The Digital Fog of Future War and Allied Command Education

“That which we are, we are;

One equal temper of heroic hearts;

Made weak by time and fate;

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield”.

Ulysses, Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Alphen, Netherlands. 31 October, 2019. Transformative change is coming, and the Alliance had better be prepared. In my forthcoming book, Future War and the Defence of Europe, which will be brilliant and very reasonably-priced, I suggest that multi-domain warfare reaches across air, sea, land, cyber, space, information and knowledge. Last week, I had the honour of addressing senior Allied and Partner officers at the excellent NATO Defence College in Rome. Founded by the then Supreme Allied Commander, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the mission of the College is to provide to NATO officers two of the most important strategic enablers – knowledge and understanding.

Writing my latest book I have been struck by the vital importance knowledge and understanding at all levels of command will have in the maintenance of deterrence, the conduct of defence and, if needs be, the fighting of future war. Knowledge and understanding will be vital to block and mitigate adversaries’ planned exploitation the digital fog of future war. Indeed, isolating command from its force and effects, and leaders from led, will be a primary aim of the future enemy warfighter.

This challenge got me thinking. If, as many at the higher echelons of NATO believe, the Alliance is moving fast into multi-domain future war, surely the place and role of all strategic enablers should be afforded equal importance in NATO’s changing, informal, and real, strategic concept, and more particularly in its military strategy.  After all, Allied Command Operations (ACO) covers the ‘doing’ stuff, and Allied Command Transformation (ACT) drives force transformation and development. And, whilst I accept that transformation also includes a role in command mindset-change, I am not sure ACT should, or could, affect the kind of knowledge-change mindset-change NATO forces will need to deal with a future war emergency.  Such change will be critical if the Alliance is to successfully and really adapt to credible future deterrence and defence against what the US Strategic Technology Office calls ‘mosaic warfare’.

The essential ‘thing’ about the NATO Defence College is that it is not a stand-alone institution. It supports and enables security and defence colleges across the Alliance by promoting best-practice models of education and research – how to know and what to know given the mission.  If the College is to further adapt it must also build on its efforts to exploit the digital domain through distance and e-learning, and by promoting a life-long professional military education culture that will be critical to future success at every level of mission command. More is needed. NDC should be given far more tools so that it can partner ACT and ‘transform’ education and training to drive forward ‘the cohesion, effectiveness, and readiness of multinational formations’.

The College adds real value to the Alliance mission, which is why, each year, I go there with enthusiasm. I believe in the mission. It is certainly not for the money.  What they offer, to my mind, is already at the cutting edge of professional military education. Still, as a former member of the NDC Academic Advisory Board I am also convinced they could offer so much.  If critical cohesion is to be afforded Alliance forces in an age of pan-spectrum digital fires what is needed is a range of best-practice education and knowledge ‘products’ from junior to senior levels of command, including simulation and table-top exercising, and which can be offered to all NATO nations.  The NATO Defence College is the place to develop and provide such ‘products’ precisely because it has the legitimacy and, with the support of the Chairman of the NATO Military Committee, because it can.

Is there a problem? No. However, there is a possible confusion of roles in adaptation between transformation and education. The danger is that Allied Command Transformation might see education and knowledge as a sub-set of military transformation. They are not. They are, at the very least, the equals of transformation for without knowledge transformation military transformation can neither be generated, nor enacted.

Therefore, I have a simple suggestion: turn the NATO Defence College into Allied Command Education, arm it with a strategic education and knowledge mission, and promote the commandant of the NATO Defence College to Supreme Allied Commander, Education. Such a step would be both transformative, adaptive and exploit a critical Allied comparative advantage – its people.

To paraphrase Tennyson: that which we are can be improved; to equal understanding in heroic hearts; made strong by knowing and commanding our fate; to strive, to seek, to find, to know, so that we never have to yield.

Julian Lindley-French

Royal Navy Strike's Back!

“The Nelson Touch did not refer to diplomacy or his sensitivity to humanitarian need, however rightly important they are in this modern age. No, the Nelson Touch referred to the combination-in-action of innovation, education, instinct, technology and teamwork in the pursuit of victory”.

Julian Lindley-French, Trafalgar Dinner Speech, HMS Nelson, Portsmouth 2018

Alphen. Netherlands. 22 October. This past week one of Britain’s new 70,000 ton aircraft carriers, HMS Queen Elizabeth, took delivery of her first four F-35B Lightning 2 strike aircraft. It was quite a sight and a very big moment! Royal Navy carrier strike is back! https://www.youtube.com/embed/jNYkbqFseYw?feature=oembed

As she was receiving the first of her aircraft off Florida, the second ship of the class, the brand-new HMS Prince of Wales, was undergoing sea trials off the coast of Scotland. The Royal Navy is once again reinventing itself as Europe’s command hub navy, Britain’s future maritime-amphibious strike force, and a true burden-sharing friend of the United States and its overstretched navy.

