EMMENA: Shifting Sands, Turbulent Waters

 “To commit the navy irrevocably to oil was indeed to take arms against a sea of [Middle Eastern] troubles.”

Winston Spencer Churchill

EMMENA

August 27. In 1914, HMS Queen Elizabeth was commissioned into the Royal Navy. She was the first oil-powered battleship and as such represented a strategic risk for the British who had huge reserves of high-grade coal (still do), but few secure sources of oil. At a stroke, energy security, European security and the Middle East became inextricably intertwined and they have been ever since. A new geopolitical region was also formed: EMMENA - Europe, the Mediterranean, Middle East and North Africa, although Europeans have long tried hard to pretend otherwise. The hard reality is that for much of the past century Europe has imposed its struggles on those far beyond its borders.

A central message of my 2017 book Demons and Dragons: The New Geopolitics of Terror (London: Routledge), which is brilliant and still very reasonably-priced was that it is structural and systemic instability across a broad geopolitical space that creates the conditions for potential conflict across the full spectrum of destruction. Consequently, European security and defence cannot be separated from events to its south and east. 

The very existence of EMMENA also disproves a fundamental and false assumption driving much Western thinking about contemporary European defence. To the east there is Russia whilst to the south there is the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and the threats they pose are very different. In fact, they are all part of the new geopolitics of EMMENA, and the threats they pose are not all different.

The new geopolitics of energy

On August 13^th, oil and gas rich UAE and Israel signed an historic peace agreement. Tel Aviv agreed to suspend its formal annexation of the West Bank in return for UAE recognition of Israel, only the third Arab country so to do. Critically, the UAE would not have done this without the “cautious welcome” for the agreement of regional energy superpower Saudi Arabia, recognition of an emerging tacit anti-Iranian bloc. On August 25^th, Greece and United Arab Emirates (UAE) began joint military exercises in the Aegean Sea.

Two weeks ago a Turkish frigate collided with a Greek ship close to the area off Crete where Turkey is surveying for hydrocarbons. Turkey’s ambitions are of concern to both France and Greece, even if they are nominally at least, NATO allies. Paris has already moved to increase its military presence on Cyprus and has indicated particular concern that TOTAL, a French energy company which is also working in the area, is being subjected to ‘harassment’ by Turkish warships.

Energy containment and the new Realpolitik of energy?

There is a new Realpolitik of energy underway with Russia effectively seeking the energy containment of Europe, possibly in conjunction with Turkey and Iran. Ankara believes it has been systematically excluded from potential energy discoveries because of deals done between Greece, Cyprus, Israel and Egypt, whilst France’s actions imply EU backing for Greece and Cyprus, both member-states. This infuriates Ankara and is pushing the Turks further towards the Russians. In July, Iran, Russia and Turkey issued a joint statement condemning Israeli action in Syria after three military strikes which they attributed to Tel Aviv. This is in spite of Ankara’s support for forces trying to overthrow the Moscow and Tehran-backed regime of President Bashir al-Assad. It is also in spite of Russia and Turkey competing with each other in Libya to end the civil war therein and reap what they both see as economic benefits, including from the vast energy reserves therein. 

Russia’s ambitions do not stop there. Moscow (with possible Iranian help) is seeking to exert control over much of the oil and gas supplies upon which Europe depends, and/or threaten the supply lines upon which Europeans depend. If successful, not only will this make Europeans more dependent on Russian energy (the geopolitics of NORDSTREAM 2) but it would also push up the price of hydrocarbons thus benefitting the sorely-tried Russian economy.

Little Europe, shifting sands, turbulent waters

EMMENA is not just the focus for the new geopolitics and Realpolitik of energy it is also the stuff of grand strategy: the organisation of immense means in pursuit of grand ends. The problem is that it is precisely such geopolitics at which Little Europe is useless. Europeans seem incapable of seeing Europe, the Mediterranean, and the Middle East and North Africa as one strategic space. It also reveals a profound lack of European strategic ambition and imagination epitomised by the high intentions, low delivery Barcelona Process. As ever, Europeans are full of grand language (Union for the Mediterranean?) which has at best limited impact. The consequence is that too much of what is a vital effort for Europe is left to front-line states such as Italy. 

If ‘Europe’ (and it would need to be ‘Europe’) is willing to seriously engage in the Middle East and North Africa it must treat the people therein as partners and be willing to demonstrate a level of strategic patience that has hitherto been lacking. For example, the promotion of free trade would be vital. However, EMMENA also reveals a fundamental weakness: the refusal and inability to compete with others often weaker powers in areas that are vital to the interests of Europeans.  Hitherto, the implicit manta has been ‘leave it to the Americans’. Increasingly, Europeans are ‘leaving it’ to the likes of Russia and Turkey. If Europeans are unwilling to properly engage seriously to help construct a more peaceful and stable MENA, then MENA will shape Europe. Sadly, ‘Europe’ itself has become a metaphor for strategic pretence and destabilising weakness.

The new geopolitics looks frighteningly like the old geopolitics. If that is the case not only will the people of the Middle East continue to suffer, but Europe will have to face the dangerous consequences systemic instability, entrenched terrorism and dangerous geopolitics.  The fate of Europe is inextricably tied to the fate of Middle East and North Africa because it is not ‘over there’, but right here.

EMMENA: shifting sands, turbulent waters, and a sea of Middle Eastern troubles.

Julian Lindley-French

Europe’s Neutered ‘Neutrals’

 “Never break the neutrality of a place or port, but never consider as neutral any place from when an attack is allowed to be made”.

 Admiral the Lord Nelson

 Neutrality?

August 19, 2020. There are two kinds of neutrals in Europe, the self-deluding non-aligned and the maliciously undermined. The Finns, Irish and Swedes fall into the first category being just about as aligned as it is possible to be aligned, albeit comfortable in the political fantasy of their ‘neutrality’.  Then there are the maliciously undermined, such as Belarus and Ukraine, for which, through the twin accidents of geography and proximity to power, ‘neutrality’ is imposed through corrosively neutered sovereignty.

In the wake of Belarus’s predictably-rigged presidential election there is much excitement amongst Europe’s chattering classes.  Lukashenko’s Nikolai Ceausescu moment is either the vanguard of democracy or a prelude to a Russian military annexation, or both, as ever the truth lies somewhere in between.  Belarus is no Ukraine and the current tensions are as yet unlikely to be the source spring of some new Maidan. Indeed, not one of those challenging the dictator Lukashenko is particularly or at all pro-Western, all having made strong pro-Russian statements and all, in one way or another, supported by factions within Russia.

