the place to realise that the London-elite are utterly detached from the everyday reality of ordinary Britons.

So why do I persevere sending out blogs into the unfathomable ether? It is precisely because I do feel alienated from the political process however futile my blogging may on occasions seem. Far from retreating from politics now is the moment to engage. Indeed, if I do not engage liberty in Europe will slowly die. And, strangely, being a fifties-something man I have earned the liberty not to cow-tow to anyone, however powerful or important they believe themselves to be.

Irish poet W.B. Yeats once wrote; “When you are old and grey and full of sleep, and nodding by the fire, take down this book, and slowly read, and dream of the soft look, your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep”.

So, my friend, I am sorry you misunderstood my meaning but Germany and France are not Britain’s enemies, they are not even friends, they are family. The shadows are indeed deep but there is always hope and you too must engage for the sake of our Europe.

Happy New Year!

Julian Lindley-French

Is Britain Going Mad?

2011-12-22T03:06:00.000-08:00

Alphen, the Netherlands. 22 December. Is Britain going mad? Please someone tell me it is not so. Sitting here on this side of the Channel I have been following over the past couple of days what passes for a debate on racism in English football.

On Tuesday Mr Luis Suarez of Liverpool Football Club was found by the Football Association to have used language against an opponent that may have had racist overtones. He was banned for eight games. If he did indeed use racist language then the sanction is just as such language does indeed have no place in modern society. However, what is dangerous about this incident is that it appears that it is simply the word of Mr Suarez against that of his accuser Mr Patrice Evra of Manchester United. There are no other witnesses.

If that is the case then it would appear to mean that a black person can now make a career-damaging accusation and all that matters is that the accusation is made. That would go against all tenets of natural justice.

On Wednesday formal charges of racist abuse were laid against the England Football Captain Mr John Terry by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS). I will not comment on that case as it is sub-judice but the way in which the press reacted had all the hallmarks of a witch-hunt. Sadly, the CPS seems increasingly political and politicised and I really do hope Mr Terry gets a fair trial.

Today, Mr Alan Hansen, a football pundit, is being hunted down by the PC wolves. Last night he referred to black people as 'coloured' on the BBC's Match of the Day, a soccer programme, although clearly no offence was intended. Mr Hansen was clear in his message that racism is wrong even if his use of language was perhaps out-dated.

What is behind all of this? First, the derided media are trying to prove their PC credentials by attacking individuals for what are in many cases the slightest infringement of race rules and laws that have become now so draconian that ancient liberties are at stake. Second, the London elite seem determined to ram this issue down the throats of Britons as a warning and because of profound failures of policy. Indeed, these witch-hunts are becoming so shrill that they reflect the steady and dangerous shift of hitherto irritating political correctness into something far more sinister; socio-fascism.

Sadly, this PC madness will only make community relations more tense, not less so as a non-racist but nevertheless fed up English majority feel that implicit in this frenzy is the suggestion that a) they are all racist by association; and b) a precedent is being established by which the law will be applied in favour of one section of society against the rest. In recent polls 85% of the population object to the Establishment obsession over race and racism believing it to be over-reacting.

Racism is wrong and must be dealt with but in a patient and common sense way, not the kind of public show trials that now seem to be the norm and which seem to be taking place almost weekly. Remember, I know what damage discrimination can do to a person and a career and I oppose all forms of such behaviour as I have myself suffered from it. The real danger is not that people will stop saying racist things, but that they will stop saying anything anymore for fear of being accused of racism. If that happens they will join the many millions of Britons who have retreated into sullen silence at work and elsewhere for the very same fear.

Where are the British going with all of this? Maoist-style re-education classes? Thought police? The Dutch think the British are going mad over this issue.

Britain used to be renowned for common sense, tolerance and balanced thinking. On issues of race and racism that is clearly no longer the case.

Julian Lindley-French

Guido Westerwelle: Europe’s New Hillary Clinton?

2011-12-21T00:39:00.000-08:00

Alphen, the Netherlands. 21 December. Watching German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle with British Foreign Secretary William Hague this week I was reminded of a John F. Kennedy quote; “The problem with power is how to achieve its responsible use, rather than its irresponsible or indulgent use”. That is not to suggest that Westerwelle is in any way irresponsible. Indeed, what struck me about Westerwelle in London was the vision of a German foreign minister behaving on the European stage much like a US secretary of state on the world stage. It is clear that Germany really does now lead Europe, just as it is clear that Britain is critical to German leadership.

Westerwelle had come to London, “…to build bridges”, and described Britain as an “indispensable partner”. At one level this is a French nightmare and explains the provocations from Paris of late. Paris is always concerned that Berlin will do a deal with London that is not made in Paris. Equally, it would be a mistake for Britain to believe there are tensions between France and Germany to be exploited. The French are clearly in on this ‘good cop, bad cop’ strategy, as evinced by this week’s British-friendly amendments to the EU Common Fisheries Policy which were supported by both Berlin and Paris purely for reasons of grand strategy.

Britain must therefore stand on strategic principle, but is London any longer up to the task? The many attacks on Prime Minister Cameron by London’s Chicken Littles miss the point...as per usual. Cameron’s Brussels ‘no’ was strategic, even if the way the British approached the failed summit was more Ealing comedy than grand epic. “The Economist” called Cameron’s stand a mistake. This merely reflects briefings against Cameron by British diplomats so long lost in the EU trees that they are unable to see the strategic woods.

In fact, Cameron achieved precisely what I said he would achieve at the time. He forced Germany to deal with Britain not simply as another member of the EU 27 but rather as a great power. There was always something strategically unworldly about the idea that even in the teeth of the Eurozone crisis Britain would simply acquiesce to a fiscal union built around Germany that by its very nature would critically damage Britain. Turkeys do not normally vote for Christmas and yet this is what the critics were calling for.

Britain’s strategy towards Germany should be clear and simple. Any move now towards fiscal and political union would by definition exaggerate German power and influence. Any such ‘union’ would force the weak into a system organised around Germany. As such the Union would begin to look more like an empire than a community, even though that clearly is not Berlin’s intention. In Europe of all places power must be held in check. However, the EU as currently structured affords no such checks. Therefore, Britain must act as the check on German power and to that end Berlin must work in partnership with London if German leadership in Europe is to be legitimate and to be seen as such.

Equally, both London and Berlin must recognise the limits to partnership. Westerwelle talked of European integration as ‘…the answer to the darkest chapter in our history”. World War Two may have been the darkest chapter in German history but the British still see it as their "finest hour", to quote Churchill, and modern Britain’s defining moment. The idea that somehow Britain will in time subordinate itself to German power, even if dressed in European finery, is wrong and Westerwelle seemed to be implying that. Britain must always make Germany work hard for British support and the maintenance of some distance between the two powers is therefore vital. The political balance of Europe depends upon it.

So, what about Westerwelle the man? Is he Europe’s new Hillary Clinton? In some respects he is more Nick Clegg than Hillary Clinton; a junior liberal, coalition partner to a conservative leader. He has also made mistakes, such as Germany’s abstention on a key Libya vote in the UN Security Council which sided Germany with China and Russia against Britain, France and the US. His motivation seems to have had more to do with his party’s perilous position in German regional elections than responsible international politics. It is a trait of imperial power to impose local politics onto international partners. Privately the Americans have compared Westerwelle unfavourably with one of his predecessors Hans-Dietrich Genscher who played a critical role in the unification of Germany…and the 1990s disaster in the Balkans. However, shuttle diplomacy in a crisis clearly suits him reinforcing not only his own credibility but German leadership.

And finally... may I take this opportunity to wish all of you who have done me the honour of reading my thoughts this past year a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. No, ‘happy holidays’ here – that is far too politically-correct. More blasting to come in 2012!

Julian Lindley-French

The Power of the Powerless: In Memory of Vaclav Havel

2011-12-19T01:18:00.000-08:00

Alphen, the Netherlands. 19 December. Two men died this weekend. One was a towering literary and political figure, one of my heroes, a man who understood change and freedom and put his life on the line for it. The other was not; resisting change and freedom at all costs in the defence of an extreme version of a failed idea against which the other fought.

Vaclav Havel was a Czech patriot, playwright, poet and president who broke the crushing bureaucracy and terror of absolutist totalitarianism. Kim Jong Il was a North Korean born to be president of a dynasty in the ludicrously named Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, an absolutist, totalitarian state that is neither democratic nor of the ‘people’. Son of his dictator father the Dear Leader exercised power through terror, the crushing bureaucracy of an overweening state and by blackmailing neighbours with the threat of an over-costly military and nuclear weapons. Both in their ways defined their age in their space, and yet they occupied opposite ends of truth.

Let me deal first with President Kim Jong Il. Enough said.

Vaclav Havel wrote; “The exercise of power is determined by thousands of interactions between the world of the powerful and that of the powerless, all the more so because these worlds are never divided by a sharp line, everyone has a small part of himself in both”. Europeans have fought for centuries to ensure that the powerless have sufficient ownership of the powerful to render accountability real; the very cornerstone of democracy.

Sadly, Central and Eastern Europeans understand the value of freedom in ways which shames us all in Western Europe, where dangerous complacency reins. Perpetual vigilance is vital to protect freedom, particularly at times of crisis such as this. European history is replete with fool's contracts; “we the powerful will resolve the mess we have created if only you the people give us more power and all your money”. Havel would have rejected a choice between being bankruptcy and freedom, but if choice was forced upon him he would have chosen the latter.

Small was beautiful for Havel. Indeed, Havel believed passionately that power should be seen to be alongside the people, in the people, with the people. His desire to bring power down from the high perches of pride it so often and too often claims for itself in Europe saw President Havel oversee the break-up of Czechoslovakia into the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic. That was the will of the people.

Havel found the presidency an uncomfortable part in a theatre de l’absurde, describing himself ‘absurd’ at his investiture in Prague Castle. And yet perhaps it was not Havel who was absurd but rather the ridiculous ego-driven pomposity, perks, and police-escorted pageantry that Europe’s new great and increasingly not-so-great now routinely claim for themselves in the name of ‘protocol’. Havel rightly mistrusted power and the people with it.

As Europe teeters on the edge of a financial and economic abyss the truly powerful call for more power. There is a very real danger that power in Europe will become systematically ever more distant from the people – the very anti-thesis of freedom and democracy. This elite-driven project comes in various ‘plays’ and ‘acts’ on stages from Berlin to Brussels. Some call upon one superpower state to lead in the name of ‘Europe’, others call for a super-state that is ‘Europe’. Both threaten democracy and freedom if not held in check. Sadly, checks and balances are being eroded in the name of 'Europe', with Havel's Europeans patronisingly encouraged to disengage from the political process, ‘our’ political process and to ‘leave it to them’.

For that reason above all other Havel was an inspiration for this blog and its own self-satirising and pompous mission to ‘speak truth unto power’. Indeed, I see myself as a true Havelist because I have never lost, nor will I ever lose my capacity to laugh at myself. However, whilst I am and can only ever be a pale imitation of my Czech hero my mission remains deadly serious – the defence of freedom in Europe.

Europe is most decidedly not North Korea. We Europeans do at least retain the semblance of choice over our leaders that the Dear Leader denied his people. Moreover, our leaders for all their many faults are not Kim Jong-Il. Nationally-elected political representatives in national parliaments are close enough to the people to understand them and their needs and yet close enough to power to hold to account the eternal and infernal ambition of the super-ego. May it ever be thus.

‘Europe’ remains a good idea in a world that is getting ever bigger as ‘we’ Europeans get ever weaker. However, Big Europe also threatens freedom even if it is not intended and must be guarded against. Havel understood the danger of seeking efficiency and effectiveness at the expense of democracy and freedom. Throughout history that has been the seductive, siren call of the powerful in pursuit of absolute power in the teeth of crisis. The pursuit of absolutism comes in many forms but it is always ‘for’ the people and in the name of the ‘people’, as it is in North Korea. Europe is a long way from that but 'we the people' must remain vigilant.

“I really do inhabit a system in which words are capable of shaking the entire structure of government, where words can prove mightier than ten military divisions”. It was Havel’s optimism that attracted me to him all those years ago, precisely because the system he had fought against had failed to crush Havel’s self-defining ‘hope’. In Havel’s Europe the line between the powerful and powerless must remain blurred even if it is not ‘efficient’. Let us all honour Havel the man by respecting his vision for Europe.

In honour and in memory of Europe’s great, ordinary man. Vaclav Havel was a friend I never met.

Julian Lindley-French

A Week is a Long Time in High and Low Politics

2011-12-16T02:38:00.000-08:00

Alphen, the Netherlands. 16 December. In 1964 former British Prime Minister Harold Wilson said, “A week is a long time in politics”. This has been a very long week for both high and low politics.

A week ago I was waking up in Brussels to the British ‘non’ to the Brussels Botch. This was European low politics at its worst as Euro-fanatics and the plain anti-British spurred on by Berlin and Paris attempted to shame Prime Minister Cameron into reversing his position and to blame Britain for a collective failure of strategy and politics. Sadly, they were aided and abetted by the strategically-inept back in London who a) illiterate in the language of power panicked at the thought of British ‘isolation’; and b) seemed willing to pay any price to keep the Germans and French happy. The British reaction was as one would expect – defiant. The British people were up for a fight and it showed.

Recognising the impasse Chancellor Merkel made a conciliatory speech mid-week in Berlin. Britain will remain an important partner, she said. Was this a new political demarche? No. Last night, Christian Noyer, the Head of the French National Bank, called on Britain’s AAA credit rating to be downgraded. On the ‘not very helpful right now’ scale of ten that got at least a nine. Well done, M. Noyer.

It saddens me that the elite of such a great nation for which I have a genuine liking and respect seems unable to resist pressing the anti-Brit button whenever it does not get its way. French low politics will only trigger more British low politics and thus make it far harder to find a solution and maintain political momentum in other crucial areas such as defence co-operation. More worrying M. Noyer would appear not to understand either the nature of the Eurozone crisis or the causes of it. Thankfully, London reacted in a measured and appropriate tone to M. Noyer’s engineered outburst, something I am sure Berlin will have noted.

Let me now switch to the other side of the ‘pond’. On Wednesday President Obama made a speech at Fort Bragg marking the end of nine troubled years of American military presence in Iraq. Since March 2003 over 100,000 Iraqis and 4500 Americans have died with many thousands more wounded, not to mention the dead and wounded from the other coalition partners who took part in Operation Iraqi Freedom.

If Europe is being broken by an excess of low politics, America is endeavouring to extricate itself from an excess of ill-considered high politics. President Obama said that whilst Iraq "is not a perfect place…we are leaving behind a sovereign, stable, and self-reliant Iraq, with a representative government that was elected by its people". The President went on, "We are building a new partnership between our nations. Because of you [US military personnel], we are ending these wars in a way that will make America stronger and the world more secure". With the hindsight of history the Iraq War as a mistake; there were no weapons of mass destruction, it distracted from the main thrust of post-911 strategy in Afghanistan, cost huge amounts of money and many lives; and tied down American forces in such a way as to embolden the world’s real mischief-makers. The US may not be the world’s policeman, but it is the actor of last resort.

Back in 2003 Germany and France warned against this adventure. Berlin and Paris were correct. The fact that Saddam is gone and some semblance of stability (and it is only a semblance of stability) has been achieved much of it due to the ability of American forces to adapt and learn, does not forgive the error of high politics America and Britain made. The 2011 consequences only indirectly reflect the 2003 war aim, "…to disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction, to end Saddam Hussein's alleged support for terrorism, and to free the Iraqi people". Critically, neither America nor its allies have been strengthened by this war and its aftermath, either in the ‘Greater Middle East’ (wherever that is) or the wider world.

The war crucially divided the NATO Alliance at a critical moment from which it has never really recovered and made America and the West seem far weaker than is in fact the case in the eyes of allies and adversaries alike. In particular, the American and British failure to properly prepare for the post-war stabilisation of Iraq was a profound mistake, much of it driven by Washington’s ideological belief that the invasion would be seen by all Iraqis as a liberation.

What conclusions do I draw? It is questionable whether Europeans are any longer capable of high politics in the face of crisis. The gap between the rhetoric of Europe's leaders and their actions is now so wide as to border on self-deceit. Equally, the gap between what America has to do and what it is willing or can afford to to do is itself becoming dangerously wide. Indeed, for Washington the common ground between high and low politics in the international arena remains elusive.

Above all, these two political failures, the Iraq War and Eurozone crisis, have destroyed trust, that most precious of political commodities and the concrete foundation upon which all sound strategy must stand.

A week is indeed a long time in politics and this indeed has been a very long and a very bad political week.

Julian Lindley-French

"Very Well, Alone...ish"

2011-12-14T06:15:00.000-08:00

My Dear Fellow Europeans, don't worry I have not gone terminally Churchillian...yet! However, I thought you should all see Low's famous cartoon which all we British hold close to our hearts at moments of stress with you lot! And, let's face it you can be just so tedious. Your only saving grace is that you are NOT American...and only some of you are French (c'est une pleasanterie, Nicholas). That would be all together too much. All best, Julian

Be Careful Europe. You May Get What You Wish For

2011-12-13T18:44:00.001-08:00

Alphen. The Netherlands. 14 December. Yesterday in Strasbourg at the European Parliament European Parliamentarians made some of the most shocking and inappropriate attacks ever against one member-state - Britain. The leader of the European People’s Party warned of ‘punishing’ Britain and of ‘tanks and Kalashnikovs’. In the feeding frenzy of myth-making and scapegoating much of it using language that verged on the profoundly disrespectful to Britain and its people. Indeed, this was unparliamentary language at its very worst, a clear attempt to create a new ‘narrative’ for a crisis entirely of the Eurozone’s own making by placing responsibility on to the British for the appalling failure of Eurozone leadership.

This is a blame game. Indeed, it is a blatant attempt to implicate a country that is not even a member of their benighted currency and which warned against its structural contradictions from the very outset. Even President Barroso joined in this stitch-up…and we all know who is behind him. How dare they?

Some talked of British ‘egotism’ and ‘nationalism’. These people would not have the freedoms they enjoy but for the sacrifice of the British people in both World War Two and the Cold War. Some talked of a lack of solidarity by Britain. These are the same people who for years have dodged their responsibilities for Europe’s security and defence and imposed its true cost on the British people. These are the same people who have dodged their responsibilities in Afghanistan forcing the British to do too much of the dying. These are the same people who wringed their hands over Libya as the British did what was necessary to prevent a massacre in Benghazi. How dare European parliamentarians lecture Britain about solidarity?

As for the Eurozone crisis the full extent of the Brussels stitch-up is only now becoming apparent. There was no need for a new treaty, only Chancellor Merkel wanted that and by demanding it she sought to make the crisis one of the EU at 27 rather than 17. It is in any case already falling apart validating once again British pragmatism. What is more to the point is that having tried to make this a crisis 'owned'by all 27 neither Merkel nor Sarkozy were prepared to offer Britain the joint leadership role befitting Europe’s second or third largest economy and strongest military power. No, Britain was expected to subject itself formally to German and French leadership even though she is one of Europe’s Big Three. That will never happen. How dare they?

And now these same people pretend that the Euro-crisis is all of Britain’s doing because London failed to properly regulate the banks in the City, many of which are German and French et al. They conveniently forget Germany’s failure at the summit to offer any real leadership to solve the immediate crisis. They conveniently forget the chronic debt into which their national leaders have pitched almost all of the Eurozone countries. They conveniently forget that Britain is the second net contributor to the EU and that the British taxpayer has for years been transferring huge amounts of money to southern and eastern Europeans with little or no prospect of any benefit. They also fail to notice that Prime Minister Cameron is climbing rapidly in UK opinion polls for saying 'no' to the wrong treaty at the wrong time for the wrong reasons for Europe.

Last week I warned against Britain retreating from Brussels however seductive the vision of our standing defiantly on the White Cliffs of Dover shaking our fist and rekindling the defiance of 1940. “Very well, alone then” was, I suggested, neither a policy nor a strategy for Britain. After yesterday’s sham of a debate in the European Parliament, more redolent of a fascist show trial than a modern, tolerant democratic Europe, I am no longer so sure.

Be careful Europe. If you continue down this road of abusing, blaming and scapegoating Britain for your own lamentable failings you may indeed get what you appear to want. Britain out of the EU.

Julian Lindley-French

Where Next for Europe?

2011-12-12T03:17:00.000-08:00

Alphen, the Netherlands. 12 December. A senior French official privately likened Cameron's negotiating position at last week's European Summit to that of someone invited to a wife-swapping party who failed to bring the wife. Very French. A more accurate metaphor would be someone invited to a seemingly perfectly respectable dinner party who upon arrival is told to sell his wife as the price of entry as the hosts cannot afford the party they promised! In fact the Merkozy ambush on Cameron simply confirmed what was already apparent; the marginalisation of Cameron had been prepared beforehand. So, where do we go from here?

At least we now know the German-French plan of attack against Britain and the message all their surrogates in the satellite states have been instructed to peddle. I have just been watching Dutch TV and the Dutch Finance Minister, Jan Kees de Jager, explain to the Dutch people (with a straight face) that the Euro crisis was caused by a lack of banking regulation. He implied that the British were unreasonable because they resisted more growth-strangling Euro regulation on the banking sector which would have disproportionately damaged Britain for a crisis not of its making. Cameron made a mistake last week because he opened the door to this kind of nonsense by justifying his stance too narrowly on the protection of the City of London (which is questionable) rather than the profoundly important strategic implications of what Germany and France were trying to do - entrench Europe in growth-free protectionism.

Yes, deregulation of the banking sector together with a lack of proper oversight did indeed cause a crisis back in 2008 for which the British taxpayer is now paying a high price. However, the Euro crisis is not a liquidity crisis, as President Sarkozy would have us all believe, but a structural debt crisis. Debt that was caused by a combination of German exports to a Eurozone which offset the high cost of German production, excessive government borrowing by Eurozone members, the expectation by southern and eastern Europeans that northern and western European taxpayers would go on transferring wealth indefinitely and the exposure of Eurozone banks to said sovereign debt. The banking crisis may have exacerbated the Eurozone crisis but the cause of it...certainly not.

What the British did last week was to reveal the true nature of the power politics at play. Eurozone-Plus negotiations will now begin on the details of a new intergovernmental treaty designed to impose stricter budget controls on member-states via the European Commission (and, by further extension, via Germany). There are already signs of the acute political tensions and the sovereignty-crushing implications of what the 24 'others' in the Eurozone-Plus signed up to.  The Socialist contender in the French presidential elections has said that any changes should be delayed until after the elections in May 2012 and in any case he would re-negotiate the deal. Denmark and Ireland are hinting strongly at the need for referenda before any such treaty change can be ratified which would further delay a 'solution' to the crisis, time the Euro simply does not have.

Two things are now needed; a sound political strategy in London and a cool head in Berlin. Implicit in the position of Chancellor Merkel is in fact a realisation that no amount of financial engineering or European Central Bank bond purchases will help resolve the immediate crisis. Greece, and maybe even Italy and a few others, will sooner of later have to fall out of the Euro, if of course the currency itself does not collapse.  Indeed, in Brussels Merkel carefully avoided any commitment that might have been seen as a serious attempt to save the Euro as currently configured. Germany's objectives instead seem to be to create a structure that would a) prevent a similar crisis destroying a German-centric survivor currency; and b) limit the impact of the inevitable on the German taxpayer.

