hms iron duke

hms iron duke

Sunday 20 March 2011

Events, Dear Boy, Events - Time for Britain to Conduct a Serious Defence Review

Former British Prime Minister Harold MacMillan when asked what kept him awake at night replied; "Events, dear boy, events".  With British warplanes and warships in action against Libyan targets it is again the unexpected that has derailed Government policy.  Last year's intellectually and strategically bankrupt National Security Strategy (NSS) and Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR) should thus be shelved and a proper security and defence review conducted.  

The Government thought it could cut defence as though it were simply yet another bloated  remnant of Labour's profligacy.  Sadly, Britain does not live in a security vacuum.  Rather, events have proven both the NSS and SDSR misguided to the point of self-delusional.  Indeed, never has that over-used and misunderstood word 'strategic' proven so inaptly and ineptly applied to national security.

Obsessed purely by the national balance sheet the British Government sought to sacrifice defence for security and to mask retreat with meaningless management speak.  With an 8% cut to the defence budgets (which in reality is nearer a 20% cut of the actual budget) the aim was to shift Britain from being an engaged leader of the international community able and willing to uphold its international military obligations to a fortress Britain detached from the world around it.  Henceforth investment would be made in purely defensive instruments against terrorism, cyber attack and missile attack. 

This revolutionary shift in Britain's security and defence posture had been signalled in a major April 2010 speech by Foreign Secretary William Hague in which he signalled that henceforth London would place the national interest first, i.e. Britain would over time withdraw from foreign 'adventures'. Sadly, as a Permanent Member of the UN Security Council and as one of the world's major economic and military actors Britain is not to be afforded such a luxury being too powerful to hide from dangerous change whatever the short-term financial imperatives.  

The sense of disconnect between security and defence was reinforced by an aside from Hague to Defence Secretary Liam Fox at last week's House of Commons Defence Select Committee hearings.  Hague urged Fox to move the debate away from defence cuts to security 'gains'.  Fox cut a forlorn figure because in his heart he knows he is being asked to sacrifice Britain's hugely respected armed forces for a vague and unquantifiable security concept that will profoundly weaken Britain's strategic influence. Put simply, the Government does not have a strategic clue.

Hague is thus essentially wrong.  The National Security Strategy is merely a shopping list of possible risks with a false set of vague priorities that profoundly undermine the ability of government to properly establish sound security and defence policy.  As such NSS for all its rhetoric generates no planning drivers because it is based on a profoundly wrong set of assumptions the most erroneous of which is the desire to recognise only as much threat as the Government believes it can afford.

Thankfully, the French came to the rescue.  The November 2010 Franco-British Security and Defence Treaty demonstrated the profound contradiction between a formal policy that was committed purely to building a cheap security fortress and the offensive political posture that a country such as Britain is forced to adopt. 

And then out of the strategic blue came Libya.  With much of the Middle East a primed powder-keg of instability and almost one year into the Coalition Government it is time for Prime Minister Cameron to put aside the foolish naivety implicit in the cost-cutting SDSR and start a proper defence review.  Only then can Britain match its military capability to its strategic responsibilities.  Grave damage has already been done. The rapid scrapping of the paid for new Nimrod MRA4 surveillance aircraft was an act of strategic Ludditism designed only to protect an appalling decision by removing the evidence.  Thankfully, it is not too late to save other vital strategic influence assets such as the aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal. 

That of course will not happen because Whitehall can never be wrong.  Five years hence those responsible for the mess that is Britain's defence policy will of course appear on television to sagely justify their incompetence.  It is a cycle that is oh so British.  To paraphrase Churchill never has a great country been so ineptly led by so few at the expense of so many.       

Events, dear boy, events!

Julian Lindley-French

Thursday 17 March 2011

The EU's Potemkin Village of a Foreign Policy

Russian myth has it that in 1787 Russian Minister Grigory Potyomkin erected fake villages to impress Empress Catherine II.  Known as Potemkin Villages they were merely facades designed to fool the Empress and impress her with the value of Russia's conquest of the desolate Crimea.   Three events have taken place since January which have sadly demonstrated the extent to which 'Europe's' Common Security and Foreign Policy or CFSP remains just such a facade.  One of these events was central to the ability of Europeans to influence world events critical to their interests, whilst the other two demonstrated the vulnerability of Europe to events even in its own backyard.