This week last year I was in the UK, where I gave the annual Trafalgar Night dinner speech on board HMS Nelson at Her Majesty’s Naval Base, Portsmouth. It was a big night and a great honour. There were also two First Sea Lords in attendance. One told me I was a controversial figure, apparently (and hopefully) because I dare speak hard truth to often dim power. The other did not like the film I had made entitled The Second Battle of North Cape, during which a Russian hypersonic anti-ship missile sinks HMS Queen Elizabeth, even though he knows I am a big fan of the carrier programme. 

In a sense, both miss the point of my message. Given the fast changing character of war, and if Britain really does aspires to remain a ‘Tier One’ military actor, and the two carriers clearly indicate it does, then it will also need to face the hard realities of Tier One warfare in the twenty-first century.  If the two carriers are not properly protected against twenty-first century technology then they could be little more than a “target of convenience”, as one Russian admiral put it. Anything less is dangerous strategic pretence.

So, why am I fan of the carriers? My speech in Portsmouth was entitled Nelson and the Pursuit of Victory.  My theme was Nelson’s ruthless pursuit of adaptation and innovation to win. The Royal Navy has always been at the forefront of adaptation. It adapted in the wake of Nelson’s wooden-walled battleship fleet to become the imperial policeman of the High Victorian age. The Naval Service again adapted in the face of Wilhelmine Germany’s challenge to create the Dreadnoughts and super-Dreadnoughts of the Grand Fleet, which in May 1916 inflicted a strategic defeat on Admiral Scheer’s High Seas Fleet.

As a broke Britain began to decline in the wake of World War One and the drastic cull of the Geddes Axe, the Royal Navy was forced into a trap in which it has been ever since. The Naval Service simply could not be both a battle-fleet in being and an imperial policing force at one and the same time. With the rise of Hitler in Germany, Mussolini in Italy and the Mediterranean, and Tojo in Japan, all with naval ambitions, it simply became impossible for the Naval Service to defend the home base, imperial lines of communication, and the eastern British Empire.  The disaster that was waiting to happen took place off Malaya in December 1941, three days after Pearl Harbor, when a previous HMS Prince of Wales was sunk, together with the battlecruiser HMS Repulse, by the air power of the Imperial Japanese Navy (I wrote an Oxford thesis on all of this!).

The essential problem was that from the early 1930s Britain was trying to be a pocket superpower on a shoestring budget with London committing the Navy to too many tasks, over too much space, and with too few hulls. Not unlike today. Some suggest that the ‘RN’ today has too few hulls to be both a ‘Corbett Navy’ (imperial policing) and a ‘Mahan Navy’ (a battle fleet). Thankfully, it does not have to. In the wake of World War Two the RN handed the global policing role to the United States Navy, which is today facing similar pressures to that faced by the Royal Navy in the 1930s. The task of the Royal Navy became then, as it is now, to help keep the US Navy strong where it needs to be.

Cue carriers! The job of the reinvented carrier-strike Royal Navy is essentially to have the capability, the offensive strike power and defensive strength to command a coalition of European/Allied navies in a future high-end emergency in the Atlantic in which the Americans are busy elsewhere.  In other words, the ability to act as a credible fast, first, high-end responder force in and around Europe. Does that mean on occasions the RN might not be able to be everywhere all of the time? Yes. This is not the Navy of Admiral Parker.

However, with a powerful future fleet of two QE-class carriers, Type 45 destroyers, Astute-class nuclear-attack submarines, and Type 26 and Type 31 frigates, the Royal Navy is once again reinventing itself as the core of European maritime-amphibious coalitions. The delicious irony, given all the Trafalgar stuff, is that to make this logical strategy work the Royal Navy will need to work closely with the French Navy, which it does.  One of the finest dinners I ever enjoyed was on the gun deck of Nelson’s flagship, HMS Victory, sitting opposite the admiral in command of France’s finest.  

To conclude, peer through the political nonsense of Brexit, which will at some point ease.  Britain’s enduring position as a major European regional-strategic power is embodied in the two new carriers, and will continue to be so, for many years to come. HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales are two armed icebergs at the tip of a largely unseen British security and defence effort that transcends politics and Brexit. For the sake of Europe’s defence, and the health of the transatlantic relationship, it would be a profound loss if Britain simply became another of those ‘talk a lot, do very little’ European countries that seem to think their defence is someone else’s job. However, precisely because Royal Navy carrier-strike is back London must finally invest in the strategy their existence demands.