Following German logic what really matters now is that Europe recovers over time to become competitive globally. This also implies a further set of questions about the role and extent of future transfers from the western European taxpayer to the rest in pursuit of such an end and whether or not said taxpayers are prepared any longer to maintain such an open-ended commitment. That is why this moment is both structural and strategic. And here is the irony. Critical to that game will be the relationship between London and Berlin.  Here Britain has a strong card to play because not only is the single market central to that mission, whilst the Euro is the cancer killing the European body economic, but Britain and Germany agree about the need for a competitive Europe.

Therefore, if cool heads prevail London and Berlin can begin a dialogue of strategic equals that would not have been possible if Britain had been reduced to a kind of super-Belgium by signing up to a hopelessly flawed deal last week. Britain is not Belgium - it is the world's fifth or sixth largest economy which many serious commentators worldwide believe is the only European economy likely to challenge Germany over the next twenty or thirty years or so precisely because of its greater openness to the world.  Indeed, had Britain signed up to the Brussels Botch it would have been subjected to the same sovereignty-crushing constraints as the other Eurozone-Plus members with the added 'bonus' of having London pay for much of the cost of 'fixing' a failed currency via a future financial transactions tax 85% of which would have been paid in London. Fair or what?

Today Britain has preserved the strategic room of manouevre worthy of one Europe's Big Three and which Germany and France last week tried to deny it. When Berlin emerges from its funk it will realise it has to deal with Britain. The French are unlikely to make that connection whilst lost in pre-election 'faux' anti-Britishness.  Indeed, a more sober Berlin will realise that a deal with Britain is much more likely to promote the kind of economic reforms and disciplines Germany knows full well Europe needs to compete in this world.

The alternative for Berlin is a structural relationship with France which simply sucks Germany ever deeper into a protectionist, statist, indebted Europe which sooner or later will be overrun by the very forces of globalisation enshrined in the City of London. The longer Europe puts off those reforms the more deadly the crisis that will eventually consume it...and the current malaise is only a ripple of that economic tsunami. Hopefully by then Britain will have long before readied itself for the real world.

Cameron? He must hold his nerve against those many siren voices that seek French and German approbation at any price. To say that it is twenty-six versus one is ridiculous. It is two of Europe's three strategic powers versus the third. All Europeans matter, and should matter equally, but the nature of this crisis has demonstrated the extent to which some Europeans are more equal than others.

Where next for Europe?  Avoid French wife-swapping parties.

Julian Lindley-French

Well Done, Prime Minister. Continent Isolated, Britain Right!

2011-12-10T02:32:00.000-08:00

Alphen, the Netherlands. 10 December. T.S. Eliot wrote, “We are the hollow men. We are the stuffed men”. The most telling image from this week’s European Summit was British Prime Minister David Cameron sitting all on his lonesome in the Council chamber. Not only did it show the childishness of our Dear European Leaders, but also the extent to which this summit was really more power politics than principle. Time will show Cameron to have been right and our Continental friends should realize that the massive majority of Britons have no problem with standing alone.

The summit was not about the Euro – nothing was done to fix that. Rather, it was about the rebranding of the European Union into an Empire. A German Empire led by Berlin with its French Passe Partout acting as agent. The hollow men and women of the twenty-four other member-states wished to do nothing that might offend Europe’s new headmistress, Chancellor Merkel. So, David Cameron was made to sit on his own in one corner of the room like some offending schoolboy. For Cameron it must have been like being back at Eton. It was pathetic to observe, as I did – I was one hundred metres away.

President Sarkozy, employing the gracelessness with which we have come to associate with a man who does a great nation no honour, suggested that Cameron had made “unacceptable demands”. If he means by that that Cameron had acted to protect Britain’s core financial services and by extension the British people from a Euro-saving tax 85% of which would have been paid in and by Britain then I suppose that is ‘unacceptable’. Can you imagine a French president agreeing to such a punitive tax on a critical French industry? No way. Can you imagine a French president opening the door to an aggressive set of European regulations that would in time destroy said industry? One only has to look at the ninety-plus cases the French are facing in the European Court of Justice for breaking EU rules to know the answer.

There is no such thing as a free tax and the result would have been the British people paying for a currency disaster that French newspaper Le Monde says rightly has nothing to do with the British. Moreover, Britain is already the second biggest net contributor to the EU mainly because of a previous Franco-German power play when they stitched up a deal on the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) that forces the British taxpayer to subsidise French farmers. Sarkozy even had the temerity to suggest that banking deregulation had caused the Euro crisis. This may have something to do with the fact that in January the French will have to honour €52.9 billion in government bonds, a further €35.9 billion in February and by April a further €50 plus billion.

Taken together the refusal of ‘Merkozy’ to address Eurozone sovereign debt, Chancellor Merkel’s insistence that the European Central Bank cannot act as the lender of last resort and the failure to address Europe’s appalling growth-strangling over-regulation now dooms the Euro to failure. No amount of effort to shift the blame for failure onto Britain and Cameron will work because time, and not much time, will demonstrate who really is responsible.

Of course, the usual suspects came out of the woodwork back in London to attack Cameron. The BBC’s flagship radio news programme ‘Today’ embarked on one of the most politically one-sided set of interviews and commentary’s I have ever heard. Retired diplomats such as Lord Hannay suggested that Britain will now be excluded from ‘process’. Lord Hezeltine even suggested that Europe is in its inevitable way to forming a United States of Europe. What planet are these people on?

They miss three simple verities. First, most political moments are indeed ‘process’, but every now and then a ‘moment’ comes along that is strategic. At such moments a stand needs to be taken and this was indeed a strategic moment. Second, a profound ideological split exists between a statist Europe beloved of the French and the more free market British who are much more attuned to global realities. To have signed a deal on those terms would have subjected Britain to European statist nonsense effectively ending all hope of the flexible economy Europe (and Britain) needs if it is to properly adapt to this globalized age. Third, and above all, not only the future of the Euro was at stake, but also the future power map of Europe.

The choice was between a legitimate Europe made up of democracies and a power Europe led by Germany and France. The deal on offer to Britain was in effect to become a super-Belgium subject to German and French whim. Berlin and Paris have done everything they can over recent years to exclude Britain from their power core and this was to be the final act. Britain will never accept subjugation to their leadership and rightly so.

Through the centuries there have been times when Britain has stood alone against the hegemony of one or two powers in Europe. This is another such moment and we British are again called on to make a stand. So be it! The one inspiring thing that came out of the Brussels summit was to see a British Prime Minister stand on an issue of principle. Now Britain stands clear in opposition to a Europe it does not believe in. That is the best negotiating position London can possibly have.

So, be sure of one thing Chancellor Merkel and President Sarkozy this game has only just begun. In Prime Minister Cameron you are facing at least one European leader who understands that.

Well done, Prime Minister. Continent isolated, Britain defiant…and right!

Julian Lindley-French

Stiffen the Sinews, Prime Minister

2011-12-08T00:29:00.000-08:00

Alphen, the Netherlands. 8 December.

Dear Prime Minister Cameron,

We are both off to Brussels today. You are going to attend some minor event at which you are expected by your German and French hosts to play a minor bit part. I will be attending (and you will love this) a meeting on the cost benefits of a common European defence policy. Who says our Continental friends lack a sense of humour!

The EU Brussels Summit will be the most important European moment since Maastricht when the Treaty on European Union 1.0 was signed. Over the years it has slowly been expanded and now its tentacles reach into all aspects of British life. Each iteration of Euro-spread has seen a British prime minister draw a line in the sand only for it to be washed away by the oncoming tide of European regulation. Having made its strategic choice not to join the EU-defining single currency back in 1991 Britain’s semi-detachedness is no longer defensible. Either Britain joins the Euro or leaves the Union. There is no middle ground anymore and you must understand that is the reality implicit in this tous azimuths summit.

Indeed, what you will confront in Brussels masquerading as an attempt to save the confounded Euro is an attempt to effectively change the Union into an Empire. You must at all costs resist this. Your premiership depends upon it. What is at stake in Brussels is a precedent over the use of power by two EU member-states via the denial of sovereignty to the rest. This is a defining moment towards which the entire European movement has been travelling since its founding back in 1950.

Sadly, in the spin apparent on the airwaves and in the column inches you have instead decided to retreat and then mask your failure from the British people. You insist that because no formal transfer of power will take place between London and Brussels no referendum need be put to the British people. This is legalistic mumbo-jumbo and you know it. Implicit in fiscal union is a profound shift of power from London to Brussels via Berlin and Paris. The implications of a shift of power are just as fundamental as any formal transfer of power...in fact more so.

You say you will not make any “unreasonable demands” and that this is not the time to negotiate. When will there be a better time to negotiate? Do you think Germany and France are not fighting like mad for their narrow national interest? Of course they are. Indeed, their collective strategy is to a) give the impression that there is no alternative but their joint leadership - there is; and b) to pretend that Britain is irrelevant - Europe's second or third biggest economy (depending on exchange rates) and largest financial market. And yet you seem to imply that somehow it is not cricket for Britain to fight for its national interest. They will laugh at you in Brussels. As President Sarkozy said this week, “...it is a joke, David”. As you old Etonians would say “play up, Mr Cameron”.

And here is the rub (I will indeed become Shakespearian). Yes, saving the Euro for now is an important mission, but not at the expense of Britain’s sovereign will and strategic influence and you must realise the distinction between the two. This is about power and you must enter that room in Brussels clear in your head that you will not sell Britain’s crown jewels. Indeed, the real mission is not to save the Euro per se, but rather to resolve the financial crisis caused by the appalling duplicity of those who established the single currency. That can only be done at 27. If Berlin and Paris insist on a separate treaty of the 17 Eurozone countries then it is a power grab – pure and simple and should be seen as such. Behind it will be a principle of German and French power leadership in Europe that Britain must resist today just as it has always resisted.

By all means be constructive where you can but in return you must insist on a new relationship for Britain with the EU built on a set of quid pro quos. The more Germany and France insist on other EU member-states ‘opting-in’, the more you must insist on ‘opting-out’. The more EU state sovereignty Berlin and Paris want to bring under their control via the supine European Commission the more you must insist real power is ‘repatriated' to London. Specifically, you must demand an end to the German and French-inspired Commission attempts to impose their statist ideology on the City of London. You must also insist that the Working Time Directive no longer applies to Britain and all aspects of the Treaty on European Union that deny Britain real control over its borders are also repatriated. Above all, if they go for full exclusion of Britain from all aspects of EU economic governance you must make it perfectly clear that you will call an in-out referendum. For that is what is at stake. The alternative is taxation without representation.

If you think that distasteful and too narrowly self-interested then just go to the web-site of the European Court of Justice. There you will find a page devoted to member-states breaking their treaty obligations when it suits their national interest. Germany has twice as many cases pending before the Court as Britain and France three times as many. For all the talk emerging from Berlin and Paris about the need for ‘discipline’ you can bet your bottom Euro that it will not apply to them. And remember, you have many more friends on this side of the Channel than you seem to realise if for once you can think strategically rather than tactically – your biggest failing. The mere sight of you fighting will galvanise other Europeans thus far intimidated by the German-French fait accompli.

I am not wont to quote Henry V but I think this summit warrants a little paraphrasing, Prime Minister. “In peace there’s nothing so becomes a man as modest stillness and humility; But when the blast of ‘jaw’ blows in our ears then imitate the action of the Tiger”.

Stiffen the sinews, Prime Minister.

Yours sincerely,

Julian Lindley-French

PS I will let you know how our talks about a common European defence policy get on. Don’t hold your breath!

Pearl Harbor: A Date Which Will Live in Infamy

2011-12-07T02:45:00.000-08:00

Alphen, the Netherlands. 7 December, 2011. Seventy years ago today at 0600 hours Pacific Time on December 7, 1941 Captain Mitsuo Fuchida launched Operation Z from the Imperial Japanese Navy aircraft carrier Akagi, flagship of the attack fleet. Fuchida led one-hundred and eighty-three dive bombers, torpedo aircraft and fighters in the first wave of strikes against the US Pacific Fleet anchored at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Minutes later a further one hundred and sixty attack aircraft took off from five other carriers – the Kaga, Soryu, Hiryu, Shokaku and Zuikaku.

Some two hours later the surprise attack had sunk four US Navy battleships, with four others badly damaged, along with three other ships sunk and seven damaged. One hundred and eighty-eight US Navy and US Army Air Corps aircraft had also been destroyed. Sadly, two thousand four hundred and two US military personnel were killed and one thousand two hundred and forty seven wounded. Fifty-seven civilians were also killed and thirty five wounded. The Japanese lost twenty-nine aircraft and five midget submarines with sixty-four personnel killed and one captured.

Two days later the British battleship HMS Prince of Wales was sunk together with the battlecruiser HMS Repulse, with the loss of eight hundred and forty Royal Navy sailors. For the British the tragic irony of Pearl Harbor was that the Japanese High Command had been inspired by the British naval air attack of 11-12 November, 1940 on the Italian fleet base at Taranto. This attack was launched from a task force under the command of Rear-Admiral A. L. St G. Lyster RN and which included the fleet carrier HMS Illustrious. Twenty-four aircraft from 813, 815, 819 and 824 Squadrons Fleet Air Arm successfully crippled the Italian Fleet.

Strategically, the Pearl Harbor attack was a failure. Captain Fuchida failed to deliver the knock-out blow the Japanese had hoped for. The Japanese Commander-in-Chief, Admiral Isoruku Yamamoto, may or may not have said, “…all we have done is to awake a sleeping tiger and fill him with a terrible resolve”. However, he is on record as writing; “This war will give us much trouble in the future. The fact that we have had a small success at Pearl Harbor is nothing”. His words were indeed prophetic. All but two of the eight American battleships were raised and returned to war service. Critically, the three US fleet aircraft carriers, Enterprise, Lexington and Saratoga were at sea and unharmed. US carriers were to prove decisive in the destruction of the Japanese carrier fleet at the Battle of Midway six months later between 4 and 7 June, 1942.

The US has been criticised many times since Pearl Harbor for poor leadership, usually without cause. In the aftermath of Pearl Harbor President Roosevelt showed himself to be a master of strategy. First, he decreed that the war in Europe should take priority even though the American people were clammering for revenge over Japan. America’s great European age in many ways began in the Pacific. Second, American industrial might was mobilised and proved the decisive factor in the winning of the two wars – one in Europe and one in the Pacific. Third, the manner by which the US conducted the island-hopping war in the Pacific was a true revolution in military affairs leading to entirely new ideas about the use of naval power and how to manouevre a mass force over strategic distance.

The fourth strategic lesson of Pearl Harbor is one perhaps that is only now becoming apparent. America’s grand strategy, and thus global stability, is dependent on two strategic partnerships both of which must be invested in and both of which require America’s partners to be as far-sighted as President Roosevelt. Europe remains America’s natural strategic partner, albeit one lost in a visionless parochialism. The other? Japan.

As an Englishman and a European I remember the sacrifice of brave Americans on a day that President Roosevelt rightly said will live in infamy.

Requiescat in Pace.

Julian Lindley-French

Is This June 1940 All Over Again?

2011-12-04T23:04:00.000-08:00

Rome, Italy. 5 December. I am back in Rome, the eternal city, under new management facing a €30 billion austerity plan. Rome, that is, not me.

Niccolo Machiavelli, that great sixteenth century Florentine strategist once said that “...every type of government...should consider beforehand what adverse times may befall him and on what people it may have to rely in times of adversity, and should in its dealings with them act in a way in which it judges that it will be compelled to act should misfortune befall”. As €-Day approaches, 9 December, 2011, there is a lot of ‘befalling’ going on at present. Make no mistake, at this week’s Euro-Armageddon Summit a new power map of Europe will be drawn.

The failure of Europe’s institutions to cope with Euro-stress is leading to a power shift of historic proportions as a new/old balance of power re-asserts itself. It will be a Europe of a winner and losers, of ‘ins and outs’, of creditors and debtors. Even if enacted in the name of the European Union paradoxically forced integration could well mark the beginning of its end. Listening to some of the rhetoric flying around got me thinking; are we facing the economic equivalent of June 1940?

Germany is dominant (by default – no master plan), France subordinated, Britain isolated and puppet governments installed in both Greece and here in Italy. For a historian it all has a very familiar ring to it. There are some anomalies. Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski has told Britain that, “we would prefer you in, but if you can’t join please allow us to forge ahead”. Minister Sikorski once accused me across a Washington table of being too pro-European. Politicians are always ‘pragmatists’ with principle. And, I really wonder if the Polish people identify as readily as He does with His ‘we’ and His ‘us’?

Of more consequence Chancellor Merkel has said rather ominously that “politics has failed” in Europe. Steady, Chancellor. And, President Sarkozy has called for a new EU treaty “re-founding and rethinking the organisation of Europe”. Meanwhile, out-manoeuvred British Prime Minister Cameron has said at one and the same time that a) if the greatest British-marginalising shift in European power politics since 1945 takes place outside a new treaty Britain is happy to acquiesce in its own demise (Churchill is spinning in his grave); whilst b) murmuring darkly that “Britain will defend its national interests” in the wake of last Friday’s failed Paris meeting with Sarkozy.

Two scenarios are likely to emerge from 9 December. Scenario one would see a new German-led core operating at the expense of Europe’s periphery. The forced German-led hybrid integration that Merkel favours will see all the European debtor nations forced to accept a fiscal straightjacket under Berlin’s direction with France and the Commission providing a fig-leaf of legitimacy. In time there will be no alternative but to create a European Finance Ministry. In the absence of effective Europe-wide political oversight democracy will be progressively eroded to the point where the only election that really matters concerns who gets elected in Berlin.

In such a scenario the British will stay out and no doubt fight – politically. Over time London would probably slowly get its act together and begin to build a counter-coalition around Europe’s periphery and beyond and reconstitute old strategic relationships in pursuit of a new strategic end – the containment of German influence. London and Berlin would thus once again find themselves strategic political adversaries.

Scenario two would see Berlin reach out not only to Britain and the EU peripherals but also to those in the wider European Economic Area (EEA) in pursuit of a new pan-European political and economic settlement. Germany would express grave concern about the legitimacy of the Eurozone and the implicit dangers to democracy therein if Berlin is seen to lead overtly for too long. Berlin might even suggest national parliamentarians replace Euro MPs in the European Parliament as part of a new European Constitution (yes, it will return). Euro-MPs are so far distant from the European peoples the X-Factor has more political legitimacy than they do.

Critical will be the relationship between London and Berlin because Germany understands that there are many Europeans within the Eurozone deeply disturbed by Germany’s power and Britain’s exclusion. If Berlin can do a deal with London then that will ensure the all-important strategic reassurance both Berlin and Europe needs to legitimise the profound change from which there is now no escape. Strategic reassurance would also be reinforced if Britain and France together strengthened their leadership of European defence. To that end, London needs to raise its strategically-illiterate, Treasury-driven eyes from the current account balance sheet and recognise that in its armed forces it possesses its one of two tools of critical strategic influence. The other being the City of London.

For Britain this moment is defining. After years of drift and spin the strategic incompetence of its political and bureaucratic elite has left London faced with the most awful set of choices since 1940 when all it could do was fight on at great cost or surrender. If the Eurozone integrates the British economy will escape mass destruction, but British influence in and over Europe will be non-existent and Britain will be reduced to a second-class European state and we British second class European citizens. If the Euro collapses Britain’s influence will be strengthened ,but only over an economically-devastated Europe.

So, is it time to dust of the Spitfires? Certainly, the crisis is leading to old reflexes as Europe’s post-war institutions fail under Euro-stress. And, as an Englishman there is something deep, beguiling and tempting about standing on the White Cliffs of Dover, shaking my fist and bellowing defiantly, “very well, alone then”. But such a fantasy must be resisted – that was then and this is now.

December 2011 is not June 1940 and we need to ensure it does not become so. No, whilst similar power relations can be implied by the shift that has taken place it is important to limit references to Europe’s destructive past. It is most certainly a power struggle but the use of power today is very different. What we need is legitimate and shared grand strategy, the effective organisation of huge means in pursuit of an urgent end. Sadly, what we will I fear get is grand tactics; badly organised and insufficient means leading to a disastrous end.

Therefore, we must all be vigilant but avoid the stereotypes of history that stress always provokes. Otherwise, we may in time be condemned to relive our history and I would not wish that on anyone. For as Machiavelli said, “...in the actions of men, when there is no court of appeal, one judges by the result”. Today, Machiavelli might have added the actions of women...one woman.

Julian Lindley-French

€-Day: Just How Broke Are We Europeans?

2011-12-02T00:28:00.000-08:00

Oslo, Norway. 2 December. €-Day approacheth and with it the Onion’s day of reckoning. Norway is not in the EU and yet strangely there is no visible sign that civilisation is about to collapse. Quite the reverse! Indeed, it is nice to be in a country that works. Being a once vaguely red-haired Yorkshireman Viking blood courses of course through my veins. That explains a lot you say. Göll (battle cry), as we Vikings say.

Of course, being a small country (population 4.9 million) with large natural resources helps. Even accounting for depletion Norway controls some 54% of North Sea oil reserves and 45% of gas reserves. More importantly the Norwegians have used the oil and gas bonanza sensibly for when Oslo can no longer call upon nature’s bounty. This sits in stark contrast with much of the rest of Europe which prompted me to pose a rather serious question at this rather serious moment; just how broke are we Europeans?

Someone should ask the question. British Chancer Osborne has just delivered his Autumn Suicide Note and the finance ministers of the Onion’s No-Go Zone met this week to fail to inject a trillion mythical and not enough Euros into the equally mythical European Financial Stability Fund (EFSF). Therefore, your faithful blogonaut pillaged six well-known havens of the dismal economics science to bring you the answer. The six dens of iniquity are in order of self-importance Euro stat, the Economist, the UK Office for National Statistics, Nation Master, the CIA (which knows everything, but tends to forget when it matters) and the Organisation for Extremely Careful Digits (OECD).

Right, pay attention. Apparently we must first distinguish between a national debt and a budget deficit. Still with me? The national debt is the accumulation of all budget deficits since the Battle of Trafalgar, or maybe even before (was there ever a ‘before’ Trafalgar?). The budget deficit, on the other hand, is the shortfall (for that read massive, gaping black hole) between what income a European government generates over a single year and what it spends. To me both seem pretty bad but then again I am only a Viking.

Now, according to Norse legend it is precisely the interaction between debt and deficit that is so exercising the Dark Lords of the Market Universe who seem so determined to bring the halls of Valhalla crashing down. They do this by lending their ill-gotten gains to the very politicians (the Dark Lords (and Lady) of the Political Underworld) who caused this mess in the first place. It is the no-longer electable in pursuit of the utterly corruptible.

Being a tad miffed the Dark Lords are hiking the cost of ‘their’ money to remind our Dear Leaders that they will have to pay for at least one lunch in their lives. Trapped in the middle are the so-called ‘squeezed’, you and me, who have to service the interest on innumerable, clearly innumerate and quite probably inebriate free lunches by paying more tax, selling off the state that apparently we use to own to someone else or having our savings crushed by the rapacious banks that caused this almighty mess in the first place.