The first event was on the face of it good news. The agreement by the European Council for a budget of some €464 million for the EU’s External Action Service (EEAS) finally resolved an ongoing dispute over funding. Moreover, with 3360 diplomats under the leadership of Baroness Ashton the Union finally has a tool in place to begin to play the influence game. And yet, as if to remind Europeans of their decline, the other events demonstrated eloquently how far Europeans have to go to rebuild shattered influence, where Europe as Europe must exert critical influence and the essential self-defeating paradox of Europe’s foreign and security policy.

The January 19 Washington summit between President Obama and China’s Hu Jintao marked the new age of international relations into which a now decidedly multi-polar world has entered. For Europeans the message could not have been clearer; after five hundred years of being the epic-centre of world politics and deciding the fate of millions if not billions, Europeans will now be at the mercy of decisions taken elsewhere, many of them in Asia.

Above all, the popular revolts in Tunisia, Egypt and now Libya were equally reminders of change and challenge and should have provided a real wake up call for Europe’s leaders and diplomats. The upheavals were not as Neville Chamberlain once described; another fight in another place in another time as 'a quarrel in a faraway country, between people of whom we know nothing'. Rather they took place in large Muslim states on Europe’s doorstep in pursuit of European values of liberty and democracy with the uncertain outcome of which has profound consequences for Europe’s security, be it the possible emergence of states hostile to Europe or new partners in Europe’s democratizing mission. Now is the moment for Europe to exert influence over events. And yet Europe is again impotent and awaiting American policy leadership. Indeed, as the failed European Council of March 11 all too amply demonstrated European solidarity again collapsed on the point of contact with danger.  With Britain and France pushing fard for a no-fly zone, Germany and others flatly rejecting the idea.

The European Union?   The EU has again been notable for a wholesale lack of influence. The US and Saudia Arabia are driving much of the external influence campaign and will continue so to do. Doubtless, China will take an increasing interest in such places, peoples and its copious amounts of oil. However, all and any influence campaign must first and foremost be established on unity of effort and purpose and in this regard the European effort is weak bordering on pathetic.

On the face of it Europeans are superbly placed to exert influence. The EU has 135 missions world-wide, with EU member-states deploying some 40,000 diplomats world-wide. The EU provides 50% of all development aid with some €72 billion being disbursed over the 2012-2014 period.

Unfortunately, the 2009 Lisbon Treaty aim to create a more coherent foreign and security policy has only partially worked. One only has to look at the structure of the EEAS to see that its structure is more ‘organiscramble’ than organigram which is the very antithesis of crisis decision-making. Indeed, although ostensibly designed to improve European conflict prevention and early warning the ever-present demand for EEAS representation by the member-states and the byzantine relationship between the Council and Commission has created such a complex system that any implied ‘crisis management’ has more to do with internal bureaucracy than strategy.

It is weakness compounded by member-states' policies. Too many of them are in denial about the catastrophic loss of influence they have suffered over the past decade. With the partial exception of Germany, the combination of financial meltdown, strategic irresolution and political division has left even the biggest of Europe’s powers small by world standards. Sadly, as they have become weaker their attachment to outmoded concepts of sovereignty has only served to accelerate a precipitous retreat from world influence.

However, perhaps the biggest lacuna has been Baroness Ashton herself. No-one denies the challenge of her position but she has singularly failed to realize that influence at top tables is as much about personality and chemistry as power. She has become adept at excuses to justify her absence from key meetings demonstrating the extent to which however policy rich the Union may be it is a strategy desert. Strategy is the key to influence. The bottom-line is this; in this moment of change and crisis in the world Europeans must finally end the old CFSP – the crisis-ridden foreign and security policy and Baroness Ashton must show the leadership and vision hitherto lacking to seize the opportunity that has been given to her.

Fail and Europe will not only lose the influence game but it will not even be invited to play and that will be a disaster not just for Europe but the world.  Europe as Europe must move beyond the Potemkin Village of its foreign policy or be cast into the strategic wilderness - even in its own backyard.