As for sniffy Royal Navy admirals, ‘tant pis’, as Admiral Villeneuve might have said. British admirals should know their own history. Informed members of the awkward squad like me are vital if HMS Queen Elizabeth and/or HMS Prince of Wales are not one day to suffer the same fate as another one-time ‘invincible pride of the Royal Navy’ – ‘The Mighty Hood!  Just read my forthcoming Oxford book – Future War and the Defence of Europe.

The Royal Navy’s carrier strike is back! Now, let’s finish the job and give them the tools to do what they are really designed for – to deter a high-end war by being demonstrably able to fight one!

Julian Lindley-French

The Riga Test 2019

“We are all inclined to judge ourselves by our ideals; others by their acts”.

Sir Harold Nicholson

Alphen, Netherlands. October 16. For many years I have had the honour of attending the annual Riga Conference. It is quite simply superb. And, every year I pose the Riga Test: can the good citizens of Riga sleep more safely in their beds than last year.  Naturally, given the location of Latvia the big issue is Russia, the now constant coercion against the Baltic States, and the threat posed by Moscow’s powerful armed forces just over the border.  This year the test also concerns Russia, but not directly. Rather, it concerns the implications of the latest Kurdish-Turkish war for the people of Riga.

Two conversations struck home to me at this conference. The first was my interview with an old friend and colleague, Ambassador Alexander Vershbow, the former US Ambassador to Moscow and Deputy Secretary-General of NATO. You can see the interview on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=teTRTxJZYu4  Sandy’s message was clear; Russia must be managed. However, managing Russia must be seen against the backdrop of a rapidly changing geopolitical environment driven by the rise of China, not least in Europe.

My second conversation took place over breakfast with the former British Foreign and Defence Secretary Sir Malcolm Rifkind. Malcolm reminded me of a 1939 book entitled “Diplomacy”, which had been written on the eve of war by British diplomat Sir Harold Nicholson. Nicholson warned there are three types of people that are anathema to good diplomacy – fanatics, lawyers and missionaries.

Russia’s success in the Middle East has been driven precisely by the combination of Trumpian fanaticism, European legalism and irrelevant evangelism.  It might sound strange to accuse President Trump of fanaticism, but a fanatic is someone so committed to his/her own cause that they will act at whatever cost to themselves and their cause. This latest Middle Eastern war was triggered by President Trump’s arbitrary decision to pull US forces out of North-West Syria thus ending their role as a buffer between Turks and Kurds. The consequent strategic vacuum is now being filled by the forces of Erdogan and Putin.

Now, I am not one of the European Chicken Little Brigade when it comes to President Trump. My first instinct is to respect the US Commander-in-Chief. However, it is increasingly hard to respect an increasingly capricious US president the actions of whom seem overwhelmingly driven by his need to assuage his domestic political base, and at any geopolitical cost to America’s standing.  

However, my main concern for Rigans rests not with Americans, but fellow Europeans. America’s withdrawal from Syria has revealed once and for all the complete absence of European strategic responsibility and any meaningful capability even in a region the fate of which has dire implications for all Europeans. Why? One need look no look no further than an expensive roll of toilet paper called the EU Global Strategy. Listen to the warbling of EU-funded European think-tanks one would think that the EU is about to become some proto-superpower.  In reality, the ‘Strategy’ was written by lawyers and missionaries and has just about enough reach to influence the Brussels Beltway, but little beyond.  It also says everything about the essential malaise of European external action – the gulf between values, interests, and power.

Contrast that with President Putin. For Putin the only ‘law’ is power, and whilst Europeans talk and Americans politic, Russia acts. As for President Erdogan, why are Europeans so surprised he is attacking the Kurds? Indeed, I even predicted this moment in my 2017 book The New Geopolitics of Terror. Even a cursory glance of Turkish history confirms Erdogan could never tolerate a Kurdish ‘state’ along Turkey’s southern border out of fear for Ankara’s eastern provinces. The absurdity of the Trump position is to sacrifice the Kurds (not for the first time in history) for domestic politics, but also sacrifice the US relationship with a critical Turkey. This is not US Realpolitik, this is just plain geopolitical incompetence. Nicholson, who was born in Tehran at the height of British imperial power, must be spinning in his grave, not least because Russia is now the referee of ‘rules’ in the region that it creates, and by which others will now abide.

