The Guns of August? Why NATO Needs Strategy not Politics

Alphen, Netherlands. 4 August. How can NATO deter Russia?  One hundred years ago today Britain declared war on Wilhelmine Germany for invading Belgium and breaching Belgian sovereignty guaranteed under the 1839 Treaty of London.  These past few weeks there has been a lot of politically-correct nonsense about the causes of World War One with (as usual) Britain’s BBC at the forefront ably supported by Cambridge professor Christopher Clark and his 2013 book “The Sleepwalkers”.  It was nobody’s fault but everybody’s fault goes the line.

The strategic causes were in fact fairly straightforward even if today they are politically unpalatable.  The war was caused by the aggressive nationalism and revisionism of Wilhelmine Germany reinforced by the paranoia of the Juncker elite about the emerging labour movement in Germany and the social and political change they were demanding.  It was triggered by an opportunistic but failing Austria-Hungary emboldened by its alliance with Berlin and then magnified by the bloc system put in place to ‘balance’ Europe.  Scroll one hundred years on and Wilhelmine Germany sounds a bit like Putin’s Russia. 

Naturally, the way the outbreak of World War One is being covered has nothing to do with history. ‘History’ (as so often) is in fact a metaphor for today and the deep divisions within Europe concerning Russia’s actions in Ukraine and elsewhere.  It would be easy to say (as some leaders are indeed saying) that Europe is now immune to big war.  That is also utter nonsense. What such leaders are really saying is that for them it is unthinkable that major war in Europe could happen.  Think again.  The proponents of such an argument like to point to Russia’s actions in Ukraine as somehow a one-off, an enforced adjustment to boundary ‘mistakes’, a realignment of states with nations. If Ukraine is compensated by Moscow for the loss of Crimea and gas supplies assured by Russia Europeans can again live happily ever after.  That is to ignore President Putin’s long retreat into nationalism and revisionism as an illiberal regime comes under increasing pressure for liberal change. 

Like the causes of World War One the facts of Russian strategy are also strategically-clear but politically unpalatable.  Since the $700 billion 2010 Defence Reform Programme was announced Russia has embarked on a major rearmament effort which now consumes some 20% of all Russian public expenditure.  Russia is also constructing new tactical and strategic nuclear weapons some of which may be in breach of the keystone 1987 Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty.  In other words, Russia’s actions are those of a state with a clear if misguided strategy rather than a state ‘sleepwalking’ into conflict.

The choice for the rest of Europe is equally clear; deterrence or appeasement?  Or, rather what balance to strike between the two.  Last week a high-level report came out from the European Leadership Network (ELN) written by several former European foreign and defence ministers.  The report warns against escalating the conflict in Ukraine to create a twenty-first century ‘doomsday’ scenario whereby systemic war between adversarial great powers could be inadvertently triggered in Europe as a result of escalation caused by the actions of smaller third parties.  Recognise it?

Now, hard though it may seem to the people of Ukraine 2014 is nothing like the powder-keg Wilhelmine Germany had created at the heart of 1914 Germany.  And yet, some of the strategic principles remain the same.  What action to take?  What does escalation actually mean?  Above all, is an accommodation possible with Moscow and is Moscow in a position to offer compromise given internal pressures? 

Professor Clark would have it that it was the pre-1914 arms race that created the conditions for World War One rather than per se the aggressive politics and militarism of Wilhelmine Germany.  That is to ignore the one dynamic strategy that drove all others.  The situation in Ukraine has been triggered similarly by the aggressive politics and proxy/closet militarism of Putin’s Russia and Moscow’s correct belief that their fellow Europeans are now so weak and divided that they can do very little to stop Russia.  Even the much-heralded enhanced sanctions agreed by the EU last week have so many loopholes in them that Russia is already driving the latest T90S tank through them.

Therefore, in such circumstances it is vital that European leaders do not confuse legitimate circumspection with appeasement.  Indeed, de-escalation before escalation looks awfully-like surrender, i.e. the abandonment of any real determination to demonstrate to Moscow that rapacious land-grabs that herald a shift in the European balance of power will be resisted.  First European leaders need to understand and then critically agree why Russia is doing this.

The reasons for Moscow's actions are again strategically clear but politically unpalatable.  Driven by a deep sense of nationalism allied to manufactured grievance over EU and NATO enlargement the Kremlin believes that unless it changes the orientation of states on its borders by extending its sphere of influence Moscow will be cast to the margins of influence.  The method is the use of actual and implied military intimidation to force Eastern European states to look not just to the West but again East.  Few if any of these states want to do this beyond being good neighbours of Russia.