Russia attacks?

That is not to say Russia is not considering the use of military force to keep Belarus firmly in Russia’s orb of strategic influence.  If, by some ‘catastrophic’ sequence of events, a group were to emerge in Minsk that was decidedly pro-Western Moscow would act. That is why President Putin has offered ‘military assistance’ to Lukashenko. Russia would rather stop the protests early because for Moscow Belarus is the hinge around which its European grand strategy turns, and home to the vital 90 km long land link to its enclave Kaliningrad. The ground is certainly being prepared for a possible Russian intervention with the usual Soviet/post-Soviet narrative about ‘outside interference’ and Lukashenko claiming “NATO troops are at our gates”. Any such intervention would also invoke the 1997 “Treaty on the Union between Belarus and Russia” to create the so-called ‘Union State’. Where there could be parallels with Ukraine given the likely nature of any Russian intervention, especially in its early stages. Expect Little Green Men!

There are some reports of Russian troop movements in the area but the sources available to this Analysis suggest they are false or exaggerated and such an intervention remains unlikely for the moment. First, the Belarussian Army remains loyal to Lukashenko, as does the oppressive and repressive security apparatus. Second, much of the protest movement is more about emerging Belarussian nationalism than a popular demand for Western-style liberal democracy. Third, Russia can still exert control over Belarus without ever having to undertake an expensive and potentially dangerous invasion.

Some time ago I pioneered the concept of 5D warfare to describe Russian statecraft. 5D warfare is applied and continuous conflict designed to exploit the many seams in complex societies via deception, disinformation, destabilisation, disruption and applied coercion via implied or actual destruction.  All 5 ‘D’s were evident in Ukraine in 2014 and still are. At least three of the five are also evident in Belarus – deception, disinformation and destabilisation. Prior to the elections Lukashenko made a big nationalist play about Russia using mercenaries to destabilise Belarus. It was pure theatre. The Kremlin may have little regard for Lukashenko as Putin sees him as a buffoon but Lukashenko, and more importantly the cronies around him, are firmly in Moscow’s pocket. Few tears would be shed in Moscow if Lukashenko went, so long as the replacement was also Russian-leaning. Indeed, there are some domestic Russian reasons why Putin might wish to play the statesman and facilitate the peaceful departure of Lukashenko.

Corrosive neutrality

Which brings me to the essential point of this Analysis. A state may appear aligned with the EU or NATO but if its institutions and leaders have been corrupted then in fact, and in spite of appearances and obligations, it is corrosively ‘neutral’.  The real power Russia exerts in Belarus is through patronage and cronyism with corruption endemic. Sadly, such influence is not confined to Belarus and is evident in some countries along the entirety of Russia’s western border with the EU and NATO…and well beyond.

Where does Belarus fit into such Russian thinking? Moscow’s wet-dream is to create a ‘security buffer’ along its western border comprised of states effectively subservient to Moscow. The corrupting of political and other elites is a vital tool in Russia’s statecraft. Thankfully, the thirst for freedom in the Baltic States has limited Moscow’s ambitions therein, others have proven more vulnerable. If a strategically-placed state refuses to bow to such coercive influence Moscow then ups the stakes by exploiting divisions within it, as Russia did in Ukraine.

The extent to which Moscow can exert ‘corrosive neutrality’ is ultimately dependent on the political capital and hard defence Western powers are willing to invest in the eastern regions of both the EU and NATO. Moscow constantly tests the resolve of the West in this regard. The fear in the Baltic States is that the US and the major Western Europeans will over time simply get tired of the common effort required to maintain freedom, particularly in the wake of COVID-19. If so, expect Moscow to step up markedly what some call ‘grey zone warfare’.

Corrosive neutrality and the geopolitics of Belarus

The West cannot ignore the geopolitics of Belarus. The hard reality is that a conflict is underway from Finnmark in the north to the Mediterranean in the south to control what might be called the strategic land littoral along the eastern borders of the EU and NATO. Belarus sits slap bang in the middle of a geopolitical conflict in which China is also playing an ever more influential role in support of Russia. The plan to build the so-called Meridian Highway between Belarus and the Middle Kingdom is designed to merge the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) with China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).  Whilst ‘privately’ financed this mega-project has much to do with boosting President Putin’s legacy and driving the economic development of Russia’s vast interior. It is also power and strategic influence.

The current crisis? Any Western help in promoting a peaceful transfer of power in Belarus will require trade-offs. Dealing with Russia is always about trade-offs. Given the nature of the opposition in Belarus Moscow might, just might, accept new presidential elections overseen by the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe or OSCE. The EU and US should use targeted sanctions that progressively isolate Lukashenko and make it hard for Moscow to prop him up. As for the wider struggle Moscow needs to be constantly reminded that its efforts to impose corrosive neutrality on EU and NATO members will fail and that their peace and freedom is non-negotiable, however many Roubles are passed under however many tables.

As for Belarus, as Nelson once intimated, the West can never consider truly neutral a place from which an attack might come.

Julian Lindley-French   

Summer Essay: Trump, Germany and the Pom-American Grenadier

“The Balkans [Europe?] are not worth the life of a single Pomeranian Grenadier”.

Otto von Bismarck

The guns of August

August 4, 2020. On this day in 1914 World War One broke out because Great Powers had created the conditions for relatively small events to trigger a major cataclysm. This is a story of two twenty-first Great Powers, America and Germany, both sleepwalking towards disaster, aided and abetted by a host of strategically delinquent lesser Powers, most notably Britain and France.

Whilst the cause of World War One was primarily due to the egregious arrogance and miscalculation of Kaiser Wilhelm II and the Prusso-German elite the other Great Powers of the day, Austria-Hungary, Britain, France and Russia, also ‘sleep-walked’ into a conflict that for many came out of the August blue. In June, I wrote a piece entitled The Guns of August 2020? My use of Barbara Tuchman’s classic book was quite deliberate. My fear was (and is) that a mix of miscalculation, complacency, stupidity, opportunity and growing Russian desperation, allied to a coalescence of dangerous events, could lead to another surprise war in a Europe paralysed by COVID-19 and asleep in the August sun. 

The reason for my concern was President Trump’s decision to withdraw and move some 12,000 US troops from Germany, which he has now confirmed.  It is a decision that is sending a powerful message to friend and foe alike, and not the one Secretary of Defense Mark Esper would like that the US is merely “…following our boundary east, where are newest allies are”. On cue Poland has agreed to fund the headquarters of US Army V Corps and the infrastructure and logistics needed for the basing of 4500 American troops and an additional 1000 rotational troops. On Monday Esper stated that the US-Polish deal "...will enhance our deterrence against Russia, strengthen NATO, reassure our allies, and our forward presence in Poland on our eastern flank will improve our strategic and operational flexibility". 