Europe? It is hard to describe complete inaction and irrelevance as incompetence. Beyond the usual wittering the EU has said and done virtually nothing to influence a major crisis on its doorstep.  A few European powers have now moved to stop arms sales to Turkey – a NATO ally – which could well be met by Ankara re-opening the route for refugees to enter Europe en masse.  However, to paraphrase Oscar Wilde, sanctions are simply the last resort of the strategically-incompetent and politically-inept.

Nicholson’s warning was a call for power and pragmatism in equal measure. Skilled diplomacy is the art of balancing the two to ensure the best outcome is not the enemy of the good outcome.  Turkey is a pivotal power for the defence of Europe, the Kurds, and the Kurdish-led Syrian Defence Force, have been loyal allies in the struggle against Daesh. Now, more than ever, Europeans as ‘Europe’ should stand up to demonstrate precisely the strategic culture and responsibility they keep banging on about by trying to broker a peace. Such a peace would ease America’s burdens, keep the Russians in check, help keep Turkey on board, and afford some level of protection to Kurds now forced into the clutches of Assad. If ever there is to be a point to ‘Europe’ and its place in the world, it is right now and in that place. As ever, Europeans will neither agree nor act, beyond the now traditionally desultory.

Can Rigans trust America, or will they too wake up one day to suffer they have also been sacrificed on the hard anvil of geopolitics? My sense is they can trust the Americans, but I am less and less sure.  Can Rigans trust their fellow Europeans? What is there to trust beyond words and a few under-equipped soldiers? Indeed, what worries me most is not a capricious President Trump, but a Europe that seems incapable of ever growing up to meet the challenges and threats its peoples face. For, as Thomas Hobbes once said, “Covenants without the sword are but words, and of use to no man”. Europe?

Julian Lindley-French

The Warsaw Uprising

“The city [Warsaw] must completely disappear from the surface of the earth and serve only as a transport station for the Wehrmacht. No stone can remain standing. Every building must be razed to its foundation”

Heinrich Himmler, October 17, 1944

Warsaw, Poland. October 2. On September 17 1944, Stanley Nosecki, of the Polish Independent Parachute Brigade, was preparing to jump into the Netherlands under the command of the redoubtable Major-General Stanislaw Sosabowski. He was to take part in the disastrous Operation Market Garden and Field Marshal Montgomery’s attempt to seize the bridge over the Lower Rhine at Arnhem. However, Nosecki’s mind was elsewhere, in Warsaw. Before Nosecki jumped he closed his eyes and dreamt of the Poniatowski Bridge, the King’s Castle, the Zygmunt Column and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier”. “Are they still fighting on those famous streets of Nowy Swiat and Tamka? Is the Holy Cross Church still there, where I used to serve as an altar boy every other Sunday?” ‘They’ were his fellow patriots in the Polish Resistance, led by the Polish Home Army and the Polish First Army, who were fighting a desperate battle against battle-hardened Nazi troops. On October 2, 1944, seventy-five years ago today, these brave men and women were finally forced to lay down their arms.

Being here today at the excellent Warsaw Security Forum is an act of pilgrimage to those Warsaw fighters who stood up for Poland. It was not just the Nazis they had to face, but also the brute cynicism of Stalin. The aim of the uprising was to install a free Polish government that would affirm Polish sovereignty before the Red Army, which had pushed the retreating Nazis back to the shores of the River Vistula, installed a puppet regime loyal to Moscow. The Home Army had hoped for support from the Americans and British, but as so often their hopes were all but dashed.

Operation Tempest had begun on August 1 and was planned as a nationwide campaign. For sixty-three days the Poles fought in what was the largest resistance operation of World War Two.  There were possibly up to 49,000 Polish combatants, but only some 5000 at most had any guns. They faced up to 50,000 well-trained and well-armed German troops. By the end of the struggle over 15,000 Poles were either dead or missing.     

In the initial phase of the Uprising, the Poles seized much of central Warsaw and the surrounding forest. They tried to make contact by radio with Soviet forces, but the Red Army did not respond. Worse, they just waited on the edge of the city for the Germans to exact their bloody revenge. Over time, the Nazis divided Polish forces into six pockets, which they then systematically destroyed. Neither the Red Army, nor the Soviet Air Force, made any meaningful attempt to support the Poles.

Churchill argued at length with both President Roosevelt and Marshal Stalin, but to no avail. Frustrated, Churchill ordered the Royal Air Force, with Bomber Command’s Polish squadrons to the fore, to support the Uprising. Between August 4 and September 28 the RAF dropped some 300 tons of supplies at low level, albeit some 50% fell into Nazi hands. Roosevelt eventually relented and permitted the US Army Air Force to conduct one high-level mission, which missed the target. The Soviets? They refused the RAF use of their airfields, forcing the RAF to fly long missions, and even fired on RAF aircraft. Forty-one aircraft were lost and three hundred and sixty RAF aircrew died. The Soviets did, in the end, drop some 13 tons of supplies, but much of it was dropped from high altitude with no parachutes and destroyed. In any case, it was all too little too late. On this fateful day, seventy-five years ago, some 15,000 Polish fighters were taken prisoner, and faced a grisly fate. By then, between 150,000 and 200,000 Polish citizens had been killed, with a further 700,000 expelled from the city. Himmler kept his criminal word, and razed Warsaw to the ground.       