Julian Lindley-French

Wednesday 9 March 2011

You Are Missing the Point, Davids

David Milliband wrote a thoughtful piece in The Times on 8 March about why the Left is losing across Europe.  It was thoughtful but wrong, especially as it concerns why Labour lost Britain. The message was essentially that old chestnut of the Labour Left - the electorate did not get it. 

As someone who until recently was a life-long Labour voter let me explain why Labour lost me.  It is all a question of discrimination and competition.  The whole point of government is that it discriminates - in favour of its own people.  That is why its first mission is to secure the interests and well-being of its own people.  Labour forgot that simple rule.  Rather, Labour in government became so obsessed with the interests of minorities that it started to actively discriminate AGAINST its own people. 

There were several reasons for this.  First, the Labour Party moved to the dogmatic Left after the disastrous Iraq War and became the play thing of minority interest groups.  By the time Gordon Brown seized power the Labour Government was an unelected and increasingly extremist tax and spend left wing government that had lost the trust of that crucial constituency; Middle England.  Second, Labour used human rights and equality legislation to quosh dissent over the disastrous impact on society of uncontrolled mass immigation.  Indeed, by 2007 even dissent over policy was met by the accusation of racism and free speech became incrasingly subject to authoritarian race laws designed to prevent an open debate over rapid changes in society that few wanted.  Consequently, the white British working class became disenfranchised, marginalised and dangerously disenchanted with too many offering their support to the extreme Right.  Hailing as I do from the back streets of central Sheffield I can only attest to the widespread anger, resentment and hopelessness among many of Labour's traditional support base. Third, the Equality Act was used to actively discriminate againt the indigenous population in the labour market...and still is.  One is used to seeing those seemingly inobstrusive little boxes on job application forms asking for nationality and ethnic origin.  I have clear proof from a friend who sat on a selection panel for a university post that far from being merely for statistical purposes they are indeed actively used as a tool of discrimination. 

The other issue is competition.  The world is becoming hyper-competitive and yet Britain has just spent the last decade or so trying to wish such competition away.  Be it in education, the media or wider society the Left tried to banish competition rather than properly prepare people for it.

Now do not get me wrong.  I am not ADVOCATING discrimination. I know a thing or two about prejudice.  We have the society we now have and rules and laws MUST be applied fairly and justly to all.  However, the twin mantras of the Left, 'social justice' and 'fairness' actually fostered the opposite - the new discrimination which today so divides British society and which has rendered Britain today such a fractured and fractious place
Minorities are of course welcome and they must be properly protected from intolerance and injustice.  However, that can never be achieved by government placing their interests above those of the majority. Sadly, David Milliband and the Labour leadership still seem incapable of accepting the consequences of their own policy actions.  Therefore, until Labour re-learns that in government its first task is to serve first the greater good of the majority, irrespective of colour or creed,  I will never vote for Labour again.  And, I suspect nor will millions like me.  Why? Because I simply lack any faith that having been sold one set of policies to get me to elect them I will not a short time later witness a left-wing government enacting misguided policy in my name. 

It is therefore, not without irony that the Coalition Government seems to be falling into the same trap.  To ring-fence aid to rich India when so much is wrong in broke Britain is simply another example of a British government that places the good of others above that of the mass of the British people for the sake of some vague and misplaced dogma.   You are missing the point, David...Cameron.    

Tuesday 1 March 2011

Globalised NATO or Fortress NATO?

For most Europeans the most important strategic event in Europe in 2010 was neither November’s NATO Strategic Concept nor the Franco-British Defence Treaty, important though they were. Rather, it was the Irish debt crisis and the threat of financial and economic contagion across the Eurozone. However, the Strategic Concept sets NATO ambitious challenges to re-orient the Alliance’s main effort from coping with enlargement to preparing for engagement which itself implies a new relationship between the protection of people’s and the projection of force. Some very difficult and clear strategic and political judgements will therefore be critical. As the ink dries on the NATO Strategic Concept one fundamental question of purpose still needs to be answered; globalised NATO or fortress NATO?