Therefore, facing clear strategic but unpalatable political truths is again the real challenge facing Europe’s leaders.  Are they up to it? Right now Europe is again dealing with fundamental issues of power and principle, war and peace even though some leaders would rather not admit it,  whilst some are even unable to recognise it.  Rather, they seek solace in a new kind of appeasement; that somehow Russia can be bought off.  This is particularly the case in Berlin which still carries the yoke of the legacy of both Wilhelmine and Hitlerian Germany even though neither has much if anything in common with modern Germany.

The problem is that history in Europe today warps politics and undermines strategy.  Appeasement prior to World War Two failed to prevent war just as much as Professor Clark would claim that pre-World War One arms races caused war.  Today’s Europe is somehow lost wandering between the two and both strategy and politics reflect that.  However, war is not prevented by simply refusing to prepare for war.  Tough though that may sound to western European leaders many of my Russian colleagues would totally understand that.

A March 2014 spat between Britain’s then former Defence Secretary (now Foreign Secretary) Philip Hammond and NATO’s then Deputy Supreme Allied Commander (DSACEUR) British General Sir Richard Shirreff highlighted the dangerous division in Europe between the strategic class and the political class.  Now, I must declare an interest at this point.  I was a contemporary of Hammond’s at University College, Oxford and although I would not claim to know him (few would) there is a protocol between Old Members of my Oxford College.  Equally, I used to support Richard Shirreff and he is a friend.  So, I will be ruthless in my analysis.

Hammond threatened Shirreff with disciplinary action because the latter had suggested that Russia’s actions in Ukraine were a “paradigm shift” and that NATO was not up to the task of defending Alliance members against Russia.  His statement simply reflected a classified assessment by NATO of NATO that Hammond found politically inconvenient.  Last week the House of Commons Defence Select Committee in a new report effectively agreed with Shirreff saying that “…events in Ukraine seem to have taken the UK government by surprise”. 

On Saturday Prime Minister Cameron wrote to all other NATO members urging them to “…make clear to Russia that neither NATO nor its members will be intimidated” and hinted at possible increases to the British budget.  He also called for a strengthened NATO Response Force (a real NRF would help) and a reassessment of relations with Russia.

On the face of it Cameron is doing what all good leaders should do in light of changed circumstances; adapting. By contrast Hammond’s tetchy response to Shirreff in March demonstrated a refusal to adapt precisely because if properly understood Russia’s action would get in the way of his policy priority – cutting the British defence budget.  To be fair to Hammond fixing the British economy was London’s strategic priority when he came to office.  Equally, Hammond had to sort out the notoriously incompetent British defence procurement process and committed Britain to a £160bn military equipment budget. 

However, implicit in Hammond’s public put-down of Shirreff was a refusal to reconsider strategy in light of changed events precisely because it might interfere with political dogma.  Shirreff told me recently that NATO was unable at present to fulfil its collective defence mission.  Today, there are very real questions as to whether the Alliance could even fulfil its deterrence mission.  Not only have NATO’s conventional military capabilities become hollowed-out to the point of irrelevance the de facto decoupling of the US from European defence is now fact. 

All of this points to a loss of strategic judgement for the sake of political expediency.  Indeed, over the weekend Sir Richard said to me that his experience had “…been an interesting case where the duty of strategy-makers to speak truth unto power conflicts with political expediency!”  On the one hand, there will be those in the Clark school of thinking that will point to the argument of General Moltke and the 1914 German General Staff who believed that unless they attacked very quickly the forces ranged against Germany would become stronger possibly irresistible.  In other words 1914 was the moment to act.  This is a little like Israel’s argument for acting against it sworn enemy Hamas in Gaza.  With only Qatar left able to offer Hamas support there is no ‘better’ time for Israel to act than now.  On the other hand, for Europeans collectively to do effectively nothing either to counter Russia’s illegal actions or to respond to Russia’s arms build-up would look dangerously like appeasement, especially to those driving policy in the Kremlin.

So, what to do?  For once Britain does matter precisely because Britain is a European power (even if my country might soon fall apart).  At the September NATO Summit in Wales Prime Minister Cameron must demonstrate that he is playing strategy not politics.  He must back the words of his letter of this weekend with action and lead by example.  In addition to the committing of 1300 British troops to more robust and realistic NATO exercises, Cameron must also commit Britain to the 2% GDP NATO baseline on defence expenditure for at least the next decade.  He must also confirm that because of Russia’s actions British troops will be stationed in Eastern Europe.  And, because of the major investment underway in the Russian Navy (with the assistance of France) Cameron must confirm that the second British super-carrier HMS Prince of Wales will join the fleet as planned.  Then Moscow might sit up and take notice that at least one European power is preparing to counter the high-end military force President Putin seems determined to construct.