The move will certainly shorten the distance between the diminishing bulk of US force in Europe and NATO's eastern border, but is the aim really to strengthen deterrence? In June, President Trump said, "…we're protecting Germany and they're delinquent. That doesn't make sense. So I said, we're going to bring down the count to 25,000 soldiers."  In other words, Trump is using US forces as a negotiating tool in a high-stakes game of poker with Chancellor Merkel where the defence of Europe is the main chip. His message to Germany is brutally clear: if Germany and other Europeans fail to spend enough on their own defence, why should the defence of Europe come at the cost of even one American ‘grenadier’? 

Low politics, high stakes

President Trump is playing presidential politics with Europe’s defence. Political decisions have strategic consequences. This August a host of events will take place that reveal the extent of America’s strategic dilemma, the global military over-stretch from which its forces are suffering, and Europe’s utter and shameful indifference to the consequences of both.  Ironically, it is not Russian military exercises that perhaps pose the greatest threat.  If anything President Putin has scaled back KavKaz 2020 on the Russo-Ukrainian border.  Still, Russian forces and their proxies continue to act aggressively around Europe’s borders and the build-up of Moscow’s forces on the Ukrainian border must be watched carefully. In July, NATO also held the twentieth Sea Breeze exercise in the Black Sea Region with the US Sixth Fleet to the fore.  In any case, Moscow is fully capable of striking at short-notice almost anywhere from Northern Finland to Ukraine and into the Mediterranean.

It is the politics of the European theatre and the relationship between Europe’s deteriorating deterrence and defence and events that is the greatest cause for concern. Of particular concern are the August 9 elections in Belarus, or at least what passes for ‘elections’ in Belarus. There is an extraordinary campaign underway to unseat President Lukashenko which Moscow is closely monitoring. The extent of Lukashenko’s concerns were revealed last week when Minsk ordered the ‘arrest’ of several members of The Wagner Group, Russian mercenaries with close links to Russia’s SVR (foreign intelligence) and GRU (military intelligence). The purpose was to demonstrate Minsk’s ‘independence’ from Russia. In reality, Belarus is firmly in Moscow’s strategic pocket and President Putin will go to great lengths to keep it that way, even using force if necessary.  Belarus is the hinge around which Russia exerts complex strategic coercion across the entirety of Central and Eastern Europe and across the spectrum of 5D warfare – disinformation, deception, destabilisation, disruption and threatened or actual destruction.

Papiertiger?

A senior American friend of mine was at an event in Washington last week on the occasion of a visit by the State Secretary of the German Ministry of Defence, Thomas Silberhorn. On the face of it all is well and good in the US-German relationship. Silberhorn not only re-committed Germany to NATO’s nuclear deterrent, he used the visit to announce Berlin’s decision to purchase US F-18 Superhornets.  Berlin is already committed to buying F-18 Growlers to replace the Luftwaffe’s elderly Tornado fleet.

However, Germany’s purchase of the F-18s also reveals Berlin’s lack of understanding of the direction and utility of future force and thus Europe’s strategic dilemma. Berlin should have purchased the F-35 Lightning 2’s as the ageing F-18s will soon prove a false economy. They are good 4G platforms but Europe is fast entering a 5G and soon a 6G world. The Germans bought the F-18s to placate the Americans and to have at least one system that for a time might penetrate Russian air defences. For a time. The utility of force is relative and changes all the time. Germany’s political class do not seem willing or able to understand that.  

For the past thirty years the main utility of force was as a super-police force in discretionary wars of the people.  Now, the core utility of force is again fast becoming high-end deterrence which means a whole different kind of force, whilst at the same time such a force will also need to contribute to a raft of stabilisation missions. If Berlin really wanted to assist the Americans it would instead focus on how it could better prepare NATO Europe for the defence and deterrence posture the Alliance will need across the hybrid-cyber-hyperwar mosaic of the twenty-first century conflict super-space. After all, Germany IS, to a very significant extent, Europe’s defence and technological industrial base. And yet, whilst Berlin is all too happy to sell advanced military stuff, it is not at all keen to invest in it.

 

Papiertiger? What would the demise of Trump reveal about Germany? Many German officials refuse to believe the US troop draw-down will ever take place, or it will have a minimal tactical effect. Many of them also assume Trump will not get re-elected in November and that a Biden administration would take a very different view. First, the US presidentials have yet to start and it is far too early to make that call. Biden has many weaknesses and frailties which Trump will mercilessly exploit.  Much like Corbyn’s Labour Party in Britain it is also hard to believe much of patriotic Middle America will vote Democrat if the woke Left of the party continues to enjoy the influence it has today. Second, US military over-stretch will worsen.  Iran is about to conduct a major military exercise and Washington has been forced to markedly increase its presence in the South China Sea. US policy towards Europe over the sharing of burdens and risks will thus not change radically and a Berlin no longer able to use Trump as an alibi will need to think and act differently. Third, and most importantly, there can be no credible European defence without German strategic leadership and a strong US-German strategic partnership.  That means a Berlin finally willing to confront the political demons that prevent the emergence of a democratic German strategic culture. It will also mean a Germany that finally stops bolting down the political rabbit hole of the fantasy that is a common EU defence every time someone calls on Berlin to pay the price of leadership.

 Trump, Germany and the Pom-American Grenadier

World War Three is not about to break out tomorrow, but war in Europe can no longer be discounted, possibly as early as this month.  In that light Bismarck’s famous quote needs unpacking because it was not about the Balkans per se, but posed much more fundamental questions about the utility of force that are relevant today: what is the best use of US forces in Europe and at what strength to serve both the US interest and the defence of Europe? What should the German-led Allies do in support of those legitimate strategic aims?

The Pomeranian Grenadiers were something of a joke in the imperial German Army, very different from US combat forces today. Bismarck cited them to contrast his policy of strategy underpinned by force with Kaiser Wilhelm II’s preference for force without strategy. Bismarck’s essential point was that policy in the absence of strategy was not worth the life of a single soldier even in Germany’s most third-rate regiment for it was doomed to fail.  President Trump’s decision is bad policy, Berlin’s reaction reveals a vacuum of strategy.