Four Strategic Posers

Equally, there are four other questions that must be answered concerning Alliance level of ambition, strategic method, Europe’s role and the way ahead if the balance between protection and projection is to be properly understood and planned for:
Question One: Is strategic ambition shared across the Alliance? To meet the twin challenges of engagement (for that is the very essence of the Strategic Concept) and austerity the Alliance will need to promote real unity of purpose and effort. The Strategic Concept is clear; NATO is in the business of organising large military (and increasingly civil) means for large political-stability ends. However, in meeting those challenges a firm grip of reality will be essential. If NATO has indeed adopted (beyond the merely rhetorical) a globalised strategic concept the Alliance by definition has immediately become weaker given its much larger context of operations and responsibilities (collective defence, crisis management, and co-operative security). Effective strategy is always more important for the more relatively weak (and relatively poor) than relatively strong. Two possible avenues are thus apparent. Either the Strategic Concept leads to a strategic Alliance built on a shared level of global ambition and girded by unity of effort and purpose. Or, the Strategic Concept is another rhetorical flourish masking weakness without strategy, i.e. risk.

Question Two: Is there a common strategic method? The title “Active Engagement” implies a new balance between protection and projection. Capability, capacity and credibility will thus underpin modernised collective defence, effective crisis management and co-operative security. However, all will demand a careful balance of investments as part of a strategically-conceived whole. “Modern defence’ implies a similar set of challenges and order of magnitude. Indeed, even contemporary Article 5 territorial defence will require both combined and joint deployable forces, with such capabilities and their supporting and associated capacities becoming the litmus test for effective Alliance engagement in a globalised world.

Question Three: What role for Europeans? For all the talk of globalised security the world is rather made up of inter-linked security regions. Indeed, the main linkage between those regions is the United States which remains and will remain the critical enabling and stabilising factor the world over, in spite of planned cuts in its 2011 defence budget. Therefore, should non-American NATO forces be organised around America’s global role or should Europeans ease the pressure on the Americans by focussing on a regional role? The implications are profound. If the Alliance is organised to support the US global role then force transformation (and in particular Allied Command Transformation), must be seen as the means to ensure European forces are part of an American-led force concept. If, on the other hand, Europeans focus on the Northern and European strategic theatres that would not only require a new force concept, organised as part of a new European pillar within the Alliance and along with it the fostering of a European strategic culture. By extension, that would also make much closer relations with the EU’s Common Security and Defence Policy an essential element in an efficient and effective European defence effort. At present Europe is trapped in a no man’s land between two very different force concepts with no clear idea apparent in the Strategic Concept as to the balance to be struck between the two.

That is not to suggest that a Euro-focus would be an easy option. Indeed, one only has to look at Europe’s neighbourhood to see the challenges; the High North, North Africa, the Middle East, Eastern Europe and/or Central Asia. And, of course, the link with US forces would need to be maintained at all costs. Certainly, the continued presence of American Combat Brigade Teams (in whatever form or number) will be vital for strategic reassurance. However, for such a pillar to be fashioned the key Europeans, such as Britain, France, Germany and Italy would need to be in agreement over the purpose and structure of such a pillar. If not there are likely to be two NATO’s; one interventionist, the other purely defensive.

Question Four: What is the way ahead? Implicit in the Strategic Concept is a balance between strategy, affordability and capability that must necessarily be built on effective interoperability between militaries. This is not just to ensure interoperability with US forces, but also to close the growing intra-European gap, and to ensure that when NATO forces deploy with partners be they Australian, Japanese or whomsoever, or indeed key civilians under the Comprehensive Approach, coalition force generation and leadership does not mean reinventing the command and control wheel each every time. Indeed, if there was one strategic ‘product’ which is the unique selling point of the Alliance it is NATO interoperability standards, particularly those pertaining to command and control and all NATO strategic and deployable headquarters should be considering how best to enhance that product in light of the Strategic Concept.

Globalised NATO or Fortress NATO?

