President Biden and the US-German Special Relationship

 “In the long run, the United States can only maintain its role as a global power through close cooperation with a stable, democratic, prosperous Europe capable of acting collectively. Similarly, Europe can only maintain and strengthen its collective ability when working with a transatlantic partner in place. Hence, devotion to European integration and transatlantic engagement will continue to be two sides of the same coin”.

 “More Ambition, Please! Towards a New Agreement between Germany and the United States.” https://www.gmfus.org/publications/more-ambition-please-toward-new-agreement-between-germany-and-united-states

 Hard multilateralism

January 28^th, 2021.  A new German Marshall Fund report is out that shines a light on the future of the transatlantic relationship and the coming Biden Doctrine of hard or assertive multilateralism. Full of Hanoverian and Hanseatic common sense More Ambition, Please! Towards a New Agreement between Germany and the United States calls for a revitalised US-German strategic partnership (during the Cold War the US-German relationship was always vital). Whilst German/European (I am never quite sure of the German distinction) ‘ambition’ is the headline of the report it is really about the re-forging of transatlantic cohesion in the wake of the Trump administration and in a changed post-pandemic world. At the core of the report is a very serious call by very senior Germans for Germany to do far more in defence of Europe, to become a more reliable partner of the United States, and to think and act strategically rather than ‘mercantilistically’.  The central message is that given the many challenges faced by both North Americans and Europeans across a spectrum of threats from Russia, China, Iran and terrorism such challenges can only be successfully faced together. 

Ironically, by offering a roadmap for Germany to do more in a revitalised transatlantic relationship the authors also highlight the vital importance to the US of militarily-capable European allies and the urgent need for Washington to again invest in multilateralism.  Germany rightly wants the Biden administration to see international institutions much as Germans do; as far more than necessary constraints on lesser powers who do not live in America’s shining city on the hill.  The report thus implies the need for both Americans and Europeans to converge on a new policy of hard, assertive multilateralism in which adherence to the norms and values of international regimes is also guaranteed by a sufficiency of hard military democratic power. The aim?  To put a firm brake on Chinese and Russian efforts to establish Machtpolitik as their preferred method for the conduct of twenty-first century international affairs.  

The strength of this report is that it rises above German parochialism to offer strategic perspective infused with ambition by establishing fundamental strategic realities Berlin must now grip. First, Germany must be at the fore in engaging together the coming strategic challenge of China which is still only in its infancy.  Second, Germany must help lead Europe’s collective defence effort to enable it to become far more efficient and effective in the post-pandemic economy to assure Allied defence and deterrence.  Third, during an emergency in which the US is engaged world-wide Europeans, with Germans to the fore, must assure their own defence. Indeed, as the report rightly states, whilst the US affords Europeans defence ‘reinsurance’, the insurance policy itself must be European.

NATO: the Atlanticsphere and the Eurosphere

NATO? It must be transformed, not merely adapted built around two re-modelled ‘plug and play’ pillars that transcend the increasingly diluted boundary between member and partner, EU and NATO – the Atlanticsphere and the Eurosphere. The Atlanticsphere would be organised around the US with Britain, Canada, Denmark, Iceland, Norway and Sweden, the creed of which would be intelligence-gathering and maritime security in the North Atlantic.  The Atlanticsphere would be linked closely linked to Five Eyes, the intelligence-sharing community that involves America, Britain, Canada and Australia (ABCA) plus New Zealand, and increasingly and interestingly, Japan.  The Atlanticsphere would be centred on two power-projection navies – the United States Navy and the Royal Navy (yesterday one of Britain’s new aircraft carriers HMS Queen Elizabeth became the fleet flagship).  Whilst focussed on operations in and around the North Atlantic, as its name suggests, it would also enjoy a strategic creed and culture that could enable it to operate far beyond. Britain?  In spite of current challenges London will increase its defence budget by some ten percent over the next four years with an increasingly powerful Royal Navy the main beneficiary. London’s message to Washington and other allies is thus clear: new US-EU, US-German strategic partnerships will be important but when it comes to another crisis crunch it will be good old Britain with its developing strategic raider force that will be the most able and capable.