So, Great Hammer of Thor, here are the facts! Let me start with the Americans by way of Euro-comparison. Johnny Yank now has a budget deficit of some $15 trillion or €11.3 trillion which is some 10.7% the size of the US economy with a national debt of 65.2%... Believe me that is big. So, the Yanks are loud, proud and broke, but I suspect we have not heard the last of those people and if anyone seriously expects them to pay they will be nuked – pay-back for the Americans will mean Armageddon. Go ahead, make my day!

Then there is that mythical island long spoken about around Viking fires. The British budget deficit will peak at around 12% of the size of the economy in 2011-12 (Europe’s largest). However, there is some debate over the size of the national debt. The CIA puts it at 59% the size of the economy, the UK’s Office for National Statistics at around 61%, whereas Eurostat has it at some 76.5% (the Euro-Aristocracy could never count properly). This is due mainly to disagreement about how the British account for defence expenditure. However, as I am not aware the British are any longer spending money on defence I will stick to the lower estimate. Either way Britain is broke, weak and confused. Situation normal, all fudged up. Keep calm and carry on.

The great fortress of the Dark Lady Germany has a budget deficit some 5.3% the size of the economy and a national debt at 57.4%. For some reason this apparently means the Germans are rich. However, Berlin has decided that as the centennial of the sinking of the Titanic is fast approaching (April 2012) a re-enactment will then take place. Berlin will sink the good ship Euro with a new treaty. Germany will thus not be rich for long. Meanwhile, Europe’s other ‘leader’ France has a budget deficit some 8% the size of the economy and a national debt at 85%. France is not of course broke but suddenly will be after next May’s presidential elections. Then paying off of French debt will be then deemed by Paris to be Europe’s historic duty. Nous sommes tous Europeens maintenant, mais vous devez payer! Thankfully, we Vikings control Normandy.

The ‘best’ of the Onion’s rest speak for themselves. Belgium has a budget deficit at 5.6% and a national debt some 85.4% the size of the economy. At the very heart of the Onion Belgium now has an historic opportunity to make Europe an image of itself; utterly broke, utterly divided with no effective government and doomed to fall apart unless by some miracle it can persuade all other EU states to scrap themselves and create a federal Europe. I suppose it is the time of seasonal good will and we are approaching Christmas and there are certainly enough turkeys around these days to vote for their own demise. Ireland meanwhile has a budget deficit of 12.2% with a national debt of 38%, which is an awful lot of Guinness. Dublin is thus broke but thankfully has a time-honoured alibi; blame the British.

And what about Club Med? Spain has a budget deficit of 8.5% and a national debt of 41.6% - good at football and tennis, sadly not so good at economics. Portugal has a budget deficit of 7.6% with a national debt of 62.6% with absolutely no means to pay it back. Hasta la vista, baby, or whatever the Portuguese equivalent. Meanwhile, Italy has a budget deficit of 5.4% but a national debt of 100.8% (one set of figures has it as high as 120%). Chaos reigns in a very broke Rome – so it is business as usual then. Meanwhile, the poor old Greeks will bear no gifts for many a Trojan moon. Athens faces a budget deficit of 9.8% and a national debt some 94.6% the size of the economy.

Norway? The Norwegians have a budget surplus (yes a surplus) some 11% the size of the economy. And even though Oslo has a national debt some 60% the size of the economy it also has the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund.

So, just how broke are we Europeans? Well and truly muggered! So, either Norway offers a fellow Viking asylum, or I invade.

Just call me Sven!

Julian Lindley-French

Does Germany Really Want to Save the Euro?

2011-11-28T06:03:00.000-08:00

Vienna, Austria. 28 November. Does Germany really want to save the Euro? The great Austrian strategist Count Metternich once famously said that when Paris sneezes, Europe catches cold. Today, he would probably substitute Berlin for Paris.

I have just spent the weekend with close German friends in beautiful Vienna. The sense of pending doom was everywhere. Much of the blame for this was placed on the very narrow legalistic approach Chancellor Merkel has adopted in this crisis. Her focus on a ‘new treaty outside the treaty’ is seen as the financial equivalent of discussing patio design as the house burns.

The Euro may be beginning the death-dive from which it is unlikely to recover. The costs of Italian borrowing reached record highs last week, Belgian and Hungarian national debt was reduced to junk status and even a bond auction for mighty Germany flopped. And yet Berlin continues to insist on disaster-defying ‘red-lines’ that seemingly have little or nothing to do with the danger of the moment.

Vienna knows a thing or two about death dives. In the nineteenth century the death-dive of the Austro-Hungarian Empire led to the ‘shot that rang round the world’. By trying to hold onto a swathe of the Balkans its final dying act led indirectly to World War One. It was the mother of all unintended consequences that swept the ruling Hapsburgs away. A relatively minor shock brought the whole rickety edifice crashing down. Just like the Euro today. In fact it was a miracle Austria-Hungary endured as long as it did. This was due to a mixture of luck, geopolitical convenience and a few able leaders and statesmen such as Count Metternich. Absent of any of the above and the empire’s fate was sealed.

However well-meaning Chancellor Merkel may be, ‘able’ is not a word I would associate with her leadership thus far of what is fast becoming an existential European crisis. The French and Germans last week failed to agree a common strategy and thus failed to reassure the markets. In a clear sign of the times my sources within the European Commission tell me the minor ‘nobility’ of the Euro-Aristocracy who work therein have been told to say nothing that might harm the Euro, whilst being encouraged to consider how best they might protect their own savings. Nice people. Of course, the rest of we Europeans are being left to the dogs. That is what aristocracies do at times of crisis – look after their own. It is the Brussels Onion at its very worst, and there are some who actually want these people to run our lives.

The thing about crises is that the choices they generate are never comfortable. I found last week’s picture of ‘Merkozy’ instructing Mario Monti, their new man in Rome, quite nauseating. Naked German and French power and electoral politics are clearly at play behind the pretence of Berlin and Paris to be speaking for Europe. As a Briton I also find it galling that the world’s fifth or sixth largest economy has been deemed by the disaster-defying duo simply not to exist. Although much of the blame for that I lay at the door of PR-Meister Cameron who has been ‘outed’ by this crisis as a very little leader of an increasingly irrelevant country. Above all, as a Dutch taxpayer, I find it particularly distasteful that two so narrowly-motivated foreign politicians are deciding the future fate of my hard-earned money.

That said someone has to act. The stakes are now simply too high. Debt defaults, bank failures, single-market destroying currency swings are just around the corner, maybe even widespread social unrest. Indeed, if the investors who have hitherto provided the bridge between what EU member-states can afford and what they spend really take fright the EU itself could be in danger. And yet Chancellor Merkel seems strangely immune to the immediate, the need to reassure the Dark Lords of the Market Universe and fight the fire which is threatening to engulf us. We get lots of strong posturing (finger-pointing, stern faces etc.) but little by way of strong leadership.

Maybe Berlin has made a secret choice; Germany would prefer the Euro in its current form to collapse, the unreformable southern Europeans to be pushed out and the currency rebuilt around a northern, western European core. Maybe it could even include the British. Now there’s a thought. Did Cameron and Merkozy do a deal?

Certainly, Berlin's behaviour means the very real prospect now looms that the whole rickety Euro edifice will come crashing down. Just like Austria-Hungary. If Berlin does indeed have a Plan B it should perhaps consider one other truism of legalism; the law of unintended consequences. Vienna learnt that the hard way.

Nice patio, Chancellor. Shame about the house.

Julian Lindley-French

Dead Politics: Europe's Enemy Within

2011-11-21T00:25:00.000-08:00

Alphen, the Netherlands. 21 November. One of the great doyens of nineteenth century British foreign policy Lord Salisbury could turn a phrase or two. Speaking of Britain in the 1870s he may well of been speaking of Europe (and the British bit of it) today when he said “…the commonest error in politics lies in sticking to the carcases of dead politics…we cling to the shreds of an old policy after it has been torn to pieces, and to the shadow of a shred after the rag itself has been torn away”.

The Banquoesque ghost of Lord Salisbury stalked Chancellor Merkel and Prime Minister Cameron in their 18 November Berlin talks. They talked of “decisive action” and of “working together”. Far from the making of strategy the talks were in reality about the mutual covering of domestic political rear-ends. My sources tell me a deal was done by which Cameron would accept some change to the Lisbon Treaty in Germany’s favour in return for a relaxation for Britain of what is known as the Working Time Directive. Berlin has thus provided London with a political fig-leaf to cover yet another British retreat. Berlin was thus non-business as usual, Euro-inertia at its very worst. More toy bazooka than big bazooka. Indeed, given the scale and nature of the struggle with the Dark Lords of the Market Universe, the meeting was little more than the strategic equivalent of re-arranging deckchairs on the Titanic. Britain out, Germany up, Europe nowhere.

On Friday night I attended the annual dinner of the Oxford and Cambridge Society of the Netherlands and I saw yet again the strategy-free malaise at the heart of the Euro-Aristocracy. The speaker was a senior British-born judge at the European Court of Justice. After making the usual sad ‘it’s all Britain’s fault’ apologia to impress his Continental friends he suggested that had Britain joined the Euro a) the project would have been strengthened (perhaps); and b) that Club Med would have found it far harder to have broken the rules (no way). My Continental colleagues of course gratefully accepted his offer of British guilt; pass the buck is one of Europe’s less endearing qualities. The white flag of surrender had been raised for the price of a free dinner.

However, his remarks did for me raise two fundamental questions. How do we break out of the Euro-inertia and dead politics that are killing effective crisis management? What would it take to get all EU member-states working together towards something like a credible solution? Now, I am neither an economist nor a politician, which is probably just as well given the mess that has been created by the marriage of dismal science and dismal appliance. What I am is an historian and strategist; I understand failure and thus the need for a change of plan. Put simply, we need to shift the centre of gravity of this crisis from the Euro to the single market and how to make it work better.

Plan B for Europe would have three basic elements: First, a new crisis leadership group is needed to foster fiscal discipline, political unity of purpose and leadership legitimacy. Chancellor Merkel should have insisted that in this existential crisis confronting all twenty-seven EU members it is vital London joins Berlin and Paris. It would be leadership overseen by a new Special EU Council of Ministers to replace the proposed Eurozone organiscramble that came out of the 26 October summit. For too many years France and Germany have actively excluded Britain from their EU leadership tryst. For too long the British have pretended that what happens on the Continent has ‘nuffing to do with us, guv’.

Second, the creation of a bad sovereign debt bank would buy time for the debt recovery and thus give all-important growth a chance. 50% of all Club Med debt would be placed in this off-shoot of the European Central Bank to be guaranteed by the northern and western European taxpayer and overseen by the new Special Council of Ministers. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) would also guarantee this bad debt bank. The new bank would probably also have to include some Belgian, Irish and dare I say French and British debt and must thus be seen as a long-term structural change to the Union, requiring an amendment to the Treaty on European Union to which London should agree.

Third, strict new rules for all Euro members aqre needed allied to a mechanism for the suspension of any member-state that breaks them from either the Euro and/or the single market. The creation of technocratic governments in Greece and Italy whilst expedient must be seen as mere stepping stones to a democratic future committed to sound financial governance. Technocracy is an alluring danger in Europe. What matters is that democratic governments better adhere to rules and thus avoid a repetition of this disaster. That means meaningful and credible compliance across all twenty-seven EU members.

As an Englishman who pays his taxes to the Dutch state I am willing to make the necessary sacrifice for the common good. However, before I do so I need to be convinced that my money will be used to work a sound plan of action and not simply despatched down yet another profligate black rhetorical void beloved of the self-serving Euro-Aristocracy. Critically, Plan B could see Britain stay in the EU. The alternative is that London permanently accepts second-class status within the EU, even as it remains the second highest net contributor. Neither the French nor Germans would ever countenance such injustice. Millions of my fellow Britons would bring down a British government rather than accept that...and I would be amongst their fold.

Cameron and Merkel missed a trick in Berlin. What is needed is real, radical and concerted action. What we got is more dead politics.

Julian Lindley-French

Playing the Race Card

2011-11-17T02:17:00.000-08:00

Alphen, the Netherlands. 17 November. Racism exists. Racism is wrong. It must be confronted and eradicated. However, dealing with racism should not be at the expense of fundamental civil liberties or freedom of speech. That is what is happening in Britain as hitherto irritating political correctness tips over into something much more sinister. There was once a time when English law distinguished the criminal from the stupid. No more it would appear.

This week alone a series of media frenzies on race illustrate just how out of balance the British elite have become on this subject (the media ‘luvvies’ in the BBC are forever lecturing the country about racism and it is utterly nauseating). The England football captain John Terry is under criminal investigation (yes, a criminal investigation) for an alleged racist remark made during a football match against Anton Ferdinand, even though Mr Ferdinand himself did not bring any charge. Yesterday, the Football Association brought charges against Luiz Suarez of Liverpool for an alleged racist slur against Manchester United’s Patrice Evra. At the other end of the spectrum Sepp Blatter, the Silvio Berlusconi of FIFA, suggested there was no problem at all with racism in football when clearly there is. And, much more seriously two men are on trial in London for their alleged part in the racist murder of Stephen Lawrence, a young black man back in 1993.

Racism clearly is a problem in Britain. However, seen from the Dutch side of the North Sea the obsession of the British elite with racism seems unbalanced and dangerous. The Dutch take a much more common sense approach to it and whatever the insinuations of right-winger Geert Wilders, Dutch society seems far more balanced in the way it deals with racism. The tragedy for me as an Englishman is that the tipping of political correctness into legal repression will not make British society any happier. Indeed, attempts to use the law to mask a failure of policy will simply drive racism underground. And, in some respects reinforce the sense amongst the decent but squeezed middle that they are now part of an oppressed majority in which their legitimate concerns about mass immigration and the failure of government to deal with it is somehow racist. I travel regularly to Britain and each time I hear basically the same message; political correctness is getting worse, minorities are being favoured at the expense of the majority, freedom of speech is being crushed by draconian laws.

Now, I write this as someone who has been at the sharp and wrong end of prejudice and discrimination. I know what it feels like and, believe me, my life today is still blighted by it. However, a fairer society will not be achieved by trying to legislate racism away. Racism is driven by fear and at this time of acute economic stress the resort to law is simply another example of a failure by the political class across the political spectrum to serve the interests of the people of Britain as a whole, irrespective of colour and/or creed.

The Left experimented with mass immigration on the British people in pursuit of a multicultural fantasy. All they did was to create yet more ghettos. The Right experiments with notions of economic liberalism to drive down employment costs whatever the human cost. Meanwhile the so-called UK Border Force is in the headlines for suspending passport checks and thus failing to properly control immigration. The result? Britain is fast becoming a country divided utterly against itself.

There is no silver bullet for racism. The only way for government to address racism is to establish a bipartisan, long-term policy that progressively removes the fear and mistrust that is driving it. First, properly re-establish border controls based on an immigration policy that is seen to work. This government is failing that test badly. Second, move away from the multiculturalism which has exacerbated the problem towards a long-term process of integration. That will mean on occasions confronting some practices which challenge the very foundations of Britain’s legal philosophy and culture, such as the informal use of Sharia Law and forced marriage. They have no place in Britain and cannot be justified on the basis of culture. The role of education has a critical role to play. Third, when racism is openly stated with a clear intent to incite race hatred and violence then and only then apply the full force of the law.

Above all, re-establish the faith of the majority that there is some semblance of balance. The playing of the race card is ever more evident. Last night I happened to be watching a programme on a Dutch TV channel about policing in my home town Sheffield. A policeman stopped a car because its driver was uninsured. The driver was an African immigrant who immediately produced a newspaper that alleged police racism as a defence. Thankfully, the police officer was himself black and was having none of it but too often the mere suggestion of racism is enough to deter the authorities. This simply leaves the majority angry and bitter stoking racism where it may not otherwise exist.

I am no nostalgist. I have no sense that the past was somehow better. All I want is for British society to function on the basis of mutual respect and tolerance. That is not happening. And, until the British elite restore some balance to how they deal with racism it will only get worse.

Julian Lindley-French

Dear Mr Kauder, A Polite British Word of Advice - in English

2011-11-16T01:31:00.000-08:00

Alphen, the Netherlands. 16 November, 2011

Dear Mr Kauder,

I read with interest your disrespectful public comments about Britain at the CDU conference yesterday. I particularly enjoyed your line about preventing we British from 'getting way' with our opposition to the proposed German politicians rescue plan, sorry, the financial transaction tax. For the record I of course respect both you and modern Germany and I understand this to be a difficult moment. However, with 400 dead British soldiers in Afghanistan and over 2000 grievously wounded, a lot of them because Germany was not prepared to pull its weight therein, lecturing we British about 'solidarity' is what we would call a bit rich.

Quite simply we British have been doing too much of the dying for Europe these ten years past for a mission in which we were all meant to be equals. Clearly, solidarity in the German you now claim Europe speaks only extends to your selfish pursuit of money, not the dangerous bits for which you seemingly expect we Britons to pay the ultimate price in great numbers. And now you wish to further damage our fragile economy to save you from a folly we warned you about many years ago. That is precisely why we did not join the Euro. It is called sovereign choice.

Your cheek seemingly knows no bounds because not only do you want our money, but to exclude us from your nice little leadership pact with France that challenges European democracy to its core. I think in America they call that taxation without representation and they recently got rather annoyed about that.

Now, I am more than prepared to do my bit for Europe and as a Dutch taxpayer I know I will have to pay, but in return I expect your country's leadership to get its act together and face facts; the German taxpayer is also going to have to pay. So, no more of this ridiculous anti-British rubbish simply to mask your own country's incompetence. Let us stay focused on the economics of the matter and then we might find a way forward together.

Attacking we British in such an egregiously unfair way when Germany has shown so little solidarity with my country or respect for it over so many years will only make us fight back and you will pay a price for that. Surely, you Germans have learned by now never to under-estimate we British. Treat my country with respect and you might get a respectful answer; treat us with contempt and we will show you what contempt means - in English.

If you wish to properly understand the situation you might wish to consult three of my recent blogs which have been published on leading European and American web-sites: No Taxation Without Representation; Solidarity: The Emptiest Word in Eurospeak; and my most recent, A German Europe or a European Germany?

You may learn something...maybe even just a bit of respect.

Yours respectfully,

Julian Lindley-French,

The Strategic Influence Game 5: A German Europe or a European Germany?

2011-11-14T21:55:00.000-08:00

“I have always found the word “Europe” in the mouths of those politicians who wanted from other powers something they did not dare demand in their own name”.

Otto von Bismarck, German Chancellor, 1871-1890

Alphen, the Netherlands, 15 November. Germany has never found the leadership of Europe easy to attain or to execute. And yet Germany today finds itself the unrivalled leader of the European Union. Can Germany for once get leadership right?

Only at the very 1871 beginning of modern Germany’s uneasy existence was Berlin led by a man who grasped both the possibilities and dangers of German power. The very creation of the then German Empire rocked the rickety European balance of power to its core. And yet somehow Iron Chancellor Otto von Bismarck steered Germany (relatively) peacefully through a minefield of competing European interests. With his dismissal in 1890 by an unbalanced Kaiser Wilhelm II Germany and Europe began the long slide towards the twin and linked catastrophes of World Wars One and Two.

Today Germany is back. It would be easy to think that the ‘sudden’ emergence of Germany as Europe’s natural leader is a consequence of the Eurozone disaster. In fact Germany has been slowly recovering its position at the centre of European power politics since 1945. And yes power politics still exist in Europe even if masked by the political correctness of Euro-speak. The Eurozone Summit Statement of 26 October simply made German leadership official.

The facts speak for themselves. The 2011 German economy at $3.3 trillion or €2.5 trillion is at least 30% bigger than that of either France or Britain and thanks to reforms in the mid-naughties structurally far more efficient than either. At 81,729,000 the educated German population is again 30% bigger than the two other members of the EU’s so-called ‘Big Three’. Critically, Germany is the world’s second largest exporter with exports accounting for some 33% of national output. For all the current German angst the Euro has been the great German wealth creator. Indeed, Germany’s 2011 trade surplus stands at $20.7 billion or €15.2 billion, some 66% of that exports to its indebted Eurozone partners. Quite simply, the Euro has offset the high cost of German production and created a customs union (Zollverein) for German exports, which was Germany’s 1914 war aim.

So, the EU has done for Germany what two disastrous wars could not, cement Germany as the natural leader of Europe and by extension supplant Britain as the natural European strategic partner of the United States. But here’s the rub; just when Europe needs decisive German leadership Berlin is unable to deliver. Indeed, having gained the power and influence that her political forebears dreamed of not-so-Iron Chancellor Merkel is probably incapable of exercising it either for the good of Germany or Europe.

First, the German Constitution is a direct descendent of the 1948 settlement imposed by the victorious allies upon a defeated Germany. Its very purpose is to prevent the concentration of power in one set of political hands in one Berlin place at any one time. Consequently, Chancellor Merkel possesses nothing like the domestic political authority of either President Sarkozy or Prime Minister Cameron.

Second, the current generation of German leaders are the heirs of a political culture that was so successfully ‘de-nazified’ they still find the concept of German leadership at worst abhorrent or at best uneasy. The whole point of German power is not to have strategic influence, especially of the ‘nasty’ military variety and especially over other Europeans. Germany will thus endeavour to ‘rule’ through the European Commission.

Third, having gained more from the Euro than any other EU member-state the German people are not at all interested in paying to rescue it, demonstrating the limits to their (and Germany’s) ‘Europeanness’. This explains Chancellor Merkel’s reluctance to let the European Central Bank act as the lender of last resort to the Euro-rule-breaking southern Europeans. It also explains her efforts to get countries that have far poorer GDPs per capita to pay for the still-born European Financial Stability Facility.

Equally, there are signs that Germany is slowly re-learning the art of Realpolitik. The opening of the Nordstream gas pipeline last week suggests a new strategic energy relationship with Russia which will concern Central and Eastern European states. The democracy-defying Franco-German presumption of Eurozone leadership suggests that Berlin might be overcoming some of its power reticence. And, the implicit anti-Britishness that has long been a factor in German foreign and security policy has been evidenced by the effective exclusion of the EU member-states with Europe’s strongest financial market from Franco-German leadership of this first order European crisis.

Consequently, Berlin and London are now on collision course. On 14 November both Chancellor Merkel and Prime Minister Cameron made speeches calling for fundamental reform of the EU. However, whilst Merkel called for "...not less Europe, but more" and an overhaul of EU treaties to force fiscal union, Prime Minister Cameron called for the aviodance of "grand plans and utopian visions" and saw the future of the Union as having the "...flexibility of a network, not the rigidity of a bloc". They meet soon; that should prove interesting.

For all that history is only so eloquent when considering Germany and Germany’s place in Europe. Berlin’s leadership must therefore be given the benefit of the doubt so long as there is any doubt left about how Germany intends to exercise strategic influence. Germany is no longer ruled by the Kaiser or Hitler and the wars are now but distant memories. Germany is a model European democracy and shows no signs of wavering from a path set for it by the victorious allies.

But the question remains; a German Europe or a European Germany? Berlin will need to work hard to convince ALL Europeans that it knows the politically-correct answer to that most seminal of strategic questions, whatever the temptations for domination afforded by the Eurozone crisis, whatever the democracy-destroying expediency of the moment.

