hms iron duke

hms iron duke

Monday 11 May 2015

Little Britain: Cameron’s True Test


Alphen, Netherlands. 11 May. Friday was David Cameron’s VE Day – Victory over Ed Day.  It was therefore fitting that the three main party leaders Cameron, Clegg and Miliband, together with the successful Scottish Nationalist Party (SNP) leader Nicola Sturgeon, honoured their commitment to lay a wreath at the Cenotaph in London but a few hours after the British electorate had delivered their crushing verdict.  And, it must be said all four demonstrated British politics at its very best acting in a way that for once did credit to their much-derided profession.  Equally, honouring Britain’s war dead should at the very least have concentrated David Cameron’s mind.  For the past five years he has slipped, slid and spun his way through his premiership, using coalition government to avoid hard decisions beyond the mantra of deficit-reduction.  No more!  With Scotland still threatening to secede from the United Kingdom and with much of England seeking to secede from the European Union the next five years will demonstrate whether David Cameron is a real Prime Minister or the PR-Meister many take him to be.

Scotland must sooner or later be faced down.  The 5 million Scots must be posed a simple question (again) by the 60 million rest of us; are ye wi’ us or agin’ us? “A Scottish lion has roared”, screamed Alex Salmond, the SNP’s bombastic former first minister, as it was announced that the SNP had taken 56 of the 59 Scottish parliamentary seats (out of a UK total of 650).  In fact it was the English lion that roared last week, a lion that lives modestly and by and large quietly in Middle England.  However, when roused it is a far bigger and more ferocious beast than its Scottish cousin and it is getting increasingly irritated by the Scottish pussy cat telling it what it is it demands.   The bottom-line is this; with a £7.5bn black hole in the Scottish budget the SNP’s fantasy leftist, public service addicted economics only make sense if the English, Northern Irish and Welsh continue paying for them.  Cameron must not appease the SNP.

However, it is Britain’s place (or otherwise) in the EU that will come to define his premiership.  With a 2017 in-out EU referendum now a certainty the first two years (at least) of his new term will be dominated by a possible Brexit…as it will dominate the EU.  If Cameron is to successfully generate EU reforms which he could genuinely defend to the British people as real change he will also have to address questions fundamental to the very existence of the EU.  Indeed, the only reform that really matters concerns the safeguarding of British parliamentary sovereignty against future incursion by sovereignty-eroding federalists.  To do that Cameron must destroy what I call the Delors Assumption. 

The Delors Assumption is an elite, Euro-federalist assumption that “ever close union” is inevitable.  And that in time national parliaments will be replaced by the European Parliament, national governments will be replaced by the European Commission, whilst the European Council evolves into a Senate in which heads of member-states/provinces sit.  In other words, Cameron is about to engage in an existential struggle about the nature and future of the EU. 

If he is to succeed he will also have to distinguish between what the EU does and what would have happened anyway in a Europe of relatively rich liberal democracies irrespective of whether Brussels existed or not.  It is certainly the case that the attempt by Brussels to by-pass London and deal directly with Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland via a “Europe of the Regions” has weakened the UK, as was the intent of its architects.  That must be stopped also.

However, free movement of labour is as much a consequence of victory in the Cold War as the EU and pretty much defined what the Cold War was fought for.  Equally, the up to 1 million migrants now trying to get across the Mediterranean to ‘seek a better life’ or escape war and conflict would be happening anyway.  Therefore, it is utterly implausible to believe that as a friend and ally of states like Italy Britain would simply leave them to cope with this influx.

There is however another issue that links both the Scottish and EU questions – Britain’s place in the world.  Some Dutch colleagues of my wife at Tilburg University said that the whole idea of the Brexit referendum was ridiculous because Britain could not survive without the EU.  Apart from demonstrating breath-taking ignorance and a complete lack of understanding of how power and politics works they simply had no idea that Britain is still the world’s fifth largest economy and one of its leading military powers.

There are several reasons for this Little Britain syndrome.  The French and Germans never have nor never will allow Britain to play a role commensurate with its weight in Europe.  Indeed, both Berlin and Paris have long conspired to reduce a first-rank European power to second-rank status and if Britain leaves the EU they will need to bear some responsibility. The Americans take Britain for granted.  Indeed, the Obama administration in particular has treated Britain too often as the 51st state and a state that is more Delaware than California.