Fifty metres from my house there is a cemetery. Within its gates some twenty young Poles lay interred in Dutch clay. They had died, like so many Poles before and since, fighting for the liberty of others so they too might one day be free. They had died free men. The men and women of the Warsaw Uprising who laid down their arms that dark October day all those years ago were not defeated. No force, however haughty in its hubris can ever defeat the Poles, for the flame of freedom burns too brightly in them.

This blog is in honour of the brave Polish fighters who died defying two tyrants, and who laid the foundation for the free Poland of today. Poland, like Warsaw, emerged from the ashes, and should remind all Europeans that to defend freedom one must be vigilant...and strong.  

Julian Lindley-French     

Fusion Defence

Alphen, Netherlands. 25 September. When I am at the later stage of writing a big book the only thing that I can think about is the bloody book. That is precisely where I am now with my latest book for Oxford University Press, “Future War and the Defence of Europe”. The blog has to go on the back-burner. Thankfully, my friend Anna Wieslander, Director of the Atlantic Council in Stockholm, last week invited me to attend a closed session with the leadership of Sweden’s armed forces. Thankfully, the subject was also close to that of the book, and whilst I cannot disclose what was discussed, I can share my own intellectual property.

My presentation considered a seminal question: What Europeans would need to do in order to act as effective first responders in a worst-case scenario? If one deconstructs that question there are four keywords therein all of which Europeans find challenging: European; act; first responders; and worst-case.

Given the implicit challenge of the question my core message was thus: European first responders during a major military crisis in and around Europe will need also to be fast responders at the high end of military capability. Moreover, given the changing character of warfare a first response would only be possible and credible if enabled by an array of sensitive sensors, indicators, allied to fast analysis. Critically, such a first response would also be dependent on robust critical infrastructure and civil defence. Society would undoubtedly be subject to all forms of coercion across the hybrid-cyber-hyper war spectrum.

Why?  Europeans are moving into an age of automated future war and complex strategic coercion in which warfare will be conducted both simultaneously and/or sequentially across the 5 ‘D’s of disinformation, deception, destabilisation, disruption, and implied and actual destruction. As AI, machine-learning, big data and other ‘synthetic’ forms of weaponry enter the battlespace speed of response, and proven speed, will be a critical element of both deterrence and defence.

What military capabilities would be needed? To be honest, I prefer to focus on the military effects that need to be generated, rather than capabilities per se. Too much of a focus on the latter tends to foster an input approach to defence investment, rather than vital defence outputs and outcomes.  To effect credible deterrence and defence armed forces will need to be able to demonstrably operate to effect across the hybrid-cyber-hyper war spectrum and deep into the domains of air, sea, land, space, cyber, information and knowledge.

What are the implications for readiness and reinforcements?  Europeans (and their American allies) need to re-conceive ideas of readiness and reinforcement, and even of defence. Given the aim of an adversary would be to force European states off-balance – strategically, politically, militarily, and societally much of the first response will be about doing what an adversary least expects or wants. This will involve the generation of counter-shock by exploiting the analysed weaknesses of an adversary systematically. Much of that response will be digital. At the force end of the response spectrum it is also critical that the future European defence force is deeply embedded in, and maintains interoperability with, US forces enabled by the revolution in military technology underway, most notably artificial intelligence and robotics.

Could hybrid warfare and new technology be increasingly used by smaller nations in order to deter and de-escalate? The advantages of a state such as Sweden, with its legacy of Total Defence, is that its pan-community concept of society and defence builds innovation into its strategic DNA.  In such a state radical new thinking tends not to be seen as a threat to the established order if such thinking is seeking to make a constructive contribution to the Public Good. This contrasts markedly with some other European countries, not least my own, Britain, which excludes such thinkers, or prefers ‘safe’ guidance from ‘safe’ thinkers – the ‘good chap’ of old. In future such thinking, and the people who generate it, will be vital for the credible future deterrence and defence of all Europeans.

The solution? Well, there are many (read the book when it comes out). However, one solution could be to transform the ailing European Defence Agency into a European equivalent of the US Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), with a specific remit to trawl for defence-applicable new technologies.  