Something else must be done in Wales– a new high-level dialogue with Russia must be started.  The ELN report said that crisis management lessons from the Cold War needed to be re learnt.   However, the report actually missed perhaps the Cold War’s key lesson; a constructive and essential dialogue with an aggressive state can only be realised from a position of strength.  The INF Treaty was realised in 1987 because many political leaders had resisted popular panic to deploy nuclear forces to Europe.  At the same time they opened the so-called “Dual-Track” negotiations with Moscow that led to the Treaty and eventually helped end the Cold War.  Dual-Track at one and the same demonstrated a will to deter in parallel with openness to talk.  It is precisely those qualities which are needed now if the Allies are to convince President Putin that the costs of his strategy will far outweigh any possible benefits Moscow’s expansionist/militarist lobby are claiming for it right now.

That is how wars have been prevented in the past and there is nothing to suggest that today’s Europe is that much different from August 1914 Europe.  To put it another way, do Europe’s leaders have the political courage to face an unpalatable and potentially uncomfortable strategic reality or has political correctness so infected the chancelleries of Europe that self-delusion is now the order of the day.  God help us all if it is the latter.

NATO needs strategy if it is to avoid sleepwalking into another European disaster because strategy implies reasoned judgement which in turn is the foundation of policy.  The need for judgement is above all else THE lesson from August 4, 1914.

Therefore, one hundred years on from the outbreak of World War One the aim of NATO must not be to fight Russia but to deter it.  For deterrence to work will, capability and above all unity of effort and purpose of all the Allies is and will be vital. 

The Guns of August? NATO Needs Strategy not Politics.

Julian Lindley-French

Australia: Guardian of the West

Alphen, Netherlands. 31 July.  Australia is living proof that a West still exists and that its beating heart lies not in the tangled nonsense of failing Americans and pathetic Europeans but deep Down Under.

Two old friends took me to task this week.  My immediate reaction to both honoured the great Yorkshire tradition of tolerance known colloquially as “bugger off”.  I come from the ‘Sir’ Geoffrey Boycott (Yorkshire God) school of international relations.  Normally, my reaction to such over-pitched deliveries is either to avoid the corridor of uncertainty and take my bat away or to play the ball straight back past the bowler for four.  However upon reflection, which is about as rare to those of us born to the White Rose as a sighting of the sun, I decided my friends may both have a point.

In an influential piece an old American friend Stan Sloan posed the question, “Does the ‘West’ Exist?”  Stan felt I should have been addressing this issue more directly. Another good friend, Captain Simon Reay Atkinson of the Royal Australian Navy took me to task for not having given Australia its rightful due in my piece “Dignified Dutch, Revisionist Russia”. 

Anyone who watched Dutch Foreign Minister Frans Timmermans brilliant verbal requiem to the MH 17 dead at the UN Security Council will have been deeply moved.  Yet, few in the old, creaking, strategically pretentious West will have witnessed the equally moving testament of Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop.  At Eindhoven Airport last week a Royal Australian Air Force C-17 Globemaster stood on the tarmac next to a Dutch Air Force Hercules to return the fallen of MH 17 to the Netherlands.  In Ukraine the strong presence of Australian officials demonstrates the very real lead Prime Minister Tony Abbott has taken to return MH 17 bodies to loved one and to find the criminals who committed the crime.

Britain is a prime example of the heart disease from which the old West suffers.  London is now so lost up its own rear end in a form of strategic political correctness that it is scared to say “boo to a goose”, as we say in Yorkshire.  Worried that any act may offend some uppity minority, or that any decision might contravene increasingly tyrannical EU ‘law’ Little Britain now hovers been irrelevance and break-up.  For a patriotic Englishman the failure of Britain’s political elite to protect British interests is deeply depressing.   

Contrast that with Australia.  It took the lead over the search for MH 370 just as it has taken the lead over MH 17.  Far from retreating behind empty rhetoric in the wake of the failed Afghanistan and Iraq campaigns Australia instead conducted a proper strategic analysis of its strategy and defence needs.  Indeed, it is perhaps the one Western country that is led by a prime minister who actually seems to understand strategy and power.  As a kid Abbott was an avid follower of Jane’s Fighting Ships at a time when the Royal Navy filled more than one at best two of its pages.

Australia is investing in a future force that will reinforce the clout Australia is steadily developing in international fora.  This reinforces something that Britain and the rest of Europe too often seems to have forgotten and which Stan’s great piece identifies; the defence of freedom, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is not achieved with rhetoric or yet another pointless, self-paralyzing and self-defeating (literally) Brussels EU meeting.  It is achieved by determination, investment, effort, cohesion and a proper sense of strategy.