Biden’s ambitions for Germany will thus depend on the extent to which the Eurosphere offers the US partnership beyond words and transatlantic piety. The report is thankfully practical on this crucial issue.  Whilst the Eurosphere would necessarily be built on the Franco-German strategic partnership it would also be re-fashioned to de-conflict EU and NATO security and defence efforts.  Critically, whilst the report calls for European defence integration it does so from the perspective of a deep collective effort rather than the Nirvana of a common defence.  The report thus reflects a necessary balance between the need for a stronger Germany and Berlin’s perpetual and rightful angst over German power and its potential to destabilise Europe. 

Biden internationalism versus German mercantilism

However, President Biden and his foreign and security policy team should be under no illusions about the challenge of building such a special relationship with contemporary Germany and hold Wandel durch Handel (change through trade) has over Berlin’s foreign and security policy. The true test will be Germany’s position on the Nordstream 2 gas pipeline, a project of such strategic implications that it could rapidly create a decoupling German-Russian mutual dependency. Indeed, in anticipation of a Biden push to impose more sanctions on Putin’s Russia Chancellor Merkel said recently, “We need to talk about whether we don’t have any more trade with Russia or what level of dependency is tolerable”. 

Armin Laschet, Chancellor Merkel’s chosen successor as leader of the CDU and possible future chancellor, emphasises the scale of the challenge.  Over recent years Laschet has revealed himself at best sceptical of both the US and the UK.  His public disparaging of criticism of Russia in the wake of the 2014 invasion of Crimea and the use of Novichok by the GRU in Salisbury in 2018, revealed a strongly pro-Russian position.  This may have something to do with there being some 1200 or so companies that trade with Russia in Laschet’s fiefdom of North-Rhine-Westphalia. Herr Laschet and his ilk might also suggest that Germany already has a special trading relationship with the US and needs little more. In that case, Germany also has a ‘special relationship’ with China. After all, every second VW that rolls off the production line is made in China.  Perhaps most worryingly, a November 2020 Pew poll revealed only one in ten Germans to have a positive view of the US. 

There is also an American flip side to all of this that Germans also need to better understand: with so much to do at home and with US forces stretched thin the world over the amount of political capital the Biden White House is willing to invest in a new US-German strategic partnership may be distinctly limited. In other words, like it or not Berlin could well soon have to pay the real price of leading Europe and make a choice between a French-led ‘autonomous’ European defence and a US-guaranteed European defence.  Clearly, for Berlin a return to pre-Trump transatlantic business as usual is really not an option.

The Biden Doctrine and European strategic responsibility

The hard truth the report reveals is that Wandel durch Handel is simply not enough anymore.  For the transatlantic security relationship to remain more than some latter day Potemkin village American soldiers must see properly equipped German forces of scale alongside them ready and willing to fight the hard yards of Europe’s future defence.  Berlin is right to reject the idea of strategic autonomy being peddled by Paris, which smacks too much of some latent Gaullist obsession with the American presence in Europe. Rather, Germans must match the hard multilateralism of the Biden administration by promoting complementary European strategic responsibility with Germany (and France) to the fore.

A US-German Special Relationship would in no way detract from the relationship that Britain, France or any other European power has with Washington, all of which are special in their own special ways.  Indeed, in spite of the usual coterie of detractors the Special Relationship between Britain and the US is secure in its uniqueness and will continue to be so. However, as the report states, the US and Germany now have a chance with a new Administration to create a strategic partnership built on the best of both strategic and political cultures. Carpe diem!

Biden and the US-German ‘special relationship’

There are some caveats Germans must recognise. First, attempts to bully Britain will fail. Britain remains a very important military power that will be critical to the future of the Alliance and the sharing of transatlantic burdens.  This is something many Europeans simply do not want to hear right now in the wake of Brexit.  Let me be clear; Brussels, Berlin and Paris cannot have their gateau and ‘mange’ it when it comes to Britain’s role in NATO.  If current EU efforts to make post-Brexit life as hard as possible for the British continues popular support for defending Europe will plummet and Britain will retreat further behind its nuclear shield. President Biden and his German allies need to realise that danger and bring Britain with them. The Atlanticsphere and the Eurosphere must complement each other, not become alternatives.  

Second, trust must be built by investing in legitimate power.  Indeed, the future of the transatlantic relationship will rest as it always has on power and trust.  There must be sufficient power to ensure the Alliance is credible in its core mission of defence and deterrence, and sufficient trust in each other to know that when the next inevitable crisis comes Americans and Europeans not only will stand together but can stand together with the necessary military and resilient civil capacity and capability to act together.    