Julian Lindley-French

For the Fallen

2011-11-12T01:27:00.000-08:00

London, 11 November, 2011. At the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of the eleventh year I was in London in silence for two minutes remembering our war dead. I had the honour of addressing the Royal College of Defence Studies on British grand strategy - the organisation of large national means in pursuit of large national ends.

British politician Aneuran Bevan once famously said; “This island is almost made of coal and surrounded by fish. Only an organizing genius could produce a shortage of coal and fish in Great Britain at the same time.” My message was equally acute; for London to have simultaneously lost critical influence at a critical juncture at one and the same time with its key security partner Washington and its key economic partners via Berlin and Brussels is an act of perverse political genius no less profound.

Too often the British Tommy has paid the ultimate price and made the ultimate sacrifice filling the gap between Britain's ends and means. 1968 was the only year since the eighteenth century that a British serviceman or woman has not been lost on Crown service.

Therefore, in fitting tribute to them and their comrades I will quote in full Lawrence Binyon::

“With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children, England mourns for her dead across the sea. Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit, Fallen in the cause of the free.

Solemn the drums thrill; Death august and royal, Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres, There is music in the midst of desolation, And a glory that shines upon our tears.

They went with songs to the battle, they were young, Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow. They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted; They fell with their faces to the foe.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old: Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. At the going down of the sun and in the morning, We will remember them.

They mingle not with their laughing comrades again; They sit no more at familiar tables of home; They have no lot in our labour of the day-time; They sleep beyond England's foam.

But where our desires are and our hopes profound, Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight, To the innermost heart of their own land they are known, As the stars are known to the Night;

As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust, Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain; As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness, To the end, to the end, they remain”.

Julian Lindley-French

Talking Tohoku in Tokyo

2011-11-09T17:24:00.000-08:00

“Amateurs talk strategy; professional talk logistics”

General Omar Bradley, 1944

Tokyo, Japan. 10 November. What a city of uber-contrast. A concrete-scape beyond an eye’s leap that crawls and then creeps before eventually soaring and swooping around the old Imperial palace at its heart. This mega-city is periodically punctuated by serene oases of intimate greenery in which water; rock and flora tease the imagination back toward a Japan long gone. Escaping the Eurozone trouble bubble and the shallowness of a London reinventing daily ways to mask its political impotence I have come to a country where tragedy means something.

Tohoku, the hydra-headed disaster of earthquake, tsunami and nuclear plant catastrophe (not too strong a word) that on 11 March rent apart a swathe of Japanese society. Not the Greek tragedy/farce that passes for disaster in Europe, but a country that this year faced a freak of nature that no human defence could endure. What lessons we Europeans could learn from this great land about civil-military partnership.

The Richter 9-scale earthquake and subsequent 16 metre-high tsunami left 16000 confirmed dead across 3 prefectures, with 4000 still missing, and 20,000 rescued at a financial cost of some $309 billion. The Japanese Self-Defence Force (JSDF) deployed some 107,000 personnel rapidly in support of the civilian authority, some 50% of the force. The JSDF was supported ably by 117,000 US personnel and troops from a host of other regional powers in a model of co-operative large-scale disaster relief.

Strange then that I have just had the honour of addressing the hugely impressive annual International Symposium of the National Institute for Defence Studies (NIDS) about NATO’s failing efforts to make a civil-military partnership ‘work’. Following on from the Vice-Minister of Defence and General Oriki, the man who led the disaster relief, and preceding Brigadier-General Crowe, the Deputy Commander of US Forces, Japan I was struck by how the joint determination to create a “dynamic defence capability” sits in stark contrast to the defeatism and cynicism in European governments and militaries about making civil-military co-operation a reality. And yet, given the gap between forces and resources such synergy remain the future if Europe is to have any chance to influence its security environment. Rather, the petty-minded, strategy-free, process-led little politics of so many European capitals still affords bureaucratic vested interest every opportunity to get very little out of a very limited effort. Looking for a reason for a failure to grip the Eurozone fiasco? Look no further.

However, it was not the big stuff of strategy that I bang on about that made the real difference in Operation Tomodachi. It was a sound system for effective information-sharing supported by responsive logistics – getting the right people, in the right place at the right time. Sure there were failings and lacunae. Effective government and governance in the three North-East Japan prefectures had been to all intents and purpose paralysed. Transportation hubs had been wiped out. The JSDF had to invent a more joint approach to operations on the hoof and closer collaboration with the private sector would have enhanced the effort, not least with the Tokyo Electric Company, owner of the radiation-spewing Fukushima nuclear facility, which for 3 days failed to inform the Prime Minister’s Office of the full extent of the nuclear disaster. And yet the most telling event was the re-opening of tsunami-ravaged Sendai Airport one month after the tragedy opening the way for materiel and personnel to flood in.

Specifically, what came across from all the main speakers was a determination of all the main actors – civilian and military alike – to do whatever was necessary to get the job done. Flexibility, adaptability and creativity were the key. At one point blanket over-flight rights for Australian C-17s was provided simply by adapting tourism laws! The close working relationship between the JSDF and US Pacific Command (PACOM) built up over many years of exercising and joint experimentation was critical because it engendered those all important commodities – solidarity and above all trust.

Looking back at Europe from afar and its faltering efforts to create a meaningful civil-military partnership it is evident that the problem is not technical but as ever political. Nothing is possible in today’s Europe. Everything is too hard and too difficult. Afghanistan is failing, money is but a memory, strategy is but a distant dream. Sadly, I am now watching this malaise affect former advocates of partnership. Many are now slinking away from support fearful that their careers will be blighted by the paucity of strategic and technical ambition that is the stuff of the current crop of political mediocrities who lead us.

Talking tohoku here in Tokyo I am once again convinced that a strong civil-military partnership is central to what passes for European strategic culture and by extension that of NATO. It must be fought for and fought through the current morass of political nothingness that is can’t do Europe today.

Admiral Lord Fisher once famously said, “Gentlemen, there is no more money. Now is the time to think!” It might be worth a try. If you do not believe me, senior commanders, I invite you too to come to Tokyo and talk tohoku. You might learn something.

Julian Lindley-French

Solidarity: The Emptiest Word in Eurospeak

2011-11-05T03:23:00.000-07:00

“The British can't understand Europe as they're from an island ... from an island you can't understand the subtleties of the European construction”.

President Nicholas Sarkozy, 4 November, 2011

Alphen, the Netherlands. 5 November. If the mythical European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) contained as many Euros as empty Eurospeak the Eurozone crisis would have been solved in a trice. Indeed, the two most meaningless words in the grand lexicon of Eurospeak are ‘strategy’ and ‘solidarity’ and I have heard more than enough of both over the past two days of G-Plenty. ‘Strategy’ has been so long lost to the bottomless pit of Euro-jargon that it now suffers a new meaning; to not know what to do, where to go or how. My university, Oxford, might wish to consider an Oxford Eurospeak Dictionary to explain to the former European voter the real meaning of such gibberish.

However, the emptiest word by far in Eurospeak is ‘solidarity’. They are at it again. Peter Altmeier, a German MP close to Chancellor Merkel, called on Britain to show ‘solidarity’ with the Eurozone by contributing more British taxpayers to the EFSF, whilst at the same time ruling out more money from the German taxpayer. French President Nicholas Sarkozy was plain insulting to the British in response to a question posed at Cannes by a BBC journalist. “The British can't understand Europe as they're from an island ... from an island you can't understand the subtleties of the European construction”. In Yorkshire, Monsieur le President, someone might call you an arrogant toe-rag for that kind of stupid and prejudiced statement. What we British do understand is rubbish when we hear it! Indeed, it is precisely because we British do understand the ‘subtleties’ of your European ‘construction’ that we are not right now up to our necks (only our elbows) in your mess.

The Germans and French use solidarity a lot; normally when they are defending their national interests to the hilt and often at the expense of we British. Indeed, the one thing that neither France nor Germany have ever offered Britain is solidarity. Germany actively worked against Britain in the early 1990s to force London out of the infamous ‘snake’, the precursor to the Euro at a similar moment of economics-defying politics. Over the past decade neither France nor Germany has shown any solidarity with the British in Afghanistan, with the result that as of this morning 388 British soldiers are dead. Our lads have done too much of the dying for ‘Europe’. But it has been always thus.

What thanks do we get? At the 26 October Eurozone summit Germany and France consigned the British citizen to that of a second-class European citizen through an ‘enhanced’ form of ‘integration’ from which the second biggest paymaster of the EU will be excluded. I think that is what Berlin and Paris call ‘democracy’, the third emptiest and most over-used word in Eurospeak.

So, let us get back to real reality (not the Euro version). The reason that the Eurocrisis is daily deepening is that for too long Eurospeak and the empty politics behind it has polluted economic reality. Germany and France are still trying to solve this crisis politically rather than economically. Eurospeak has thus become the problem as it underpins the alternative reality that created this mess in the first place.

Economic reality is simple; Greece must default and be removed from the Eurozone, supported thereafter by all of us via the IMF; the northern, western European taxpayer (me) must be clobbered so that the EFSF can save Italy and the rest; and the European Central Bank must be empowered to administer my money with the likelihood that more Euros will need to put into the system (I think they call it quantitative printing or ink inflation – something like that). Or, the Euro must fail. As a Dutch taxpayer I can see the train wreck heading towards me but what from what I can see rather than the brake being applied a committee meeting is underway.

Now, as a Briton, I know I am going to have to contribute more in some way because it is in my country’s interest to do so. However, before Britain does indeed contribute more of its own debt to the crisis I would rather like to see a real strategy in place as PR-Meister Cameron is about to announce said increase. It will be via the IMF and in support of individual Eurozone members and it will cost each British household around about €2000. And this at a time of real financial suffering. That is real solidarity M. le President and Mr Altmeier.

My respect for the French and German people remains absolute – my annoyance is not with my fellow European sufferers. Our solidarity is real. The problem is the increasingly dismissive and arrogant European elite. Indeed, if you M. le President really understood ‘solidarity’ and acted in its spirit perhaps you might also better understand the European ‘construction’, as you put it. Maybe solidarity means something different in German and French?

So, if you want our money stop using the silly solidarity word if you do not mean it. We Britons know that when we are in trouble you will of course vanish. And please, M. le President, we know you do not like us, but if you expect us to pay please show a little more respect. We did after all liberate you French twice last century…from the Germans.

Julian Lindley-French

The Strategic Influence Game 4: Utterly Entangled America

2011-11-03T03:58:00.000-07:00

"Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations — entangling alliances with none." Thomas Jefferson

Alphen, the Netherlands. 3 November. As the G-Plenty and Not-so-Plenty meet in Cannes a big month beckons for the United States. One month hence will be the seventieth anniversary of Pearl Harbor which brought a formal and abrupt end to 1930s American isolationism. December 2011 will also see the withdrawal of US combat forces from Iraq. One year hence the US presidential elections will take place. Obama’s first term has been dominated by extracting America from Afghanistan and Iraq and NOT dealing with debt and financial disaster. Obama’s second-term (the presidential candidates on the US Right are hopelessly split and/or less than compelling) will face déjà vu all over again; how to deal with a break-out WMD state in the Middle East. The way in which Washington deals with the coming Iranian Crisis will do much to set American grand strategy on its twenty-first century course.

The International Atomic Energy Authority’s (IAEA) is about to issue a report that Iran is speeding up efforts to enrich weapons-grade uranium. This will lead to crisis with Israel. It is thus strategic make your mind up time for America – continue as a somewhat less super-power in a constrained leadership role or join its feckless and hopeless European allies in a) global isolationism; and b) selling the family silverware to the dodgy dealers over the horizon to pay for debt obesity.

Strategy is the preserve of the relatively weak. Ten years ago there were a few in Washington (an influential few) who were mad enough to believe that America the Mighty was so strong that strategy need simply be a shopping list of America’s wants in the world. And, whilst Twain-esque reports of America’s strategic demise are hopelessly premature the United States today looks like Britain in 1911 – immensely strong on paper and yet spread thin the world over.

America has been a liberating power, but one that has always and rightly had a keen sense of the national interest. Since 1945 that power has been sustained by a strong sense of internationalism, more often than not supported by European allies the freedom from tyranny of which the US has been the ultimate guarantor. American internationalism has also been sustained by clear economic benefits for the American people. However, something profound has changed that is evident at Cannes; the globalisation which emerged from American free market internationalism is no longer working overwhelmingly in America’s favour.

Furthermore, since 911 American prestige has badly been damaged by two inconclusive wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Although nothing like as costly as World War Two or the Vietnam War this loss of prestige has enabled China to turn economic strength into political influence. Beijing is now on the way to becoming the new peer competitor of America in a new bipolar world. Taken together globalisation and China’s emergence on the crest of an economic bow-wave faces Washington with the most profound of strategic choices; retreat back into a form of neo-isolationism or re-commit to a new form of leadership.

The latter option begs a question; leadership of what? By now Europe should have joined the US in a form of bipolar leadership of the West in the world. Instead, Europe is retreating ever deeper into Euro-isolationism as Germany and France seek ever more incompetent ways not to deal with the Eurozone crisis. Britain? America’s hitherto ‘special relation’ has become a very little ‘power’ retreating from influence both in Europe and the wider world with a fractured society trapped in self-defeating political correctness. What price Europe for the continued commitment of America to Europe’s stability? Japan is a possible partner but is recovering from an enormous natural disaster and twenty years of stagflation. India is being India - non-aligned.

American strategic leadership will thus be far more complex than hitherto making decisive action against Iran very dangerous. Power-shift is the elephant in the room at Cannes. Like it or not the centre of gravity of future American power will be the Asia-Pacific region with the US cast as great stabiliser. Challenges will be for the mostpart indirect with new and old technologies used to offset American power, often in league with non-state actors, such as Al Qaeda – be it cyber-attack or WMD proliferation. And, the Middle East will continue to boil as the Arab Spring creates as many autocrats as democrats.

Faced with such complexity American leadership could well be an oxymoron with the role of traditional diplomacy ever more important, with coalitions rather than formal alliances being the stuff of American foreign and security policy. This will in turn require a big shift in the balance between American diplomacy and force. That will be a difficult call for any future American president to make. Political culture, deficit-reduction and pork barrel politics all tend to undermine American soft power. The iron triangle of political funding, defence industries and the armed forces still exerts undue influence in Washington fifty-one years after President Eisenhower warned about the military-industrial complex.

It was Winston Churchill who said that, “You can always count on Americans to do the right thing - after they've tried everything else.” Let us hope so. For over sixty years American leaders have more or less ignored Jefferson’s famous dictum to avoid entangling alliances. If America is ever going to heed Jefferson’s warning now is the deficit-ridden, withdrawal moment it is going to happen. Iran will prove the test – pre-empt an Iranian bomb by attacking it; build a political coalition that somehow prevails upon Tehran or simply live with the Iranian bomb and constrain a frightened Israel.

Tough call.

Julian Lindley-French

Publish, Plagiarise, Pressure...or Perish. What is Wrong with Academia?

2011-11-01T03:28:00.000-07:00

Alphen, the Netherlands. 1 November. What is wrong with academia? Some 30 papers have been corrupted by false data, with at least 14 doctoral theses compromised and 150 papers going back to 2004 now to be investigated. The committee set up by the universities of Tilburg and Groningen, and which published their interim report yesterday, call the scientific fraud “considerable and shocking”. Professor Dr Diederik Stapel, Professor of Cognitive Social Psychology and Dean of Tilburg’s School of Social and Behavioral Sciences is today at the centre of a storm that has made headline news on both television and in the newspapers here in the Netherlands. So is my wife for she is the Science Communications Officer of Tilburg University and has had to handle much of the fall-out from what is an all-round failure of academic ethics and rigour. But how isolated a case is this?

In my many years sitting at the cusp between academia and policy the widening gap between the two has made my own posture increasingly uncomfortable. The culture of publish or perish which seems to have been the root cause of Stapel’s alleged corruption has been eating away at academic rigour for years. The literature is now full of meaningless and pointless dross just so that arbitrary publication targets can be met, so that arbitrary funding decisions can be made. I would not wish to cast aspertions on all my colleagues as there are still some very fine minds at work in academia. However, very few academics now undertake rigorous evidence-based research. The pressure to publish, on both students and academics, is now so great that less than academic tendencies are commonplace.

The number of times I have seen my own work plagiarised is frightening. A few years ago I attended the London launch of a major report on European defence. As I began to read the report my mouth dropped open; the first five pages were lifted directly from a report for the Bertelsmann Stiftung that I had authored. Not surprisingly I complained. Recently a student of mine submitted a paper that contained extensive extracts from one of my own publications with no attempt made to attribute the source. Now, whilst I would not of course question her taste or persipicacity, I did rather question her sanity. Indeed, it was so blatant a case that I simply had the paper re-worked before I would begin to consider it. She seemed to have assumed that because she was paying for the course she had also purchased the assessment. I fear that as universities become ever more desperate for money this kind of ‘misunderstanding’ will only increase.

But it is not over-ambitious students in a hurry that I worry about. From afar the Stapel case reeks of the stink one gets when a profession becomes a closed shop. The professorial ethos of ‘you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours” is everywhere in academia. Professional ‘etiquette’ means that professors very rarely question each other’s work and accept the self-serving and often incomprehensible rubbish that now abounds. This retreat from academic rigour has been reinforced by governments (and notoriously the European Commission) which too often subject universities and think-tanks to project funding. ‘Research’ is only commissioned that provides the answers the paymasters want to hear.

This in turn has tended to reinforce the left and left of centre orthodoxy and political correctness from which every western European university now suffers. All research is political in some form but today too many academics at major universities are in effect self-selected. The congregating of like-minded individuals simply adds to the creeping authoritarianism of political orthodoxy. If 'reality' is uncovered that suggests an alternative thesis it must be ignored or explained away and its authors sidelined.

However, what has become really insidious is the way professors exploit their students. There is some evidence in the report that Stapel intimidated his students into accepting his corrupt data for years until a few of them were brave enough to speak out. I can imagine just how he got away with this. Too many professors behave like medieval aristocrats; insisting that they are above supervision, handing out patronage by hinting at future careers if students agree to undertake huge amounts of work; and ‘authoring’ subsequent publications which in reality are the fruits of others' labours. So many professorial publications are in fact written by others, only for the 'other' then to be discarded when it suits and left broken in the self-obsessed professorial wake. Burnt out careers and broken people are everywhere in academia. The whole system simply encourages the self-obsessed, the ego-maniac and the downright unfair.

Professor Stapel deserves all he will get for the damage he has done to a lot of promising young people. However, I hope, just hope, that the academic gods will also hold a mirror up to themselves, both here in the Netherlands and elsewhere. Stapel is almost certainly the tip of a very grubby iceberg.

Publish, plagiarise, pressure...or perish. Academia needs a re-think. It could start by awarding a medal to those brave students who had the courage to uncover this fraud.

Professor Dr Julian Lindley-French

No Taxation Without Representation!

2011-10-29T04:32:00.000-07:00

"London is the centre of financial services in Europe. It's under constant attack through Brussels directives. It's an area of concern, it's a key national interest that we need to defend."

Prime Minister David Cameron, 29 October, 2011

The 26 October, 2011 Euro Summit Statement and the decision by the seventeen Eurozone countries to move towards ever deeper economic and fiscal integration will make Britain and the British people third or fourth class European citizens, after the likes of Belgium and Luxembourg. For the world’s fifth or sixth largest economy and Europe’s strongest military power Britain’s status in the EU was changed overnight from being one of the Big Three in an essentially inter-governmental structure, to being shut out of a German-led integrated system. To force the British people to go on paying for something with which the overwhelming majority of them do not agree with and for which they gain little or no benefit would be to subject a proud, old country to humiliation. That is not going to happen.

Figures supplied by Britain’s Office for National Statistics capture the extent of the unfairness to which Britain is now subject by its European partners. Britain is the second largest net contributor after Germany having injected some €10.5 billion in the EU in 2010. Britain’s gross contribution is also second to that of Germany at €22.4 billion, having leaped 74% since 2009. Some warn that Britain’s trade with Europe could be damaged if Britain left the EU, with some 40% of exports going to the EU. In fact, in 2010 Britain ran an enormous trade deficit with the EU of €53.1 billion, compared with a trade surplus of €11.7 billion with the rest of the world. The average British household now pays around three hundred euros per year to the EU, which for many is close to the monthly cost of keeping a roof over their head.

The Eurozone breakout of 26 October was thus more than a technical decision to save the Euro. It saw the beginning of a fundamental shift of power inside the EU in favour of Germany and the European Commission. This power shift is manifested by French and German-inspired attacks on the City of London by the European Commission, Britain most important strategic economic asset. Berlin and Paris are moving to strengthen both Frankfurt and Paris as financial centres at London’s expense. Prime Minister David Cameron warned on 29 October, 2011 that the City of London is under constant attack from EU. He described Britain’s finance industry as a “key national interest”, and warned that the single market must be kept open to non-Eurozone members.

Cameron went on, “Sometimes it’s necessary to have regulation but the regulation is badly drafted, badly formed and it doesn’t necessarily reflect what large financial centres like London need. And, of course, all countries in Europe pursue their national interests. Would the French and Germans like a larger share of financial services in Paris and Frankfurt? Of course they would. I want to make sure we keep them in London”.

Specifically, Cameron is deeply concerned about proposals from the European Commission which are supported by France and Germany which would impose a tax on all financial transactions in the EU to help fund the way out of the Eurozone crisis. Not only would this hinder London’s ability to compete with other global financial markets such as New York, Singapore, Hong Kong, Shanghai and Tokyo but it would effectively mean that the British were contributing 80% to tax to cover debt in a Eurozone of which they are not a member.

The power shift implicit in the Statement is truly historic and historians will come to see it thus. Germany is about to win the 140 year systemic struggle for the domination of Europe. Given Berlin is the big winner the Germans should perhaps not complain too loudly about the price for solving the crisis as the Euro has done so much for so long to fuel Germany’s export-led growth. The single currency has in effect acted as a customs union built around Germany thus offsetting the high costs of German production.

Equally, London also has responsibility for the position in which it finds itself. Ever since joining what was then the European Economic Community (EEC) back in 1973 London sold ‘Europe’ to its people as a free-trade zone and nothing more. Indeed, Britain has been trying to hold back the development of a more political and social Europe ever since. In ever more desperate attempts to reconcile what was promised to the British people with the political moves in Europe towards deeper integration London has sought opt-outs, which has simply removed Britain ever further from decision-making in Europe. ‘Brussels’ is now an utterly hated word across much of Britain and unfairly so. Ironically, the most important opt-out was the decision not to join the Euro for the simple fact that Britain was right about the inherent contradictions in the structure of the currency driven as it was by political ambition rather than sound economic fundamentals.

So, where can the British go? In fact Britain remains one of the world’s most advanced economies and by dint of being outside the Euro has better prepared itself for the globalised market than any of the Eurozone countries. Indeed, the Eurozone crisis is the world’s first globalisation crisis of the developed world caused precisely because the Eurozone tried and failed to seal itself off from the consequences of globalisation. It is no coincidence that David Cameron spent the period immediately after the Eurozone summit in Australia with the leaders of the Commonwealth amongst the fifty-three members of which are some of the world’s up and coming economies, most notably India.