Currently the Commonwealth Games are taking place in Glasgow.  Fifty-seven states, nations and territories from across the world are competing in an event that on the face of it seems an anachronism of British Empire.  In fact the Commonwealth is a free association of free states and peoples that grew out of the Empire but which today has nothing to do with it.  Instead, the Commonwealth is the new West, part of a world-wide web of democracies which Australia is helping to lead. 

Today’s Commonwealth says something else about the West.  It is far more effective when it is organised in loose confederations of aligned interest than the one-size-fits-all straitjacket that is the failing EU. 

Stan Sloan says in his piece that the relationship between liberal democratic values and free markets that has come to define the West is also its essential weakness because it sometimes forces states to compromise the former in favour of the latter – Russian gas.  Stan, here I beg to differ.  Australia demonstrates that the mix of the two is still a potent force so long as a state retains sufficient national sovereignty to feel comfortable and self-confident about the choices its makes and its ability to make informed choices.  In other words the West is essentially about balance and it is that which Europeans in particular have abandoned and which has been so badly exposed by MH 17.   

Why is Australia guardian of the West?  Because Australia like the Commonwealth of which it is a vital part proves the West is an idea not a place and that for its values to survive it must be invested in.  Given Australia’s place in Asia-Pacific it cannot afford to delude itself about security, strategy or interests. 

 Australia: Guardian of the West.  Good on yer mate!

Julian Lindley-French

Dignified Dutch, Revisionist Russia

Alphen, Netherlands. 29 July.  French statesmen Charles Maurice de Talleyrand once said, “To succeed in the world it is much more necessary to discern who is a fool, than to discover who is a clever man”.  The tragedy of MH17 is about so much more than the murder of 300 people or even the tragedy of eastern Ukraine.  It is about a Moscow that has decided to become a radical, revisionist power and a Europe that simply does not want to recognise that. 

  

Living here in the Netherlands during these dark, depressed post MH17 days the contrast between two very different cultures is stark.  The Kremlin seems to have retreated into a self-justifying, self-pitying narrative that somehow the West has got it in for Russia and Moscow must act whatever the cost.  The Netherlands and its people by contrast have behaved with a quiet, solemn dignity as the bodies of MH17’s fallen have all-too-slowly returned.  There is little or no talk of retribution here.  It is a profound clash of cultures that concerns two very different ways of seeing the world.

Yesterday I learnt that the black boxes from MH17 confirm what the world already knew – the Malaysian Boeing 777 airliner was shot down by a missile.  The immediate cause is clear; one-group of pro-Russian separatists under pressure from Ukrainian forces fired an SA11 missile at what they thought was a Ukrainian Air Force military transport.  It was an act of brutally indifferent incompetence made possible by Russia.

Indeed, it is not just MH17 or the illegal annexation of Crimea or even the incompetent proxy and not-so-proxy de facto occupation of eastern Ukraine that confirms my fears of a Kremlin (and I mean Kremlin) that has radically changed strategic course over the past year.  Through the testing of a new ground-launched cruise missile Russia is now in possible breach of that cornerstone of European security the 1987 Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty.

And that is the essential problem for Europe; an inability to understand the extent to which Russia has changed track.  Proof may well come in the next couple of weeks.  As pro-Russian separatists are forced back on Donetsk and Luhansk Moscow must decide whether it will allow their collapse or intervene.  Moscow’s worse nightmare would be a sudden collapse of the separatists with significant amounts of Russian heavy weapons suddenly falling into Ukrainian hands.    

This morning the EU will agree new sanctions on Russia.  Much of the haggling over the past few days within the EU has been about how best to share the consequent pain of imposing sanctions against Russia.  New EU sanctions will be imposed on the defence, energy and finance sectors but they will be sufficiently limited not to hurt Berlin, Paris and London too much.  The French will still sell their warships to Russia, Germany will still send advanced engineering components to Russia’s gas industry and the City of London will still be a haven for dodgy Russia money.  Indeed, it appears that Chancellor Merkel only agreed to even these limited measures because President Putin did not return three of her telephone calls this past week. 

Here in the Netherlands the question I have been asked repeatedly by my Dutch friends, family and neighbours is that eternal question at such moments – why?  For all my many years of experience in the business of statecraft it is not a question I can easily answer.  Talleyrand once said that, “The art of statecraft is to foresee the inevitable and expedite its occurrence”. 

