The Future Defence, Deterrence and Resilience Conference

In October, I had the honour of directing the Future Defence, Deterrence and Resilience Conference at Wilton Park in the UK. Under the leadership of General Lord Richards seventy leading practitioners and experts considered the vital relationship between people protection and defence-vital power projection.  My full conference report Cn be downloaded at https://thealphengroup.com/

Key Takeaway

The core contention of this conference was validated: that the capacity to project legitimate coercive power is central to credible defence and deterrence but that such power can only be credible if Allied and Partner societies are demonstrably secure to friends and foes alike.  The key to effective resilience and thus credible defence and deterrence is shared, well-designed, and responsive architecture built on a range of critical partnerships. These partnerships must be deeper and more planned than hitherto between NATO and the EU, between member-states and partners, but above all, between governments and civil society. There is much to relearn from civil defence during the Cold War.  

Introduction

The Future Defence, Deterrence and Resilience Conference was the third in a trilogy of policy-focussed future war/defence conferences. The 2022 Future War and Deterrence Conference considered defence strategy going forward in an uncertain and strategically competitive world for the Alliance and Partners. The 2023 Future War, Strategy and Technology Conference examined the impact of Emerging and Disruptive Technologies (EDT) on Allied and Partner defence strategy. The Future Defence, Deterrence and Resilience Conference focuses on the balance to be struck between people protection and power projection, civil defence and military defence in the face of the hybrid war in which autocratic powers are already engaged against open, democratic societies.  As such, the Conference explored the civil military partnerships that will be vital to affecting such resilience.

All three conferences revealed the urgent need for choices to be made by the governments of free nations if a balance is to be struck between capability, capacity, resilience and affordability to meet the challenge going forward of preserving a just peace and the Western way of life. Credible deterrence rests as much on convincing an adversary that society and governance is sufficiently secure to resist all forms of aggression, of which the fielding of adequate and legitimate military power is a vital albeit one part. Hybrid or ‘grey zone’ war comes in many forms, but it essentially seeks to disrupt, destabilise and disinform, possibly as a prelude to decapitation and destruction of a state. The threat must thus be seen as precisely that.

Systemic hybrid war by a peer competitor would also involve a sustained and systematic campaign to denude and degrade a state’s communications and energy nodes and infrastructure, as well as systems vital to the critical functioning of the state, continuity of government and governance, and the resilience and robustness needed to minimise the impact of attacks. Effective resilience demands effective consequence management, strong cyber defences (and offensive capability), civilian structures vital to the maintenance of the military effort and military mobility, and prevention of applied disinformation and propaganda on social media.

Core Messages

Too many democracies have been asleep at the wheel in the face of oncoming threats to freedom and the systems that underpin it. Governments have chosen to see such threats as “wicked political problems” too challenging and complicated to deal with, even if the consequences of their inaction are dangerous, even potentially catastrophic. Adversaries such as China and Russia have used a series of crises – 9/11, the 2008-2010 banking and financial crisis, the refugee and immigration crisis, Brexit, and COVID 19, to exacerbate divisions within open societies and thus weaken governance. They have also sought to dominate the digital domain and turn it from an enabler of communications into a weapon of misinformation.

There were several key themes that emerged during the course of the conference, focused on the need:

·         to share resilience best practice between Allies and partners;

·      for greater transparency between government, industry and citizens about the scope and scale of threats across the hybrid, cyber and kinetic war spectrum;

·         to forge a much deeper partnership between the state and citizens;

·         to build redundancy into critical national infrastructures allied to increased resilience;

·         to involve the defence, technological and industrial bases and a wider supply chain in thinking, planning and action about resilience at an early stage;

·         for a genuine EU-NATO strategic partnership across the defence, deterrence and resilience posture; and

·         for whole of government approaches that underpin whole of society responses to ensure effective consequence management.

Above all, there was broad agreement that a very real threat is posed to democratic societies and their capacity to deter adversaries and defend themselves if current attempts by autocratic states to undermine resilience succeed. Above all, there is a pressing need for all Allies and partners to know the State of Resilience in their respective countries by undertaking national audits based on a shared NATO and EU methodology.

Deterrence is only credible in the minds of an adversary if they are convinced that under no circumstances will they achieve expansionist and adventurist goals through coercion, be it real or virtual. Traditionally, deterrence has been built upon the credibly demonstrable capacity to project military power. In the 21st century power projection demands clear evidence of people protection, meaning that open societies have the political and social resilience to withstand ‘All Threats Warfare”. Over the past thirty years Western societies have become ever more complex and diverse as well as ever more open. Given that such openness is the very quality the West sees as essential to its ‘way of life’ defending it is unlikely to succeed unless there is also a new form of adaptive deterrence built upon resilience. That is why people protection is as important as power projection. Resilience means not simply the capacity to resist imposed shocks but to recover rapidly from them governmentally, societally and economically, allied to an indisputable capability to impose unacceptable shocks on adversaries and their societies and thus directly threaten the ability of autocrats to remain in power. Therefore, the free West not only needs to get sharper, but it also needs to get harder.    

