Little Europe

 A Summer Thought Piece

By

Julian Lindley-French

“And tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”

Ulysses, Alfred Lord Tennyson

That which we are

In May 1945, Aneurin Bevan, a British politician, lamented, “This Island is made mainly of coal and surrounded by fish. Only an organizing genius could produce a shortage of coal and fish at the same time”.  In 2022, Britain faces a drought, an energy crisis and the price of fish is astronomical. Britain is not alone. Germany is facing an energy crisis entirely of its own making, whilst France faces extreme drought and an energy crisis due to faults in its ageing fleet of nuclear power stations. The deeply-ingrained cause of their respective crises is not simply the unexpected and appalling cost of the pandemic. It is a systems failure at the top of government caused by an inability/refusal to think strategically, plan structurally, and act collectively.  For many years strategic foresight has been abandoned for political expediency which is now catching up with a Europe wholly ill-prepared for the crises with which it must contend.  COVID and war revealed just how ‘little’ Europe has become and the extent to which some Europeans are undermining the West.   

Ends, ways and means. Europe’s defence is the biggest victim, in spite of the laudable ambitions in the 2022 NATO Strategic Concept. The closer one gets to the Russian border the stronger the commitment to deterrence, defence and resilience; the further one moves away from the Russian border the weaker the commitment.  Britain, France and Germany remain leading global economic and global powers. Together they represent 65% of all European defence investment and over 80% of defence research and development.  Rather, all three seem to have retreated from power realism into power pretence with all of them facing profound constraints over the use of power, as much cultural and political as actual.  It is this gap between power and realism that is the weakness Putin perceived prior to his invasion of Ukraine.  The habit of making grand pronouncements that are never fulfilled.  In the dog-eat-dog world the likes of Putin and Xi are forging such power pretence is proving lethal with ruling elites in Berlin, London and Paris too often happy to play at power, but unable to make the tough choices power demands beyond them.  The appearance of virtue has become the leitmotif of a false ‘strength’, rather than the considered practice of power thus helping to destroy the very rules-based order they claim to champion.

The European nation-state is still the epicentre of European power, but many Western European nation-states are now ‘led’ by people ‘made weak by time and fate’, and sadly weak in will. Some seem no longer to believe in the very states they lead, just at the moment Putin and Xi have reasserted hard power as the hard currency of hard power in the twenty-first century.

Heroic hearts?

Western European leaders also refuse to face down those would destroy the nation-state from within, be they separatists or fantasists, from the woeful to the woke, or those who wrongly see the European nation-state as an anachronism.  Those who believe ‘Europe’ can only be a power in the world if its nation-states are subjugated to an EU that has proven itself to be anything but greater than the sum of its parts.  Western Europe’s profound divisions are made worse by an ideological war over where ‘power’ should reside in Europe. Many of the EU’s technocrats and Eurocrats see nation-state as an incumbrancer on the power of their ‘Europe’. Those who have the freedom to despise their respective nation-states as the font of all ‘imperial’ evil in the world, driven by a corrupted knowledge of history and the dangerously mistake belief that their own ‘states’ are at best on the wrong side of history, or at worst the ‘real’ enemy.  Some even see any enemy of their enemy as an implicit friend, however dangerous.  This implicit coalition between the bad, the sad and the mad is rendering Western Europe incapable in the face of the threats and challenges that could very quickly become existential.

The French are subject to a coquettish president with the ambitions of Napoleon, but the power of Louis Napoleon.  Britain’s political class long ago abandoned sound strategic judgement in the favour of short-term self-interested politics, whilst much of the governing Establishment is locked into a false narrative of decline that appears to implicitly accept the future demise of the United Kingdom. The Germans are still lost in a strategic desert of their own making even as the zollverein they created around them begins to dissolve. Zeitenwende?  Of all the Europeans Scholz has the real resources to exert Great Power, but lacks the vision or the leadership skills to realise it. He also leads a political party, the SPD, in which many claim there is a moral equivalency between China, Russia and the United States.  Power brings with it responsibility to others but for all the Euro-rhetoric Germany lacks the essential solidarity with other Europeans that would be needed if the European Project is ever to be more than empty words. There is one other ‘European’ power, the United States.  Indeed, it is the growing crisis in American power and influence world-wide that is casting a harsh light on Europe’s power pretence. Sadly, the Americans are too internally-distracted and externally-stretched to offset the incompetent retreat from power, will and strategy of their major Allies.

A newer world?

Without Western Europe states that are strategically intelligent and politically cohesive it will be impossible for the US to generate the geopolitical weight to generate the challenges the West must facing the world over. Trapped in a geopolitical wasteland between power and virtue Western Europe’s leaders seem too interested in scoring petty points off each other than competing in the geopolitical arena.  It is precisely just such a competition which is now underway. Words are not enough and deeds, even dirty deeds, will be needed for democracies to prevail and Europeans to remain free in the Great Game of the twenty-first century. Unless the Great Powers of Western Europe can re-discover power, will and strategy American security policy could one day fail and with it the very ideas of health, happiness and the pursuit of prosperity that is the idea that IS the West. 

Therefore, it is up to the leaders of Britain, France and Germany if Europe is to be secure, if the necessarily new transatlantic relationship is to be made to work, and if the wider democracies are to see off the systemic challenge of the power autocracies. America cannot do it alone, whilst much of Europe cannot do it at all. To do that they must first overcome their own ‘wiki-worlds’ in which power and ‘reality’ is whatever they pretend it is. Britain and France might have global interests, but they are not global powers.  They are first and foremost European Great Powers and very capable ones at that if they so choose. Britain might have left the EU, but Europe is where Britain is. France is not Europe and Macron is not Charlemagne. Germany? Power is not how many VWs are sold world-wide.  It is German mercantilism and the dependence on Russian energy upon which it relied that helped create the current crisis and the opportunity for Putin’s disastrous adventurism in Ukraine.

Test of leadership?

Western Europe, with its three ‘Great’ powers to the fore, is the transmission between the US and the Alliance.  Only such leadership from Europe’s ‘Big Three’ will enable the US to both contain Russia AND deal with a blockade of Taiwan by China. The Poles and others in central and eastern Europe (with one very Hungarian exception) will do what they can but unless Britain, France and Germany stand together the ‘West’ will break.  Specifically, they must lead the re-armament of Ukraine over the coming winter pause and strengthen sanctions.  Keeping Kyiv in the fight and imposing tough sanctions on Moscow is the best way to put pressure on Moscow to negotiate a just peace in Ukraine. 

Europe’s future defence? As I write this summer thought-piece I am finishing off another book on NATO and its place in the world.  NATO is Europe’s US-enabled platform for geopolitical influence, but only if the European Allies match words with deeds.  The EU has a vital role to play helping to make Europeans more resilient in the face of the repeated shocks which is really the new normal.  However, the EU is the very antithesis of sound geopolitics, like turning up to a gunfight with a lawyer.  Only Britain, France and Germany can together transform NATO into the sword and shield of Europe’s future defence, do so at a cost Americans can bear, and force Russians and even the Chinese to begin to respect Europe as a power. Realising that lost respect will take one word – leadership. For the sake of Europe, the West and the wider free world European leadership starts in Berlin, London and Paris. The alternative? More of the same beggar thy neighbour policies in which all Europeans (and Americans) lose.  Europe must once and for all grip the big picture and plan for the future!

 “Come, my friends, 'T is not too late to seek a newer world. Push off, and sitting well in order smite The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths.Of all the western stars, until I die”.

 Julian Lindley-French