My concern is a deep one. Europeans are in denial about the possibility of another major war in Europe. European leaders are ignorant about the nature of coming future war. One cannot respond to that about which one knows little or nothing! Indeed, Europe’s defence establishments face a profound challenge: just how open are they to real ‘red team’ new thinking and pain in the posterior people (like me) who dare challenge politically and bureaucratically-convenient assumptions?

To conclude, Europe needs a new concept of fusion defence which forges government, new people, new industries beyond the defence sector, and new thinking into a new strategic public private partnership to generate defence and deterrence across the civ-mil bandwidth. 

First response and fusion defence are thus two sides of the same Euro-strategic coin. Europe’s future defence will depend on both!

The book? It will be brilliant and very-reasonably priced.

Julian Lindley-French

Arnhem!

Seventy-five years ago today, not far from where I live, Allied airborne forces were landing in great strength. Their objective was to seize three Dutch bridges and open the road for British armoured to cross the Rhine, enter Germany, and end the war. Operation Market Garden was a bold move by General Eisenhower and Field Marshal Montgomery. It failed and gave General Bittrich and his German forces what Anthony Beevor has called Germany’s last victory. Five years ago I had the privilege of being invited to sit in the front row of the seventieth anniversary. In honour of the men of many nations who gave their youth and their lives so that the Netherlands can live in freedom, but in particular to those of my fellow Britons who fought and died at Arnhem, here is what I wrote.

Oosterbeek War Cemetery, Netherlands.  21 September.  A lone Spitfire barrel rolls over the assembled veterans, a C-3 Dakota transport aircraft rumbles overhead in splendid salute.  Russet autumn leaves float to the ground from the giant American oaks that surround this place of sanctuary as if the souls of the paratroopers who lay interred herein are making one final drop.  Amidst the browns, greens and greys of an ageing year airborne maroon on young and old runs like a proud seam between then and now, in a great jump across the seventy years that have passed since the great battle of September 1944.  This is a day of proud men, real men for whom the ranks of Portland stone are not just the names of young men but real people, real comrades, fallen friends.  It is these brave men many weighed down in old age by their own bemedalment who can tell the real story of the real battle for Arnhem, not Richard Attenborough’s “Oh What a Lovely War with Parachutes”, false ‘epic’ “A Bridge Too Far” that so ill-defines those fateful days between 17^th and 25^th September, 1944. 

Seventy years ago today Operation Market Garden had been underway for four days.  A massive combined airborne (‘Market’) and land (‘Garden’) operation in which British, American, Canadian, and Polish forces fought together with the Dutch Resistance and the Dutch Princess Irene Brigade to capture three vital bridges.  If successful Field Marshal Montgomery’s brilliant, but risk-laden operation would have seen Britain’s XXX Corps under the command of Lt. Gen. Brian Horrocks cross the Rhine and open the way into Nazi Germany.  The plan came close to succeeding, and no doubt would have but for the unexpected presence of the II SS Panzer Corps and the 9^th and 10^th SS Panzer Divisions under the command of Lt General Wilhelm Bittrich.  The key to the battle was the bridge at Arnhem, today called Johnny Frost Bridge in honour of the British colonel commanding the 1^st Parachute Brigade and who came so close to succeeding.

On 17 September, 1944 41,628 airborne troops launched the largest airborne operation in history.  The airborne force consisted of the British 1^st Airborne under the command of Major-General Roy Urquhart, the US 82^nd Airborne under the command of Major-General James M. Gavin, and the US 101^st Airborne under the command of Major-General Maxwell D. Taylor with the 1^st Polish Independent Parachute Brigade under the command of Major-General Stanislaw Sosobowski held in reserve.

The strategic aim was for the airborne forces to to enable General Dempsey’s 2^nd British Army to enter Germany quickly, capture the Ruhr industrial belt and so end the war by crossing the rivers Waal, Maas and finally the Rhine at Arnhem.   However, for Market Garden to work XXX Corps would need to reach Eindhoven in 2 to 3 hours and cover the 65 miles/104kms between its jump-off point at Lommel, Belgium and Arnhem in 2-3 days to relieve British 1^st Airborne. 

To assist XXX Corps in its drive north the US 82^nd Airborne would land in the Nijmegen/Grave area and take the bridge over the Waal and the US 101^st Airborne would land in the Eindhoven/Son area closest to the September 1944 frontline and seize the bridge over the Maas.  Seven bridges in total had to be seized.  Simultaneously with the drops XXX Corps would punch a hole through the German frontlines from their start in Belgium and then drive quickly north to link up with the lightly-armed airborne forces.