However, the ultimate responsibility for the Little Britain syndrome rests with the Westminster political elite.  The fixation with fixing the economy is on the face of it sound. However, to believe as Cameron seems to that the only thing that matters is austerity at whatever cost to Britain’s standing in the world has proven to be disastrous for British influence.  There is something else at work here.  Many Scots want to leave the UK because they no longer feel proud to be British.  Many English feel the same way – hence the rise of the much narrower and less noble nationalism all too evident in last week’s general election.  In other words, my wife’s Dutch colleagues believe Britain counts for nothing because that is the message London has been sending and it is precisely what many Britons also believe.

Therefore, if Cameron is to succeed with the economy, in Scotland and/or in Europe and the wider world he will need to make the British people as whole feel proud again.  To do that he will need to think again about the strategic brand that makes Britain an influential player.  For that he need look no further than the Cenotaph and the lines of distinguished British veterans being honoured on VE Day for their famous victory and their sacrifice.   

One key component in Britain’s world-wide strategic brand and critical to a Britain that punches above not below its weight is its world-renowned armed forces.  Even the most cursory of glances around the world suggests the need to reinvest in them.  They also act as identity glue that binds England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales together. Therefore, far from the further defence draining cuts the government is threatening to make in the forthcoming Strategic Pretence and Insecurity Review 2015 Cameron must instead honour his September 2014 NATO pledge and spend 2% of Britain’s GDP on defence.

Little Britain: Cameron’s true test.


Julian Lindley-French  

Saturday 9 May 2015

Victory Day Russia 1945-2015


Alphen, Netherlands. 9 May, 2015. Today is Victory Day in Russia commemorating and celebrating Russia’s crucial and critical role in the defeat of Hitler and the evil scourge that was Nazism.  Let me immediately pay tribute to the role the then Soviet Union paid in the defeat of the Nazis and the enormous sacrifice of its peoples.  Up to 28 million Russians died in the Great Patriotic War with 75% of all Nazi forces engaged by General Zhukov’s and General Rokossovky’s Soviet forces.  For all the sacrifice elsewhere defeat of the Nazi’s would quite simply not have been possible but for the herculean Russian effort.  Today, Russians everywhere have a right to feel proud.  Today, as a Briton I offer my profoundest respect to Russia and Russians.

Which makes what I had to say to a senior Russian in Budapest this week all the more necessary, and sadly, all the more regrettable.  My message was blunt.  As a student of Russian Moscow is today charging down a dangerous, strategic blind alley that can only end in either major conflict or major defeat for Russia…or both.  Indeed, the new ‘war’ Moscow is waging against imaginary ‘fascists’ in the West is utterly ill-conceived and can only end in disaster for Russia and quite possibly all of us. 
  
A week or so ago in Rome I acted as Rapporteur for a big NATO meeting that considered Russia’s use of strategic maskirovka/hybrid warfare – that complex mix of deception, disinformation, active destabilisation, aggression and intimidation in which Moscow is currently engaged. Moscow’s aim is to keep the rest of us permanently strategically, politically and militarily off-balance.  As part of that meeting I chaired three of NATO’s top commanders in a discussion about how best to counter Russia’s use of military intimidation.  Today 16,000 Russia troops will march through Red Square supported by the latest Russian tanks and military aircraft, together with two Iskander M mobile tactical nuclear missile launchers.  The show of Russian military might on show today is meant to send a ‘message’ of Russian might to fellow Europeans like me and my leaders.  The message from my NATO commanders was clear; should heaven forbid a shooting war ever break-out in Europe between Russia and NATO Russia would lose.

President Putin is not simply engaged in strategic maskirovka for the sake of it.  His strategy is clearly designed to lever effects at two levels.  At the grand strategic level President Putin is endeavouring to reinvigorate Russia’s strategic brand and the influence and effect Moscow seeks to exert to its east, south, north and, of course, west.  That is why the guest of honour today is President Xi Jingping of China, with the President’s strategic ‘messaging’ to the West loud and clear.  At the domestic level all of this sabre-rattling and sabre-toying is designed to ensure the survival of President Putin domestically by wrapping the Kremlin in an enormous, nostalgic Russian flag.