And then of course there is the Anglosphere. Ten years of bruising engagements by the British military in Iraq and Afghanistan has seen some eight hundred British soldiers killed and some three thousand badly wounded. It has also demonstrated to the British that when it comes to real danger for all the talk of European defence London can expect little solidarity from its European partners. Family are the only ones that can be trusted; America, Australia, Canada amongst others. The British have done too much of the dying for Europe these ten years past. Libya? Too little, too late and it is seen by many in London merely as a vehicle for re-election seeking President Sarkozy to grandstand. There may even be benefits for both sides as a Europe without Britain can finally get on and do what it pretends it has always wanted, but which it also pretends the British have always frustrated, not least a common defence policy.

No Taxation Without Representation was first used in the run up to the American Revolution against Britain by Reverend Jonathan Mayhew in 1750 Boston. James Otis then said that "taxation without representation is tyranny”. What was right in 1750 remains just as right in 2011.

The day will now come when Britain leaves the EU and it will be perhaps the saddest day of my life.

Julian Lindley-French

A Bridge too Far: Britain Must Now Leave the European Union

2011-10-27T01:03:00.000-07:00

There will be “a further strengthening of economic convergence within the euro area, …improving fiscal discipline and deepening economic union, including exploring the possibility of limited Treaty changes”.

Herman van Rompuy, President of the European Council, 27 October, 2011

Alphen, the Netherlands. 27 October, 2011. You will forgive your faithful blogonaut a third blog in a week on the same topic – the Eurozone crisis. However, the mission of this blog is to peer through the political murk and the fog of jaw behind which the Euro-Aristocracy and their faithful Eurocrats love to hide and bear witness to real strategic change. Before me I have the Euro Summit Statement of 26 October, 2011 (strange how it was issued at 0400 hours CET 27 October but is dated 26 October). Historians will come to regard this document as perhaps the most important since the EU’s founding 1957 Treaty of Rome. A political Rubicon was and had to be crossed last night by the Eurozone countries towards political and economic integration, but Britain for a whole host of reasons cannot, nor will she ever follow.

Quite simply the statement marks the moment when the countries of the inner-union broke once and for all with those of the outer-union. For someone who has spent much of his adult life believing in the essential unifying mission of Europe it is with the most profound sadness that I now call on Britain to leave the European Union. To save Greece, Britain has been sacrificed and given the stakes there was little alternative. However, for Britain to stay now would simply heap humiliation upon cost without influence and my proud, old, badly-led country deserves better than that.

As ever the devil is in the detail of Union-speak. It is not the headlines that matter, although as a Dutch taxpayer I am the one who is really going to take the now infamous ‘haircut’…and I will be bald for many years to come. Europe's Dear Leaders are simply inventing ways to avoid saying that. Private banks that hold Greek debt will write-off 50% of their returns; the ‘firepower’ of the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) will be increased from €440bn to €1 trillion (it will be €2 trillion within a year); and European banks will be required to raise about €106bn in new capital by June 2012...much more is needed.

The key breaker with Britain is Annex 1 (the truly dangerous strategic bits of EU-speak are always hidden in the ‘language’ of annexes): “Ten measures to improve the governance of the euro area”. There will be twice yearly Euro-summits at which the Eurogroup meet under the leadership of a President of the Euro Summit who will be ‘designated’ by the Heads of State and Government (HofSG) of the Eurozone. The “Eurogroup will ensure ever closer coordination of the economic policies and promoting financial stability”. One can tell how weak is Britain’s influence as whoever writes this stuff is clearly not English. The non-Euro members and the European Parliament will be “kept informed” by the Euro-summit president, which will be nice.

There will be a Eurogroup work-plan towards deeper integration drawn up by a Eurogroup Working Group, “drawing on expertise provided by the Commission” which will be chaired by yet another “full-time Brussels-based President”…who will be different from the President of the Euro Summit. Still with me? Fantastically, the Onion will soon have five presidents – more high-paid jobs for the Euro-Aristocracy and their Eurocrat friends. What is the collective? A plethora of presidents, or merely a pain? Critically, the ECOFIN Commissioner, Head of the Omission's Economic and Finance Committee; the President of the Euro-Summit; the President of the European Commission; and the President of the Eurogroup shall be responsible for “communicating the decisions of the Eurogroup”. That should be clear then.

Make no mistake for all the Byzantine complexity and secrecy beloved of the democracy-defying Brussels Mafia this moment is the decisive break with Britain. London had an opportunity to shape this moment but woke up too late and did too little. London will of course do what it has always done at such moments of retreat. Play down the significance of the statement, assure the British people that its impact will be minimal, and that assurances and opt-outs have been secured. There will be failure-masking talk of leading the non-Eurozone members towards a counter-balancing bloc. History will prove that London’s ‘assurances’ will be as empty as the people who make them. The simple fact is that Britain is the big loser (again) from the Euro-crisis. My old country must now take its chances with the wider world which represents over 60% of Britain’s trade. Bring on the Anglosphere!

The statement marks the decisive end of the fifty year struggle between a sort of ‘intergovernmental’ Europe and a sort of integrated Europe. The latter is not at all what the British people signed up to. To stay further would be to pay for someone else’s party and that would be unfair. A German-led inner core will now make decisions with implications far beyond mere issues of economy. Economics is after all power and Britain has no part of it.

Therefore, I call upon the Euro-Aristocracy on both sides for once to do the right thing; prepare for the departure of Britain from the European Union and recognise that Britain has trading rights under the World Trade Organisation that must be respected.

To paraphrase Winston Churchill; this is not the end of the beginning, but rather the beginning of the end for Britain in the European Union.

It is a bridge too far for Britain…and we all know what that means.

Julian Lindley-French

Euro-Crisis: A Little Bit Pregnant, David?

2011-10-25T03:10:00.000-07:00

Alphen, the Netherlands. 25 October. Right now your faithful blogonaut should be on a Royal Navy warship somewhere off Europe. No, we are not planning an invasion, but it might come to that. Instead, I am in bed writing this missive on my steam-powered lap-top. Yesterday, having gone through the Eurotunnel, and back into Blighty as far as the ancient town of Rye, I had to turn back laid low by the Dutch Disease – the dreaded lurgy. The long run home through enemy territory – Calais, then Dunkirk and up to the Belgian border was touch and go. But in the end I made it flaps down with seconds to spare, in spite of some dense flak in the form of Belgian traffic near Antwerp and eventually belly-flopped into bed. Gallantly and valiantly I had decided to abort the mission and head home in the national interest, not wishing to infect what is left of Her Majesty’s navy. There is however some good news. Being full of flu for once my head is clear to think.

PR-Meister Cameron is trying to create a position for Britain in the Onion that simply no longer exists - being half in Europe. This Eurozone crisis will end that absurdity and confront Britain with the most profound of choices. We are all moving inexorably towards that moment. Last night almost half of Cameron’s Conservative Members of Parliament voted for a referendum to be put to the British people. The question on offer would be simple; should Britain stay in or leave the European Onion? In doing so they voted expressly against the wishes of PR-Meister Cameron. Rightly in my view, the PR-Meister made the point that now is not the time for such a question to be placed before the good citizenry and honest burghers of Britain. He sympathised with his rebels by suggesting that the British Parliament was "ever more impotent" as the "tentacles" of the European Onion "intruded into more and more areas of national life". The time for reform was at hand, he said…but not just yet. What matters now is that we all pull together to avert what is a European crisis of the first order. But the day of reckoning approacheth!

Time will prove the obvious; the PR-Meister is defending the indefensible. On the one hand he believes the British interest is best served by staying in the Onion but on the other he is promising his revolting back-benchers that a "fundamental change" in the UK's relationship with Europe will soon take place. How?

The contradictions in Cameron’s position are indeed profound. First, the political space Britain now occupies in the Onion is eroding fast. Given events being in the Onion but not in the Euro makes little sense now, let alone a year hence when the consequences of this moment unfold. Logically given London's current position all that is going to happen is that the British will inevitably incur more cost for less influence. Second, “repatriating powers” from Brussels will not free London from the grip of the Onion. With the European Omission’s powers inevitably strengthened Britain will still be ever more subject to a whole host of European Directives rightly designed for and by the political and monetary core of Europe. The PR-Meister will of course demand ‘opt-outs’ but all these ever do is ensure Britain has next to no influence over the strategic track of the Onion. It is precisely Britain's penchant for opt-outs that over time has led to the loss of critical influence in and over the Onion. Third, fiscal and economic integration will lead inevitably to even further political integration in areas such as home affairs and defence which are a vital British interest but over which London will have no say. Fourth, having promised no more British cash to solve the Euro-crisis PR-Meister Cameron’s call to us all to douse the fire in the neighbouring house will mean just that – more British cash.

Britain’s real position was captured by President Sarkozy at the EU-summit this week. “We are sick of you criticising us,” the French President said, “…and telling us what to do.” Note the ‘us’. Britain simply is not regarded as one of 'them'. So much for solidarity.

Sadly, PR-Meister Cameron’s position on the Euro-crisis is symptomatic of the muddled and contradictory strategic thinking at the heart of the British Government. Indeed, over Europe Cameron finds himself in the political equivalent of being a little bit pregnant. But here’s the real tragedy – so is Ed Milliband, the Labour Party leader and Nick Clegg, the leader of the Liberal Democrats. Whatever one might think of the Tory rebels at least they see how ridiculous Britain’s European ‘policy’ has become. It is about to get an awful lot worse. Britain is in the worst possible of all strategic/policy positions - no influence/ high cost.

To properly influence events Britain must be at the core of the Onion. Or, to avoid the costs Britain must leave the Onion. There is no middle ground. In other words, Britain must join the Euro, or leave the Onion. It is as simple and straightforward as that.

Talking of symptoms – where’s the Lemsip?

Julian Lindley-French

Der Plan and the Onion: Under New Management

2011-10-23T01:36:00.000-07:00

“Those who have checked improvement, because it is an innovation, will one day be compelled to accept innovation when it has ceased to be an improvement”.

Lord Palmerston, 1848

Alcala de Henares, Spain. 23 October, 2011. There is something vaguely disturbing watching a Brussels European Onion summit from afar; especially when the topic is how to waste even more of my money. Watching a few with an awful lot of money in offshore tax havens (the Euro-Aristocracy) instructing a few others on huge tax-free salaries (the Onionistas of the European Omission) how to spend my money leads me to paraphrase Oscar Wilde; it is the unspeakable in pursuit of the too-taxable to save the hides of the responsible.

Der Plan to save the Euro, well-intentioned and necessary as it is, effectively re-orders the political map of Europe and confirms once and for all who really calls the shots; Berlin. London? Nowhere, as usual.

I am writing this missive beneath the eaves of Cervantes’s home on a sun-draped street in central Spain with Chancellor Merkel now cast in the role of Don Quixote and trying-to-be-re-elected President Sarkozy as her faithful squire Sancho Panza. In fact, Der Plan is a stroke of German genius; the Euro-Aristocracy will get the banks to bear much of the cost of the Greek tragedy whilst simultaneously using my money to save the banks. Those who have been calling for decisive leadership have now got it – German leadership. Come next week the Onion will be under new management – German management.

Here in Alcala one sees the real human cost of this crisis on the proud, honourable and decent people of Spain who have come so far since they rid themselves of Western Europe’s last tin-pot dictator Franco back in 1975. Der Plan will leave the heirs of Philip II with little alternative but to abandon principle and accept what they are given – orders. They are too deep in debt to do otherwise and the soon-to-be new government will be forced to take the cheapest option on offer. It is a sign of things to come

Der Plan, I am told, will also contain the German joke. The powers of the European Omission will be extended to ensure proper management of national budgets. I told you it was a good one. Physician, heal thyself, I hear you utter in despair. It is like putting an arsonist in charge of the Pentagon. Oh sorry, we tried that. Not that Germany…and, er, France. has any alternative and neither Berlin…nor, er, Paris see this as a power grab. It is leadership that has been thrust upon them, but such is life. Nor will said leadership come cheap…either for Germans or the rest of us in the Onion-zone.

Der Plan could also prove a tad tricky for the British, particularly if London ever again wakes up (unlikely) and realizes that just because some woman from Lancashire is in ‘charge’ of EU foreign policy Britain does not control Europe. British PR-Meister David Cameron, has promised the British people a referendum if there are treaty changes pursuant to this stitch-up, er, sorry, Plan. Concerned about a vote in Parliament he even got arch anti-Onion William Hague to suggest that the British Parliament might be a ‘distraction’ for the PR-Meister at this time. Don’t you just love the Euro-Aristocracy?

Many commentators, including your faithful blogonaut, have characterized the choices facing the Eurozone as state up or break up. To Brussels or to de-Brussels; that has been the question. In fact there is a Third Way (oh no, not another one!) hybrid integration, which is the second German joke. It goes something like this. Germany will lead the way towards much deeper and intense political and economic co-operation between the larger member-states of the Euro-Onion-Zone, supported by Sancho Panza, er sorry, France. If they can get away with it the little onions outside will be offered ‘guarantees’ about future access to Berlin, sorry, Brussels. However, in return they will also agree to pay to fix the Euro, although every effort will be made to avoid telling their taxpayers. Quietly, the European Omission will be invited to push towards deeper fiscal onion with a particular emphasis on using the crisis to promote political integration via the smaller European states (they are all broke anyway).

PR-Meister Cameron might thus be induced to go along with the second German joke and present it to the British as a ‘technical’ adjustment of little import to the British thus, of course, not requiring a referendum. The British people might after all get the referendum answer wrong; just like their Danish, French, Dutch and Irish confreres before them. It will be of such little import to the British that a series of other minor 'adjustments' will follow soon thereafter. The Omission, freed to bring more power unto itself, will issue a whole array of entangling Directives of financial regulation mainly aimed at the City of London. This will strengthen Frankfurt at the expense of City and eventually break the all-important link between the City and Wall Street. A special relationship will be established between Germany and the European Omission that will then lock German leadership into the Onion. That cannot be good for Britain, nor Paris, as the latter soon finds itself replaced as Sancho Panza by the Omission, nor indeed for Berlin.

In fact, I have no particular problem with the leadership of Europe of a modern, democratic Germany. It is a fact of power life. However, what is at stake in Brussels concerns the checks and balances that need to be in place to ensure sound leadership. Britain’s effective absence from influence over this crisis is leading inevitably to a re-ordering of state and institutional power in Europe that is not in Britain’s or in anyone else’s interest.

Palmerston’s first dictum of British foreign policy was simple – London must do whatever necessary to prevent a dominant power on the Continent of Europe. It is time the British remembered that – crisis or no crisis.

But do not despair. There is always the European Parliament there to prevent any abuse of power. Baarf! Baarf!

Perhaps I should be quoting Goethe!

Julian Lindley-French

The Strategic Influence Game 3: The Loser

2011-10-18T01:03:00.000-07:00

“A man in peril of drowning catchest whatsoever cometh next to hand… be it never so simple a stick”

Sir Thomas More, 1534

Alphen, the Netherlands, 17 October. Strategy is the art of gaining the greatest influence at least cost. For at least a generation the British elite have specialised in gaining the least influence at the greatest cost – be it in Europe, the transatlantic relationship or the wider world. Why?

The factors are many but put simply Britain’s political elite have made just about every strategic mistake there was to make over the past fifty years or so – apologising for Britain abroad, apologising for old Britain at home. Today an impotent, rudderless political class lacks strategic imagination and is incapable of strategic leadership. All too conscious of failure the state is resorting to creeping authoritarianism and political correctness to quash the concerns of middle Britain about the consequences of decadent decline; the excessive influence of special interest groups over government – be it big business or minorities. Common sense and the will of the majority have been cast asunder. Sadly, it is hard to imagine Britain surviving the next fifty years. Surveying the wreckage there is very little for Britons to be proud of.

The strategic political correctness that suffuses the British elite is evident in British foreign policy - the longest post-Imperial apology in history. Keeping foreigners happy at almost any cost is not national strategy. The retreat from international realism has been reinforced by a retreat from domestic realism. The constant and failed ideological experimentation on the British people by both the political left and right has led to a society so fractured that all government can do today is talk of Britain as a series of ‘communities’.

Abroad so far and fast is Britain's retreat from real strategic influence that soon London will no longer be able to mask systemic failure by appealing to and exploiting fading symbols of past glories. The European crisis will reveal the extent of Britain’s retreat from influence; ever more cost for ever less influence - the very antithesis of sound strategy.

London’s retreat from strategic influence was painfully apparent at a meeting at which I spoke last week on transatlantic defence relations. As ever the British unable to talk strategy preferred to talk cost and capabilities, or rather the lack of them. My American colleagues tried hard to be sympathetic eschewing what they saw as London's doom and gloom by looking for new ways to cheer the British up in this age of aggravated austerity. And yet even as I spoke I knew in my heart that the strategic depression that pervades all and every corridor of Whitehall would ensure nought would come of it. London has given up, surrendered. Now resigned to being a very third rate power my once great country has become a strategic basket case.

This lack of duty and responsibility at the top of politics is particularly unfair on the proud men and women who have worn the uniforms of the British armed forces with such distinction and who have put their lives on the line for a Britain that no longer exists. Rather, they serve a political class so utterly self-obsessed and so lacking in any vision of what Britain could still achieve in this world if just for once they did what they are paid to do; lead. Sadly, British leadership today has been reduced to little more than political PR. Never have so many been so poorly led by so few so high.

Talking of which some fifty metres from the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) where I was speaking British Defence Minister Dr Liam Fox was resigning. He had in his own words ‘blurred’ the distinction between private and public life. Allegedly he had given inappropriate access to a right-wing friend allegedly close to foreign powers who had also appeared frequently during Dr Fox’s official trips abroad allegedly implying an official status he had no right to. Sadly, there is probably more to come out but what is clear is that another landmark has been surrendered on the political road to public contempt.

No wonder the British people are abandoning politics in despair worn down by the essential hypocrisy and self-serving shallowness of contemporary British politics. The average life expectancy now of a British Defence Secretary is one year; that means a pool of six politicians are needed to get through one parliamentary term or six scandals - which is more or less the same thing these days. There is a joke there somewhere.

Why does this matter? For Britain the Fox resignation marks simply the latest example of a political elite too many of whom believe in a culture of entitlement. In this case it also shows a Coalition Government so ill-disciplined as to be virtually dysfunctional deep into perhaps the worst crisis since the Second World War. It also reveals a culture of deceit in government reinforced by a belief that the people cannot be trusted with the facts. Not because the facts are inimical to national security but because the facts are too embarrassing for political leaders.

As I walked through the Victorian grandeur of Whitehall I was struck by Britain’s past mocking Britain’s present. Britain's little leaders – both left and right - in big rooms huddling behind their thin rhetorical facades awaiting the economic equivalent of the Blitz. Somewhere to the East something nasty is happening in ‘Europe’ (one is never really in Europe in Britain) about which apparently the British can do nothing but yet for which the British will pay.

London is thus drowning in a sea of rhetorical irrelevance between the capitals that do matter – Washington, Berlin and Paris. Britain is the big loser in the strategic influence game; no longer America’s ‘special relation’ and utterly marginalised in Franco-German efforts to save Europe from disaster.

What a little country Britain has become…and how cheap it sells itself.

Julian Lindley-French

The Strategic Influence Game 2: China in Space

2011-10-13T04:19:00.000-07:00

"People should not be unfamiliar with strategy. Those who understand it will survive, those who do not understand it will perish"

Sun Tzu

Alphen, the Netherlands. 13 October. On 29 September at 1316 hours GMT a Long March 2F missile, China's latest lifter, powered into the sky carrying Tiangong-1, Beijing’s first space laboratory. Shortly, China will launch Shenzhou 8 which is designed to link up with the orbiting laboratory some 350 kilometres above the Earth. Soon the Long March 5 will be in service capable of putting a 50 ton payload into low Earth orbit. On 10 August China’s first aircraft carrier began its sea trials. Although it is a re-fitted former Soviet carrier and by no means state-of-the-art, taken together with China’s investment in submarines, a new ‘carrier-killer’ ballistic missile and stealth aircraft Beijing is clearly intent on entering the strategic Premiership of world power. This ambition should be clearly understood as such...with all that implies for the West.

The timing is no mere coincidence. With the West mired in debt and much of Europe suffering strategic depression China is signalling that the Western world order is over. A challenge is being laid down to the United States and its allies that has enormous implications for NATO and European defence. Critically, as China invests in expeditionary military capability much of Europe is effectively unilaterally divesting itself of said capabilities. This is not without a certain irony. The loss of Europe’s conventional deterrent will almost certainly lead to much greater reliance in time on nuclear deterrence, something the legions of soft power disarmers in Europe might wish to consider.

Like Russia, China has a classical view of international politics. The state comes first – at home and abroad. Alliances, such as they exist, are designed merely to further the national strategic interest the aim of which is decisive influence over the neighbourhood and in time peer competitors. China’s grand strategy, which is euphemistically entitled Strategic Harmony, represents a world view that is essentially zero sum – a stronger China means a weaker America.

It is within than context that the space launch must be seen. Beijing clearly understands the psychological impact of power symbolism. With the Euro crisis accelerating Europe’s precipitate decline into strategic impotence China is establishing its psychological and ‘moral’ supremacy over much of the West. Strangely, Europe seems to be happily complicit in its own decline with little regard for the medium and long-term strategic consequences of its debt-dependency on China. This can be partly explained by the decadent nature of the debate in Europe about the ‘right’ to power. Indeed, so confused have Europeans become about the relationship between values and interests that the making of what might be termed European grand strategy is now nigh on impossible.

With Europe trapped in a self-defeating debate about the morality of power China is driving forward to make best use of it by re-defining the rules of the strategic game. China’s practice of power is to use the West against itself. By keeping the Yen artificially low China has used the West’s consumer obesity to force potential peer competitors into debt by effectively warping the global economy in its favour. The global economy is no level playing field. When the US threatens retaliation (Europeans are of no consequence in Beijing) China concedes just enough ground to maintain the system in its favour.

The transfer of wealth from West to East generated by China’s effective capture of globalisation has been used in part to fund an increase in defence expenditure of some 247% over ten years. It has also been used to fund national prestige projects that help convince the world of China’s emergence as a superpower and mask the many contradictions that exist in the Chinese economy and its complex society.

Cleverly, the Beijing elite is strengthening its grip on power by offering China a new social contract. The Communist Party agrees to draw back from overt interference in the lives of its citizens (to a point) and to promote improved living standards by embracing capitalism in return for the Party enjoying an untrammelled right to the exclusive exercise of power – both at home and abroad.

Having created this new social contract the reform pressure on the Party has by and large gone. However, the pressure on Beijing to exert Chinese power and influence abroad has increased. It is a high-risk strategy. So long as economic growth can be maintained the Party's freedom to act will be maintained. However, if China’s economy falters then the temptation to resort to narrow Chinese nationalism will become a very real danger. Like Russia massive state power is concentrated in the hands of a relative few with a very traditional view of power and strategy.

When the 'correlation of forces' is deemed appropriate Beijing will certainly move to resolve the status of Taiwan and China's various territorial disputes in the South China Sea. Over time China will seek to further extend its strategic footprint further into the Indian Ocean and South Pacific. And, this process will inevitably lead to increased tension with the US as China seeks to remove the US from its sphere of influence.

Chinese strategy does not mean war is inevitable nor does it suggest that China is implicitly or explicitly warlike. China is merely the latest player of a geopolitical game that Europeans invented but have now forgotten. However, China’s determination to exert strategic influence is clear. The power to influence is after all the purpose of its wealth creation. This simple strategic truism of Chinese power and strategy will thus shape the strategic balance of power of the century to come.