The Kremlin seems to believe that conflict is inevitable and that Russia must prevail.  Working with Russian colleagues over many years I have been struck often by how vulnerable Russia is to a sense of conspiratorial victimhood to justify good old-fashioned Machtpolitik.  If so then 2014 will mark much more than mere culture clash.  Indeed, the loss of MH 17 may not be the 2014 equivalent of the 1914 assassination of Archduke Ferdinand and the Archduchess Sophie.  However, it is one of those big summer moments in European history.

It has been an honour to live here amongst a great people these past couple of weeks.  To see the strength of the Dutch still seared by anger and disbelieving incredulity that something like MH17 could happen in 2014 Europe.  Will EU sanctions and other pressures be enough to force Russia to return to the standards of international behaviour implicit in Dutch dignity?  My sense is not and that Russia is indeed committed to a new strategic course of action of which Ukraine is but one element.  If Russia invades eastern Ukraine what then? Time will soon tell.

Julian Lindley-French

Why EU Foreign Policy does not Work

Alphen, Netherlands. 28 July.  In Monty Python and the Holy Grail the somewhat weak-kneed and weak of will Sir Robin confronted by the Three-Headed Knight says to King Arthur, “Would it help to confuse him if we ran away more?”  I was reminded of this scene when doing a TV interview yesterday to discuss the debacle of the EU’s pathetic non-response to MH17 and Russia’s continuing proxy and not-so proxy aggression in Eastern Ukraine.  Unless Moscow changes tack something even bigger and nastier is about to happen. Russia is now locked onto a course that somehow or another will see it take another part of Ukraine.  And yet in the face of such aggression EU member-states seem more interested in fighting each other than blunting Russian ambitions.  Yet again EU foreign policy has been proved not to work.  Why?

Yesterday Sir Tony Brenton the former British ambassador to Moscow discussed the crisis.  He told a story that explains all too graphically why the EU routinely fails in a crisis.  While serving in Moscow he received the text for the May 2003 “EU-Russia Common Spaces” agreement.  This long-term plan suggested four grand spaces: a Common Economic Space; a Common Space for Freedom, Security and Justice; a Common Space of External Security; and a Common Space of Research and Education.  So meaninglessly lofty was the document and so lacking in diplomatic substance that Sir Tony read it out to his appalled staff.  This EU fantasy was about as far as one could get from applied statecraft.

It highlighted the three essential dilemmas of the EU and its so-called external relations.  First, EU external relations only work so long as no-one really tests it.  That is why Brussels loves the long-term and the meaningless language of unstrategic ‘strategic partnerships’.  Second, the only crisis the EU really focuses on is the eternal internal crisis that the EU has become.  One only has to look at the ridiculously labyrinthine structure of the European External Action Service to recognise it is just about the worst possible instrument to conduct real time crisis management.  Third, as soon a crisis breaks the member-states are far more concerned about using the EU to shift the burdens and costs of crisis management onto other member-states than actually confronting the challenge.

That is precisely what happened this week.  On Tuesday EU foreign ministers met to discuss tougher sanctions on Russia in the wake of MH 17.  They could not agree.  Britain wanted to protect its financial services sector, France wanted to protect its warships deal, Germany wanted to protect the 25,000 German jobs dependent on the oil and gas sector it shares with Russia, and Italy did not want anything that would reveal the Faustian energy pact it has struck with Moscow.  Only those Central and Eastern European members in the firing line of Putinism were really willing to confront the wider strategic implications of Moscow’s actions which had been re-iterated by President Putin as recently as his 1 July speech to Russian diplomats.

As usual when there is an impasse the European Commission was sent away to consider more sanctions.  The draft document that emerged yesterday and which will be discussed by ministers today was archetypal of all that is wrong with EU foreign and security policy.  It was little more than a blatant Franco-German attempt to shift almost all the cost of any further sanctions onto Britain and the City of London.  So much for the impartiality of the European Commission.  And, far from deterring Russia this absurdly unbalanced document if enforced would probably do more to push Britain closer to an EU exit than damage Russia.

The consequence is not just an expensive foreign policy white elephant, and the EU is certainly that.  So much political energy is expended by EU member-states trying to out-manoeuvre each other for narrow, short-term gain within the EU (in EU parlance the search for common positions and joint action) that their own national foreign policies are gravely weakened.  Britain is a classic example of this.  For that reason the EU foreign and security policy whole is far smaller than the parts of its sum resulting in a Europe that punches way below its weight not just in the world but also in Europe. 

In the long-term either Europeans move towards a genuine EU foreign policy or they renationalise their efforts to enable the construction of coalitions of like-minded states.  The problem with the former idea is that it would require an EU Foreign Ministry which would in turn need a country called ‘Europe’.  The problem with the latter idea is that it would mean an end to the EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy. 