Contemporary Berlin and Washington both miss Bismarck’s essential point: the peace of Europe is maintained via a complex matrix of constraining agreements and treaties reinforced by minimum but credible conventional and nuclear military force. Too much force and Europe becomes unstable, too little force and Europe becomes unstable.  Today, Germany has neither force nor strategy nor policy relevant to the threats it faces and the Europe it leads, whilst President Trump sees US forces in Europe only as a transactional ‘joker’ card in an obsessive poker play with a “delinquent Berlin” that he is using to appeal to his voter base. 

There is another factor in the causes of World War One that is relevant to Europe today and which many Americans tend to miss, preferring instead to see ‘WW1’ as another European ‘civil’ war into which they were dragged. In fact, World War One was the first major war between democracy and autocracy. The very cause of the war was the fear the agrarian Prussian aristocracy in then Germany’s east had of burgeoning calls for democracy in Germany’s industrialising west.  For all President Putin’s put-downs of liberal-democracy, and as COVID-19 chaotic as it is, it is the fear autocracy has of real democracy which is driving much of the Kremlin’s strategy.

The real cause of US-German dissonance and the weakening of the transatlantic relationship is the structural shift in geopolitics underway, America’s inability to be strong all of the time everywhere, and Germany’s refusal to recognise that Americans can only underwrite European peace if Europeans do far more for their own defence. Critically, such a defence will not only require German leadership but more (and better) legitimate, democratic German armed forces. No-one in Berlin wants anyone to point that out.

So, until there is a new and formal peace with Russia, and the Middle East and North Africa re-establishes stable states across its region, the security and defence of Europe will likely continue to ultimately rest on the lives of a relatively few ‘Pom-American Grenadiers’. At least they are first-rate. As for Americans and Germans they might heed the words of Albert Camus: “Don’t walk behind me; I may not lead. Don’t walk in front of me; I may not follow. Just walk beside me and be my friend”.

 Julian Lindley-French

Little Britain 2? A Hard Rain is Cummings

“A hard rain is coming”

Dominic Cummings, Chief Advisor to Prime Minister Boris Johnson

Abstract: Brexit and COVID-19 have fundamentally changed all of the great assumptive lathes upon which all the tools of Britain’s external reach have hitherto been forged. There has never been a more propitious moment for a truly radical re-evaluation of Britain’s vital interests and how to secure and defend them. A radical such as Cummings might just be the man to break the defence pretence from which for too long London has suffered. However, the forthcoming Integrated Security, Defence and Foreign Policy Review will need to be far more than the sum of his own prejudices.

 

A hard rain is Cummings

There is a mantra Dominic Cummings should have pinned to his office wall as he considers Britain’s Integrated Security, Defence and Foreign Policy Review and it reads like this: ensure Britain is strong enough where it is critically necessary; help keep America strong where and when it is strategically necessary; and make NATO work where absolutely necessary.  

George Orwell once wrote that in times of universal deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act. At first sight the news that London is considering sending HMS Queen Elizabeth to the Indo-Pacific to deter China has the ring of Gilbert and Sullivan about it, especially as the announcement coincided with a rumour that the British were also planning to scrap the building of three Fleet Support Ships necessary to make future such deployments possible.  For some strange reason the Americans tend to get a tad irritable when they are asked to use their over-stretched armed forces to support a bit of British grandstanding.  Still, this is the silly season and there are many balloons been floated about the forthcoming ‘Dom Does Defence Review’ (aka the Integrated Review) which will be led, as is so much of British policy these days, by Boris Johnson’s ‘Advisor for Everything’, Dominic Cummings. 

There has been a fundamental problem with British security and defence policy since at least 1922: the yawning gap between ends, ways and means. Today, that gap is as wide as it has ever been. Listen to the rhetoric of the Johnson Government and the high summer of strategic pretence is in full bloom: Global Britain should do more on security and defence, but do it with significantly less money. To make this impossible equation ‘add up’ politically Cummings wants to hot-wire Britain’s defence by shifting the focus of Britain’s armed forces from the physical battlespace to the digital, the virtual, the orbital and the informational battlespace by downsizing the physical and the kinetic. Another of Dom’s prevailing assumptions is that such a shift can only be done if Britain relies more heavily on allies, most notably the US and NATO, even as it cuts the very British means the US and NATO need. In 2019 Britain effectively abandoned the Continental Strategy it is has followed since at least 1944 and effectively withdrew from the land defence of Europe.

Politics, as ever, is trumping strategy. London claims it will maintain the commitment to spend at least 2% of GDP on defence and increase its real-term defence investment by 0.5% per annum.  A lot of this smoke and mirrors. The accounting method used to calculate British defence expenditure might meet NATO’s very lax standards but would not pass muster with any decent accountant. Critically, COVID-19 has already seen a marked contraction in GDP and the shift to space, digital and virtual (always expensive) could only be paid for either increasing the defence investment budget markedly (very unlikely) or by cutting further vital military ‘teeth’ formations, such as 21st century airborne (sadly predictable) and equally vital support and logistics, such as Future Support Ships.  Team Tempest and the much-vaunted Future Combat Air System? Let’s see where that goes.

Britain’s dangerous choices

The dangerous choices Britain now has to make which are implicit in the Review are thus: if Britain makes the wrong set of radical defence choices having caused The World Crisis - inadvertently or otherwise - China (and Russia) could well be the big strategic winners. If the UK goes all defence virtual and becomes the militant wing of soft power London will be complicit in worsening US military overstretch and further weaken the defence of Europe (a central theme of my forthcoming Oxford book Future War and the Defence of Europe). London has already retreated behind its nuclear shield in favour of some occasional strategic raider role. Global Britain?

Hard rain means hard truths. For all the current defence and deterrence pretence in the fashionable salons of London’s defense philosophes and their wittering about the ‘digital’ and ‘informational’, warfare still ultimately involves well-trained and well-armed young men and women having ‘win’ hard yards and paying for it with their lives.  Beijing and Moscow understand this. Indeed, if one reads Chinese and Russian military strategies and doctrine both see the primary purpose and utility of the virtual, digital and informational as enablers for the physical, not as an alternative to it. Cummings does not seem to understand that. Worse, it is not at all clear that the current service chiefs will be sufficiently robust with their political master/s (Dom) about the damage that defence amateurism on steroids could do to Britain, its defences and its alliance. Indeed, ‘the Chiefs’ seem more interested in appeasing Dom by implicitly endorsing the nonsense that the digital, the virtual and the informational is all the ‘warfare’ Britain should aspire to fight.