Third, re-assert NATO’s true purpose by re-establishing a power strut at its core.  NATO’s duty is to stop a major war in and around Europe by proving the Alliance can fight one.  The Alliance has always been built around a core relationship to keep it aloft, a bit like the central wing strut on a plane. For the early part of its existence the Anglo-American relationship provided that strut because it was built on the experience of combined operations forged during World War Two.  Indeed, NATO emerged out of such experience. With France having excluded itself by the 1970s the Federal Republic of Germany provided much of the strut, at least on the European landmass.  Now, Germany is being again called upon but to act as a just such a strut of the Alliance. However, to do so Germans will have to confront something many would prefer not to – how to fight and win a war.

More ambition needs more action!

More Ambition, Please! Towards a New Agreement between Germany and the United States is an important German statement that would have been difficult for responsible Germans to write even a decade ago.  The rest of us? We will never forget your past, Germany. How could we, yesterday was Holocaust Memorial Day.  The Shoah will never be forgotten. However, most of us are also prepared to trust modern, liberal, democratic and responsible Germany with our future as long as Germany is prepared to trust itself. As L.P. Hartley wrote in 1953, “The past is a foreign country, they do things differently there”.

Julian Lindley-French 

Elephants and Swans: The Annual TAG Report

https://thealphengroup.home.blog/

Elephants and Swans

 The Annual TAG Report

 A Personal Review by Professor Dr Julian Lindley-French, Chair of The Alphen Group

8 January, 2021

Abstract:

This TAG Annual Report is my personal take on the Group’s activity in 2020 and my reflection on the outstanding analysis offered by its members over the past year. Perhaps the dominant theme in both our PREMIUM blogs and the virtual ZOOM conferences we held was the search for priorities in uncertainty and the urgent need to better understand the balance of risk faced by Americans, Canadians and Europeans. COVID-19 dominated news and lives in 2020 but the pandemic also accelerated systemic change with China possibly a clear ‘winner’ with all the profound strategic implications such a ‘victory’ would entail. However, China is not quite yet and enemy and some hope still possibly a partner. Given that the nature of the threat China poses, and indeed the opportunities it could afford COVID-19 ravaged economies remains unclear and it is that uncertainty over China that is doing as much to divide the West as any overt act of coercion by Beijing. What price are Europeans in particular willing to pay for partnership with China what price would the transatlantic relationship pay for it?  What of the West itself? During the final tumultuous months of the Trump administration some Europeans even seemed to be playing with the prospect of diminished Atlanticism with calls for European ‘strategic autonomy’ one moment offering to strengthen the transatlantic community, the next moment threatening to replace it. Implicit in all these debates was the search for a renewed sense of strategic purpose. This raised another question: will Germany ever be able to lead Europe?

2020 was also a year of expansion for the TAG and I had the honour to welcome to our fold Professor Yves Boyer (France), General (Retd) Sir James Everard (United Kingdom), Admiral (Retd) Giampaolo di Paola (Italy), Professor Zaneta Ozolina (Latvia), General (Retd) the Lord Richards of Hurstmonceux (United Kingdom), Professor Ste Rynning (Denmark), Paul Schulte (United Kingdom) and Colin Robertson (Canada) and Ambassador Alexander Vershbow (United States). It is great to have you all on board.

Swans and elephants

During one of our virtual ZOOM conferences one TAGGER suggested that, “The real threat to NATO and its cohesion are Black Elephants; risks that are widely acknowledged and familiar (the ‘elephant in the room’) - but ignored. When the elephant can no longer be ignored it is passed off as an unpredictable surprise (a ‘black swan’) by those who were slow to address it. NATO’s biggest Black Elephant is the reluctance of its member countries to spend on defence.”  I agree.  Black Elephants are indeed a major risk to the Euro-Atlantic community and the wider security and defence of Europe. However, it is black swans which could prove the most deadly.   

Judy Dempsey in her TAG blog “Multilateralism Buckles under Corona” spelt out the consequences of both elephants and swans. The post-1945 order was in bad shape, she said, even before the Coronavirus swept across the globe. “In the midst of the pandemic, it is barely surviving with few prospects of being revived”.  Holger Mey in his TAG blog “Dealing with Risks” offered an insight as to why. Those who were surprised by the outbreak and world-wide spread of COVID-19, Holger suggested, had either no understanding of biology or history or both.  Everything that happened was foreseeable and foreseen as well as predictable and, indeed, had been predicted. In April, another TAG v-Conference went further. “COVID-19 should have been predicted. The response to it will dominate the political and strategic agenda on both sides of Atlantic for the foreseeable future”.