Ultimately, the 2010 NATO Strategic Concept will be about money, specifically the relationship between forces and resources. Radical new threats to security, such as cyber-terrorism, energy security and even the consequences of climate change are to some extent germane to the Alliance crisis management mission. However, they also pose a very danger to Alliance cohesion if the relationship between a globalised NATO and fortress NATO is not understood. In such circumstances new security threats could merely become the latest political alibi to retreat into unauditable security challenges either to mask and justify further cuts in defence budgets or avoid sharing burdens and danger. No alliance (or union) can survive such strategic dissonance over time. Ultimately NATO is a military organisation that must think about and prepare for the successful fighting of future wars.

Global NATO or Fortress NATO? Until that question is resolved then the 2010 Strategic Concept could well remain an ambiguous enigma and a potentially dangerous one at that.

Julian Lindley-French

This article was first published in February 2011 by Aspenia

Monday 28 February 2011

Securitisation or Just Plain Common Sense?

The aid community call it 'securitisation', the rather narrow and deliberately derogatory suggestion that if British taxpayer's hard earned money is spent in the British interest then the moral uplands which many of them rather vacuously occupy will have been sullied.

The Coalition Government, as in all things, has tried to find the middle ground between the Left's view (rather prevalent in the aid community) that money spent on the world's poor must come first and those of us who believe that whilst nice in principle eradicating global poverty should be put on the back burner whilst so many in Britain face poverty. 

Andrew Mitchell, the Secretary of State for International Development, will this week announce the results of a major review into British aid and development.  Some of it makes perfect sense. Gone will be the aid to Russia, which regularly sends submarines and bombers into British air and water space to try and embarrass Britain.  Gone will be the aid to China which is at present trying to slow its inflation-stoking annual growth upwards of 9% per annum and which recently became the world's second largest economy.

However, three gaping holes in the review will be glossed over.  First, there will be no proper and much needed reform of the bloated Department for International Development (DfID).  Some 3500 strong and with several senior officials earning more than 90000 pounds a year it is to me gratuitously offensive for them to lecture the rest of us about alleviating poverty.  Indeed, in a sea of departmental cuts DfID stands out as an island of wealth and largesse, being the only department of state to enjoy an increase in its 2011 budget.  Second, will be the lack of any move to reform the Overseas Development Act (ODA).  The brainchild of the Labour Left, and beloved of Claire Short and Harriet Harman, the ODA effectively permits DfID to act as a state within a state placing them under no responsibility whatsoever to demonstrate a link between the use of British taxpayer's money and the British public good.

However, it is perhaps the third lacuna which will perhaps be the most gratuitously obscene.  India is set to receive some 1.2 billion pounds from the British in aid over the next four years.  And yet, whilst the British economy actually shrank in the last quarter of 2010 by some 0.6% the Indian economy is humming along at 9% per annum.  The obscenity comes from the fact that India is pouring billions into a space programme that Britain could only dream of and last month the latest, brand new guided missile warship went down the slips in an Indian shipyard straining to cope with orders for such ships from the Indian Government. 

And yet, one of the two Royal Navy ships that rescued so many from Libya over the past few days is now on its way home to be scrapped.  This is not because the ship is outdated, but rather because under Britain's recent Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR) London can no longer afford such a ship.

But perhaps worst of all the Indians do not even want the money.  Two weeks ago an editorial in the influential Hindustani Times suggested that "cash-strapped" Britain was more in need of the money than India, the economy of which was "humming along".  That very week I spoke to a senior Indian ambassador at an important security conference. He was succinct; New Dehli fully understood that Indian poverty was an issue for a rich India to resolve.  Moreover, when the Indian Government had suggested to DfID that such aid might be ceased they were rebuffed with the accusation that they were being "arrogant".  The only arrogance in this sorry affair can be found in an official aid community that has become unbalanced by the 'power' of its own political correctness. 

Just before that meeting I was in Portsmouth Naval Base standing before the now defunct aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal, until recently the pride of the fleet.  Ironically, that 1.2 billion pounds we are giving to India is just about the money that would have kept Ark Royal in service or would have preserved the brand new but now scrapped critical airborne surveillance aircraft the MRA4. What a mess!

Britain is not alleviating poverty in India.  Rather, the British taxpayer is subsidising one of the fastest military expansions in Asia at the expense of Britain's security and defence.  Indeed, the only effective defence apparent in London is that of a bloated DfId and its myriad of civil servants and assorted hangers on.