Make Britain strong enough…

The US needs Europeans to do far more for their own defence and Britain, as an important European regional strategic power, needs to be at the core of any such European effort.  Forget all the nonsense about a common EU defence. The only way to organise such a US-supported European defence will be to construct it around Europe’s three major powers, Britain, France and Germany, and within NATO.  Indeed, NATO is the only available mechanism for the all-important transformation of a European defence effort that by 2030 (at the very latest) will need to credibly deter and defend across the physical, digital and virtual domains of 5D warfare: disinformation, deception, destabilisation, disruption and implied or actual destruction. 

Therefore, the forthcoming Cummings defence review (forget all the guff about an integrated approach) should be about generating sufficient British military power to buy influence in Washington and the Alliance, power is after all influence. The aim of the review should be the transformation of NATO into THE vehicle for the generation and rapid deployment of sufficient European force to deter and defend against both a high-end peer competitor AND support front-line Allies dealing with chaos to NATO’s south. The true and coming test of both NATO and Britain will rest on the ability of Europeans to mount a defence against the worst-case scenario in which adversaries exploit US military over-stretch by engineering crises in multiple theatres simultaneously. The EU? Adapt the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) to focus on greater resiliency of critical command and security infrastructures, and make Britain a strategic partner.

Adding strategic value

Defence reviews are about difficult choices, the Cummings Review is no different. Given the rapidly changing and deteriorating strategic environment Britain can add most value to its own future defence, that of its European neighbours and its American allies by helping create a high-end, first responder European Future Force. Such a force must be able to operate to effect across the multiple battlespaces of air, sea, land, cyber, space, information and knowledge and NATO’s European pillar should be reformed with that single aim in mind. At the core of the force should be an Allied Command Operations European Mobile Force (based on the old ACE Mobile Force) and organised around a British-led Allied Rapid Reaction Corps and other NATO commands that has sufficient twenty-first century military manoeuvre power to block a major attack on the Alliance (supported by relevant enablers, logistics and indicators) AND sufficient military mass to support front-line states to the south dealing with the consequences of engineered chaos across the Middle East and North Africa. If Britain’s Strategic Command is to match words with deeds the creation of such a force should be central to its mission.

In the wake of COVID-19 such a vision will not only demand more defence from states like Britain but far greater synergy between European forces and a profound change of mind-set on the part of European leaders. It will also demand that in spite of Brexit Britain, France and Germany march in strategic lock-step. Therefore, establishing the foundations of a new transatlantic/European strategic partnership should the single over-arching political and strategic aim of the Cummings Review.

The Cummings Review

Dominic Cummings is essentially right – a hard rain is indeed coming to Britain’s foreign, security and defence establishment and Britain’s strategic outreach certainly needs shaking up. Brexit, COVID-19, the publication of the Russia report by the parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee, and the rapid deterioration in Sino-British relations are the first heavy showers of the Gathering Storm.  Closing the woeful ends, ways and means gap from which Britain’s armed forces have for too long suffered not only needs to be grounded in geopolitical reality it must also do something inimical to the Westminster and Whitehall mind – put strategy before politics in pursuit of the national rather than the political interest.

The alternative is that the Cummings Review will turn out to be yet another exercise in strategic pretence, the musings of an over-mighty defence amateur with a chance to impose his particular prejudices on a defence establishment already teetering on the edge of dysfunction.  If Cummings is to do any service to Britain’s critical national interests in the wake of the COVID-19 disaster he will also need to answer two questions that too many British governments have for too long dodged: what kind of power is contemporary Britain, and what hard power role should Britain aspire to play?  The mushy furnishings of British soft power so beloved of the London Establishment will simply can no longer afford comfort in this world.   

American and Indian forces will shortly begin a major joint military exercise. It is part of the emerging World-Wide web of Democracies that will contest the twenty-first century strategic space with China and Russia. Britain is a major strand of that web, albeit very much a Euro-Atlantic strand. Ultimately, the Cummings Review must understand that and end British strategic pretence or fail. To do that Cummings must properly consider the application of all national means in pursuit of Britain’s national interests but in the world as it is, not the world London would prefer to exist.

1922? The Geddes Axe and the then swingeing cuts to the Royal Navy set the political and strategic scene for disarmament, appeasement and ‘peace’ through weakness.  Britain must not over-arm but along with its democratic allies it needs sufficient arms to convince the likes of China and Russia that peace is best served by other means. In the light the Integrated Defence, Security and Foreign Policy Review is perhaps the most important since Geddes. 

Don’t screw it up, Dom!

Julian Lindley-French

Why NATO needs a new Strategic Concept

“Where the Washington Treaty leaves open the balance between global and regional tasks, the Strategic Concept must specifically interpret geopolitical circumstances. What are the threats and what are the military implications? These are the two basic and essential questions the Strategic Concept must answer”

Jens Ringsmose and Sten Rynning

Why a new NATO Strategic Concept

By no later than 2030 NATO must be demonstrably able to fight and thus deter a high-end world war AND support front-line Allies to Europe’s south dealing with the consequences of potentially catastrophic collapse across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA).

In spite of significant but modest progress on integrated air and missile defence and enhancements to the Alliance’s conventional deterrent at last week’s NATO defence ministerial the Alliance is at a tipping point between political credibility and military incapability. The cause of the crisis, for that is what it is fast becoming, is twofold: increasing pressure on US forces the world over and a refusal of Europeans to take on the bulk of the burden for their own defence.  A Strategic Concept would thus reset the what, the why, the where, the when and the how of Alliance action at a critical juncture.  The core message of the next Strategic Concept would also need to be clear: NATO is essentially a European organisation for Europeans supported by Americans and Canadians, not an American organisation for Europeans occasionally supported by Europeans. The reason why there is no new Strategic Concept is because there is no consensus in the Alliance over a new Strategic Concept. That is both telling and dangerous for it reveals a lack of cohesion that is the single biggest threat to the Alliance and why NATO so desperately needs a new Strategic Concept.

In making such a call I am in no way dismissing the inherent and implicit complexity in drafting such a Concept. The Alliance is not simply a vehicle for amassing sufficient military power to keep those who it does not want ‘in’, ‘out’; it is also a vehicle for keeping those who are ‘in’ ‘in’, and to ensure those ‘in’ do not fight others who are also ‘in’. As such NATO’s purpose is fourfold: the defence, deterrence, security and stability of the Euro-Atlantic area.  Its method is dual track: to generate sufficient capability, capacity and cohesion to deliver all four, whilst constantly seeking to engage adversaries and partners in dialogue. In the wake of the Cold War the centre of Alliance gravity shifted towards dialogue, now it must shift back towards military defence. The world is changing rapidly and adversely and the very lack of a new Strategic Concept is reinforcing the perception of adversaries and partners that the Allies are simply too divided, too weak and too often subverted by the idea that values alone can substitute for power.