And, for the record, I regret the refusal of many Western leaders to attend today’s ceremonies in Moscow. Whatever one thinks of Moscow’s use of hybrid warfare in Ukraine it is Russia’s sacrifice and ultimate triumph seventy years ago that 9 May commemorates.  Moreover, I fully understand that Russia has legitimate interests and rights that must be respected. I am also prepared to accept that President Putin is genuine in his world-view.  The President clearly has a classical view of power and does not accept the ‘community’ concept of international relations pioneered by and implicit in the European Union.  He is certainly not ‘duty’ bound to see the world the same way many other Europeans see it.

However, what saddens me most about Russia’s use of hybrid warfare today is the betrayal of political principle it implies.  Worse, I am witnessing the sad retreat of a country which I hold in the highest regard into political cynicism that goes far beyond political realism.  The struggle against Nazism was essentially about the upholding of norms in international relations; that might for might’s sake is not only not right, but never right, and that free peoples have the right to free sovereign choice.  Then Soviet leader Josef Stalin may have disagreed with me about this but my pious hope has always been that contemporary Russia would demonstrate its greatness by championing such ideals and respecting them.  Russia can never be ‘great’ in the way it is behaving today, and does not need to behave this way.

Therefore, as a friend of Russia, I feel deeply disappointed and concerned to see Russia dragging Europe down into the abyss of power balances and spheres of unwanted influence.  Indeed, Ukraine has become but the front-line of a much greater and even more dangerous systemic struggle, and I say that with due respect to the people of Ukraine and their current agony.

In my latest book Little Britain I berate my own country’s leaders for too often turning am major power into a minor one. Russia is also a great country, a great power and a great state.  However, at present it is acting like a stupid one.  As I said in Budapest, there can be no European security without Russia and all of us want Russia to take its rightful place as a leader of the European family.  And, to see that happen we are prepared to be patient and sit down and address sensibly Russian grievances. However, Moscow must understand one thing; we will not negotiate with Russia with a Russian gun pointed to our heads.

There is a reason why Russia celebrates Victory Day on 9 May whilst the rest of us celebrate VE Day on 8 May that is itself indicative.   After British Field Marshal Montgomery took the surrender of all Nazi forces in north-west Europe on 4 May a period a wrangling then took place as to where the final, final, final surrender should be signed.  On 8 May the Nazis surrendered (again) at Rheims to Supreme Commander, Allied Expeditionary Force General Dwight D. Eisenhower.  However, at Stalin’s insistence the Nazi’s surrendered (again) in Berlin on 9 May in a ceremony organised and overseen by the Red Army.  Complex though it was the multiple surrenders culminating as they did in the main signing in Berlin was, given Russian sacrifice, entirely appropriate. 

In honour of Russia’s fallen; Za Rodinu! Za Rossiya!


Julian Lindley-French

Friday 8 May 2015

Victory in Europe

“Yesterday morning at 2:41 a.m. at Headquarters, General Jodl, the representative of the German High Command, and Grand Admiral Doenitz, the designated head of the German State, signed the act of unconditional surrender of all German Land, sea, and air forces in Europe to the Allied Expeditionary Force, and simultaneously to the Soviet High Command.

General Bedell Smith, Chief of Staff of the Allied Expeditionary Force, and General Francois Sevez signed the document on behalf of the Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force, and General Susloparov signed on behalf of the Russian High Command.

Today this agreement will be ratified and confirmed at Berlin, where Air Chief Marshal Tedder, Deputy Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force, and General de Lattre de Tassigny will sign on behalf of General Eisenhower. Marshal Zhukov will sign on behalf of the Soviet High Command. The German representatives will be Field-Marshal Keitel, Chief of the High Command, and the Commanders-in- Chief of the German Army, Navy, and Air Forces.

Hostilities will end officially at one minute after midnight tonight, but in the interests of saving lives the "Cease fire" began yesterday to be sounded all along the front, and our dear Channel Islands are also to be freed today.

The Germans are still in places resisting the Russian troops, but should they continue to do so after midnight they will, of course, deprive themselves of the protection of the laws of war, and will be attacked from all quarters by the Allied troops. It is not surprising that on such long fronts and in the existing disorder of the enemy the orders of the German High Command should not in every case be obeyed immediately. This does not, in our opinion, with the best military advice at our disposal, constitute any reason for withholding from the nation the facts communicated to us by General Eisenhower of the unconditional surrender already signed at Rheims, nor should it prevent us from celebrating today and tomorrow as Victory in Europe days.