The bottom-line is this; until Russia sees that Europeans are prepared to face economic pain to blunt Moscow’s ambitions they will continue to regard the EU as somewhat of a foreign policy joke; an institution long on grand declaratory rhetoric and very short on power and substance.  And, until all Europeans are prepared to share such pain equitably then any and all such efforts will do more damage to each other than the intended miscreant.

If Europeans continue to hide a no man’s land of foreign policy irrelevance and incompetence they will be victims of the twenty-first century rather than shapers of it. So, what will the EU and its member-states do to blunt President Putin’s ambitions?  Run away more.  That should confuse the blighter!

Julian Lindley-French 

Seizing Sevastopol: What to do with Russia’s French Warships?

Alphen, Netherlands. 23 July.  Predictably the EU fell apart yesterday over what to do about Russia.  Naturally the assembled foreign ministers all pretended otherwise but the only winner was President Putin.  There was a motley extension to the motley collection of asset freezes and travel bans and some talk of future sanctions covering the energy, financial services and defence sectors. It was only talk. And of course Britain and France fell out (again).  France accused Britain of hypocrisy over London’s demand that Paris halt the €1.2bn sale of two state-of-the-art French warships to Russia.  French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius not unreasonably pointed out that Britain has been far too “no questions asked” about the London money of Russian oligarchs close to President Putin.  The French were too polite to point out that Britain still has some 252 active arms export licenses worth some £132m for the sale of weapons to Russia.  For all that it is inconceivable that in the current situation France would help Russia create an entirely new expeditionary military capability. 

These are not any old new warships.  Weighing in at 21500 tons the Mistral-class ships are state-of-the-art marine amphibious command and assault ships that for the first time ever will give Russia the ability to launch from the sea 450 special and specialised forces supported by helicopters and tanks.  The first of the ships is due to be handed over to the Russia Navy in October.  France says that Russia has promised not to use them in its ‘near abroad’. Nonsense.  These two ships could be deployed anywhere around Europe from the High North to the Baltic Sea, from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean. 

France must stop talking contracts and start thinking strategy.  That means seizing the ships.  There is a precedent. One hundred years ago in August 1914 the British seized a brand new battleship they had been building first for the Brazilians and then when that deal fell through for the Turks.   Winston Churchill personally insisted the ship be taken into British custody.  She was a state-of-the art Super-Dreadnought battleship with 14 12 inch guns, displacing 30,000 tons and capable of 22 knots. 

Although contractually obliged the British Government of the day felt the strategic situation of the day warranted seizure.  As one can imagine the Ottoman Empire was none too pleased by the seizure (along with one other new battleship) and some scholars believe it helped to push Constantinople towards Wilhelmine Germany.  Still, they could have been used against the Royal Navy and that would have been just a tad embarrassing.

The problem of course with seizure (apart from a seriously peeved Putin) would be what to do with the ships.  The French Navy has neither the personnel nor the budget needed to crew two new ships of this size. However, there are three alternative, very non-Russian options that Paris may wish to consider: 1. create a new Anglo-French strike force; 2. make the ships NATO common assets paid for by NATO Europe; or 3. make the ships the first EU-owned assets at the core of a new maritime amphibious Combined Joint Expeditionary Force (CJEF).

Under the 2010 Franco-British Defence and Security Co-operation Treaty the two countries are working up a CJEF.  Current efforts have been focused on co-operation between air and land forces.  However, with the launch of the two British super aircraft carriers HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales the addition of the two Mistrals to a maritime amphibious CJEF would markedly enhance the ability of the two countries to launch and sustain significant operations from the sea.  This would ensure Britain and France were at the centre of efforts to enhance the expeditionary capabilities of Europeans but also offer real support to hard-pressed Americans.  The problem as with all ships of this size is their crewing but that is not beyond the bounds of sensible solution.

One of the big issues at September’s NATO Wales Summit will be burden-sharing.  The ships could become a NATO-owned asset in which all Alliance members invest.  The Alliance would then in effect purchase the ships from France and they would be crewed by personnel from all NATO nations – just like the Luxembourg-registered E3 aerial surveillance vessels.  The beauty of this elegant solution to France’s dilemma is that the purchase and subsequent crewing would go some way to helping some NATO members get towards the 2% GDP defence investment target the Americans regard as the minimum.  It would also help the Alliance develop a serious European High Readiness Force (Maritime).

A third option would be to make them the first EU-owned common defence assets to give EU Battle Groups a much-needed capability boost.  Indeed, the ships would certainly help to create an enhanced EU maritime amphibious capability.  It would help France lead the way towards the 5000 strong expeditionary EU force former President Sarkozy called for back in 2008.  One option would be to place the ships at the heart of a project cluster involving several EU member-states under permanent structured co-operation, possibly the Weimar Triangle.  By making such a move France would again be firmly at the helm of efforts to enhance the EU’s Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP).