A very act of a Strategic Concept would be an act of deterrence. First, it would re-establish a new 'contract' between Allied leaders and those in NATO charged with fulfilling the mission set them. Second, it would help establish the new political and military centre of gravity the Alliance desperately needs to credibly and simultaneously support strategic directions east, south and north. Third, it would reinforce deterrence by also demonstrating that the Alliance collectively understands the scope, pace and strategic direction of change, and the threat it is generating. Fourth, it would communicate resolve and clarity of purpose (unity of mission) to NATO citizens. Fifth, and perhaps most pressing of all, it would reassure the Americans that Europeans are serious about their own defence, understand the burdens it places on an increasingly over-stretched US, and are now willing to match strategic autonomy with strategic responsibility. Above all, a new Strategic Concept would demonstrate a shared level of shared strategic ambition vital to re-establishing a balance of relative power between the security environment and thus the roles and tasks of the Alliance to 2030.

Ostriches, heads and sand?

Why is a Strategic Concept so difficult for the Alliance? Too many of the West’s political leaders seem curiously unable to grip the scale of emerging threat and its implications for the Euro-Atlantic area. Worse, the high political tendency in many Allied countries is to keep defence off the political agenda. The rise of military China, the dangerous mix of economic instability and over-securitisation in Russia, the advance of a new era of military technologies, the erosion of the rules-based system, the toxic combination of demographic change, fundamentalism and fragile states across MENA, and a US under increasing pressure domestically from debt and external commitments suggest NATO needs not so much to adapt as reset. Then there is COVID-19. The 2019 NAT Military Strategy has been critically undermined by the crisis, or at least it will be. Therefore, the Alliance desperately needs to grip and demonstrably so the impact of COVID-19 on the ends, ways and means of Alliance defence, deterrence and outreach.

NATO faces existential choices.  The Alliance (or rather its nations) can continue to recognise only as much threat as it can politically afford and avoid all the fundamental challenges implicit in preparing a new Strategic Concept, or it can face them. The Alliance can continue to maintain the illusion of cohesion, organising nice leader photo-ops and well-drafted eloquent communiques, or it can confront all challenges square on, including cohesion-corrupting Chinese debt. The Alliance can continue to choose the short-term and the politically easy but such a course of inaction will quickly confirm that NATO is simply too politically fragile to meet both high-end and wide-angle strategic threats, its essential purpose.

Such contention-avoidance will see Europe locked into a virtual Ten Year Rule colluding in its own future shock. If that is the case then the future defence of Europe will soon become little more than a Potemkian village. Some would like to build such a ‘village’ around a coalition of worthy German-led continental European powers (the Eurosphere), whilst the Americans and British (the Anglosphere) quietly sail away from the Continent in their nuclear-powered vessels taking their German-offending nuclear weapons with them. That would be a profound mistake because it is the North American and European pillars together that is the real bedrock of credible Alliance defence and deterrence. Too harsh?  Last year Britain withdrew all but a tiny portion of its Army from the Continent, whilst the Americans are now threatening to withdraw some 28% of its already small force. The very process of embarking on a new Strategic Concept would help arrest this strategic drift into distant and barely engaged pillars. 

The new NATO and a shadow Strategic Concept

Power is relative. A transformed NATO is thus needed, not some ‘adapted’ paper tiger. Today's NATO is still far too analogue, and insufficiently digital. The new NATO would be constructed around a hybrid, cyber, hyper defence European pillar (with the Brits included). The hard core of the Alliance would be a twenty-first century multi-domain European Future Force able to respond to and deter high-end threats to the east and north of the Alliance, AND support front-line to the south in multiple and simultaneous emergences. The new NATO would be sufficiently Europe capable to enable the Americans to be strong wherever and when they are needed, and able to move fast anywhere in and around Europe. The act of this ‘Strategic Concept’ would help establish the necessary vision and ambition needed for such an Alliance to be realised. It would also finally set NATO on the road to resolving the politically toxic issue of transatlantic burden-sharing and give Europeans far more 'sovereign' control over their own defence within the framework of a re-vitalised transatlantic strategic relationship/partnership.

Next steps? In 2009, I chaired part of a Washington meeting about the then 2010 NATO Strategic Concept. At that meeting I made an historic offer to the then NATO Secretary-General and assembled leaders: Europeans would improve their military capabilities, if the Pentagon improved its coffee. Now is the time to be similarly ambitious, although I hold out little hope for Pentagon coffee. Sometimes the world of ideas must offer solutions and courses of action to the world of policy. This is one such moment. With each passing day the 2010 Strategic Concept looks ever more like a work of the ancients, eloquent and almost quaint in the world it describes, and NATO's role therein. Therefore, I call for the drafting of a shadow Strategic Concept produced by a group of the most experienced strategists and practitioners on both sides of the Atlantic and which capitalises on the findings of the NATO Reflection Group. We have work to do! Let’s get on with it!

NATO is a warfighting, security-enhancing defensive alliance. It is NOT a military EU! It is time to remember that. NATO needs a new Strategic Concept and fast!

Julian Lindley-French

NATO: Is Cohesion Killing Deterrence?

15 June, 2020

 Cohesion versus deterrence

Is NATO’s obsession with cohesion killing deterrence?  On the face of it the question seems silly because without political cohesion no alliance can function. In ‘NATO speak’ cohesion is established by finding common ground between the Allies on a whole raft of issues from threat perception to defence investment. The NATO bureaucracy is obsessed with cohesion, particularly around major political gatherings such as this week’s NATO Defence Ministerial. This is because ‘cohesion’ is critical to the ‘language’ of the ‘communique’ that is routinely issued at the end of such meetings.  Unfortunately, the NATO machine is so focussed on maintaining the appearance of cohesion that it will go to great lengths even when there is little or no agreement on substantive issues such as now. Indeed, I sometimes unsure whether NATO is a defence alliance or an armed conference organiser. The danger is, and it is a very real in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis, that ‘cohesion’ will become a metaphor for a lowest common denominator NATO in which apparently ‘successful’ communiques issued but none of the real issues are addressed because they are too politically toxic. Over time, such defence pretence will kill the Alliance as maintaining the twin illusions of political solidarity and cohesion are deemed to be more important than credible defence and deterrence.     

To illustrate my concern there was an interesting high-level response to my last Analysis, The Guns of August 2020? Indeed, a spirited debate took place between myself and senior NATO and non-NATO people.  Below is my response to one senior NATO figure.  There are some minor changes to the original missive as I do not wish to reveal his identity and I am not in the business of embarrassing good people.