Today, perhaps, we shall think mostly of ourselves. Tomorrow we shall pay a particular tribute to our Russian comrades, whose prowess in the field has been one of the grand contributions to the general victory.

The German war is therefore at an end. After years of intense preparation, Germany hurled herself on Poland at the beginning of September, 1939; and, in pursuance of our guarantee to Poland and in agreement with the French Republic, Great Britain, the British Empire and Commonwealth of Nations, declared war upon this foul aggression. After gallant France had been struck down we, from this Island and from our united Empire, maintained the struggle single-handed for a whole year until we were joined by the military might of Soviet Russia, and later by the overwhelming power and resources of the United States of America.

Finally almost the whole world was combined against the evil-doers, who are now prostrate before us. Our gratitude to our splendid Allies goes forth from all our hearts in this Island and throughout the British Empire.

We may allow ourselves a brief period of rejoicing; but let us not forget for a moment the toil and efforts that lie ahead. Japan, with all her treachery and greed, remains unsubdued. The injury she has inflicted on Great Britain, the United States, and other countries, and her detestable cruelties, call for justice and retribution. We must now devote all our strength and resources to the completion of our task, both at home and abroad. Advance, Britannia! Long live the cause of freedom! God save the King!


Radio broadcast by Prime Minister Winston Spencer Churchill, 8 May, 1945

Monday 4 May 2015

High Politics, Low Politicians - Beware Britain’s Strategy Crisis



This is a big week for Britain.  It is also a big week for the US and NATO as Britain’s ugly baby election campaign stumbles towards its UK-busting nadir on Thursday.  Last week Steve Erlanger wrote an insightful piece in the New York Times that considered Britain’s steady drift from the world stage.  By way of response to Steve’s piece below is a piece I submitted to the NYT in March that explains more deeply the causes of Britain’s precipitous decline which looks as if now it will end in only one possible conclusion – the dismantling of what was perhaps the most influential state in World history over the last five hundred years. 

The slide in British defence investment has been too-easily written off as a consequence of the 2008 financial crash and the need to balance Britain’s books.  In fact, Britain’s defence cuts mask a much deeper existential question; what kind of power should Britain aspire to be in the twenty-first century.   Britain is locked deep in a strategy crisis which if unchecked threatens to destroy the transatlantic security relationship and, in time, NATO.  Washington has slowly begun to recognise the threat, or at least its symptoms.  However, the US is doing nothing like enough to help pull its old friend and ally back from the edge of the strategic precipice over which London now peers.  

In January President Obama warned Prime Minister Cameron about the continuing decline in British defence spending.  In March Britain announced it is joining the Chinese-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. Both events are symptoms of a crisis over the future direction of British national and defence strategy that is tearing London’s High Establishment apart – both political and bureaucratic.

Indeed, London’s much-politicised High Establishment is split between those who believe that soft power is the future and that Britain should accept its place as yet another soft EU power and those that believe Britain can and should still count as a power – political, economic and military. The tired idealists believe that American military adventurism has led Britain to disaster.  The frustrated realists believe that Britain remains a world power, albeit modest in size and ambition, and as such hard military power should remain the bedrock of all British influence and strategic effect.  It is a philosophical and political divide worsened by a strategically-illiterate, inward-looking political class who routinely confuse strategy with politics and who have abandoned any sense of British patriotism to pursue narrow sectarianism.  It is a confusion all-too evident in this most depressing of general election campaigns.

Britain’s EU-leaning foreign policy is run by a generation of politicians and diplomats who have built their career making the little, daily deals that are the stuff of Brussels.  As a group the tired idealists are wholly unprepared for the return of the grand geopolitics implicit in Russian aggression and Chinese assertion or the super-insurgency ISIL is driving across swathes of the Middle East.  Many in this group come from a school which also believes and accepts that Britain’s decline is inevitable and that their job is to manage Britain’s decline ‘successfully’ so that ‘Europe’ can rise in its place. Dream on.

The realists believe that the UK, one of the world’s top five economies and military powers, remains a power to be reckoned with in the world. They also believe that the special relationship with the US is not only Britain’s most important strategic partnership, but the anchor relationship in the wider transatlantic relationship and thus the strategic bedrock upon which NATO is established.  As a group they are by and large unromantic about the US and the much-exaggerated ‘Special Relationship’ but recognise that if the US remains central to British security and defence policy Britain must be able to influence Washington. However, they also understand that much of that influence will be dependent on the capability and capacity of Britain’s sorely-pressed armed forces.

