“Plans are worthless, but planning is everything”
President Dwight D. Eisenhower,
National Defense Executive Reserve
Conference,
November 14, 1957
Trakai,
Lithuania. 16 January. Can NATO and EU
states plan effectively for 360 degrees of very different threats? It is with
grave concern that I must report that His Excellency Linas Linkevicius, the
Lithuanian Minister of Foreign Affairs, failed this year’s Snow Meeting. No
snow! Apart from that the organisation of this superb annual security
conference was as impeccable as ever. With
an over-arching theme of keeping the transatlantic bond strong European
security nestled comfortably within the Snow Meeting like a Lithuanian lake
amidst a forest of silver birch. Sadly, I come away from beautiful Trakai each
year with my concerns about European security heightened. Indeed, Europe’s ‘security’ is fast becoming like
a gigantic marshmallow; pierce the thin, crusty edge in places like Lithuania and
one discovers a thick gooey core or irresolution and uncertainty at Europe’s
heart.
Eisenhower’s
famous quote has often been misunderstood, and the original context forgotten, but
it is worth today quoting his 1957 speech in some length. “Some years ago, there was a group in the
staff college of which some of you may have heard, Leavenworth Staff College.
This was before our entry into World War One, and in that course it was
necessary to use a number of maps and the maps available to the course were of
the Alsace-Lorraine area and the Champagne in France. But a group of “young
Turks” came along and wanted to reform Leavenworth. They pointed out it was
perfectly silly for the American Army to be using such maps which could after
all be duplicated in other areas without too much cost – they would get some
maps where the American Army might just fight a battle. So they got, among
other things, maps of the area of Leavenworth and Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, and
in succeeding years all the problems have been worked out on those maps. The
point is, only about two years after that happened, we were fighting in
Alsace-Lorraine and in the Champagne”.
Eisenhower
went on to explain the distinction he rightly insisted upon between plans and planning.
“There is a very great distinction because when you are planning for an emergency
you must start with this one thing: the very definition of ‘emergency’ is that
it is unexpected, therefore it is not going to happen the way you expected”.
As part of
the Snow Meeting and as part of a delegation I had the chance to meet the
ever-impressive President of Lithuania, Her Excellency Dalia Grybauskaite. What
makes her impressive is the clear-sighted understanding she has of her country’s
security situation and what must be done about it. Russia must be deterred with strength so that
any irresistible itch President Putin needs to scratch does not at any point
involve the invasion of Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia.
The problem is
that Lithuania is not Europe’s only vulnerable state. My many trips to Rome
have also revealed an Italy far more in tune with the tragic and ongoing events
to its south and the massive migration flows such chaos is both triggering and
enabling. Rome is also far less concerned with Russia, for obvious reasons,
than Lithuania, even if Italy also takes its NATO responsibilities very
seriously at a time of extended economic duress. In such circumstances for Rome to establish
effective policies and strategies to cope with and manage what looks
increasingly like a structural shift in population movement requires a wholly
different set of tools than those needed to deter the Russian military.
It is this
essential tension which exists between defence of the ‘east’ and security of
the ‘south’ and which reinforces Eisenhower’s wise dictum. In spite of NATO’s sterling efforts to recast
its deterrence and defence posture to cope with such a wide array of challenges
there is simply not the resources available to provide a credible response to
both. This is important because Friendly-Clinch’s
First Law of Strategic Nonsense identifies an inverse, obverse, and not-so-little
obscene relationship in such circumstances between plans and planning. Indeed,
when planning cannot be properly resourced there is a profusion of plans which
may suggest NATO be renamed the North Atlantic Summit Organisation and
Declaration-Writing Organisation.
In Europe
today there are a mass of plans to deal with every conceivable threat Europe
could possibly face. However, in the absence of the sound, considered, co-ordinated
and efficient application of necessarily immense resources precious little proper
planning will take place. ‘Planning’ requires planners to think big and build
redundancy into their plans, precisely because as one of the Moltke’s pointed
out, all plans collapse on contact with the enemy. Such planning also requires political
leaders to think equally ‘big’ and devote the necessary resources to ensure
such planning is sound. Indeed, it is
the ACT of planning which is the central tenet of credible deterrence.
NATO places
much faith in its ‘360 Degree Approach’ to security and defence. In fact NATO has three dangerously separate
120 degree approaches that in effect compete with each other – a growing threat
to the north, a profound threat to the east, and a complex and long-term threat
to the south. The purpose of planning is ease that tension and craft a credible
response to all three. To that end, sound planning would suggests that NATO in
partnership with the EU moves to actively support Europe’s three sets of
frontline states – Finland, Norway and Sweden to the north, the Baltic States
to the East, and Italy, Spain et al to the South. To some extent that is
precisely what is being planned for. Or, rather, that is what a lot of key Western
European states say that that are planning for. However, the gap between what
those states say they would do in an ‘emergency’, and what they are capable of
doing, grows wider by the day.
“There are
always the Yanks”, I hear you proclaim. Hold on a minute. The US faces
challenges the world over. NATO plan can
only be credible if Europeans are planning at the very least to be credible
first responder to major emergencies in and Europe. Which brings me back to my giant
marshmallow, which I shall call ‘Kurt’. Lithuania
has increased its defence spending to meet the 2014 NATO Wales Summit defence
investment pledge of 2% GDP on defence. Italy is engaged deeply in trying to
ameliorate the situation of and situation with irregular migrants transiting
North Africa. And yet, too many powerful Western European states talk a lot
(President Macron!!!) but in fact reveal little evidence of any real planning
or the commensurate investment that would be needed to cope with an emergency
that looks ever more likely. Indeed, President Macron looks to me ever more
like Tony Blair from 1997 to 1999 – a man with ambitions far greater than the
country he leads.
States like
Britain, France and Germany are the gooey mess at the heart of European security
and defence but which in an emergency would need to act as a critical strategic
reserve for the front-line states. And
yet, for all their political ‘plans’ there is no real evidence that they are
undertaking anything what might be termed proper strategic planning. They just
talk a lot…and send a few troops to Lithuania.
Plans are
worthless, but planning is everything.
Speaking of which can we have some snow next year please, Mr Minister?
Julian
Lindley-French
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