Forays into deep space are merely steps on the Long March of Chinese national strategy on the road to a new strategic space. China's strategic space. Who or what will exert strategic influence over China?

Julian Lindley-French

The Strategic Influence Game 1: High Noon in the High North

2011-10-09T01:29:00.000-07:00

"The view from Moscow is that...decline in Western power makes it more difficult for NATO to ignore co-operation with Russia”.

Keir Giles

Alphen, the Netherlands. 9 October. Who said geopolitics is dead? Ninety-four years on from the October 1917 revolution if anyone had any lingering illusions that Russia is a democracy they were surely dispelled by the 24 September announcement that President Medvedev and Prime Minister Putin would simply swap jobs in 2012. Moscow likes to call Russia a ‘managed democracy’. In fact Russia is a micro-democracy of two…and even that is suspect.

President ‘elect’ again Putin will thus be in power until 2024…at least. Moscow also announced recently an increase in defence spending of some $66 billion over three years, which amounts to some 3% of the Russia’s gross domestic product. With the economy slowing, entrepreneurial activity being squeezed by an increasingly rapacious Kremlin and civil society all but moribund the Putin regime is beginning to look very much like the Brezhnev regime of Soviet old. Then, a self-serving regime sought to offset its lack of legitimacy at home by causing trouble in Russia’s self-designated ‘near abroad’.

The obvious flashpoint will be the Baltic States, the security of which must remain an absolute priority for NATO and the EU. Ukraine is also a worry. However, it is the mineral rich High North of Europe where an increasingly assertive Russia could perhaps play its most aggressive card.

Prime Minister Putin has repeatedly said that Russia intends to defend her strategic Arctic resources with military might. On 28 June the Russians conducted the third test-firing of the new Bulava submarine-launched ballistic missile in the Barents Sea. In July Foreign Minister Ivanov indicated that Moscow intended to extend her territorial borders in the Arctic by some 2 million square kilometres and that Russia intended to keep two brigades of troops at high readiness in the far north, rather than one. In August Russian Defence Minister Bulgarkov announced the decision to acquire 120 more of the highly-capable Iskander M nuclear missiles and that the first battalion had been deployed to the Northern Military District near St Petersburg. With a range in excess of up to 500 kilometres this deployment potentially threatens much of eastern and northern Europe.

Furthermore, the Norwegians are reporting a marked increase in sorties by Russian strategic bombers along the Norwegian coast with simulated attacks now a regular occurrence. On 7 July as the Russian and Norwegian foreign ministers exchanged ratification documents for the delimitation treaty on oil exploration and exploitation in the Barents Sea a Russian strategic bomber formation flew down the Norwegian coast. Nor are the Norwegians alone. Britain has noted a marked increase in Russian air and naval operations against British air and sea space.

Why does Russia do this? Much of this is traditional Russian bluster that anyone working on Russian strategy has come to know well. Some of it is Moscow’s frustration with a lack of progress on co-operation with the Alliance over missile defence and concerns about NATO’s intervention in Libya – Europe’s ‘near abroad’. Russia sees the West as two-faced. However, strategic opportunism is also a factor. Moscow’s strategy must thus be seen as a truism most Europeans seems to have forgotten; when one lacks power to make the rules strategic influence is not solely a function of being ‘nice’.

Fortunately for the West Russia is a clumsy exponent of the geopolitical art and too often permits frustration and the power parochial to trump strategy. In effect, it is déjà vu all over again. Declining oil and gas revenues, a hole in Russian Government finances and increasing defence budgets simply did not add up to a sustainable grand strategy – then or now. However, the impules to play Strong Russia is ever-present.

A stable relationship between Russia and the West is clearly in Moscow’s geo-political interest. One only has to look at a map to see the challenges Russia faces to its south and east. However, two things prevent that. First, whilst the 2010 NATO Strategic Concept hinted at better relations with Russia uncertainty, irresolution and retreat has made the West an uncertain partners/adversary. Second, the small Kremlin cabal that holds power have very parochial political and strategic agendas that by and large contradict financial and economic reality. Taken together the drivers of Russia’s strategy in the High North become clear.

Sooner or later there will be a domestic crisis in Russia. The Baltics and the Ukraine are too sensitive for overt adventurism but not the High North. Indeed, in spite of extant treaties boundaries and borders are sufficiently fuzzy for Moscow to exploit if it feels the need to send a message to the West without necessarily provoking a direct confrontation. It is as ever a high-risk strategy.

In the iconic film High Noon local sheriff Will Kane (Gary Cooper) finds himself alone against a ruthless gang of outlaws. The little man standing firm against the bully eventually wins the day when the local citizenry finally realise that his fight is their fight. Think Finland, Norway, Sweden…and Russia.

High Noon in the High North? It could be coming soon to a screen near you.

Julian Lindley-French

Afghanistan Ten Years On

2011-10-06T02:03:00.000-07:00

“They [the Haqqani Network] didn’t agree on several things, so the meetings were without any outcome. That’s why we are seeing now all these reactions and attacks going on.” A senior Afghan official.

Alphen, the Netherlands. 6 October. The first Afghan war of the twenty-first century is coming to an end as the first Afghan civil war begins. Ten years ago today the first Western soldiers were about to set foot on Afghan soil. The Taliban were then routed and it seemed likely that Al Qaeda would soon be denied the space that is Afghanistan from which to launch lethal attacks on Western civilians. Ten years on tens of thousands of Afghan lives have been lost; some 1700 American soldiers are dead alongside 400 of their British comrades, with many more dead from coalition nations. $21 billion of aid has been spent – much of it wasted or spirited away. And still the ‘strategic’ goal of a stable Afghanistan at peace with itself and the world seems an elusive dream. Yesterday’s War?

To talk privately to officials in European capitals Afghanistan has become the non-war. After all, they say, Bin Laden is dead, the Americans want out and Europeans in any case have more pressing matters, such as saving European society from financial ruin. They tell themselves that ‘they’ have done their best for what was after all another failed American war. Of course, in spite of all this no damage has been done to NATO which must now consider other futures.

There is much talk of transition – transition in to Afghan rule; transition out for the West. End 2014 is now the magic date when all major combat operations will end and by which time some grand political bargain will (of course) have been fashioned for Afghanistan. The West will (or course) stay in Afghanistan for years to come offering its aid and advice – members of a well-meaning international community. In reality only the Americans will be formally present on the ground and few at that.

The Afghans, ever-savvy fence-sitters, have not missed the meaning of the moment. The attacks by the Haqqani Network on Kabul are merely the first salvoes of a new power struggle between and within the Pashtun-led Taliban and Afghanistan’s ‘others’ over who will control what bit of the Afghan space, how and at what drug price – fuelled of course by generous doses of mischief from Afghanistan’s ever-interfering neighbours.

The race to fill the Afghan space with something that looks ever so slightly like a functioning Afghan state now enters its final, dangerous stage. What will the end look like? Will it be a formal handover of power with a nice flag-swapping military ceremony, or will it look more like the chaos of 1973 Saigon? Who knows? Whoever does know in Afghanistan?

2012 will be the pivotal year. The trick for the Americans will be to intensify peace-talks whilst fighting. Campaign momentum is everything, Sadly, it is unlikely the Karzai Government will shift off its own fence. History suggests it will continue with some efforts to establish basic but acceptable levels of governance, whilst cutting informal deals with the members of the not-so-loyal opposition, and prepare to get out.

As ever, the situation in the south will be critical but not exclusively so. It is too early to tell if the Kandahar murder of Ahmed Wali Karzai in July 2011 has eased or complicated what passes for a political process in Afghanistan. The Pashtun represent 42% of the population but are by no means a unified body and whilst they are the political centre of gravity in Afghanistan their appeasement will only lead to conflict with the Tajiks (27%) Hazara (9%) and Uzbeks (9%).

The 2014 state of the Afghan National Army and the Afghan National Police will thus be the true test of the West’s legacy. It is in them the West must now focus its main, last effort. Will they be able to act as a unifying national force? Will they be strong enough for Kabul to exert real control over Afghanistan? Or will they be just strong enough to spare the West’s blushes on departure? The nature of the West's departure depends on the answers to these questions.

It is not Switzerland that is being so painfully constructed in the Hindu Kush but chaos still beckons if we simply walk away. Ten years on all of us in some way engaged in the campaign - from the loftiest politician to the humblest squaddie or grunt - need to grip the importance of this moment. If not, the sacrifice will have been in vain and history will condemn those on whose inattentive watch they perished.

Yesterday’s War?

Julian Lindley-French

Euro-Crash! Now, Britain! Now's Your Time!

2011-10-03T01:06:00.000-07:00

“I never worry about action, but only inaction”

Winston Churchill

Alphen, The Netherlands. 3 October, 2011. At the climax of the Battle of Waterloo Napoleon’s Imperial Guard tried to force the road to Brussels. The Brigade of Guards was waiting in ambush. “Now Maitland! Now’s your time!” Wellington thundered. Immediately the Guards emerged from the long grass and fired volley after volley into the Old Guard until for the first time it broke and ran. The Battle of Waterloo was won and Brussels was saved. It is time again for Britain to save Brussels...from itself.

Throughout Europe’s long and turbulent history the English/British have always been the guarantor of Europe's stability. The British have stepped in at critical moments of crisis either to prevent an overweening neighbour from dominating the Old Continent or to prevent the worst excesses of an unhinged ideology. It is a mark of Britain’s decline and the lack of leadership at the top of power in London that David Cameron and his team have been reduced to talking about the Eurozone crisis as if a) it is ‘nuffing to do with us, guv’; b) something to be swept under London’s increasingly threadbare political carpet; and/or c) wailing like some latter day Cassandras from the rapidly eroding margins.

The bottom-line is this; as Europe’s second or third largest economy, biggest financial market and Europe’s most capable military power it is precisely at this moment of existential crisis for the EU that Britain must show its traditional genius for pragmatic leadership…or leave the EU. That is effectively the choice on offer to London. No ‘ifs’ or ‘buts’.

Britain still has real political and popular influence over here but it is fast waning. My Dutch neighbours are puzzled by Britain’s impotence, and not a little offended by it. Where is the country that twice in the last century saved Europeans from servitude? The village in which I live was liberated by a huge British-led army that swept through here in 1944. Much of the democratic shape of modern Europe is down to Britain’s leadership. People are again looking to Britain and Britain is failing them.

The good news is that Britain has not had such an opportunity to lead for at least a generation. For my Dutch neighbours it is precisely because Britain is not in the Euro that Britain should lead. People all around me are suddenly volunteering the belief that Britain was right after all – the Euro as conceived back in the 1990s simply does not work and never will. And yet, more or much more Brussels seem to be the options on the table and the Dutch, that most European of nations, have no appetite for more Brussels.

Britain thus needs a plan to return the EU from whence it came; to enable Europe’s democratic nation-states to influence better together today’s hyper-competitive world under the leadership of Europe’s democratic nation-states. The mantra? More cooperation, less integration.

Britain’s plan would re-assert national sovereignty over key areas of European policy and strategy. To that end Prime Minister Cameron should first join Chancellor Merkel and President Sarkozy to stabilise the immediate crisis, even if that costs money. In return Cameron must insist on the repatriatriation of key areas of policy, such as social, labour, foreign and security policy - even if that means a new treaty. He should move decisively to end ever closer political union, i.e. more political integration, and insist that the European Commision's powers of decision-making be returned to the European Council - where the will of the member-states is enacted. The European Commission should be reduced to a much smaller enabling body with its powers of policy initiation removed.

The size and cost of all European institutions should be reviewed so that the damaging confusion over 'competence' is brought to a rapid end. Many of the meaningless but expensive posts and structures created by the Lisbon Treaty should be scrapped; such as the European President and the European Foreign Minister and the hopelessly Byzantine European External Action Service (EEAS). The European Parliament should be reformed and reduced in size so that real politicians, i.e. national parliamentarians, rotate through a much smaller consultative institution that sits solely in Brussels. The pretentions for the EU to have a separate legal and political identity on the international stage should also be scrapped. Finally, Britain should agree to a revised monetary union for those who a) want it; and b) agree to fiscal harmonisation but insist that ALL EU member-states have a say over the running of such a union.

If not the unelected Euro-fanatics could well win the day in the name of short-term expediency. That will mean an even more unaccountable, ‘communitarian’ Brussels. In time, it will also mean more national sovereignty will vanish down a Brussels black hole and thus be lost to incompetence and secrecy. It will certainly mean that any pretence to a link between European power and the European people will vanish leading to a ‘Europe’ run by faceless Eurocrats overseen by toothless and meaningless institutions dangerously far distant from the ordinary citizen.

What gives Britain the right? As one of my Dutch neighbours said to me, “We could not understand when the Euro was created why you British did not want to join. Now we do and you were right, just as you were right about the Constitutional Treaty and European defence”. This crisis is too important for Britain to stand aside. London must lead the EU or leave it.

Now Britain! Now’s your time!

Julian Lindley-French

Britain and the EU: The Day of Reckoning Approaches

2011-09-29T05:00:00.000-07:00

"It was an illusion to think that we could have a common currency and a single market with national approaches to economic and budgetary policy."

Jose Manuel Barroso, President of the European Commission

London, 29 September. The Euro-crunch is upon us and with it perhaps the most delicate and dangerous moment in the EU’s history. Indeed, the implications of what is about to happen are slowly only becoming apparent. One of the most profound of which could be the withdrawal of Britain from the European Union.

The Euro can only survive if the EU and the Euro become one and that by definition excludes Britain. It also means more integration and that in turn means more power transferred to unaccountable Brussels. Talking to a couple of very senior British politicians in London it is clear that Britain will never adopt the Euro whoever is in power. Nor will London accept the hidden integration necessary to solve the Euro-crisis and Britain’s consequent marginalisation. Least of all will the British pay the price for something of which Britain is not a part. The alternative is to simply accept leadership by a Germany that does not want it.

A couple of years ago I breakfasted in Washington with former German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer. I made the point to him that the Union had reached the point where London could no longer pretend to the British people that the Union is merely a super-market. If the Union moved decisively towards political and economic union the British would be faced with the worst of all worlds – subject to the Brussels diktat without influence over it. Fischer’s response was blunt; if that is how the British think then very well go. That moment has now arrived. So long as the Euro was not the Union the pretence of a messy fiction could be maintained and Britain could remain within the EU even if it was not a Eurozone member. Not any more.

The implications of Britain’s departure would be profound to say the very least. Critically, the checks and balances on Germany’s power that Berlin is rightly conscious of would be profoundly weakened. Britain’s presence guarantees the essential balance of big state power at the heart of the Union. And, in spite of London’s current travails and its many idiocies Germans have long-understood the importance of Britain’s role, particularly now as Berlin emerges from history to become the undisputed master of Europe.

Is there an alternative to German leadership? Whilst a believer in the concept of a more united Europe of states I have been extremely critical of a system that under the guise of ‘integration’ has emphasised the power of bureaucracy at the expense of democratic legitimacy...and rightly so. Nothing in European history suggests that such an approach is politically sound. And yet, if the runes are to be read correctly – and one has to read runes on these occasions because of the obsessive culture of secrecy in Brussels which too often sees the European people as enemy – the bureaucracy is about to be given a whole raft of new powers to save the single currency.

The increased commitment to 'communitarianism' called for by Commission President Barroso, is one of those euphemisms beloved of the Euro-Aristocracy which runs the bureaucracy to place themselves ever closer to the very heart of European power for the sake of expediency. The really cheeky bit is that they also want the British to pay for much of it. The call for the Transaction or Tobin Tax on banking transactions to help pay for the European Financial Stability Facility would see the British contributing 80%. The rest? The Facility might need to be expanded to a staggering €2 trillion if the so-called 'Blockbuster Fund' is set up to cover all debt across southern Europe. Moerover, with the European Central Bank already swimming under a mountain of junk debt it is I the Dutch taxpayer who will have to guarantee what is in effect going to be a transfer to the south of what little wealth I have for many years to come.

Whatever choice is made it will not be by or for the British and thus the further marginalisation of Britain is inevitable. Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democratic Deputy Prime Minister, believes Britain has more influence by remaining within the EU. However, if the EU core are about to create a system from which Britain is excluded but for which it must pay then that is clearly no longer the case. In such circumstances EU membership would no longer make strategic sense for London. Quite the reverse in fact because a future Britain would be better placed to play its vital balancing role outside the Eurozone/EU political singularity.

Therefore, all concerned might need to pause for a moment and consider the consequences. Commission President Barroso has rightly said that this is the EU’s most dangerous moment. With its coming the EU could now well have embarked on the road to the final reckoning over Britain and its membership. If that is a conscious choice then so be it. However, if it is an unintended consequence then beware. For all concerned some thinking is needed now about how best for Britain to depart with least damage.

Some of you in Brussels will scoff. There will be those amongst you who believe that in time the British will be forced to join the Euro and accept more Brussels not less. That would be a mistake. The appalling mismanagement of this crisis has made that option simply impossible. That was the message of my political interlocutors in London - one Conservative, one Labour.

History also offers a salutary lesson to our European partners. Never under-estimate us!

Julian Lindley-French

The SAS War Diaries: Who Thinks Wins

2011-09-26T07:26:00.000-07:00

"Let your plans be dark and as impenetrable as night, and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt."

Sun Tzu

London. 26 September. They literally leapt to prominence in May 1980 when Britain’s elite Special Air Service (SAS) stormed Iran’s hijacked London embassy. I was watching snooker on the BBC at the time as coverage was interrupted to cover the assault live. It was the dawn of the 24/7 media age in which we live today. I can still remember the mixture of awe and amazement as masked men swooped down from helicopters armed with stun grenades and light machine guns. This was the stuff of James Bond.

Thanks to the now copious (and mainly bad) books about the ultra-secret SAS and their motto – Who Dares Wins - a mystique has been cultivated in the international public mind that sees these superstars of the British Army less the extremely good soldiers they are and more latter day super-heroes. Thanks to that the SAS are one of the few elements of Britain’s strategic brand to have survived intact London’s headlong retreat from military influence. Therefore, the revelation that an SAS Trooper had built up a detailed war diary of the regiment’s World War Two activities was to say the least a surprise. What the book demonstrates is the vital importance of the thinking soldier – then and now. Could this offer a way forward for all Europe’s soldiery?

The now sterile debate over Europe’s militaries can be characterised thus; not enough invested in what works and too much in what does not. The same by the way goes for the British Army. I still find it hard to understand why an army with a force in excess of 100,000 people finds it so hard to deploy and sustain 10,000 of their number. The SAS turns all of that upside down and has done since its creation back in 1941. It was not mass that mattered to them, but impact. In a sense they were the ultimate British military caricatures – a Formula One army rather than a mass production army, the latter of which has never quite suited the British.

When I cast my eye across the faded glories of many European militaries it is indeed like wandering around one of those fantastic European war museums - hugely impressive and utterly out of date. It was a world in which army divisions were made up of tens of thousands and in turn formed parts of armies made up of hundreds of thousands. Any one country may have had several such armies organised into army groups. Today, what were once armies are now battle groups of several hundred or so men, whilst the great regiments have become the battalions of which battle groups are made. As we witness the miniaturisation of Europe’s once great armies it is unlikely European armies will ever again deploy a division. And yet never has something so small cost so much.

So, why not make virtue out of necessity? It was the very smallness of SAS units, allied to their intelligence, that made them so agile and flexible. They could range far and wide behind enemy lines disrupting and destroying and then vanishing. They had the best equipment and knew how to make best use of it and out-planned, out-moved and out-thought the enemy

Today, most European armed forces are trapped between maintaining a very pale imitation of a force Napoleon, Wellington or Blucher would have recognised and an even paler imitation of the SAS. A lack of political leadership, clear military thinking, nostalgia and the political influence of old soldiers has thus turned much of Europe’s armed forces into a series of extremely expensive museums. They have missions defined by a shrinking list of the things they used to be able to do, rather than the things we would really like them to be able to do. European defence planning is thus in effect a little bit pregnant – incurring the costs of pregnancy without the prospect of bringing forth something that in time might kick, bite and scream.

Defence strategy demands of a society that it exploits comparative advantage. Military strategy requires its armed forces to be able to do exactly what an enemy least desires. European society is educated and technological. It is also individualistic and yet collaborative. It can think for and of itself but is disciplined and open enough to understand the vital role of partners. In other words, Europe’s comparative advantage is its human capital, which is precisely the comparative advantage of the SAS..

Whether planned for or not the future European soldier will be first and foremost a thinking soldier, aware of the context of his or her actions, able to undertake a wide range of tasks across the conflict spectrum, and connected by technology to other key partners both civilian and military. This is exactly how David Stirling conceived the SAS back in 1941. But can we Europeans design a system in which our soldiers will be best able to exploit that comparative advantage?

Certainly, a pretty radical re-think would be needed. First, all the many legacy units and platforms weighing our armies down would need to be scrapped. Second, all conscripts would need to go. Third, a much more modular command chain would be required to enable smaller units to integrate, detach and re-form as required. Third, a command culture would be needed that emphasised small unit leadership. Fourth, at least twice (probably more) of today’s average investment per European soldier would be needed. Too costly? In fact, we could afford such a force without spending more.

Today, only 10% of Europe’s 2 million soldiers are of any real use with the €180 billion or so spent annually spent vso badly that it is a criminal waste of European taxpayer’s money. Look at the alternative. Spent effectively €180 billion could pay for a force of some 500,000 cutting-edge thinking soldiers. It is almost impossible to imagine a scenario in which Europeans would need more or any force or circumstance that could defeat it.

At the core of the whole effort there would to be something very new; a defence education system that took the best and the brightest and gave them not only what they needed to know to succeed, but better enabled them to know how to know. Knowledge power and fighting power are the twin barrels of SAS effect and will be so for Europe's future warriors.

The SAS are a legend. However, there is nothing Arthurian about them. Veiled in an almost impenetrable mask of necessary secrecy the Hereford Men generate respect and fear in friend and foe alike. Ultimately, what the diaries reveal is something quintessentially simple; a force that was simply extremely good at soldiering in all its forms, employing something for which armed forces have not always been renowned for – brains. And, it still is.

Who thinks wins – this is a lesson that should be grasped by all Europe’s armed forces.

Julian Lindley-French

Beware Julians Bearing Gifts

2011-09-24T01:13:00.000-07:00

Alphen, the Netherlands,

24 September, 2011

Dear Greeks,

I have just been listening to more Euro-twaddle from one of your ministers on the BBC. I suppose it is my warped sense of humour but I just love the twisted metaphors those responsible for this disaster employ to avoid the simple truth. To bail you out of the mess you created I will have to spend much of my hard-earned money with absolutely no guarantee that a) you will be grateful; or b) you will change. And, I will have to do it for a very long time. So, what do you want? Do we get the pain over with quickly and kick you out of the Euro, do I suffer the pain of your financial toothache for years to come, or are you really prepared to make the sacrifices that will justify my funding you?