Prime Minister Cameron has been the catalyst for Britain’s strategy crisis but he is not the cause of it.  Equally, Cameron’s determination to join the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank is revealing in and of itself because the only ‘national strategy’ that he seems to understand is mercantilism – his belief that the only ‘strategy’ in world affairs is trade.  This reflects what Labour leader Ed Miliband’s calls Cameron’s “pessimistic isolationism”, and not without reason.  Certainly, Cameron’s government at times bears a striking similarity to Stanley Baldwin’s depression-era appeasement government of the 1930s.  Equally, some of Milliband’s pronouncements reflect the fantasy, unaffordable Utopia into which much of the British political Left have retreated.

NATO is the big loser from Britain’s strategy crisis.  At the September 2014 NATO Wales Summit David Cameron committed Britain to spending at least 2% of its GDP on defence.  The statement was pure Cameron; meant for the moment but nothing more.  If re-elected of Thursday Cameron’s current spending plans suggest that defence will again be savagely cut.  Worse, Cameron has instructed his eminence grise Oliver Letwin to find ways to make it appear Britain is spending 2% of GDP on defence post 2017. Letwin is the architect of Cameron’s retreat from strategy into politics.

The Obama administration has not helped.  The repeated lectures from Washington that Britain must not consider leaving growth-deficient, regulation-hidebound, equally strategically-illiterate Brussels and accept its place in an EU that is deeply ambivalent about its relationship with the U.S. has deepened the divisions in London’s High Establishment.  Clearly, Washington must make up its mind.  The US can either continue to treat Britain like the 52nd state of the US, insist on a Little Britain remaining embedded in an uncertain and counter-strategic EU. Or, the US can move to preserve the ‘Special Relationship’, help rebuild British strategic self-confidence that the US has helped to crush and again see a Britain that leads in Europe, rather than scuttling away into a rat-hole of declinism which is where Britain is today headed, and which would help no-one.

The bottom-line is this; with US forces stretched thin the world over it is vital that Washington’s NATO allies become effective first-responders in and around Europe.  That was the message of the big NATO conference for which I acted as Rapporteur last week in Rome.  For the sake of the Alliance Britain must be in the vanguard of such a NATO-centred effort.  If Britain is not in NATO’s military vanguard London will become simply another other Europeans; all too happy for the US taxpayer to bear the true cost of Britain’s defence.  Why?  Over the next decade the rise of illiberal military power threatens to eclipse liberal military power.  The Anglo-American special relationship is not what it was.  However, the strategic alignment of these two powers still has within its gift the capacity to stabilise a dangerous world and if needs be strike and punish.

As a British strategist watching my country being led down the plug-hole of history by London’s High Establishment the struggle between tired idealists, frustrated realists and plug-hole politicians is perhaps the most depressing professional event of my now long career.  Those that take a perverse pleasure in seeing the fall of the country that prevented tyranny in Europe twice this past century, and there are many such fools, may wish to pause. Britain’s strategy crisis is not just America’s strategy crisis, it could also mark the end of NATO and mark the end of political balance within Europe.

High politics, low politicians. It is not just Britain's future that is at stake on Thursday.


Julian Lindley-French

Friday 1 May 2015

Hybrid Warfare: NATO needs a Stoltenberg Doctrine


Rome, Italy. 1 May. Manfred WÓ§rner had one. George Robertson had one. NATO needs a Stoltenberg Doctrine – a galvanising and clarifying statement of intent that would define Secretary-General Stoltenberg’s tenure. The need is pressing in the face of the new threats the Alliance is facing. A Stoltenberg Doctrine would be thus: the re-forging of a true political-military alliance via the regeneration of strategic and political unity of effort and purpose to combat the wars being waged against the seams of Allied societies and polities by the likes of Russia and Islamic State.  Critically, a Stoltenberg Doctrine would help close perhaps the most dangerous of NATO’s many seams – the growing gap between Alliance political and military leaders.  Russia’s use of so-called hybrid warfare; the planned and skilled mix of disinformation, destabilisation and intimidation is a dangerous gambit to force Eastern European states back into Moscow’s sphere of influence. 