There is one other option; one hundred years on from Entente Cordiale France could generously give one of the ships to the Royal Navy.  The Russians had intended to name one of the ships Vladivostok and the other somewhat provocatively Sevastopol.  Again there is a precedent for such name changes.  In 1914 the British christened the new battleship HMS Agincourt (of course).  In 2014 the British could offer the French a choice; HMS Crecy, HMS Waterloo or how about HMS Trafalgar?

Just a thought.

Julian Lindley-French

MH17: How Much Do ‘WE’ Care?

Alphen, Netherlands. 21 July. “Why don’t the Russians care about the people on that plane?” That was the question a friend of mine put to me this morning.  It is a question I find hard to answer.  Of course, the Russians do care about what happened, especially the Russian people.  No-one in Russia wanted this ghastly disaster but Russia must be held account for what happened because Moscow made the disaster possible.  However, that begs an even bigger question; how much do WE care about MH17?

The evidence for what happened is now undeniable even by the Kremlin.  Last Thursday MH17 was shot out of the skies by an SA-11 surface-to-air missile that was either fired by a pro-Russian separatist with a Russian advisor standing by or possibly even by a Russian GRU (military intelligence) officer.  Four Ukrainian military aircraft had been shot down over the previous week by Russian missiles a part of an attempt by Russian forces to help the separatists blunt a Ukrainian offensive into eastern Ukraine. 

This morning President Putin said that “all must be done to end the conflict”.  However, whilst the Kremlin did not want this to happen Moscow only ‘cares’ about MH17 and the victims who died therein in so much as the disaster complicates the politics of an expansionist strategy to which Russia remains fully committed. 

So, how much do ‘WE’ care?  There are options open to the West – both Europeans and North Americans – which would hurt an already vulnerable Russian economy.  Tighter travel and financial sanctions could be imposed on top officials in the Kremlin.  Deeper and far better co-ordinated so-called ‘sectoral sanctions’ could be imposed by both North Americans and Europeans on the Russian energy and technology sectors that build-on the restrictions imposed by Washington last Wednesday.  Such sanctions could be further reinforced by a complete stop to all development loans and co-operation projects by the EU and which build-on last week’s limited EU action prior to MH17’s downing.

However, any deeper sanctions will be a real test of ‘WE’ as further strictures would hurt Europeans and their vulnerable economies in particular.  Hence the question how much do WE care?  The question also pre-supposes the idea that a ‘WE’ actually still exists.  The idea of a ‘West’ is open to serious doubt so dysfunctional has the relationship become.  The idea of a ‘Europe’ is even open to ridicule so pathetic has the EU response been and so utterly dysfunctional what might be termed a European foreign policy.

Britain, France and Germany finally stepped into the leadership void over the weekend by jointly calling for stringent measures to be taken against Russia.  However, the strange foreign policy no-man’s land that now exists between the EU and its member-states has reduced the European ‘whole’ to far less than the parts of its sum.  Indeed, too many EU member-states no longer have a foreign policy at all (Britain most particularly).  What is left is a kind of transactional politics in which ‘foreign policy’ is directly linked to perceived economic cost. 

President Putin knows this.  Today, the foreign ‘policies’ of Europe are measured purely and only in terms of ‘cost’ rather than the defence of values central to democracies.  Therefore, concerted action against aggression reduced to a balance sheet analysis of immediate cost given the varying trade and energy relationships Europeans ‘enjoy’ with Russia.  Any sense of a ‘WE’ goes straight out of the crisis window. 

A real test for Europeans will come tomorrow at an EU meeting called ostensibly to discuss a new approach to Russia.  If European leaders are serious about facing down Russian expansionism and the arms flows that created the conditions for the loss of MH17 and 298 innocent people they will be judged by their actions. 

If Europe’s leaders are serious Russian oil-giant Rosneft will tomorrow be removed from the London Stock Exchange by London, France will scrap the €1.2 billion sale of two Mistral class advanced maritime assault ships to Russia and Germany will scrap a whole host of trade deals with Russia.  A strong signal would also be sent to Moscow if Sweden’s Foreign Minister Carl Bildt is immediately appointed EU Foreign Minister and with immediate effect.

Additionally, access of Russian firms to European financial markets will be blocked even though that would hurt London and Frankfurt.  If serious the meeting will also confirm Ukraine’s status as an EU Strategic Partner and consider accelerated measures to wean Europeans off Russian energy supplies which admittedly will take time.  There would also be a decision to end once and for all the agreement to construct the Ukraine-bypassing South Stream Pipeline to supply gas from Russia to the rest of Europe. 