Thankfully, Secretary of State Mitchell was floored by Jon Sopel on the BBC's Politics Show.  When faced with this obscenity all he could do was trot out the tired mantra that many Indians lived below the poverty line. 

If the plight of the Indian poor was so important to New Delhi why not scrap a space programme or a guided-missile ship or two?

Securitisation or just plain common sense?

Julian Lindley-French                 

Britain and France: Bringing Europe Back to Strategic Sanity?

‘Il n’y a pas de liberté, il n’y a pas d’égalité, il n’y a pas de fraternité sans securité.’ – President Nicolas Sarkozy, 2008

Introduction

The one hundredth anniversary of the 1911 Agadir Crisis in which Britain and France together faced down a challenge by Wilhelmine Germany also marks a century of complex but by and large consistent strategic co-operation between Europe’s only true world powers. On November 2, 2010 London and Paris agreed the Defence and Security Cooperation Treaty. On the face of it the accord is by and large military-technical: to develop co-operation between British and French Armed Forces, to promote the sharing and pooling of materials and equipment including through mutual interdependence, leading to the building of joint facilities, together with mutual access to each other’s defence markets, through the promotion of industrial and technological co-operation. However, as with all things Franco-British the devil is in the strategy. This accord, like so many that has gone before, is really about the need to lead Europe back to strategy sanity.

It will not be easy. Almost all the anchor points of traditional European strategy have failed. For the first time in half a millennium Europe is neither the centre of power or conflict in the world; American leadership which for so long provided an alibi for European strategic indolence is uncertain and focused elsewhere; Russia is a critical energy partner rather than critically dangerous and most Europeans do not know where the state ends and Europe’s institutions begin. Furthermore, after a decade of Asian growth the strengths of oriental competitors are routinely and wildly exaggerated, whilst Europe’s own weaknesses and introspection are equally ‘fashionable’. With much of North Africa and the Middle East on fire and after twenty years of identity-sapping mass immigration Europe’s contemporary ‘security’ appears on the face of it to have little to do with military firepower. Indeed, the apparent inability of America’s hyper-military to secure Afghanistan or Iraq has reinforced the sense that for Europe much of its security is as ‘soft’ as the form of power Europeans contemporaneously champion.

Europe’s Woolly Power

The retreat into what might be perhaps called “woolly power” is supported by the facts. NATO Europe nations have a combined gross domestic product (GDP) of €12.5tr compared with the US GDP of €10tr or some 124% of the US total. However, the combined 2009 defence budgets of NATO Europe totalled €188bn compared with the 2009 US defence budget of €503bn. NATO Europe thus spends some 37% of the US expenditure on defence. Sixteen of the twenty-six NATO Europe members spend less than €4bn per annum and much of it inefficiently with the ratios between personnel and equipment budgets particularly perverse, with too many bloated headquarters, top-heavy command chains and outdated formations. Between 2001 and 2008 NATO Europe spending on defence fell from €255bn to €223bn (not adjusted for defence cost inflation).

However, of that €188bn France and the UK together represent 43% or €80.6bn, whilst France, Germany and the UK represent 61% or €114.2bn and the so-called ‘big three’ spend 88% of all defence research and development in NATO Europe. And here’s the rub; over roughly the same period the US has increased its defence expenditure by 109%, China by 247%, Russia by 67% and Australia by 56%. In other words, Europeans might have been trying to talk themselves out of the more dangerous trade in power but the rest of the world seems to have missed the point. Therefore, one defining feature of the hyper-competitive contemporary multi-polar, globalised world of the twenty-first century is the belief on the part of non-Europeans that credible and capable militaries remain a fundamental currency for power and influence.