My reason for being in Rome was to act as Rapporteur for a high-level conference at Major-General Bojarski’s excellent NATO Defence College entitled NATO and New Ways of Warfare: Defeating Hybrid Threats.  It was an outstanding conference as testified by the twenty-six pages of notes I must now forge into a coherent and concise report. However, excellent though the conference was I was struck by the absence of any politician from any of NATO’s twenty-eight nations, and not for the first time.

The gap between political leaders and those charged with military leadership is an ever-more apparent and dangerous phenomenon.  The result is what I call “summititis.”  No, it is not some form of urinary tract infection, but it can be even more painful.  Rather, “summititis” is where political leaders agree to Sherpa- drafted declarations that they neither understand nor own. The 2014 Wales Summit Declaration saw a particularly painful dose of “summititis” contracted.  David Cameron’s ‘do as I say, not what I do’ exhortation to other NATO leaders to spend a 2% of GDP on defence which he had no intention of fulfilling was particularly painful.

Stoltenberg I would see the re-invigoration of the 2010 NATO Strategic Concept at the 2016 Warsaw Summit through the realignment of collective defence, crisis management and co-operative security (although why the Warsaw Summit is being held just before the 2016 US presidential elections strikes me as both bad strategy and even worse politics).  Both Russia and IS are exploiting the implied division between the three pillars of the Strategic Concept by destabilising the home political base of Alliance nations upon which NATO defence solidarity is founded.  

Stoltenberg II would realign ill-thought through Alliance initiatives/sound-bites that have dripped into Alliance planning since 2010, more often to fill a political void that galvanise action.  These include Smart Defence, NATO Forces 2020 and the Connected Forces Initiative none of which have any real planning traction. The focus for Stoltenberg must be the full spectrum implementation of the Readiness Action Plan agreed at the Wales Summit to provide credible forward deterrence and implied forward defence for Eastern European allies.  My sense at the moment is that the Alliance has simply created yet more acronyms but no more forces. Indeed, as someone said at the conference, “when in doubt form a committee”.

Stoltenberg III would offer something genuinely new; the creation of an Alliance concept of hybrid warfare.  Ironically, ‘hybridity’ is itself nothing new.  To paraphrase Clausewitz, hybrid warfare is simply the continuation of naughty politics by nefarious means via a defection from the rules and norms that render international relations peaceful. Thus, the best way to counter hybrid warfare is hybrid warfare, i.e. the exploitation of the political and societal seams of an adversary.  Take Russia.  If Moscow continues to intimidate NATO’s Baltic allies with snap exercises then NATO should devote at some exercises that imply the swift removal of Kaliningrad from the Russian strategic and political orb, even if that means calling Russia’s bluff over its implied use of tactical nuclear weapons.

Above all, a Stoltenberg Doctrine would provide a coherent strategic ‘message’ demonstrating NATO’s comparative advantages to political masters.  In effect, a Stoltenberg Doctrine would offer a compelling vision for a new balance between strategy, military capability and capacity, and all-important value-for-money affordability.  The reason NATO leaders are paying only lip-service to the Alliance is that NATO is NOT a political priority.  Russia’s aggression against Ukraine and its destabilisation of “NATO Strategic Direction East” is seen as politically inconvenient for the main thrust of debt-ridding austerity in Europe.  The raging scourge of IS in “NATO Strategic Direction South” is seen as politically inconvenient because politicians would rather not face the seams that have opened up in many Alliance societies by a failure to integrate minority communities.  Both threats must be confronted and whilst NATO could not prevail alone NATO still has a vital role to play is Europe’s borders are again to be stabilised.

Winston Churchill once said: “True genius resides in the capacity for evaluation of uncertain, hazardous and conflicting information”.  That is the essence of the hybrid warfare challenge which will dominate Secretary-General Stoltenberg’s tenure at NATO’s political helm.  Since his October 2014 appointment Stoltenberg has rightly taken time to consider NATO’s position in the changing geopolitics of Europe and the world.  However, the honeymoon period is now over. NATO needs a Stoltenberg Doctrine and fast.

And, I suppose, I had better get on and write that report.