The operation began well.  At 1435 hours on 17 September behind a creeping artillery barrage XXX Corps began its drive north with the Irish Guards in the lead under the command of Colonel J.O.E. Vandeleur.  However, the presence of Bittrich’s forces close to Arnhem placed the British 1^st Airborne in a very precarious position indeed and increased the pressure on XXX Corps to make rapid progress northwards.    

However, the US 101^st Airborne failed to take the bridge over the Wilhelmina Canal at Son before it was demolished by the Germans. This led to a delay of some thirty-six hours for XXX Corps until a temporary British Bailey bridge could be constructed.  Moreover, the narrowness of the roads and the scale of liberation celebrations slowed XXX Corps significantly.  On 20^th September the US 82^nd Airborne after a river-borne crossing seized the north end of the bridge at Nijmegen just as a Tiger-killing Sherman Firefly tank under the command of Sergeant Peter Robinson of the British 2^nd Grenadier Guards stormed across the bridge from the south.

British tanks paused at Lent north of Nijmegen due mainly to logistical reasons and the vulnerability of tanks to German Panzerfaust anti-tank weapons, which were particularly effective given that most Dutch roads are on dykes.  The delay effectively meant that 1^st Airborne in spite of an attempted reinforcement by Polish forces on 21^st September into drop zones that has been overrun by the Germans.  This led to the slaughter of many of the Polish airborne troops.  On Saturday, 25^th September 1^st Airborne received orders to withdraw the remnant of that gallant force back across the Rhine. Some wag at headquarters gave the operation the ironic title Operation Berlin. 

Operation Market Garden had failed.  However, the Allied front-line had advanced over 65 miles/110kms and large parts of the Netherlands had been liberated.  Allied losses were probably around 17,000, of which some 13,226 were British, whilst it is believed German forces suffered up to 6,000 killed.  It is believed between 500 and 1000 Dutch citizens were killed.

This morning I had breakfast with Major-General ‘Mick’ Nicholson, commander of the US 82^nd Airborne and Brigadier Giles Hill of the British Parachute Regiment.  We met to discuss ‘strategy’.  However, the meeting although important was not the main event. We were all really here for the veterans. Today is their day; a day to remember the sacrifice that has given my life the freedom I never take for granted.  There was another group of guests among us, modest in number and modest in demeanor from Germany.  This is as it should be; allies, friends and partners standing in solidarity and paying respect for the ultimate sacrifice that made liberty possible.

Today I saw a past reconciled with a present in which a new generation of children offered us all a bridge to the future.  It is a bridge of liberty that must always be defended and can never be too far - then, now and into the future.

“I was there, you know”.  One brave soldier says to me, tears in his wise eyes.  “I know”, I say.  “For it is for you I have come”. 

Thank you, Gentlemen. 

Julian Lindley-French

Entropy: The Four Holes at the Heart of the Old West

Entropy: “…measure of the disintegration and disorganisation of the universe”

Oxford English Dictionary.

Alphen, Netherlands. 9/11.  Whither the West? Like most people I know exactly where I was on September 11, 2001. The middle of Dartmoor is as close to the middle of nowhere it is possible to be in England.  Beautiful, bleak, and in places foreboding, it is a place in which it is all too easy to get lost. ‘Lost’ is a word I associate with the Old West these days. Yes, one hears Western leaders talk much about shared values and interests, usually at NATO summits, and normally when there is precious little shared strategy. Niall Ferguson wrote, “The biggest threat to Western civilization is posed not by other civilizations, but by our own pusillanimity — and by the historical ignorance that feeds it.” It is that combination of pusillanimity and ignorance, albeit in different measures across the Old West, that have created four gaping holes: US foreign and security policy, the old Anglo-American core, the Berlin-Brussels Axis, and the retreat of Europeans into a fantasy Euro-world.

US foreign policy: Since Churchill and Roosevelt founded the Old West in the midst of war in 1941 on board USS Augusta, the Old West has always been organised around what could be called American internationalist doctrine. The sacking of John Bolton by President Trump is indicative of a lack of any such doctrine with a president increasingly ‘winging’ foreign policy. Bolton maybe a hawk, but he has always been a consistent hawk who believed that threats to the United States required the application of persistent American pressure. For Bolton, there were no out-of-the-blue deals to be done with the likes of Iran, North Korea or the Taliban, just pressure to be maintained leading to regime change in America’s favour, even if that involved at times the use of force. To be honest, having met Bolton, I was surprised he was appointed as the 27^th National Security Advisor. His world-view always contrasted markedly with that of President Trump, which seems to oscillate between a kind of ‘bloody foreigner’ neo-isolationism to a sort of deal-making ‘real-estate with nukes’ activism. It is hardly surprising Bolton and Trump finally fell out over President Trumps desire to invite the Taliban leadership (whoever that really is) to Camp David to see if a peace deal could be struck. Without clear American leadership the Old West is reduced to little more than a set of iterative trade-offs. It should be so much more than that.

