Masters of Hot Air?

February 28th, 2024  My favourite TV series is the brilliant Hanks/Spielberg 2001 "Band of Brothers".  It tells the story of Easy Company of the magnificent US Army 101st Airborne Division.  It is a very human story of ordinary Americans doing extraordinary things in war to defeat Nazism and liberate Western Europe between 1943 and 1944.  We Brits do not figure much in it, but then it is a story of brave, young Americans and fair enough.  Still, Tom Hanks does appear briefly as a British paratrooper. You can then imagine my disappointment watching the new Hanks/Spielberg "Masters of the Air".  It is still a story of brave, young and terrified Americans (even though many of the actors are strangely British) carrying out their duty in B-17 Flying Fortresses or Forts as they were known by their crews, and paying for it with their lives and liberty.  

Unlike "Band of Brothers" the new series is brash and too often inaccurate and treats their RAF allies with contempt.  They present the RAF as a bunch of arrogant aristocratic 'toffs'.  There were a few such in Bomber Command's aircrew, but the massive majority were ordinary Aussies, Brits, Canucks, Czechs, Kiwis, Poles and from a host of other nationalities and from a host of ordinary backgrounds. They were also all volunteers and they all paid a terrible price either with their lives or with their minds or both.  Many felt conflicted about the area bombing of German cities and people but this was Total War. If you asked my grandmother who was bombed out by the Nazis in Plymouth and Sheffield what see thought about the RAF striking back she would have echoed the words of Air Marshal Sir Arthur "Bomber" Harris:  "The Germans have sowed the wind, they will now reap the whirlwind".  

What saddens me about the latest Hanks/Spielberg World War Two epic is what it says about contemporary, angry America. An America that needs to tell itself that it is alone and that all of its friends and allies are useless and untrustworthy.  That is simply not the case.  The experience of my family in World War Two and my many American, German and other friends, is why I am a committed Atlanticist, why I am a committed European, why I am honoured to call Luftwaffe officers my friends, and why I will always defend freedom from those who threaten it -physically if called upon. 

So, as an antidote to "Masters of the Air" let me share with you another movie, "Lancaster".  It captures in thirteen minutes what  my forebear in the RAF went through and what "Masters" fails to capture in several hours Enjoy, as my American friends would say. 

https://youtu.be/sSXiny5mEpg 

Just for the record, the USAAF 8th Air Force lost 26,000 aircrew during the campaign, whilst RAF Bomber Command and the Royal Canadian Air Force lost 55,000 of 126,000 aircrew.  Whose counting?  I am, because I honour every single bloody one of them American, British and the rest. 

Julian Lindley-French

No Way Norway!

 

“Castles in the air – they are so easy to take refuge in. And so easy to build”.

Henrik Ibsen

February 10^th, 2024. Just back from the Norwegian Atlantic Committee’s superb annual Leangkollen Conference. The conference was great, the debate less so with a lack of urgency, realism, solidarity, but above all self-deceit permeated the debate.

First, it is ridiculous, almost morally repugnant, that Norway with its enormous sovereign wealth fund does not spend 2% GDP on defence.  At the conference Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store made all the right noises but…  One only must watch Putin’s interview with Tucker Carlson and the lecture he gave the world on fantasy Russian history to understand NATO must confront an increasingly unstable megalomaniac with Norway on the front line (look at a map).  about the growing Russian threat to Europe’s richest country with its enormous sovereign wealth fund.  And yet, Store said he ‘hoped’ Norway might spend 2% of GDP on defence by 2026 but that we all have domestic politics.  Yes, Prime Minister, we in Britain also have domestic politics and yet we spend 2% partly to defend you! Just for the record was it not Norwegian NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg who said 2% was the baseline not the goal of Allied defence expenditure.  Oslo expects America and Britain to play a crucial role in Norwegian defence and deterrence.  If Norway is not prepared to spend the minimum agreed on defence NOW why the Hell should we bother?  All rich Norway is doing is transferring the cost of Norway’s defence onto broke Britain.

Second, no more NATO defence pretence, please. Admiral Rob Bauer, the Dutch Chairman of the NATO Military Committee, made an excellent speech about the vital need for a close relationship between NATO defence, deterrence and enhanced societal resilience. There was also a joke doing the rounds of the Conference. The next NATO Secretary-General must be a woman from central or eastern Europe and from a country that spends 2% GDP on defence…so it will be Dutch Prime Minister Marc Rutte. Rutte would make an excellent NATO ‘Sec-Gen’ apart from the minor fact that whilst he has been Dutch Prime Minister, he has done very little to strengthen the Dutch armed forces.  The NATO Defence Planning Process is in danger of becoming one of the great works of European fiction because of countries like Norway and the Netherlands.

Third, we must face reality with at least some urgency. There was agreement at the conference over the need to strengthen deterrence because Russia is committed to confrontation so long as Putin lives, and Moscow is learning lessons from its failures in Ukraine.  There was also agreement that whilst Russia might take 3 to 5 years the Russians will reconstitute their forces, they now have the war economy to do it.  In other words, the Alliance has that time to really strengthen its eastern and northern flanks.  And yet, there was little or no sense of urgency in Oslo.  Worse, whilst the eastern Europeans, Finns and Swedes understand the need for strengthened deterrence, Western European powers including Norway do not really feel threatened by Russia or anyone else for that matter except perhaps, Donald J. Trump.

Fourth, just tell Ukrainians the truth. The debate on Ukraine went something like this: “We are all very concerned by what could happen in Ukraine in the spring, and we all want to Ukrainians to win and push all Russian forces out of their country.  However, we have either given Ukraine most of what we can give them or we do not want to, we cannot expand military production quickly, and in any case, we need to re-equip our own forces.  Oh, and by the way, we will probably not offer Ukraine NATO membership at the NATO 75 Washington Summit, or even the road to NATO membership.  But don’t worry, some of us will offer Ukraine bilateral security guarantees just like the ones we gave Poland before World War Two”. In other words, despite what Allies are saying in public whilst preserving the independence of what is left of Ukraine is sort of important (have a look at another map), as far as the rest of us are concerned Russia can have Crimea and Donbas.  

Deploy the Trolls!

Julian Lindley-French