“Laws are silent in
times of war”
Cicero
Rome, Italy. 27 October. War is
unthinkable. Therefore, it must be thought about. I am back in the Eternal City
reading about Cicero and his ultimately fatal tryst with Caesar over the
age-old struggle between law and power. In a sense it is that struggle which is
the theme of my blog today. Tomorrow I address the NATO Defence College on the
future of NATO against the backdrop of two challenges to Western ideas of power
and law. ISIS seeks to impose extreme religious law on the world, whilst
President Putin simply wants power to trump law. My presence in Rome is
certainly timely as I have just returned from an outstanding conference
organised by Dr Robert Grant of Wilton Park on NATO and Russia. What was for me
fascinating and worrying in equal measure was the inability of many of the
‘dips’ and officials around the table to admit that Russia’s actions of late
have moved Europe closer to a major war than at any time since World War Two. Therefore,
as the Alliance prepares for the 2016 Warsaw Summit it should heed the fourth
century AD words of Roman philosopher Vegetius in De Re Militari, “Si vis pacem, para bellum.” (If you want peace,
prepare for war).
Now, don’t get me wrong. I am no
militarist. I am far too much the historian for that. Equally, I am very much a
political realist and thus all too aware that illiberal regimes thrive by
intimidating liberal regimes and people’s by the very implication of their
power irrationality.
At the Wilton Park conference
much was made of the new NATO “Russia Strategy”. The debate moved up and down,
back and forth but it did not address the real issue; the possibility of war. The
trouble was I could not ignore the ‘war’ word and intervened to suggest that if
Russia’s warlike preparations on NATO’s Eastern Flank look like a war-duck,
quack like a war-duck, and all-too-often violate air-space by flying like a
war-duck, maybe just maybe we should listen to the signals President Putin is
sending us and thus prepare for war. Naturally, my intervention was greeted like
a bad fart at a diplomatic reception; clearly apparent but best politely
ignored.
By ‘war’ I do not mean the Band-Aid,
pretend strategy NATO currently has on offer.
Reassurance Action Plans, Spearhead Forces et al are all very well and
good. However, they bear little relation to what is needed to properly
establish credible forward deterrence on NATO’s eastern flank. This sense of
playing at deterrence ran through the conference. Indeed, one has only to see
the gap between the rhetoric at the September 2014 Wales Summit about the need
to strengthen deterrence via increased defence spending (eventually) and
increased investment in defence equipment (occasionally), and today’s
unforgiving reality. Indeed, for a new report by Price Waterhouse Coopers
states that in the period 2014-2015 the only region in the world to actually reduce
its defence expenditure was Western Europe – hardly the hard signalling of
steely resolve.
Rather, conference seemed to
place the preservation of fragile unity before political and military
credibility. Naturally, much was made of
various ‘action’ plans to be discussed at the Summit but all fell far short of
the reformed full spectrum capability that NATO’s twenty-first century
collective defence will need if the Alliance is to meet the challenges posed by
Russia, ISIS, and by extension US over-stretch. It is as though the Alliance is
lost in a strategy vacuum, mouthing the right words but prevented from turning pious
words into proper policy, planning, and action.
The most pressing danger to NATO is
a lack of leadership at the top. Indeed, the fault lies not with those diplomats
and officials who valiantly try to eek some sense of strategic unity of effort
and purpose out of irresolution and weakness. As I indicated in my interview
last week with European Geostrategy
the fault lies with the political minnows who pass themselves off as our
leaders and for whom pulling the short-term political wool over the eyes of the
people is far more important than preparing for their sound defence.
In such a leadership vacuum no
diplomat or official, however skilled in the art of statecraft can fashion
credibility from craven strategic illiteracy. The hard reality is that Europe’s
political class from Chancellor Merkel down are simply unable or unwilling to
bring themselves to face hard reality. That is why Europe is so crap at crisis
management, any crisis, and why President Putin can get away with his power super-bluff.
What to do? The only way for NATO
(not the EU, OSCE or UN) to restore credible deterrence (the primary mission of
the Alliance) is to return to the principles of worst-case planning which informed
the Alliance at its founding back in 1949.
Indeed, it is the Alliance’s wilful retreat from the principles of
traditional defence planning that have reinforced the strategy vacuum that
President Putin is now exploiting.
When it
came my turn to present at Wilton Park I offered a sobering worst-case
scenario. It is 2020. The Russian economy has suffered repeated energy shocks
and the domestic position of President Putin has become vulnerable, possibly unsustainable. Suddenly a crisis erupts in East China Sea
involving key US allies and the US is forced to respond in force. After weeks of de-stabilisation, disinformation
and deception power and information networks suddenly crash in the Baltic
States, and across much of Eastern Europe.
Alarming reports begin to appear of ‘Little Green Men’ at Riga, Tallinn
and Vilnius airports. Military exercises underway in Kaliningrad and Belarus
intensify and expand and the Kremlin begins to talk of NATO aggression and
cites violations of Russian air, sea and land space, as well as attacks via
cyberspace.
Russian
forces begin to cross into the Baltic States to “restore peace and stability”
and to consolidate a “peace buffer” between Russia and an “aggressive NATO”. Russian nuclear forces – both strategic and
tactical – are placed on full alert. In a national TV address President Putin
tells the Russian people he is simply straightening Russia’s “strategic
defensive line”, acting to prevent the “oppression” of Russian minorities, and
removing a final “anomaly” that has threatened Russia ever since the end of the
Cold War.
Shortly
thereafter Putin rings President Clinton and German Chancellor Merkel (surprisingly
still in power) and tells her he had no alternative and does not seek a wider war
with the West. He apologises for the ten
American, five British and five French servicemen killed during Russia’s
advance. He also offers compensation to the families and his “sincere condolences”,
together with the immediate return of all those captured in what is now the
Occupation Zone. He also offers free gas supplies to several EU member-states
as a mark of his bona fides. At home flushed
by apparent ‘success’ President Putin nationalist credentials are now on a par
with Alexander Nevsky and Peter the Great.
In effect,
Putin’s fait accompli offers President Clinton and Chancellor Merkel the same
choice Britain and France faced in 1939 over Poland – space for time. In other
words, having been unable to defend the Baltic States Putin poses NATO leaders
a chilling question; does the rest of the Alliance really want to go to war
with nuclear Russia to free them? After all, US forces are too over-stretched
to respond in force in both Asia-Pacific and Europe (“the US cannot make 30,000 into 300,000”), and NATO
Europeans are too militarily-weak and politically-divided to act as effective
first responders. Surely, Putin implies, would it not be best for all concerned
to negotiate the best terms possible for the people of the Baltic States now
again under Russian rule?
If the Warsaw
Summit does nothing else it must re-consider how to properly establish credible
forward deterrence. That means a NATO that must think again about war, big war.
Allied Command Operations and Allied Command Transformation must be instructed to
do just that. For, as Thomas Hobbes once said, “Covenants without the sword are
but words”. After all, it is Russia who is doing the intimidating and
escalating, not NATO.
Quod, si
vis pacem, para bellum. Thus, if we want peace, we must prepare for war…or at
least be seen to be thinking properly about it.
Julian
Lindley-French
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