Placed in that context the Franco-British treaty begins to make European strategic sense. There is of course an added twist; Britain and France, like so many Europeans (although with the notable exception of Germany) are facing severe financial pressures. Strategy and affordability are thus the twin mantras of co-operation between London and Paris and must be seen as such. There are two further factors driving London and Paris together. First, after ten years of following American leadership slavishly Britain today is a less secure place than it was on 10 September, 2011. It is a loss of faith reinforced by an Obama administration that is as unfriendly and uncommitted to the Special Relationship as any post-war American administration. Second, after twenty post Cold War years trying to build a strategic defence partnership with Germany at the heart of European union Paris is now profoundly concerned at both the pacifism and increasingly self-interested nature of Berlin’s foreign and security policy.

Back to the Future

Britain and France are this going back to state-centric power basics. Gone are the theological debates over NATO or EU first. Rather, London and Paris want to re-establish a foundation for a new European military capability that in time will be able to operate where it will really matter – in the seams between land and sea and in and around the Mediterranean Sea and Indian Oceans which will be the epicentres of global power competition and European stability. It is military capability that will be designed to operate in a range of formats – EU, NATO, UN or simply under Franco-British coalition leadership. To that end, the 2010 British Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR) calls for “Greater sharing of military capabilities, technology and programmes and potentially more specialisation, working with key allies, including France, and based on appropriate formal guarantees where necessary” Put simply, given the global context of Europe’s contemporary security the security challenges faced by all Europeans are becoming ever more complex, while the forces and resources that can be devoted to security are increasingly squeezed as defence expenditure becomes discretionary in an age of austerity.

Therefore, only a true strategic partnership between the world’s fifth and sixth largest economies and the second and third biggest cash spenders on defence stands any chance of finally creating a European pole of security and defence power. This could in turn help reinvigorate and rebalance a tired transatlantic relationship. The Franco-British Treaty thus represents a revolutionary departure from traditional strategic norms for both London and Paris.

Equally, there is little nostalgic attachment (nor can there be) to past structures and relationships in the pursuit of influence in a world that is changing fast. Here those driving Britain and France to closer co-operation will meet institutional and political barriers. While the financial case for a renewed and intensified partnership is clear, the political and strategic imperatives on both sides of the Channel are less so. There are those in London who are so wedded to the unconditional ‘followership’ of America that accords with the never-to-be trusted French smack of heresy. In Paris the Gaullist wing of the French right baulk at any structural co-operation with l’albion perfide. Furthermore, whilst the West (and Europe) is suffering from a crisis of solidarity any Franco-British defence partnership must still necessarily accommodate Germany and avoid any suggestion that it seeks to exclude the United States. Moreover, institutions remain important levers of influence for both countries be it the EU, NATO, OSCE or the UN. However, what is clear from the accord is that such institutions are no longer ends in themselves and must be judged by their competence and utility as levers of influence. Lord Ismay’s crisp objectives for NATO in the 1950s still resonate; NATO’s purpose was to keep the Americans in, the Germans down and the Russians out.

Today Ismay would confirm the need to keep the United States constructively engaged with Europeans, to encourage the Germans to act and engage responsibly across the security spectrum, and to ensure that an apparatus is in place to deal with major rising and revisionist powers, such as India, China, Russia, and Brazil. Therefore, in an age of austerity whilst the affordability of defence will necessarily be at the heart of Anglo-French defence co-operation such a relationship must reflect a realignment of respective national strategies.

Creating Leadership Hubs

Certainly the treaty takes at best tentative steps towards meaningful defence co-operation with much of the emphasis on the military tail rather than military teeth. However, it is noticeable that the treaty focusses not only on areas vital to the respective national influence of both countries, but also on those areas likely to create Franco-British leadership hubs. These include easing the cost of strategic nuclear sovereignty, promoting naval strike cooperation as a step on the road to a European carrier battle group, creating a combined joint expeditionary force, better sharing of strategic intelligence, as well as defence-industrial convergence, specific project cooperation over ‘big ticket’ items such as strategic air lift and air-to-air refuelling and joint training.

Britain and France – Bringing Strategic Sanity Back to Europe?

