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