NATO now and next?

“Dear…, great to hear from you and as an Ally and citizen I very much hope next week's Defence Ministerial goes well. I will certainly look out for more support for the Deterrence and Defence of the Euro-Atlantic Area. You have access to a far more detailed picture than I do and given my respect for you I am listening. Still, my self-imposed task is to be a critical friend of our Alliance and act as a part of an informal external Red Team that challenges the assumptions that, however efficient, all institutions create in order to simply make the machine work. The reason the plan to withdraw 9500 US troops is dangerous is twofold: now and next. Now, because of a combination of circumstances, and next because of what it implies about the future of the Alliance over the next decade. To be really reassured I would need to see the Ministerial address both.

Now: We face the Russian constitutional plebiscite on 1 July and only this week the extent of the economic damage began to emerge that COVID 19 has done to already weakened European economies. For example, according to HMG (British Government) figures the UK economy contracted by 20% in April alone due to the lockdown. The October 2019 NATO Military Strategy could not possibly have assumed the economic and political consequences of this crisis and its implications for European defence. 

Next: Faced with an economic crisis and its political consequences most Europeans tend to cut defence, Russians tend to exaggerate it. In that context, the plan to withdraw the troops is being presented in Europe as a political/tactical issue. In fact, it masks a fundamental US dilemma that is not unlike that faced by Imperial Britain in the 1890s. With the rise of the US and Germany as Great Powers it became rapidly clear to London that Britain could be strong in Europe, the Mediterranean/Suez or the Eastern Empire, but given the rapidly shifting correlation of forces not all three simultaneously, hence the 1902-23 Alliance with Japan.

That begs of Washington two fundamental questions that need to be answered now and communicated honestly to the Allies. First, with the rise of China as an aggressive real power peer competitor (Russia is exploiting Chinese power) how does the US intend to maintain relative military strength where it needs to be strong the world over. Second, how militarily strong does the US expect its most capable allies to aspire to be to enable the US to both maintain its own relative strength and its obligations to the Allies through the Alliance? Unfortunately, there is absolutely nothing in the changing balance of power and Europe's retreat from such power that makes me at all sanguine about now, let alone 2030.

The bottom-line of NATO now and next is that the US will only be able to continue to afford Europeans the post 1949 security guarantee if Europeans do far more for their own security and defence. The minimum down payment on a revised sharing of transatlantic burdens would be a European multi-domain future force able to operate at the high-end of conflict and thus assure deterrence (the real business of NATO) if you Americans were forced to be engaged in great strength elsewhere. I see no such ambition.

My Oxford thesis was on British policy and the coming of war and one finding was that for all the appeasement of the age Britain did in 1932 scrap the rolling Ten Year Rule and in 1934 began to rearm. All I see in Europe today suggests to me a) Europeans continue to be locked into a kind of rolling virtual Ten Year Rule; b) the political culture herein is unable to grip the worst-case; and c) the only possible leader of Europe, Germany, lacks both the strategic culture such leadership demands, and is still far too intimidated by its own past to lead where it matters. Worse, some of the official language and responses (NATO Reflection Group?) sound like the reassuring assessments that the Foreign Office and the Berlin embassy fed back to the Baldwin and Chamberlain governments. They were at the time locked in a desperate struggle to escape the Depression and really did not want to be bothered with issues such as renewed military threat. Then, as now, there was a tendency to commission worthy reviews and commissions for political ends precisely to avoid facing the cost, consequence and reality of adverse strategic change. With all due respect to the NATO Reflection Group, Harmel it ain't!

Actions and consequences

As I said in my piece (The Guns of August 2020?), actions have consequences, but the US action is not the only one of concern. For example, the British Integrated Foreign, Security and Defence Review has already been delayed and all the signals I am picking up is that whilst the UK may signal its intention to maintain the 2%/20% commitment it will only do so through more creative accounting. Much of the rest of Europe is likely to follow suit. In that context, if the White House proceeds with the withdrawal of 9500 troops the timing could not be worse, either for the ministerial or the wider defence of Europe. Whilst I fully accept that a direct military attack on NATO is highly unlikely our colleague’s analysis is well-made. If the Kremlin does indeed embark on another land grab in Ukraine I see absolutely no political will on the part of Germany and other Europeans to do anything other than condemn such action with rhetoric. Moscow knows that. In 1982 I recall that it was Britain's decision to withdraw HMS Endurance from the South Atlantic (which was hotly contested inside HMG) which led Buenos Aires to disastrously miscalculate and invade the Falkland Islands. Again, actions (can) have consequences.

Let me thank you for engaging and I am genuinely glad you are optimistic as I learnt to trust your judgement many years ago. I also hope you are right to be optimistic about NATO's direction of travel. Will it arrive in time? The most dangerous period for the Allies on our eastern borders is precisely whilst such an adaptive journey is underway. The worst of all outcomes would be if you Americans are rendered steadily and relatively weaker over time and space than you need or should be simply because you are forced into adverse, even perverse choices to offset the military weakness of Europeans. Such weakness would be an open invitation to the likes of China and Russia to make US strategic calculations impossibly complicated at a time, place and manner of their choosing and far more quickly than many in Europe are willing to countenance. The pace and scale of China’s military rise cannot be over-stated. The implications for both the US and the Alliance can also not be over-stated. Is it on the agenda this week?

Therefore, if my concerns are really to be assuaged at the Defence Ministerial the one thing I would need to see is ministers specifically addressing the adaptation of the 2019 Military Strategy in light of the changed economic, political and strategic circumstances of the Alliance now, and how best next to maintain the ends, ways and means stated therein.

All best,

Julian

Julian Lindley-French

The Guns of August 2020?

“One constant among the elements of 1914—as of any era—was the disposition of everyone on all sides not to prepare for the harder alternative, not to act upon what they suspected to be true.”

 Barbara W. Tuchman

 June 7^th, 2020

The Guns of August

It is not the mission of this Analysis to scaremonger, but actions have consequences. The decision of President Trump to suddenly withdraw 9,500 of the 34,000 US troops in Germany, some 28% of a capability at the core of NATO deterrence, is one such action. Why is President Trump doing this, why is it potentially dangerous, what could be in President Putin’s mind, what could happen, where and when?

In the wake of the US decision Moscow has already announced it will reinforce the Western Military District (Western Strategic Command) with the Guards Motorised Rifle Sevastopol Red Banner Brigade. This force will support the Guards Red Banner Tank Army to “…perform tasks on ensuring the defence of the Russian Federation in the Western strategic direction”. This follows comments over the past week by Colonel General Sergei Rudskoi of the Russian General Staff who in referring to limited-scale Allied exercises accused the US and NATO of conducting “anti-Russian” activities close to the Russian border.  