Julian Lindley-French

Monday 27 April 2015

Hongerwinter: Operations Manna and Chowhound


Alphen, Netherlands. 27 April.  Hongerwinter. It was perhaps the first true humanitarian military intervention.  On the morning of 29 April, 1945 a Lancaster bomber called Bad Penny took off from its base in eastern England on a test mission to drop food to the Dutch people that would eventually see 11,000 tons dropped from the skies in a little over a week.  It is hard to believe sitting here in prosperous, modern, comfortable Netherlands that seventy years ago today some twenty-one million people were facing starvation with thousands dead or dying. Indeed, between 18,000 and 22,000 Dutch civilians had already died during the infamous 1944-45 “hongerwinter” (hungry winter). The threat facing the Dutch people prompted perhaps the most remarkable ‘bombing’ campaigns by the Royal Air Force and United States Army Air Force of World War Two - Operation Manna (RAF/RCAF) and Operation Chowhound (USAAF).  

By early April 1945 Field Marshal Montgomery’s 21st Army Group had isolated German forces under General Johannes Blaskowitz in the western Netherlands, effectively cutting them off.  On 9 April, Churchill and the British war cabinet discussed the need for urgent action to alleviate the suffering of the Dutch population. 

Montgomery allocated two divisions, mainly from the Canadian First Army (General Crerar) to feeding the Dutch people, even though much of the territory remained under German occupation.  Churchill proposed approaching the head of the German occupation, the notorious Reich Commissar Arthur Seyss-Inquart, to seek a ceasefire.  However, he added a the warning that, “…if they refuse [to co-operate], we shall hold all German troops left in Holland responsible for it”.

Seyss-Inquart initially refused any threatened to blow the Dutch dykes and flood much of the country between Allied and German forces.  However, hedging his bets Seyss-Inquart also suggested that a ceasefire may be possible if the Red Cross brought in the food.  It was a face-saving manoeuvre and by the end of April a deal was agreed. Thereafter, as part of the biblically-named Operation Manna between the end of April and 7 May the Royal Air Force and Royal Canadian Air Force flew 3928 sorties over the Netherlands delivering some 6680 tons of food.  Operation Chowhound saw the USAAF fly an additional 2268 sorties dropping some 4000 tons of food. When that effort proved insufficient a land operation began delivering food often behind German lines and often with the tacit approval of the Wehrmacht.

One 170 Squadron RAF Lancaster was tasked with dropping food over the town of Vlaardingen. Rear-gunner Denis Thomson recalled, “People were waving and shouting.  The nurses were lying on the sloping roof of the hospital, waving and cheering us as we flew over. We were only about 600 feet in the air and supplies were dropped in crates with no parachutes.  People ran to gather the food – I was really worried a crate would land on their heads”. 

Bob Upcott of 115 Squadron, Royal Air Force, recalled: “All our bombers were flying at low altitude so as not to damage the food parcels. On one of our Manna missions we flew over a hospital on our way back from the drop zone. We saw a nurse there unfold the largest Union Jack we had ever seen.  It was a remarkable gesture – and a brave one. German soldiers looked on in bemusement”. 

German forces in the Netherlands surrendered on 5 May, 1945.  Amidst the horror and the suffering there were lighter moments.  One of the main architects of the drops and the eventual peace was the German-born Dutch Prince Bernhard, husband of then Princess Juliana, who was part of a four man negotiating team.  Bernhard was a chain smoker and was forced to step outside of the meeting each time he craved a cigarette.  The moment he appeared Dutch civilians would start singing the Wilhelmus, the Dutch national anthem.  After hearing the Wilhelmus countless times Bernhard vowed to give up smoking.

Operations Manna and Chowhound marked the beginning of the transition from war to peace at the end of World War Two.  It also marked the moment when the brave, quiet, resistance of the Dutch people saw them claim their country back from the Nazis.  For the British, Canadians, Americans and others who took part in Operations Manna and Chowhound it was one of those wartime events which crystallized the need for the terrible struggle to drive Nazism from Europe.   

The Netherlands would not be the country it is today but for the stout resistance of the Dutch people and the courage of the Allied servicemen who liberated the Netherlands.

Lest we forget!