Julian Lindley-French and David Richards

Riga Test 2024: Mean What we Say, Do What We Say!

 “That’s why I argue that the defence of the UK starts in Ukraine. It’s why I argue that Estonia and the border with Russia is our front line, not just theirs. That’s the first task. It’s one of statesmanship. It’s one of diplomacy. It’s one of recognising the power of deterrence, and we haven’t in the past.”

UK Secretary of State for Defence, Rt Honourable John Healey MP, November 2024

November 12. This is a tale of three cities – it was the best of times; it was the worst of times and all that. This past month I have been in two beautiful and historic cities of Riga and London whilst in Washington they await the arrival of Caesar Donald J. Trump who has just crossed the Rubicon and will soon cross the Potomac (he is coming the long way round from New York).

My purpose in Riga was to attend the superb Riga Conference which I have had the honour of attending since its inauguration. Every year I set the Riga Test which can be thus summarised: can the good people of Riga rest easier in their beds this year compared to last. The answer is marginally yes, but only because Russia is screwing up its rape of Ukraine more than the Western European allies are screwing up NATO’s defence and deterrence…and only for now.

Russia will be back red in tooth and claw. First, because President Putin is lost in some myth about Mother Russia’s ‘great’ imperial past and the past slaying of Western enemies, both real and very much imagined. Second, because he has got it in his head that Russki Mir was born in Kyiv and for that reason Ukraine must never be allowed to choose its own destiny. Third, because China is all too happy to impoverish Russia to stretch the American forces thin the world over and use Putin as a useful idiot to that end. Fourth, Donald J. Trump will not be stretched partly because he really does not care about anything that gets in the way of America First.

My second port of call was London. Both Riga and London are/were ports. My purpose in London was threefold. First, to promote my new book The Retreat from Strategy, which is still brilliant and very reasonably priced on Amazon and in all good bookstores. Second, to give my annual rendition of Henry V’s Band of Brothers speech to my own band of brothers (and sisters) at the Cavalry and Guards Club for which I am brilliant and very reasonably priced. We few, we happy few and all that.

It is true that the Russians are mired in a disastrously and incompetently Russian meatgrinder of a war in Ukraine and for that reason the immediate military threat to the Baltic States is perhaps less than it was prior to February 2022. However, contemporary warfare reaches across the hybrid, cyber, conventional, and nuclear domains and Moscow sees itself as already engaged in a war with the West across several domains.

At the Cavalry and Guards Club I had a delightful dinner with Lord George Robertson, who is one of my political heroes not least because he is to Scotland what I am to Sheffield. I am not going to reveal the contents of that discussion albeit to say I came away encouraged. Robertson is leading the new British Government’s defence review which is due for completion early in 2025. The fact he is leading it convinces me the review will be a properly strategic NATO-First review in marked contrast to the political PR London has published for the past twenty or so years. For too long strategically illiterate Treasury economists have demanded London only recognise as much threat as they think Britain can afford and refused to consider the economic and human consequences of a war in Europe, they have helped cause by forcing Britain to punch beneath its weight in NATO and Europe’s defence.

Which brings me to Washington. My Ukrainian friends are becoming increasingly cynical about the ‘whatever it takes’ rhetoric coming out of London when it is clear that London has neither the intention to define just what the ‘what’ is, the means nor the risk-requiring will to do anything more than freeze the current conflict and thus leave Russia holding 20% of Ukraine.  At least Trump will be honest about that. He has already told both Putin and Zelensky that the war must stop and if not, he will punish both. If Putin does not end his war Trump will surge American support for Ukraine, if Zelensky does not stop fighting he will cut off US military aid which is 80% of the total effort. Either way, Crimea and the Donbas is lost to Ukraine. If they do what he demands Russia will be gradually ‘rehabilitated’ in both Trump world and Euro world primarily because the Germans are quietly hoping Trump succeeds.

What links Riga and London, apart from Ryanair and boozy Brits, is trust. The Latvians believe that Britain, other western Europeans, and Americans are committed to their defence. The problem is they do not believe it as much as they did last year. The coming tawdry deal over Ukraine will deepen their mistrust that whilst Trump at least does what he says, even if they don’t like it, western Europeans rarely do as they say. It is all smoke and errors. Back to London. The NATO Allies agreed to enhance the Enhanced Forward Presence in the Baltic States to further deter the Russians by increasing the size of their battalion-sized forces to brigades. All well and good. However, London is now suggesting that most of the ‘strengthened’ force will stay in the UK deterring no-one. Worse, there are those close to the defence review suggesting NATO needs to be “more realistic.” This is London-speak to mean that Britain no longer has either the ambition or the will to meet the very commitments it made to NATO in the 2019 Military Strategy, the Defence and Deterrence of the Euro-Atlantic Area Strategy, or the Regional Plans to which London signed up and which are central to what?  The deterrence of Russia and defence of the Baltic States.

So, Mr Healey, mean it when you say “Estonia and the border with Russia is our front line, not just theirs” because what I hear is that ‘our’ front-line far from starting at Tartu pretty much starts and ends at Margate. No more smoke and errors! That is the real test of Riga 2024.

Julian Lindley-French