It was striking the extent to which TAGGERS also believed that the pandemic has accelerated strategic trends already in play.  The TAG believes not only that strategic competition with China will increase in 2021 but that distracted Western policymakers will remain too reactive and too slow to respond. The Group was scathing in its assessment: “The West has naively connived in its own vulnerability and must now seek a more balanced relationship with China”. The sense was that lazy assumptions about the benefits of globalisation far from promoting mutually beneficial interdependence could lead to a distinctly unhealthy form of dependence on Xi’s Middle Kingdom. And, whilst “Globalisation will not end but rather slow down a process of re-regionalisation is also likely to ensue”. The TAG also called for “a full and dispassionate assessment of COVID-19 crisis management”. This is because the response and responsiveness of the machinery of government on both sides of the Atlantic appeared at times to be confused and sluggish.  Moreover, far from being a crisis of globalism, COVID 19 could well prove to be the first global crisis of twenty-first century nationalism”. Only a properly considered “functionalist response will counter nationalism”.

Strategy, action and leadership

The TAG also considered the crisis of leadership. Events in Washington in early January revealed the dangers to complex democracies of irresponsible leadership. The problem in Europe leans more towards the risks of irresolute leadership. In many respects Germany epitomises and exemplifies the difficulties Europeans have not only in dealing with and confronting risk and establishing and implementing the necessary strategies for prevention and effective response and management. These dilemmas beg a further and seemingly interminable European question the answer to which the wider world is unlikely to await: who leads?

Anna Wieslander of the Atlantic Council in Stockholm suggested Germany should lead the way towards a truly European Pillar in NATO. Anna called the “European pillar” an old idea whose time has come. Indeed, rather than pursue yet more confusing debates on “strategic autonomy”, a “European Army” and/or an eventual “European Defense Union”, all of which not only make little sense to many but positively repel others (post-Brexit Britain?), the 21 states that are both members of NATO and the EU should focus on defining, developing and strengthening the European pillar of NATO. Is Sweden finally abandoning non-alignment? It should. It is not.  Why Germany? “The responsibility falls on Germany, who is well suited as the traditional unifier in the EU and with a defense which is mostly integrated into NATO”. If only Germans shared Anna’s vision and confidence.

German TAGGER Alexandra Schwarzkopf by and large agreed with Anna but had no illusions about the domestic political challenges any strengthened German leadership role would need to overcome. In her TAG blog “Making Security a “Kitchen Table Topic” in Germany” Alex was clear: “Seventy-five years after the end of World War Two, Germany is a major economic and democratic power. I think it is time for us to assume more responsibility worldwide.  And especially given our past, we should vigorously contribute to the defense of our allies and the democratic world order to which post-War Germany owes so much”. However, “To do this we need a societal debate – a kind of citizens’ forums - about German foreign and security policy as part of a broader debate about its strategic role in the world of the 21st century. The most populous and biggest economic power in the EU cannot be a bigger version of Switzerland. Germany’s “strategic beauty sleep” must end”. Most TAGGERS would echo such sentiment but I am reminded of a piece I published many years ago in The International Herald Tribune in which I suggested that for many years Germany’s friends and allies had used World War Two to impose modesty on Berlin, too often Berlin now uses World War Two to imposed excessive modesty on itself. Europe and the wider transatlantic relationship needs modern, democratic, decent Germany to lead alongside a United States that needs more capable allies more urgently by the day.  Let me be clear: neither Europe nor Germany can any longer pretend to be elephants or swans. This world does not permit bystanders to history as this coming decade will make all too clear.  

Risk, change and strategy

The effective management of risk pre-supposes not only a firm grip of such risk and the policy priorities which flow thereafter, but sufficient public support for the costs and constraints that flow thereafter. Public diplomacy and strategic communications (they are not the same things) but the reputation of democratic government for competence is being sorely tested by the use of fake news. Canadian TAGGER Colin Robertson highlighted the extent to which black swans and black elephants feed on fake news (flying elephants?) to sow confusion and discord. Colin was clear: “Disinformation is a clear and present danger to liberty and representative government. Technology, especially artificial intelligence, have amplified its threat.  The liberal democracies need to get their acts together. This means investing in science, restoring civics to the curriculum, teaching critical thinking, relentlessly exposing and penalizing the sources of disinformation. Having failed the test of self-regulation, social media must be held accountable through government regulations and enforcement. Governments need to be more forthcoming with the public. Transparency is the best disinfectant for disinformation”.