The old Anglo-American core: The Old West was founded on the back of the Anglo-American alliance of World War Two, what some call the ‘special relationship’ that endured into the Cold War. Even today, Britain does enjoy a ‘special relationship’ endures in such areas as ‘Five Eyes’ intelligence-sharing. However, Britain’s utterly inept political and bureaucratic High Establishment has made Britain anything but ‘special’ and reduced what should be a considerable regional-strategic power to little or no influence. Brexit has been an exercise in utter strategic incompetence reflected in what I see every day on my travels – Britain today neither matters, nor is it respected.  How the once mighty have fallen. Without a serious Britain, able and willing to commit still considerable talents and capacities to the institutions of the Old West, pathetic Britain is helping erode the very institutions critical to its influence. Brexit? The latest consequence of a failed London.

The Berlin-Brussels Axis: It would be somewhat comforting to think that as Britain’s elite retreats into the pathetic irrelevancies of post-power, Berlin and Brussels were stepping up to help construct a New West in which Americans and Europeans would again stand burden-sharing should-to-shoulder as cornerstones of world stability.  Nothing could be further from the truth. Never have two world capitals built on power been so apparently, uneasy, unwilling, or unable to understand the nature of power or its application. Mercantilist Berlin talks endlessly about ‘Europe’, but usually means Germany; a parochial Germany for which foreign policy is about how many cars it can sell, or how much oil and gas it can get on the cheap from Russia. Leadership? Forget it. Brussels is fast becoming a big power run by little people from small countries obsessed with their own status but who either lack a strategic culture are strategically-illiterate, or both. For them, President Trump and Brexit are God given, more interested in criticising the America who defends them, or punishing the British for daring to leave the EU, than actually preparing their Euro-world for the real world. The Brussels elite wallows in its insufferable self-satisfaction, fiddling whilst Europe’s smoulders with unease and slithers into uncompetitive decline. A town locked into self-reinforcing, self-congratulation for the ‘munificent’ and ‘magnificent’, Europe that have built, whilst millions of Europeans who live in the real Europe look on aghast.

Fantasy Euro-world: A mark of Europe’s decline is the retreat of many of its un-led citizens into an equally unworldly fantasy. It is a kind of slavery of the child in which democracy appears to continue, but there is little real relationship between voting and power. Their distant ‘betters’ know better and the really little people should not concern themselves with power, so many do not. This week the admittedly ‘ever more Europe, all the time, for absolutely everything’ European Council on Foreign Relations asked a sample of Europeans what should, “Whose side should your country take in a conflict between the United States and Russia?”  The poll suggested 45% would opt for neutrality. They clearly did not ask Europeans in the Baltic States. Indeed, it is hard to envisage ANY such conflict NOT actually being ABOUT Europe and Europeans. It would have been interesting to see the results if the question had been, “Whose side should your country take in a conflict between the United States and Russia OVER EUROPE?” my suspicion is that the answer may have been inconvenient.

The only conclusion from all of the above is that the prevailing power in both the transatlantic relationship and Europe is entropy. This is not the fault of the people, it is rather the fault of political elites who have consistently refused to treat citizens as partners in power. Opaque elites who treat their fellow citizens as children, keeping them in a state of strategic infancy, unwilling or unable to trust them with hard truths. Imagine a world in which the transatlantic relationship did not exist, in which America and Europe were adversaries rather than partners. Then you imagine a world in which America and a Europe are defeated, and all by themselves.

Maybe the Old West is dead, but Americans and Europeans have never needed each other more. My fear is that the British disease will spread. Britain’s elite have achieved something I once thought impossible and destroyed my belief in my country as a power. How long before this cancer, this entropy, spreads to the rest of Europe and beyond. How long before Americans become so self-doubting about their role in the world that the American dream becomes their and our nightmare?

For all my despair with, and at, leaders I am still not prepared to raise the white flag of surrender just yet. We must fight back against the entropists, the deniers of power, the breakers of relationships, and the ahistorical idiot ‘savants’ who lead on both sides of the Atlantic. The West today is lost in the middle of a dark nowhere. Therefore, at this tipping point in world affairs, it is time to end the entropy of the West, and build in its place a New West in which all the forces of freedom the world over stand together and turn shared values into shared action.

In memory of the many victims from many nations of all races and creeds who perished on September 11, 2001.

Julian Lindley-French