To help you clear your thinking let me as a Dutch taxpayer explain to those of you in Greece about to take to the streets to demand more of my money to fund your lifestyle something you may wish to know about my lifestyle. I am not a rich man so the money you take from me matters. I earn most of my money as a freelancer and as I have no generous safety net I just have to get up early in the morning and work hard. Much of my day is spent writing reports, advising, writing papers and looking for new ways to earn money. The blogs you read are often written in the dead of night when I have the time. I am 53 years of age and will be working until the day I drop. Now, as I understand it you want me to fund a lot of you so you can retire at 55. I rather think not.

Sadly, the market in which I must today operate is becoming progressively worse and my income is falling as a result. This is partly because the bankers who got us into the 2008 disaster refuse to lend to each other let alone to little people like me who are trying to make a go of it. No problems, the bankers know how to look after themselves.

But let us be clear. It is also because the government I fund has to cut its budget hard and raise my taxes to pay for the consequences of a life-style that too many of you seem to regard as your right. Not all of you. I have too great a respect for Greece to blame you all for this mess. Nor do I view all southern Europeans as one. Each case is different. Spain, for example, is relatively sound to my mind and Italy a big enough economy with sufficiently strong fundamentals to pull through.

Moreover, I am even prepared to accept another dose of the one-way ‘solidarity’ beloved of the European Onion and its Euro-Aristocrats if I could be sure that once and for all you would get your financial house in order. But that’s the point, I cannot. How can I be sure that a couple of years downstream you will not come back to me and demand more of my hard-earned money? Give me some hope here.

Nor do I wholly blame your government for putting all that I have worked for at risk, even though they are a pretty rum lot. Our own Dear Leaders should have stopped you from running away with my money a long time ago. Sadly, at the time the Euro-Aristocracy of which they are a part were too busy slapping each other on the back for their ‘vision’ whilst of course quaffing another glass of that very good Dom Perignon 53, which had been paid for by my hard work.

Of course, the greater the disaster the more opaque the metaphors leaders retreat into to avoid the hard facts of failure. The European Central Bank is moving to calm the markets, we are told. The European Central Bank needs the ‘support’ of the Onion’s richer member-states, we are told. Governments are working hard to agree the terms of the latest bail out, we are told. What they really mean is that they are all working hard to deprive me of more of my hard-earned money so they can spend it on you.

So, my dear Greek friends remember when you are protesting for the protection of your living standards what you really want is more of my money so I can lose my living standards. Ask yourselves just what it is you are going to give me in return. At the very least a few of you could carry placards saying “We demand more of Julian’s money”. At least it would be honest. Above all, remember that old Greek saying – Beware Julians bearing gifts! If you have my money there will be a price to pay.

Pass the Ouzo, I need it!

All best,

Julian Lindley-French

The 2012 Euro Crash: The Hole is Less that the Sum of the Parts

2011-09-22T00:59:00.000-07:00

“Liberty is rendered even more precious by the recollection of servitude”

Cicero

Rome. The eternal city. As I hand-draft this thought Agrippa’s second century Pantheon soars above my head, its oculus open to the heavens. Still the largest unsupported concrete dome ever built it is a testament to a political truism as cogent today as it ever was; structure may endure long after power and principle have collapsed.

Your blogonaut has been stung into writing this piece by the base accusation from a Euro-Caesar that I have become a Euro-septic. Me, who has suckled from the teat of the Onion’s she-wolf like some latter-day son of Aeneas. Even the insults are archaic these days.

Rome’s great sons Sulla, Pompey, Crassus, Caesar and, of course, Octavian all claimed the power of Dictator to save the Roman Republic from disaster. “Trust me”, they all chimed, “the Republic is safe in my hands”. The rest is history as the Republic fell to be replaced by the autocracy of Empire. Cicero and Cato were isolated voices railing against the loss of Rome’s ancient liberties but so seductive were the crisis calls that their respective sticky ends elicited little public concern. What mattered was the here and now, not the maybe and then.

Now, I do not for a minute see the Onion as Dictator. Nor do I doubt the good intentions of those members of Europe’s leadership class now clambering for more Europe not less as we approach the 2012 Euro crash. But beware what you desire. More Europe would be a less accountable Europe. The Onion would become even more bureaucratic and thus offer more opportunities for the bureaucracy to do what bureaucracies have always done; draw ever more power unto self. There would be much talk of effectiveness and efficiency as conformity replaced diversity and free-thought was reduced to sedition. The result would be incompetence tinged with intolerance. The curbing of liberties no doubt offered as progress cynically celebrated by the trappings of a false Triumph, and all of course done in the name of the People.

The danger is real. The Onion has traditionally expanded its unaccountable ‘competence’ (good Onion-speak that) at such moments of friction. Known as neo-functionalism it is power creep beloved of the bureaucratic classes that sit at the right hands of the Euro-Aristocracy. There is real pressure to ensure that no other state becomes another Greece to the Onion’s Rome and this is pressing the Euro-Aristocracy to call for more state sovereignty to be poured down the Brussels black-hole like some inverted Pantheon with the oculus now drain.

The forthcoming annus horribilis thus sees the Onion as Aristotle's Metaphysica reversed in which the hole is less than the sum of the parts. At its heart lies an incapable Onion that in turn renders its parts impotent. Today, Europe has a very bad pretend super-state allied to ever-weakening under-states the latter led by politicians forced to talk the language of pretend power. It is just at such points when legitimate government has been rendered incompetent that would-be Caesars call for power to be ‘centralised’. Act in haste; oppress at leisure.

There is something else I notice sitting here beneath the cavernous emptiness that is the Pantheon. The original Roman magnificence has been blighted by what can only be described as appalling Baroque marble graffiti. Today, the Pantheon really is the Roman equivalent of a Yorkshire outside toilet with bay windows on it.

If the Onion was just an Onion and focussed on supporting Europe’s states by co-ordinating and harmonising state action then common sense might just prevail. But so many ‘ambitions’ now adorn the Onion that it has taken on a whole new architecture that very few ordinary Europeans ever signed up for. The Plebs are thus reduced to being distant, impotent witnesses to a political destiny over which they will have little control. They may be offered the odd plebiscite but only if they give the answer deemed Euro-politic by the Euro-Aristocracy.

The Pantheon’s magnificence reflected the vigour of power that was Agrippa’s and Hadrian’s second century Rome. But, in time the very creeping competence of the Empire destroyed it. Lacking legitimacy from within it had to conquer without to prevent the political edifice from crashing under the weight of its own political obesity. Rome the idea became Rome the mighty and perished because of it.

Scroll down 2000 years and the 2012 Euro crash. If the Onion’s power is increased yet further the still utterly immature European Parliament will offer no protection for Europe’s citizens in the face of an over-mighty but incompetent Euro-bureaucracy. Its Tribunes will either be co-opted or dismissed and the most we may hope for are Consuls and Praetors loosely legitimised by a European people knowing not why they vote nor for whom.

So, I am no Euro-septic, just a European who at this moment of profound danger fears for a politically septic Europe. I believe in Europe; but not this Europe.

Julian Lindley-French

Rotten Eggs and Stinking Onions

2011-09-19T00:43:00.000-07:00

“…what one finds is that aristocracy seems to emerge from the very midst of democracy as the result of a natural effort”.

Alexis de Tocqueville

Alphen, the Netherlands. 19 September. Watching former International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn bear his soul to the French people was painful. His dalliance with a chambermaid in a New York hotel was explained away as a ‘moral failing’. Strauss-Kahn’s ‘confession’ followed a now well-trodden path of false humility from a cynical member of Europe’s über-class. And yet, the very people who caused the banking and Euro disasters, of whom he is one are asking for even more power to fix their crises.

It is the European Onion which created the new Euro-Aristocracy born of political and bureaucratic patronage and the Bankokleptocracy that supports them. They have skilfully exploited the democratic and sovereignty deficit at the Onion’s core. What a strange place Europe has become when no-one quite knows who controls what and what a dangerous moment this is for European democracy. It is as though the twin crises are inadvertently recreating the l’ancien regime swept away by the French Revolution in 1789, albeit a la l’Europe.

The 2008 banking crisis is not over. We are merely at half-time. 60% of economic output will be lost by the time the banking crisis and the Euro meltdown are eventually resolved. Indeed, our children will be paying for the consequences of banker’s greed and political insanity for many years to come. The casino banking which caused the crash is alive and well. None of the fraudsters who robbed millions of us of income and interest have been jailed. They continue with their champagne life-styles and their bogus bonuses whilst governments cut public services and contracts to sweep fraud under our carpets.

Last week a 31 year old Ghanaian, Kweku Adoboli, was arrested in London for allegedly gambling away some 1.5 billion Euros whilst working for Swiss bank UBS. Who will be in charge of the internal UBS investigation? It will be a certain Mr David Sidwell, the former Chief Financial Officer of JP Morgan bank, who were at the forefront of the so-called ‘forward setting’ that led to the 2008 crash.

The British Government said it would support the findings of a review that called for retail banking (the bit you and I use) to be separated from casino banking. But, of course, nothing is to happen until 2019. The over-mighty subjects in the banks pretend to complain but they know all too well it is mere theatre. They are above and beyond the control of any and all governments and in any case deals have been done behind the scenes in today’s health and safety equivalents of dark, smoke-filled rooms...and well beyond the public gaze.

Of course, Mr Adoboli, if found guilty will be hung out to dry. He will face an exemplary sentence. There will be much talk of him being a rotten egg in an otherwise sound basket of financial services. Nothing could be further from the truth. He was able to inflict such damage precisely because the entire edifice is rotten to the core with rotten eggs integral to a system that lacks any moral compass.

And then we have the Euro-crisis. I now await the day when it is announced that a super-tax is to be imposed upon me to pay for the Greeks and their southern neighbours who can no longer be bothered to work or pay taxes; and to do so the value of my Euro savings has been slashed. Which brings me to the most galling aspect of this crisis; at last week’s meeting in Poland our wining, dining leaders once again tried to wish the disaster away. No decision action was taken, no finger-prints could thus be found at the scene of the crime.

Instead, having created this appalling mess our Dear Leaders are now claiming that the only way forward is fiscal union. Now, if I was a real cynic I would suggest that the crisis was built into the Euro from Day One precisely so that the über-class could at some point by-pass democratic oversight. Fiscal union is but one short step from political union and with it a huge increase in the role and cost of the Onion in our daily lives.

The European Parliament? It is incapable of providing effective political oversight. Indeed, the only difference between it and a travelling circus is that the latter at least provides entertainment, even if most of the clowns are to be found in Parliament.

It is time therefore to go back to first principles. First, the banks must be brought under proper legislative control and that means national parliaments working together. If they threaten to leave Europe as a result then those banks must be denied the right to trade in Europe and thus forced to sell their European operations to European banks under proper control. Second, if Greece (or any other) fails to bring its budget deficit down to a level commensurate with its treaty obligations it must be forced to leave the Euro. A time limit must also be established for that to be achieved. Third, no new treaty can be agreed by the Euro-Aristocracy that passes more power to the Onion without a referendum in each member-state. Fourth, planning must now begin for the orderly replacing of the Euro, either with national currencies or with a Euro focussed on an inner-core to which other currencies are pegged.

I know I am going to pay a price for this mess but I want to know now what it is and be assured that what emerges is transparent and effective.

The bankokleptocracy is full of rotten eggs; aided and abetted by a Euro-Aristocracy that has hijacked a once noble idea for narrow gain – the Onion. When are we ever going to learn?

Julian Lindley-French

Why Ten Year On Britain is Less Secure

2011-09-10T10:51:00.000-07:00

It has been a bruising decade for Britain. If on 10 September, 2001 an analyst had suggested that within months British forces would be fighting on the ground in Afghanistan, let alone in Iraq less than two years later credentials would have been questioned. 911 quite simply changed all the planning assumptions upon which British security and defence policy was established.

In September 2001 London was still enjoying a late Indian summer of British power. Under Tony Blair’s leadership London had enthusiastically embraced liberal humanitarianism. The decade of tragedy in the Balkans had done much to shame Europe and Britain with it. However, the British armed forces had performed reasonably well when the bluff of the Bosnian Serbs was finally called in 1995.

The 1998 Strategic Defence Review was a radical document. Then Secretary-of-State for Defence in a moment of prescience said Britain faced “a complex mixture of uncertainty and instability. These problems pose a real threat to our security, whether in the Balkans, the Middle East or in some trouble-spot yet to ignite”. In his now famous Chicago Speech Tony Blaire set out the ‘doctrine of international community’ which effectively spelled out the Responsibility to Protect that became UN mantra. And, with British land forces leading the way into Kosovo in 1999 Blair was into his strategic stride.

And yet no-one could have foreseen both the impact on Britain’s armed forces and the traditional balance between protection of British society and projection of British power of what was to ensue. As the sheer scale of the horror of that day sank in London knew it faced a profound dilemma. Of course, standing shoulder to shoulder with the United States was the right and natural reflex for a country the defence policy of which in effect amounted to standing on America’s shoulders. America was the indispensable ally with whom Britain had a special relationship the support of which magnified British power and influence. And yet, sending British troops deep into the Muslim heartland was bound to ignite deep passion in Britain’s burgeoning Muslim population.

Furthermore, the cost would be prohibitive. The planning assumptions over the rate at which British military equipment would wear out presumed modest enough operations that the force would not need to be re-capitalised until 2025. In fact, it soon became apparent that the equipment would wear out by 2014, which partly explains government thinking in the 2010 Strategic Defence and Security Review and the hire-purchase approach to affording the military adopted by successive Labour governments. Sooner or later it had to be paid for.

There were also unexpected benefits. When Tony Blair went to the US Congress on 20 September, 2001 any chance of the IRA re-starting its armed struggle in Northern Ireland was ended. Any attack on a British soldier now fighting America’s global war on terror would be seen by the Americans as an act of terror, not a struggle for freedom. Washington moved decisively to cut off funds to the IRA.

And yet, taken together the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have been disasters for Britain. They have been too big, too long and too far away for Britain to sustain on a peace-time defence budget and peace-time political and bureaucratic mentality. Strenuous efforts have been made, mainly by the military, to square the cost-resource circle by enhancing civil-military co-operation and through the extensive use of reserves, but somehow neither war crossed a threshold to be sufficiently serious for London to organise itself on a war footing. This of course begs the question were the wars serious enough threats to Britain’s security to fight? Did fighting both wars in solidarity with the US actually make Britain a more or less secure place?

It is too early to answer those questions but given the many stresses and strains on a changing British society as a result of those two wars they are reasonable questions to ask. And, it does seem strange that whilst sending British troops to Afghanistan and Iraq to keep violent jihad at strategic distance millions of people entered Britain over the same 2001-2011 period from some of the most conservative Muslim societies on earth.

This apparent disconnect between security policy, defence policy and immigration policy continues to this day, given added spice by the need to cut Britain’s budget deficit. Britain’s already under-funded armed forces are to be cut by at least a further 10%. Tellingly, since 2001 there has been a four-fold increase in investment in the intelligence services over the same period. In spite of the fact that the British military has fought two wars if defence cost inflation is taken out there has been a 25% cut in the defence budget since 2000.

In effect security has consumed defence and in spite of the fine sounding intentions of the 2010 National Security Strategy Britain’s strategic footprint is shrinking fast. The British armed forces just about got away with Libya but it was a close run thing. Ten years on from 911 liberal humanitarianism and the adventurism some saw in it is effectively over. Britain has revealed itself as yet another strategically-illiterate European country as the friction between mass immigration and Britain’s twenty-first century wars make the first order priority to stabilise a dangerously fractured society.

And what of the future? If the economic situation permits in 2015 (and it is a big ‘if’), and of course the current government is still in power, then a commitment has been made to reinvest in the British armed forces. However, the future force will be far smaller. Indeed, by 2015 the British Army will be smaller than at any time since 1911, when Britain had by far the world’s largest navy.

This can only mean Britain is shifting from a strategy of engagement to a strategy of protection. In effect, a fortress Britain is being created with a residual military able to reach out strike and punish on occasions but little more. Yes, there will be great emphasis (and much bluster) on conflict prevention through aid and development but so many of the causes that start conflicts are out of Britain’s control, not least the hyper-competition between the emergent and more established Great Powers.

Ten years on from 911 Britain is a much reduced power in spite of the heroic efforts of its young men and women under arms. Perhaps the two wars and financial and economic crisis of the last decade represent not merely the consequences of 911 but the final end of four hundred years of global influence. If so, Britain as super-Belgium is not very appealing and Britain’s retreat will mean the world is more dangerous, not less so.

Julian Lindley-French

Liberty's March

2011-09-10T01:31:00.000-07:00

“It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried”. Winston Churchill

10 September, 2011. There comes a time when all the analysis must end and a simple act of remembrance undertaken. I remember the three thousand people of all nationalities, faiths and creeds who died that bright, bad day in Washington and New York. I remember the many tens of thousands of our young men and women who have sacrificed their lives to defeat Al Qaeda. I remember the many tens of thousands of believers in the great faith of Islam who have lost their lives and I honour them. I remember the brave men and women across the Middle East who today are dying to take their lives back from the corrupt, the intolerant and the downright evil. I also remember those many tens of thousands whose lives have been blighted by this sad decade. Now is the time to honour our fallen, and move on.

Tomorrow I will drive from the Netherlands to Britain through the great monuments of freedom’s struggle. I will pass Nieuwkirk which marked the end of the trenches in the 1914-1918 Great War when British, French and American forces fought side-by-side against the Kaiser’s autocracy alongside young men from across the world. I will drive on past Bray Dunes from which in 1940 the British Army was plucked in the miracle of Dunkirk only to return exactly four years later to defeat Nazism as part of the greatest armada in history. I will cross the Channel through the Tunnel, a concrete link between European powers that is as well the symbolic representation of a new Europe at peace with itself and the world. I will drive along the south coast of England under the very skies which in 1940 Royal Air Force Spitfires and Hurricanes defeated Hitler’s Luftwaffe ensuring the eventual defeat of the Nazis and in time the restoration of liberty across the whole of Europe.

For all the self-doubt, the many siren voices of decline and defeatism one hears the merest glance at a political map reveals a simple truth; having embraced Europe and defeated Soviet totalitarianism liberty is now marching beyond our Atlantic shores. It is marching across the Middle East and in time will ensure the defeat of violent extremism. Even when extremists lash out from time to time and may hurt us they can never defeat us.

“It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government, except all the others that have been tried”, Winston Churchill once famously quipped. There may be much wrong with our democracies and there certainly is. The professional political class in North America and Europe has become a self-licking lollipop. It spends too much time in arrogant self-contemplation and not enough time reflecting as to how it might better serve the people. And yes, our societies are changing profoundly causing friction and mistrust. And yet, all the massive majority of incomers want is the right to be Americans, Canadians or Europeans. We must never allow ourselves to be defined by any one race or religion. Indeed, if there is any one message from the roll call of fallen honour that marks Ground Zero that is it.

There is simply no other form of government or governance that comes close to democracy for it champions liberty and we are the champions of liberty. The fact that I have the right to be profoundly critical of my own British political class is a liberty I will exercise until my final breath. Indeed, speaking truth unto power is a right which defines us all. It is that which makes the democratic West the beacon of hope for millions in support of whom once again American, British and French forces are again risking their lives.

We have made mistakes since the fall of the twin towers and we should be always conscious of our many failings. We are superior to no-one. We must learn to learn better and be humble enough to admit our errors. We must better respect the choices of others if they are made free and fair. But, we must also remember that the world is a better place when the West is strong and we are united.

Justice, tolerance but above all liberty, are the proper memorials to our fallen. I for one remember them on this day; and in their honour look to a better future.

Requiescat in pace.

Julian Lindley-French

Brigadoon

2011-09-09T01:27:00.001-07:00

“Brigadoon, Brigadoon, Blooming under sable skies. Brigadoon, Brigadoon, There my heart forever lies.

Let the world grow cold around us, Let the heavens cry above! Brigadoon, Brigadoon, In thy valley, there'll be love”.

Alphen, the Netherlands. 9 September. There is an old Danny Kaye film about a mythical Irish village called Brigadoon which appears to the people but occasionally and where all is perfect and problems such as they exist at all are reduced at a stroke to a merry metaphor. Since that bright, bad day ten years ago ended the age of the twin towers the Whitehall Village has become a political Brigadoon; fighting and appeasing the causes and consequence of 911 at one and the same time, with little idea of strategy or mission. It has been an awful decade for a Britain in which the disconnect between the governed and the unworldly governing class is now dangerously wide. Political correctness means that real issues are rarely confronted, only hinted at indirectly.

Elected representatives have been stripped of any meaningful influence as politics and law have become hopelessly entangled. Presidential but politically impotent prime ministers have been held to account by unelected lawyers whilst all became obsessed with serving that media mogul on the Sky. How the mighty are finally fallen. The cult of political celebrity has been little different in its vacuous waste from the celebrity culture that today obsesses Britain’s politically impotent masses.

Brigadoon has instead slipped into half-truths, half-policies and half-leaders. No voter has the desired government. Labour conned itself into power under the mantra of social democratic New Labour only to be captured by the Hard Left of the Party when an unelected and unelectable Gordon Brown was offered the chance to experiment on Britain. Today, the Coalition Government sees a small Liberal-Democratic minority exerting influence way beyond its meagre representation in Parliament, whilst the high-bureaucracy has become a focal point for competing ideologies as to how Britain should be run and its place and role in the world.

In Brigadoon there is no cultural or racial tension. In Britain lives are routinely being blighted by racism and intolerance. Indeed, as Brigadoon vowed to make Britain safe in the wake of 911, it simultaneously lost control of Britain’s borders. At least discrimination in Brigadoon is now more equally shared. Formal discrimination against the majority comes in the form of multiculturalism and ‘equal opportunities’. Employment today is offered not on the basis of quality or capability but race and gender. Those insidious little boxes on application forms asking for race and gender details are not simply for statistical purposes.

Beyond the bounds of Brigadoon an angry majority has instead been cowed into silence. Anti-racist and anti-discrimination campaigns simply pushed intolerance underground and at the same time made it worse. Too often too many take out their frustrations on minorities who, unfairly blamed for the fantasies of Brigadoon, not surprisingly huddle together for safety in urban ghettos. The indigenous population that could afford it has simply fled to the hills leaving the centres of many English cities dangerous places where poverty, hopelessness and too often hatred stalk the streets. At night and at weekends gangs and drunkenness rule the space law and order too easily abandoned. Today, a million of our young people are bereft of education, employment and training, and streets burn as police do nothing for fear of being accused of breaking politically-correct taboos. Damned if they act; damned if they don’t.

Even the very existence of Britain is now under threat. An enemy of the British state has virtually unchecked power in Scotland with his one professed aim to bring down the United Kingdom. The English of course are forbidden to comment on anything for fear of being accused of racism and/or imperialism. This is in spite of the regular provocations that now emerge from Edinburgh as their sons and daughters at Scottish universities suffer blatant fee discrimination. The broke and put upon English are however still expected to pay the Scots to stay in Britain and for the feral elite who ran Britain’s banks into the ground in their pursuit of greed.

Ten years on from 911 ‘Strategy’ has been done to death in Brigadoon; as empty a word as it is misunderstood. Trapped in the longest post-Imperial apology in history Brigadoon has been fighting and appeasing violent jihad at one and the same time. In the immediate aftermath the renowned British military was sent eastward to keep the threat at strategic distance, even as millions from some of the poorest and most conservative places on earth were allowed into Britain. And then came 7/7. Ten years on a thousand of our brave young men and women are dead and many more grievously-wounded fighting wars that cannot be won. The British military is broken, the wars un-won and London’s influence diminished the world over.