Julian Lindley-French

Sunday 26 April 2015

Gallipoli


Alphen, The Netherlands. 26 April.  Churchill wrote, “The price to be paid in taking Gallipoli would be heavy, but there would be no more war with Turkey”.  A century ago yesterday the Gallipoli Campaign began, Churchill’s great grand strategic folly.  Six years ago I stood atop Mal Tepe, the summit of Gallipoli, with Suvla Bay far below to my right, along with a group of cadets from the Netherlands Defence Academy I was leading on a visit to Turkey. This was shortly after having paid our deep respects at the Kemalyeri Memorial and Sehitier Abidesi, the memorial to the Ottoman fallen, along with hundreds of rightly-proud Turks.  One can get no sense of the enormity of the challenge that British Empire and French forces faced in taking the Gallipoli Peninsula unless one stands atop its highest point and surveys the scene Kemal Ataturk saw.  It is a breathtakingly beautiful and dangerous place. 

The Gallipoli campaign was pure Churchill – the grand strategic out-manoeuvre to end all grant strategic out-manoeuvres.  Churchill’s intention was to oust Turkey from the war by forcing British and French warships through the Dardinelles Straits into the Black Sea. Churchill, who was then First Sea Lord, was then an ‘easterner’ (as opposed to a ‘westerner’). He believed success in the Dardinelles would better support Russia and force the surrender of Constantinople, Imperial Germany’s Ottoman ally, thus relieving pressure on the stalemated Western Front.  When the effort to force the Dardinelles failed with the loss of ships and men, due mainly to superb Turkish defence and Allied command incompetence, the aim then switched to taking the Gallipoli Peninsula which dominate the Straits, and which were key to the Ottoman defence.

Before climbing to Ataturk’s lofty command post we had first visited Cape Helles, the British Memorial, before going to ANZAC Cove where Australian and New Zealand forces landed.  From ANZAC Cove we than began the ascent, thankfully with Turkey’s very generous support rather than under Ottoman fire, up the narrow track to Lone Pine where the Australian Memorial is situated.  One gravestone stuck in my mind.  It simply read, “He was a good bloke!” Pure Aussie.  We then climbed further to Chunnuk Bair and the New Zealand Memorial.  Only by making that fateful climb can one begin to grasp the courage of the ANZAC forces as they struggled to gain the heights critical to campaign success.  And, only be looking down from on high can one begin to grasp the courage of the Turkish defenders who eventually stopped them but only at great cost.

Gallipoli was the first in many respects.  It was the first truly maritime-amphibious operation.  It was the first truly Allied operation.  However, perhaps of more lasting importance Gallipoli was the place where Australia and New Zealand forged their modern national identities.  It was also the place where in many respects modern Turkey was forged and the Kamalist Consitution which has sustained that great country to this day.

After repeated attempts to gain the heights culminated in the August 1915 offensive the campaign failed and so did Churchill’s grand strategic attempt to end World War One at a stroke.  Equally, one only has to stand head bowed at the New Zealand Memorial at Chunnuk Bair to realise how close ANZAC forces came to forcing the heights and with it a decision.  On 9 January, 1916 the final Allied forces were withdrawn from the Peninsula after a skilfully concealed evacuation.

Allied losses during the Gallipoli Campaign were 252,000 of which there were 34,000 British killed, 9,768 French, 3,709 Australian, 2,721 New Zealanders, 1,378 Indians and 49 Canadians.  Ottoman losses are believed to range between 218,000 and 252,000. 

This modest blog is in honour of all the men on both sides who gave their lives during the Gallipoli Campaign.  The best that can be said for ‘Gallipoli’ was that it paved the way for a new form of warfare.  It also showed what happens when military vision, command and equipment fail to match either strategic vision or miltary-strategic reality, something upon which our own leaders should spend more time pondering…but do not.  The price paid was indeed heavy but war with Turkey continued.

My trip to Gallipoli was also memorable but not just for my tryst with World War One history.  It took place just at the moment an unpronouncable volcano in Iceland decided to go explosively uppity and ground all air traffic in Europe.  The Turks saved the day.  Ankara offered us a coach and two drivers. We then drove back across Europe from Gallipoli to the Netherlands via the Western Front battlefields. Somehow it seemed fitting.

However, whilst I deeply respectful of the Turkish and other Allied forces who fought at Gallipoli I am writing this blog first and foremost out of respect for the ANZAC forces who came halfway round the world to help defend the then Mother Country - Britain. As I stood on ANZAC Cove I sent an email to an Australian general expressing my respect for the achievement of his forebears right where I stood.  Australians and New Zealanders are a bit like we Yorkshire lads, not big on pomposity.  So, let me finish this blog in a typically Aussie/Kiwi way. 

“Good on yer, mate!”


Julian Lindley-French