Liberty, security, free speech and freedom. Just what is the balance between rights and responsibilities in the twenty-first century? Does ‘freedom’ mean the right to implicitly endanger others through irresponsibility? Who decides? Who or what is the new Leviathan and how much freedom must the individual surrender to avoid anarchy? What about the autocracies who foster such anarchy for their own ends in a world in which ‘warfare’ now seems a permanent feature across the mosaic of information and digital warfare in which neat ideas of identity and sovereignty seem increasingly quaint.  

Power, structure and crystal balls

Such profound change has, of course, equally profound consequences for order and structure. An enduring TAG theme throughout 2020 was the impact of such change on institutions and their respective members.  This was most apparent in the debate over the crises of ends, ways and means with which the EU, NATO and their respective nations are grappling.  It is a crisis that was evident in the two formal submissions of evidence the TAG was called upon to offer. 

The TAG submission to the NATO Reflection Group did not pull its punches about the need for a new NATO Strategic Concept and for Europeans to do far more for their own security and defence. As the submission stated: “NATO is ultimately a European institution for the benefit of Europeans. The NATO Reflection Group can do the Alliance a great service if, like Harmel, it confronts NATO’s hard realities. If not, it is simply another exercise in political self-deception in which political cohesion is given more importance than credible defence and deterrence.  The hardest of those realities is thus: for the transatlantic relationship to continue to function, and NATO with it, Europeans will need to do far more for their own defence, and become better able to support the Americans when they so choose.  Given the investments such an outcome will entail European leaders will also need to better protect and inform their people and make both them and the critical systems that support them far more resilient in the face of Russian coercion and terrorism”.

Such firmness and clarity over strategy was also apparent in the TAG submission to the UK Integrated Review. In spite of budgetary pressures from Brexit and COVID-19 Britain, the TAG stated, must maintain its highly-skilled, high-end armed forces and seek to reinforce the security and defence of Northern Europe, the Arctic and the Eastern Atlantic. The TAG called on IR 2020 to strike a better balance between cost and threat and afford a vision of Britain’s future role in Europe’s defence out to 2030. The reason for such a call was simple because in in the months preceding the December 2020 EU-UK trade deal the world’s fifth largest economy and defence spender appeared to steadily retreating from the defence of Europe. Thankfully, in November 2020 Prime Minister Johnson also announced a 10% increase in the British defence budget which added fuel to the TAG’s call for more innovative thinking about what sound security and defence should look like in 2021 and where best to invest. As the TAG stated, “The pooling of several departmental budgets could promote greater efficiency and effectiveness in pursuit of National Strategic Objectives, but only if the ends, ways and means crisis from which UK Armed Forces (UKAF) suffer is also addressed”.

TAGGER Paul Cornish took up the theme of strategy in his TAG blog, “Tanks for the Memory”. As Paul rightly said, “The fate of the MBT [main battle tank], and any other military capability, should be decided neither by quasi-historical projections, nor techno-fetishism, nor cost – but by strategy. Strategy is an attempt to engage with a future that is not merely uncertain, but fundamentally unknowable. But it must nevertheless be engaged with – decisions must be made in the present for the strategic posture of the future. It’s at this point that cash-conscious governments like to tell themselves (and the rest of us) that perhaps the future is less unknowable than is supposed, that they have the singular skill of peering into the future and finding, when they do, that the future is, uncannily, not too worrying and can, most conveniently, be managed on an even more limited budget or with some technological ‘fix’. Fine – but I’d prefer a MBT to a crystal ball any day”.

Resilience and the unintended unexpected

Naturally, one does not craft strategy in a vacuum and others make strategy too – that is the essence of strategic competition. Moreover, the consequences of such competition are not always linear as it generates both the intended and the unintended. The capacity to cope with the unintended and the unexpected is the sine qua non flip side of strategy. Indeed, strategy without resilience is simply oxymoronic, with the emphasis on moronic. 