Why is President Trump doing this?

With Joe Biden confirmed as the Democratic Party nominee for the November US presidential elections the White House is now in full campaigning mode.  The Trump decision to ‘bring the boys home’ must thus be seen as election gambit to appeal to his neo-isolationist election base. However, there are also deeper structural pressures growing on the US Armed Forces that Europeans must not discount. The rise of Chinese military power in East Asia is beginning to force uncomfortable choices on Washington over where and how best to use its increasingly over-stretched armed forces.  Europeans have long come to believe that the purpose of the US military is to act in their interests even if, at times, it may conflict with the American interest.  Therefore, President Trump’s decision must also serve as a warning to Europeans for the future.

There is another possible reason: the threat that Germany could abandon nuclear NATO.  In May 2020, the US Ambassador to Germany, Richard Grenell accused Berlin of refusing to support NATO’s policy on nuclear deterrence. This followed calls by Rolf Mutzenich, the SPD leader in the Bundestag, for Germany to insist upon the removal of US nuclear weapons from German soil. Allied to recent Pew research it suggests growing German ambivalence about the wider transatlantic relationship, Trump or no Trump.  President Putin then increased the political pressure on Germany by announcing that Russia might resort to a first strike nuclear policy in the event of a conventional military attack on Russia.  

Why is the decision potentially dangerous?

Much of Western Europe is distracted and disrupted by the COVID-19 emergency. Worse, behind the rhetoric the contemporary transatlantic relationship is close to breaking, not least because it now relies on the essential (it is certainly not ‘special’) strategic relationship between the US and Germany. Britain is in precipitous strategic decline and in 2019 effectively abandoned the defence of continental Europe by withdrawing the bulk of its forces from Germany. London is hunkering down behind its nuclear shield and has little or no influence on international affairs. Indeed, London seems to have less and less influence even over British affairs. For all President Macron’s talk of European strategic autonomy France is mired in deep debt and only has influence if Germany agrees. The rest of Western Europe is either not defence serious, has abandoned statecraft or enjoys a close relationship with Moscow that could well compromise the ability of the Alliance to act in an emergency.  Turkey is now so alienated from the rest of Europe it can no longer be relied upon to act during an Alliance emergency.

What’s in President Putin’s mind?

President Putin is again facing a difficult domestic situation and has just declared a COVID-19 state of emergency. Russia’s critical export of hydrocarbons has been crippled by the collapse of the oil and gas price and is unlikely to recover soon.  Since the bungled invasion of Georgia he has rebuilt the Russian Armed Forces at great cost. However, the force could be approaching peak capability that he will be unable to maintain if the economy continues to decline.  Putin is also losing popularity at home and needs a boost and the adventurist reflex in Russian nationalism must never be under-estimated.

Moscow has also noted the sharp deterioration in Sino-US relations over recent months.  It may be that China has now decided to bring to an end the ‘One China, Two Systems’ model.  In the first instance any such action could involve the military occupation of Hong Kong as a warning to Taiwan not to seek formal secession. Beijing and Moscow are clearly discussing anti-Western strategy.  With the US mired in the presidential elections and Europe impotent the summer of 2020 could be the perfect opportunity for Beijing and Moscow to support each other by creating simultaneous crises in the Indo-Pacific and Europe.

What could happen, where and when?

If Russia acts it is unlikely to be through a direct force-on-force attack on NATO as it would be too dangerous.  Whilst Putin may hint at such an attack there will still be over 50,000 US personnel in Europe.  However, the chaos across much of Europe also makes it ripe for the exercise of complex Russian strategic coercion through the applied use of 5D warfare – deception, disinformation, disruption, destabilisation and implied and even actual destruction. As with all such past events the period immediately preceding such action might appear deceptively calm.

Where? Russia’s Western Military District stretches from Norway’s North Cape to Ukraine’s Donbass, where it abuts the Southern Military District and the Black Sea Region.  President Putin is increasing Russia’s military mass roughly halfway along that border so that it can exert pressure, possibly in support of non-military coercion to the north or south.  The nature of any Russian action would likely involve hybrid and cyber warfare attacks in all NATO and EU countries north and south of Ukraine and Belarus, possibly including military feints and deception.  However, any military focus would likely be on Ukraine, possibly with the objective of seizing the port of Mariupol (more likely), or launching a more ambitious incursion along the Donetsk, Mariupol, Melitopol, Odessa axis (less likely, but not impossible).  The invasion of Ukraine has cost Russia dear but it would be a mistake to believe such ‘cost’ would prevent further incursions.   

When could such an attack take place? In August 1914 Imperial Germany invaded Belgium at the start of World War One. In August 1939 Hitler and Stalin concluded the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact at the start of World War Two. In August 2008, President Putin used the distraction of the Beijing Olympic Games to invade Georgia.  So, August, when much of Europe has effectively gone to sleep for a month.

A dangerous trinity

In June 1914 few thought war in Europe was imminent. However, a dangerous trinity of opportunity, circumstance, military mobilisation, false assumptions and miscalculations rapidly led to catastrophe.  Something similar could be happening in Europe today. There is opportunity, dangerous circumstances, military mobilisation allied to de facto de-mobilisation and no doubt a whole raft of false and frankly quite desperate assumptions working their way down Kremlin corridors, as they have so often done in the past.

President Trump is also essentially right in his criticism of Europeans.  They do not do enough to defend themselves and the US is called upon too often to do too much with too many European leaders in denial of danger, Germans to the fore.  However, the decision to suddenly withdraw 9500 troops now is strategically cack-handed at best, and dangerously crass at worst.  President Trump might think he is being politically savvy, but it also suggests he is as strategically-illiterate as the European leaders he clearly despises. The only possible other explanation is that maybe President Trump has done a deal with President Putin. Is it a better deal than the one President Putin has with President Xi?

In 1963 British historian A.J.P. Taylor offered his “red button” theory of how World War One broke out. Taylor’s thesis was that given the nature of mass mobilisation and their reliance on railway timetables, once started they led irrevocably to war. There is much to be contested in Taylor’s thesis but European history is replete with moments when the momentarily powerful believed they would have no better opportunity, whilst the momentarily weaker seemed far weaker than they actually were. As Taylor said, “Human blunders do more to shape history than human wickedness”.  

The lesson of history? S++t happens!

 Julian Lindley-French