So, is there sufficient of a ‘WE’.  No.  The same old EU empty nonsense will emerge from the same old type of meeting as very little action is doubtless blown-up in the communique into “decisive measures”.  Italy and others will block anything that might in any way affect their Faustian energy deals with Russia.  It is questionable whether Britain, France and Germany are really prepared to take together real steps that would hurt both Russia and themselves in the name of principle.  After all trade relations between Russia and its fellow Europeans (particularly Germany) are worth ten times that of Russian-US trade links.

President Putin fully understands all this.  He understands that in this crisis as in so many others there is no ‘WE’ – neither a Western ‘WE’ nor a European ‘WE’.  Indeed, his superficially emollient words of this morning are specifically designed to undermine the already very little ‘WE’ that exists.

MH17: How much do ‘WE’ care?  Sadly not enough.

Julian Lindley-French

MH 17: Russia Stop this Madness!

Alphen, Netherlands. 17 July.  Today I was at Amsterdam Schiphol airport picking my father up.  There can be little doubt I walked past the poor people of many nationalities whose remains are smouldering as I write on the Steppe close to the Russia-Ukrainian border.  It is of course too early to tell what or who downed Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 as it made its way from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur.  However, the known circumstances, the location, tweets from pro-Russian separatists congratulating themselves for shooting down a Ukrainian military plane that coincide with the loss of MH 17 and other information which I have seen all point to a surface-to-air missile of Russian design as being responsible. 

Let me say at the outset that Russia did not do this.  The chance that a state-of-the-art Russian military system under Russian military control was used is very small indeed.  Such advanced systems would have had an Identification Friend or Foe (IFF) safeguard that would have ‘tagged’ MH 17 as soon as it was ‘painted’ as a target. What is far more likely is that an older, less sophisticated system such as an SA 11 (NATO codename ‘Grail’) or something similar was involved.  Such systems are known to be in the hands of the separatists who may or may not have the capability to operate the system effectively.  There is clear evidence that Russian military equipment is making its way across the border between Russia and Ukraine and the Ukrainian military may have lost some SA 11s during Russia’s occupation of Ukraine-Crimea.

It is equally unlikely to have been the responsibility of the Ukrainian military.  Two Ukrainian military aircraft have been lost over the past 48 hours to missiles fired either from within the separatist area or possibly even from over the border in Russia.  There has certainly been a clear escalation over the past few days and there can be little doubt Moscow is pulling the strings.

Last week I published a piece for the RUSI Journal entitled “Ukraine: Understanding Russia”.  In the article I tried to look at the conflict from the Russian viewpoint because too often other Europeans simply impose their assumptions on Russia.  Equally, I am no apologist for Russia.  My fellow sitting on the fence Europeans trying to explain Russian aggression away at almost any cost also have to look hard at themselves.  For example, how can France possibly sell two state-of-the-art amphibious attack ships to a country that is creating and managing such a conflict in twenty-first century Europe?

Of course Russia did not want this awful disaster to happen and President Putin rightly called President Obama the moment he heard of the disaster.  However, the bottom-line is this; Moscow must bear some of the responsibility for this disaster.  In 2014 it is Moscow that has created the conditions which has led to the loss of a civilian airliner carrying 295 innocent people to a surface-to-air missile over European airspace by fuelling the crisis and arming the separatists.  In 2014 only Russia can create the conditions for a peaceful resolution to this conflict by insisting on and joining the EU to help craft a negotiated constitutional settlement for a Ukraine at peace with itself and its neighbours.  To make that happen Moscow must stop its efforts to de-stabilise the Kiev regime and begin to behave in a manner befitting the Great Power Russia is.

Sadly, I fear I may be witnessing quite the reverse.  Indeed, Moscow could well be on the verge of launching a classically Russian ‘August’ stratagem.  In 2008 Moscow waited until the midst of the European summer holidays to launch its invasion of Georgia.  Russian forces are now again building up on Ukraine’s border, increased volumes of Russian military supplies and advisers are crossing the border into Ukraine in support of the separatists and more aggressive action is already evident.

If Moscow has any sense of the damage it is doing to Europe but above all to Russia itself the loss of MH 17 must be pause for reflection.  At the very least Russia owes such reflection to the grieving relatives of the people past whom I walked today who are now the unwitting victims, the lost souls to a the ridiculous and tragic theatre of Russia’s twenty-first century insidious Machtpolitik.

MH 17: Russia stop this madness!

Julian Lindley-French