Talking of the unexpected TAGGER Kate Hansen Bundt in her blog “Biden and the High North” highlighted the growing importance of China as an Arctic power. She called on President-elect Joe Biden and his team not to take their eye off the Arctic ball (should that not read ‘puck). China. Kate said, is not just challenging the US in the Deep South (of the world) and the Far East, but also in the High North.  She cited the increased threat posed by China’s icebreakers and Russia’s nuclear submarines in Norwegian waters, some seven times larger than Norway’s territory. Implicit in Kate’s warning was another tendency apparent in Europe’s response to geopolitics: the tendency towards denial, particularly for those smaller European powers which lack what some call a ‘strategic culture’.  For this reason Kate also reminded us all of the importance of multilateralism to small Nordic powers, such as her native Norway. To my mind, such multilateralism is the very DNA of Europe’s strategic culture. However, that begs a further question: why does the pooling of European sovereignty seemingly and routinely lose Europeans influence over events?  Deus ex Machina or the nature of the ‘Machina’ itself?

The unexpected also has geopolitical consequences. That was the essential message from a TAG debate on the geopolitical and defence-strategic implications of the 2020 war in Nagorno-Karabakh. In 2021 there would appear to be no small countries in faraway places about which we can afford to know nothing a la Neville. This brief but brutal European between Armenia and Azerbaijan war saw identity, religion, nationalism, geopolitics and military technology combine with Machtpolitik and Realpolitik. It also suggested a future in which the West no longer makes the rules whilst others routinely flout the ‘rules’ that so exist.  The war also challenged the hitherto neat policy and strategy prescriptions with which Western policymakers have become so comfortable. Wars amongst the people and wars between peoples suggest the escalation from one to the other could become far faster than expected, or indeed, intended.

The war should also remind Europeans if Crimea had not already that strategy is about far more than words on paper. It is about power, cause and effect. As such strategy calls for indicators that can properly warn us of threat, understanding of the nature of threat, and far quicker responsiveness, both political and military, to deal with threat. Above all, it demands the proportionate means of power and capability in sufficient capacity to enable the means and the ways to maintain the peace as a legitimate end, and if needs be restore it. Power means risk. That begs a further question of Europeans we enter 2021: can we compete if we are not also willing to take considered risk? 

The Chinese elephant and the American swan?

China was ever-present in TAG debates during 2020.  In many respects the fault-lines in the TAG over China reflect those within the wider West. Some TAGGERS believe the West should seek what one called “managed reciprocity via robust engagement with China”, whilst others were committed to active more containment and overt strategic competition.  I was not at all sure any of us have a clue what to do with China and its power.  TAGGERS, like so many others in the West, are simply unsure what to do about or with the Chinese elephant.  Can it be tamed or is it set to rampage through the china shop that is Europe (I like a good mixed metaphor)? Or will China simply buy the shop and the contents therein?

For that reason, renewed and reinvigorated American leadership will remain vital given that the “mother of all challenges” will remain geopolitics. TAGGERS hope that under President Biden the transatlantic relationship will become more predictable, more of a partnership again and thus better able to exert “shaping power” on the world beyond.  However, business as before in the transatlantic relationship is not an option for Americans, Canadians or Europeans.  Moreover, COVID-19 will continue to emphasise matters domestic with the available political bandwidth for foreign and security policy likely to be decidedly limited, not least in the US. And yes, whilst the Biden administration could well be more “decent” and better aligned with European values and the ideology of multilateralism than the quixotic Trump administration, Washington will still demand Europeans do far more for their own defence. It simply has no choice. China’s rise is stretching US forces and resources thin the world over and as events of late have simply confirmed America’s many internal divisions will be Washington’s main preoccupation. Therefore, like European mariners of old maybe it really is time for Europe to finally set a strategic course with a new Strategic Compass for a new strategic future. Just a word of warning: words do not float.

Talking of words, perhaps the final one should go to TAGGER Stan Sloan. In his TAG blog “(Some Worrying) Transatlantic Security Options” Stan suggested, or rather implied, an implicit choice was afoot between substantial continuity, positive radical change and negative radical change.  My bet is that all three will happen. Still, Stan reminded me of what was said of the French fashion designer Pierre Cardin, who died in 2020. Cardin, it was said, was always one step ahead of tomorrow. The danger is that Europe in particular is not one but two steps behind tomorrow. The task of The Alphen Group is thus to show how all of us can quicken our strategic pace. We will need to! The first step? As one TAGGER memorably put it, “The European pillow must become the European pillar”. Amen to that!

Julian Lindley-French,

TAG Chair,

January 2021