Ten years on Brigadoon has passed much of its authority to Brussels-doon and the European Onion in an attempt to create the perfect alibi for failure. It is an EU that is patently and patiently dragging its richer members down into the depths to pay for its failed members like some super-institutional Titanic. Huge burdens are now imposed upon Britain with absolutely no benefits to show for it, other than the strangely abstract that Brigadoon claims.

And yet there is still hope. The generosity of the British people remains as their support for starving millions the world over attest. Although Brigadoon, true to form, has exploited that generosity by getting the British people to pay for India’s nuclear weapons programme and armed forces. And, whilst the British spirit is bowed, it is not as yet broken. There is a genuine thirst to be proud again and many of the incomers simply want to be given the chance to be British. It will take at least ten years to recover from a disastrous decade but if Brigadoon can be kept out of our lives the good will and common sense of the massive majority of ordinary Britons of all creeds and colours will prevail.

“Brigadoon, Brigadoon, Blooming under sable skies. Brigadoon, Brigadoon, There my heart forever lies. Let the world grow cold around us, Let the heavens cry above! Brigadoon, Brigadoon, In thy valley, there'll be love”.

Julian Lindley-French

Sleepwalking into a Nuclear Nightmare

2011-09-07T05:44:00.000-07:00

"Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds."
Robert Oppenheimer quoting the Bhagavad Gita

Alphen. The Netherlands. 7 September. With the West deep in sombre remembrance of 911, a new and dangerous shift in the nuclear balance is taking place in the shadows. There is a New Nuclear Realpolitik afoot that is shaping today’s world... and tomorrow's.

Iran is moving patiently towards a nuclear weapons system. Taken together the empty commitment made towards a global nuclear zero, calls by the strategically-illiterate to remove the last US nuclear forces from Europe, and the out-dated US-Russian Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) make the world’s nuclear future more dangerous not less so. The entire global arms control architecture is in urgent need of renovation if it is to be relevant to this century not the last.

Iran is playing clever. According to the International Atomic Energy Authority (IAEA) Tehran will soon begin enrichment of weapons-grade uranium at a new underground site near Qom. Iran has been swift to remind the world that its intentions are entirely peaceful. At Bushehr the first nuclear power reactor to generate electricity in the Middle East began fuelling up in late August. It could be operational within a few months, although it will more likely take a year or so. In effect, Iran is using the civil programme to remind the international community of the failure of the so-called Nuclear Weapons States (NWS) to fulfil their side of a bargain struck 43 years ago in the 1968 Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Under the NPT the Non-Nuclear Weapons States (NNWS) would be given assistance to develop peaceful nuclear energy in return for the Nuclear Weapons States divesting themselves of nuclear weapons at the earliest opportunity.

With Russian support the Bushehr plant complies with the NPT, and by keeping its civilian development on a separate track to its military programme Iran is complicating attempts to reveal the extent and scale of Iran’s current efforts to develop nuclear weapons. The West is of course huffing and puffing and some limited sanctions have been applied by the United Nations, but oil-rich Tehran has little concern for its image in the West. Rather, it aims to become the strongest actor in the region sitting at the crux of the Middle East and Central-South Asia and snubbing the West is a conscious part of that strategy.

Why should the World be concerned? First, Iran’s ambitions are putting Tehran on a collision course with nuclear-armed Israel, which has some 200 warheads at Dimona. Second, if Iran succeeds in upping its prestige amongst developing states by deploying such weapons then with India, Pakistan and North Korea all now established nuclear powers any hope of President Obama’s Global Zero will soon evaporate. Third, nuclear weapons act as the great equaliser for states the armed forces of which are relatively weak, such as Iran. In the event of, say, ten or more nuclear powers a whole new balance between deterrence and defence will be needed.

Europe is not being at all clever. Earlier this year Belgium, Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Norway moved to have the remaining 200 or so European-based US nuclear warheads removed from their soil. The role of nuclear weapons is to offset weaknesses in conventional forces. However, these very same countries not only want rid of NATO’s cornerstone nuclear defence, but they are also savagely cutting their respective militaries AND trying to neuter missile defence. This is strategic illiteracy of breath-taking proportions.

The US could have been cleverer. By proposing a Global Zero of which there is little reasonable chance the hitherto dormant strategically-illiterate have once again become exercised. Nor were the implications of the 2010 START treaty fully thought through. Reducing nuclear weapons is a good thing and with some 23,000 warheads the world-over there is clearly work to do. However, focussing purely on an out-dated bilateral track with Russia not only beefed up an untrustworthy Moscow but more importantly (and inadvertently) actually offered incentives to the likes of China and India to build-up to US and Russian levels precisely so they can be seen as equals – and made such a goal attainable. Strategic parity is precisely the essence of both countries’ national strategies.

Together, Iran, Global Zero and START 2010 have in effect killed the 1968 NPT – with nothing under consideration to replace it. Worse, US thinking reflects profound confusion in US strategy between Realpolitik and strategic political correctness. There is no European thinking of note. Consequently, an out-of-date multilateral arms control treaty will be left in place for fear that to replace its failing structures could bring the whole edifice crashing down. This is not least because the West itself is on very dodgy ground in terms of compliance. Where is the nuclear logic in that?

Political risk must now be taken. The democratisation of mass destruction allied to globalisation is driving seventy-year old nuclear weapons technologies and their associated missiles into the strategic open far faster than arms control can stop it. Consequently, the leader powers are losing control over both the technology and likely end-users.

With the Non-Proliferation Treaty dying of old age what is needed is an entirely new treaty with new incentives, enhanced constraints and with an International Atomic Energy Authority that is truly fit for purpose. Those Europeans who want rid of US nuclear weapons (and what about British and French systems?) should for a moment take a strategic view and realise that in this anarchic, Realpolitik world empty-unilateralism is as dangerous as uncontrolled proliferation.

The nuclear genie is now out of its aged and cracked bottle. It is therefore time for the West to regain the nuclear high ground and negotiate whilst there is still a semblance of strength. If not we will sleepwalk into a nuclear nightmare.

Julian Lindley-French

When Think-Tanks Stop Thinking

2011-09-04T00:47:00.000-07:00

“A wise man is cured of ambition by ambition itself; his aim is so exalted that riches, office, fortune and favour cannot satisfy him”. Samuel Johnson

Alphen, The Netherlands. 5 September, 2011. Something strange happened to me last week. A leading London think-tank (which shall remain nameless) asked me to remove my affiliation as an Associate Fellow from my blog because in the words of the offending email, “I do not mince my words” and because my blog may be seen as the official position of aforesaid think-tank. Excuse me!

Associate fellowships, special professorships and the like have proliferated over recent years. They offer institutions free labour during a time of austerity in return for an affiliation that implies prestige. What happened to me is of course immaterial but what it implies is not; that think-tanks stop thinking and challenging for fear of offending the so-called ‘great and good’. Whatever happened to academic freedom?

There are two reasons why this is happening in London (and I have seen evidence of it elsewhere). First, some of the more traditional think-tanks have become too close to the Establishment. Consequently, their instinct is to validate rather than challenge Establishment thinking. As a result they become progressively co-opted by the Whitehall Village and thus add little to it. Second, there has been a host of new think-tanks in London over recent years most of whom support one political party/issue or another. Their mission is simply to justify the political positions of their political/vested interest masters. Sadly, whilst there are a few think-tanks still free to do what they should be doing – thinking, challenging and provoking – they are perilously few in number.

Thinking, challenging and provoking is also the overt mission of my blog. It is not without method or rigour. On occasions (dare I say) I may be wrong. However, when I challenge or provoke I do so after a lot of thought and supported by a lot of facts, and with many years of experience behind me. My goal is essentially simple; to fill with analysis and strategy the expanding gap between the abstractions into which government is retreating and the very different reality on the ground which real people see daily. In other words, I am trying to do what too many think-tanks now fail to do too often.

Implicit in this creeping vine of intellectual entanglement is a wider risk – the more sensitive the issue the greater the pressure for self-censorship driven on by the political correctness that now oozes from every fissure in political London. Of course, one must at all times be sensitive to the impact of ideas and words and I am acutely so. However, that must not stop free thought.

The ‘offending’ blog seems to have been “The Great Immigration Disaster” in which I analysed official figures and considered the impact on Britain’s social infrastructure from uncontrolled immigration. The fact is that Britain is my country and the pace and scale of immigration as confirmed by the official figures and the changes it implies for Britain – both positive and negative - represent one of the most profound and indeed strategic changes to British society ever seen. Thus, I have every right to consider it.

And yet here’s the rub; very few beyond the far Left or far Right are brave enough these days to consider this vital issue. This conspiracy of silence, which is not limited to immigration, reflects a lack of leadership at the very top – both on the Left and Right. It is a failure of leadership itself fuelled by fear and narrow political calculation that opens the way for the politics of hate.

The simple fact is that politicians are scared of dealing with difficult issues for which they have few or no solutions and their fellow-travellers in the think-tanks too often validate rather than challenge this. Cosy elites are always dangerous, but when free thought is either co-opted or simply quashed then there is something profoundly wrong.

Such insecurity also reveals a dangerous vulnerability at the heart of Britain’s elite. The British people still hang on to the now out-dated belief that Whitehall remains capable of dealing with all issues and establishing sound strategy as a result. In fact, the more sensitive the issue the more likely it is that Whitehall avoids it; and the more likely that think-tanks will take their cue from government.

The bottom-line is this; Whitehall’s inability to confront profound and sensitive issues explains why Britain is incapable of establishing sound strategy. The job of think-tanks therefore is to truly challenge orthodoxy, not to ratify it. And that means more than empty marketing slogans that appeal to government and corporate sponsors. All that does is to legitimise the group-think that inevitably leads to failure.

The alternative to moral courage? I see it here every day in the Netherlands the politics of which is dominated by a right-wing populist Geert Wilders. All he has done has filled the vacuum created by the failure of the intellectual class to challenge the governing class on issues of fundamental importance to society and the state.

The world is a safer place when think-tanks think, not merely pander. So, rest assured; I will not stop blogging, the views expressed herein are entirely my own, I will not mince my words and I will confront all and any issue I deem to be of strategic importance.

Oh, and I have also removed the offending affiliation. Their loss!

Julian Lindley-French

Thank You, Royal Wootton Bassett

2011-09-01T06:31:00.000-07:00

Alphen, the Netherlands. 1 September, 2011. Every now and then politics is full of painful symmetries. Today saw the start of the long-heralded cuts in personnel of the British armed forces. Some 22,000 posts will be cut over the next four years with more possible on top. This represents over 10% of the force, with more likely to come.

Last night the people of a small, dignified Wiltshire town turned out for the last time in Sunset Service to mark their role in respecting Britain’s fallen soldiers. Since April 2007 Wootton Bassett has paid its respects to 345 fallen servicemen and women who have passed through the town on the return of their bodies from Afghanistan and Iraq.

Some 2,000 people turned out on 18 August to pay silent tribute to Lt Daniel Clack of the 1st Battalion, The Rifles; the last body of a serving British soldier to be repatriated via neighbouring RAF Lyneham which will shortly close due to the cuts. Henceforth, Britain’s dead will return via RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire where the town of Carterton will take up the vigil.

The town’s mayor, Paul Heaphy, said last night that the service was the “last full measure of devotion” to those who had died.

In June President Obama said the people of Wootton Bassett marked the “best of British character”. From this October the title Royal Wootton Bassett is to be conferred upon the town by Her Majesty the Queen as a mark of royal respect. Yesterday the Union Flag was lowered one last time before being taken to the memorial garden at Brize Norton.

The wife of one servicemen when asked about the cuts said, “I don’t believe Mt Cameron and those involved in making the decision to cut the Armed Forces are fully aware of the true cost and impact that the stroke of their pens will have on those who served them so proudly”. I am sure the people of Wootton Bassett are, as are the rest of us who think about these things. But that is perhaps for another day.

Thank you, Royal Wootton Bassett. You are indeed the best of British; already royal to my mind in both spirit and generosity.

Julian Lindley-French

The Worst Journey in the World

2011-08-31T00:51:00.001-07:00

Alphen, The Netherlands. 31 August, 2011. Seventy years ago this day the first Arctic Convoy set off from Scotland en route to Murmansk in Northern Russia. Between August 1941 and May 1945, 78 convoys comprising some 1400 merchant ships completed what Winston Churchill called, “the worst journey in the world” to deliver vital war supplies to Soviet Russia under a lend-lease agreement with the United Kingdom and United States.

The convoys were escorted by the ships of the Royal Navy, supported by units of the Royal Canadian and US navies. Over that period 85 merchant ships were sunk by enemy action, together with 2 Royal Navy cruisers, 6 destroyers and 8 other escort ships. Sinking was almost certainly fatal as life expectancy in the freezing waters of the Norwegian Sea and the Arctic Ocean amounted to a few minutes at best.

Operating under constant threat of air and U-boat attack from occupied Norway the convoys had to operate either in perpetual dark or perpetual light. Moreover, severe weather, fog, strong currents and the mixing of warm and cold waters not only made the use of ASDIC (sonar) difficult, but also greatly complicated convoy cohesion.

Keeping ships together was vital. In July 1942 convoy PQ17 suffered the worst losses of any convoy in World War Two. Fatally, following constant attacks by air and the threat from the German fast battleship Tirpitz (sister ship of the Bismarck), the convoy was ordered to scatter. Only 11 out of 35 ships made it to Archangelsk on Russia’s Arctic coast.

Hitler deemed the convoys to be of such strategic importance that intense efforts were made by the Luftwaffe and the Kriegsmarine to disrupt them, but at an enormous cost to both services. On December 26, 1943 Admiral Sir Bruce Fraser, flying his flag in the battleship HMS Duke of York and supported by the cruisers HMS Belfast, HMS Jamaica, HMS Norfolk and HMS Sheffield, trapped and sank the German battle-cruiser Scharnhorst by employing for the first time radar-controlled gunnery. In the Arctic twilight Duke of York straddled Scharnhorst with the first salvo from her 14 inch guns. On 12 November 1944 32 Royal Air Force Lancasters from Nos 9 and 617 (Dambusters) squadrons dropped the massive Tallboy bombs on the Tirpitz as she sat in Norway's Tromso Fjord. She rolled over and sank within minutes. In all the Germans lost 2 battleships, 3 destroyers and some 30 U-boats in addition to many aircraft.

The convoys provided essential support to a hard-pressed Soviet Union, particularly during the siege of Leningrad in 1941 and 1942 by delivering critical food and ammunition supplies. As the war moved towards its conclusion the Soviets insisted the convoys continue, mainly for symbolic reasons. In the end the Arctic Convoys proved a decisive victory for the Allies, but at an enormous cost in lives and ships.

Vital to that success was ULTRA intelligence gained as a result of the cracking of the German Enigma code at Bletchley Park in southern England. This enabled the Royal Navy not only to make the best use of its forces, but also provided the forewarning to route convoys around U-boat wolf packs and German surface raiders.

Seventy years on from what was an epic struggle which claimed the lives of thousands of men on both sides it is right that we pause and remember their sacrifice.

Julian Lindley-French

From the Halls of Montezuma to the Shores of Tripoli?

2011-08-29T01:52:00.000-07:00

“At the very time that Rome burned, he mounted his private stage and, reflecting present disasters in ancient calamities, sang about the destruction of Troy”. Tacitus on Nero

Alphen, The Netherlands. 29 August. Writing in Time.com Professor Gordon Adams of the Stimson Center in Washington gave me a bit of a kicking following my blog “Well Done, NATO”. I had suggested that NATO, the EU and its member-nations endeavour to support Libya’s National Transitional Council with the stabilisation and reconstruction of Libya. Gordon rather forcibly objected, citing failures in Afghanistan and Iraq. There is nothing wrong with that. I like a good Yank-Yorkshire punch-up. It moves the debate forward. "What on earth are we thinking?" Gordon thundered. Here is what I am thinking.

Now, before I am deemed to have offended the entire US Marine Corps – never a good idea - my use of the first line from the Marine Hymn is not a slur on them. Indeed, I have nothing but respect for the Corps. What concerns me is the apparent loss of America’s strategic mojo. Which brings me to my main concern; America’s is catching the European disease; ignoring threat because it is too expensive. If that is the case then American leadership is over and with it NATO. And I for one am not (yet) prepared to accept that.

Gordon paints a picture of another Iraq and/or Afghanistan with tens if not hundreds of thousands of Western troops sent to Libya to fail to rebuild yet another Arab/Muslim country. I suppose it is a natural reaction to a decade of American and European strategic incompetence and growing American and European isolationism. Frankly, Iraq/Afghanistan fatigue has wreaked havoc with our strategic self-assurance. Gordon’s Hobson choice is thus; either flood Libya with ‘our’ troops, or do nothing.

I reject that choice. First, his suggestion that we the West have learnt nothing about stabilisation and reconstruction after ten years of faking it, botching it and generally making a mess is bogus. We have indeed learnt two rather important things: 1) that the outcome will never be Switzerland (Europeans never believed in that any way); and 2) if we do use what now constitutes the world’s leading pool of military and civilian stabilisation and reconstruction expertise it should only be in support of a government in transition...and with a reasonable hope of achieving it.

And here's the crux; Libya is also neither Afghanistan nor Iraq. Libyan human leadership capital is far better than that of either Iraq or Afghanistan. There is a middle class unlike in Afghanistan where it had been destroyed by the Soviets. Sectarianism of the sort we saw in Iraq is far less of a factor. Libya’s infrastructure has suffered far less damage than that suffered by Afghanistan and Iraq and with high-grade oil Libya can afford its own future.

Nor can we dither. There is a power vacuum developing in Tripoli and it is vital we help the moderates on the National Transitional Council prevail. Not by sending huge numbers of Western forces, although the EU’s mythical humanitarian force needs to be stood up urgently. Rather, by patient support over key areas of governance and transition. Yes, a stabilisation force is indeed needed but one drawn from all countries in the International Contact Group (and beyond) and legitimised by UN mandate.

This is the crunch moment. The residents of Tripoli, which with Benghazi is the key to power in Libya are already complaining of a lack of life essentials – food, water, power supplies. The coming battle for Sirte, the last real stronghold of Gaddafi loyalists is likely to take place only because negotiations with the National Transition Council are failing against a backdrop of the very reprisal killings I warned about a week ago. The Berber minority have walked out of talks about future governance because a relatively small number of Islamists are now pushing for Sharia Law to be the law of the land,

The West therefore needs to use its expertise cleverly. Indeed, having paid such a high price to gain such expertise it would be a shame that that our collective strategic depression is leading to failure of both nerve and vision. Much of this expertise far from being a monstrous regiment can mainly be found amongst civilians in the public and private sectors, which Gordon Adam rather peevishly calls the providers of good will, advisers of merit and profit seekers. That is simply not fair.

And, I did indeed make the point that the Libyans must always be in the lead and a partnership established early and modestly to establish key needs and advice. The British are working with the Council to achive precisely that. But then again we are not American so anything we do does not count.

The bottom line is this; the southernmost tip of NATO/EU is only 294kms/182 miles from Tripoli.

The alternative is to do nothing and fiddle whilst Libya burns. How many refugees now crowd the shores of Lampedusa on their way to the rest of Europe? Expect a few more.

“From the Halls of Montezuma, to the Shores of Tripoli?” I wonder, Gordon.

Julian Lindley-French

The Great Immigration Disaster

2011-08-26T05:25:00.001-07:00

Alphen, The Netherlands. August 26. I have just returned from a shopping expedition to Breda, the nearest town of significance to my home. I spoke to someone in a shop who asked me a really strange question. “Are you English?” he said. To which I of course replied yes. He then asked me if I was really 100% English. Apart from finding this somewhat intrusive – not untypically Dutch, I said yes. “You are a dying breed”, he ventured. Maybe not, but the latest statistics from the UK’s Office for National Statistics (ONS) show that in 2010 hyper-immigration into Britain continued unabated.

Britain is now heading rapidly towards a population of 70 million. It is a figure the islands simply cannot sustain. As such hyper-immigration now represents an existential threat to British society, culture and social infrastructure. The Whitehall Village is again failing the British people in a critical area whilst trying to impose silence on the people by accusing anyone brave enough to raise this critical issue of racism. It is not racist to express concerns about one of the most pressing challenges of the age. Common sense can no longer be suspended. As ever, I am prepared to put my head above the parapet and I am no racist. Try me!

The BBC of course covered the news in passing, preferring not to address any comment that might threaten the multicultural wonderland the BBC clearly believes in. Indeed, the BBC’s coverage of this matter stopped being objective some time ago.

Net immigration last year rose by 21% with 239,000 more people arriving in the UK than leaving. This is in itself a dangerously misleading figure for its masks the net loss of British people to the island which means the social and cultural impact is even higher than the figures suggest. The number of those emigrating last year stood at 336,000. Indeed, the ONS put long-term immigration (those coming to settle permanently) at 575,000 last year. This makes a mockery of the government’s stated intention to reduce net immigration to ‘tens of thousands’ by 2015. “Do the math”, as the Americans would say.

Now, for the sake of balance this figure could also reflect the legacy of the last Labour Government which not only lost control of Britain’s borders, but actively promoted hyper-immigration. I am prepared to give the government one more year to bring immigration under some form of control and show it has done so before I become really concerned.

Study is also a reason for much of the immigration, with some 228,000 students entering the country last year. On the one hand this is good news for Britain’s higher education sector, but many do not leave. Attempts to then enforce deportation are then blocked by the Human Rights legislation which has to all intents and purpose removed control of Britain’s borders from Whitehall. So, what do politicians do when they cannot deal with a crisis? They take their collective heads and place them collectively in the nearest deep pool of sand.

Nor is this an issue of race. The issue is mass. As I have said before, I do not care if Britons are white, black, yellow or whatever so long as they are loyal to the United Kingdom and to the values that underpin our society. As an immigrant myself here in the Netherlands my first duty is to the Dutch state, its people and its laws. This is something I take very seriously. Evidence in the UK would suggest that the obsession with multiculturalism is leading to a new phenomenon – British citizens who are loyal to another country.

What is particularly worrying is the marked increase of the number of immigrants from the so-called A8 countries in Eastern Europe. Again, I visit these countries a lot and they are full of hard-working, great people. However, the numbers coming to live permanently in the UK has increased from 5,000 in 2009 to 39,000 in 2010. Sadly, much are going straight onto welfare dependency or doing the kinds of jobs that would start Britain’s unemployed youth on the career ladder. As of August 2011 there are some 1 million 16-24 year old NEETs in Britain – not in education, employment or training. There are also some 43,000 claimants of British social security now living in Warsaw.

Immigration Minister Damian Green gave the usual limp-wristed response that EU laws prevent the government managing reciprocal, intra-EU migration. Well, sorry, but the migration is not reciprocal – it is all one way. I am all for managed migration, but that is the point – it is not managed. If this trend continues then London must begin to consider suspending EU treaties so that it can regain control of British borders.

The British people of all colours and creeds are rightly fed up with the failure of the Whitehall Village to regain control of hyper-immigration. It is a failure of politics, a failure of will and failure of management. Above all, it is failure of leadership. This leaves me with the most profound of concerns about the future of my country. It is so, so sad.

Get a grip, London!

Julian Lindley-French