Clearly, both countries have invested significant strategic ambition in an audacious political demarche. Why? Because ultimately both Britain and France understand fully that they are in relative and parallel decline, just as they implicitly recognised such decline back in 1911 and showed a radical willingness to combat such decline. Thus only through strong partnerships can both London and Paris re-establish the prerequisite for influence vital to security. Franco-British defence cooperation is thus not just vital for London and Paris but for a Europe that is dangerously and strategically adrift. Indeed, joint purpose and effectiveness must be reflected in the contemporary strategy of two old powers that, together and apart, have shaped Europe and the modern world for over 300 years. The alternative is stark. To paraphrase Neville Chamberlain, Britain and France are in danger of becoming small countries far away from the centre of power about which they know little, locked as they are too often in a parochial struggle for the leadership of a Europe that has declared itself to be dangerously irrelevant.

Julian Lindley-French

This article was first published in the February 2011 edition of Atlantic Perspectives of the Netherlands Atlantic Commission

The King's Speech and the President's Visit

“The task will be hard. There may be dark days ahead, and war can no longer be confined to the battlefield, but we can only do the right as we see the right, and reverently commit our cause to God. If one and all we keep resolutely faithful to it, ready for whatever service or sacrifice it may demand, then with God's help, we shall prevail”. The King’s Speech, 3 September, 1939

I loved The King’s Speech, mainly because it said so much about Britain today. In 1939 Britain was emerging from a period of dreadful financial and economic turbulence which had been marked by deep social divisions and profound uncertainty over its future role in the world, which was apparent even before World War Two. And yet, with absolutely no illusions what sacrifice a second war with Germany would demand and with that sense of dramatic theatre the British have of themselves at such moments the country stirred for action in defence of the very values which became the bedrock of the Atlantic Alliance. We were plucky. Indeed, two years later in 1941 the Atlantic Charter was signed between the UK and US which laid the foundation for victory in both World War Two and the Cold War.

It is therefore ironic that President Obama should visit Britain at such an iconic moment and in the midst of celebrations of such an iconic film for the pluck the film implicitly celebrates has all but vanished. Indeed, the President had better realise the scale of the challenge he faces in restoring some semblance of British pride. Why? Because for all its self-doubt and the self-imposed decline championed by the terminally politically correct Britain still plays a critical role in US grand strategy. Put simply, if Britain becomes simply another declinist European power then any hope that Europe will stand alongside the US in America’s global stabilising mission will be lost.

I am firmly of the belief that the cornerstone of world stability will necessarily remain the transatlantic relationship and the English-speaking peoples in conjunction with fellow democrats. It is precisely such a vision of which the British today seem incapable and which dangerously is being lost this side of the pond.

Britain today is a sullen place with a government exaggerating decline for political purposes. No-one under-estimates the economic challenges, least of all your correspondent, but it is also being exaggerated in historic terms, something that I proved in my recent evidence to Parliament. Moreover, there is a belief across society that after a decade of being the good ally the US does not appreciate the efforts and sacrifice we British have made to support Washington. Indeed, when President Obama said recently that the US had no better ally than the French a British nerve was struck. Britain today is less secure precisely because it has been a loyal friend of America and the proxy target of choice for your many enemies. It is hard to justify our sons (and daughters) dying in large numbers when an American Congress distressingly turned the BP disaster into an anti-British rant. I am not of that opinion but believe me it goes to the heart of the Establishment and society and can be found in some surprising places.

My guidance to the President is not to trot out the same old Special Relationship jargon. The British (unfairly) feel used and are tired of American presidents who pat us patronisingly on the head and expect us to re-double our efforts. No, what is needed is a NEW relationship in which Britain and its efforts are celebrated and in which the president reminds the British people and leadership that Britain still matters; for Europe, an insecure world and TO America.

What is therefore needed in his forthcoming address to Parliament is thus (and not without irony) a King's Speech in which Mr President reminds all we British that we have a right to be proud, that America cannot succeed without the support of an engaged Britain and any suggestion that he harbours post-Imperial distrust of we British could not be farther from the truth.

70 years on the signing of the Atlantic Charter which won both World War Two and the Cold War the President is coming the Britain to renew the vows of mutual trust that shaped the world for the better and will continue to do so. In the spirit of Winston Churchill and President Roosevelt, President Obama should thus bring with him a new Atlantic Charter to relaunch Anglo-American relations in a new phase of world history which will prove no less challenging than that of the past.

Julian Lindley-French