Operation Varsity Plunder

 

“The situation in the West has entered an extraordinarily critical, ostensibly almost deadly, phase”.

Joseph Goebbels, March 24th, 1945

March 23rd, 2025. Eighty years ago today, on March 23rd, 1945, not far from where I write these words, Operation Varsity Plunder got underway.  Operation Varsity, the airborne component, involved 16,000 British, American and Canadian airborne forces and some 2000 aircraft, the largest single airborne operation ever conducted and twice the size of the D-Day ‘drop’, as well as significantly bigger than Operation Market Garden

The main ground and riverine effort was led by the British 21st Army Group, supported by American and Canadian forces and commanded by much maligned Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery.  The mission was to cross the Rhine in strength and then break into Northern Germany and encircle the Ruhr industrial area.

Operation Varsity involved two divisions of the US XVIII Airborne Corps tasked with disrupting German defences.  The British 6th Airborne Division, including the 1st Canadian Parachute Battalion, had the critical task of opening the way for the riverine and ground assault by capturing vital villages and bridges over the River Ijssel. Despite significant losses all the objectives were seized, not least because many lessons had been learnt from the failed Operation Market Garden in September 1944.

On March 23rd, Montgomery had some 30 divisions under his command facing 10 German divisions the strength of which were depleted due to losses suffered elsewhere. German defences were centred around the still powerful 1st Parachute Army.  British Intelligence also estimated that on the eve of battle Wehrmacht forces fielded 114 heavy and 712 light anti-aircraft guns. To counter this threat RAF Bomber Command, RAF 2nd Tactical Air Force, and the US Army Air Force undertook a week of attacks prior to the crossing, structured so as not to reveal the exact location of the planned crossing of the Rhine.  

Operation Plunder began at 2100 hours on March 23rd, and by 0300 on the morning of March 24th British and American forces had established several bridgeheads on the eastern bank of the Rhine.  The three spearhead Allied formations were British XII Corps, British XXX Corps and US XVI Corps, whilst the famed British 79th Armoured Division deployed specially adapted amphibious tanks (Hobart’s Funnies) to reinforce the crossings.

XXX Corps led the assault landing between Rees and Wesel with the 51st (Highland) Infantry Division, the Black Watch, the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders and 1st Commando Brigade, Royal Marines, together with the 15th (Scottish) Infantry Division.  In many ways, Plunder was a Scottish feat of arms because several English divisions (43rd Wessex Division, Guards Armoured Division, 50th Northumbrian Division, the East Yorks, Green Howards etc, and the Polish Division) had defeated Bittrich’s 2nd Panzer Division during the hard-fought Battle of the Nijmegen Salient and Operation Pheasant in the wake of Operation Market Garden.

By March 27th, Allied forces had secured all the main objectives and Generaloberst Johannes Blaskowitz took the decision to retreat beyond the Dortmund-Ems Canal to the Teutoberg Forest.  On March 25th, Winston Churchill accompanied by Montgomery, Field Marshal Alan Brooke and US General William H. Simpson, strode onto the eastern bank of the Rhine from a landing craft.  For the British this was the high point of the campaign in North-West Europe with the way to Hamburg, Kiel and the Ruhrgebeit effectively open. The next day Supreme Allied Commander, Dwight D, Eisenhower, held a lunch for Churchill. It was Eisenhower who had given Montgomery the task of crossing the Rhine in strength, against the wishes of many senior American officers, most notably Patton.

The victory did not come without cost. Operation Varsity cost the Allies 2700 killed with 72 aircraft lost, whilst the number of Germans killed during Varsity Plunder are unknown but included many civilians.  Some 3500 German troops were captured during Varsity.   Operation Plunder saw some 4000 British and Canadians killed, and some 2800 Americans killed but by D plus 7 30,000 German troops had been captured.

This afternoon I will drive to the old railway bridge over the Rhine at Wesel which was blown up by the Wehrmacht in March 1945 to pay my respects. As the wheel of European history turns again, I will reflect on those who fought and died for freedom and those now again charged with defending it – Britons, Canadians, Germans, Poles and Americans alike.

Operation Varsity Plunder. Lest we forget, Leaders!

Julian Lindley-French  

 

Making Europe Great (Power) Again: Defence or Pretence?

 

(Note of The Alphen Group virtual conference 060325)

President Trump has not caused a temporary crisis in transatlantic relations, but a permanent Atlantic Zeitenwende (Atlantic sea-change).  Can a deal be done to save that relationship and, of course, NATO. Europeans must move to Trump-proof their defence without encouraging him to double down on his threats, and even though he is “burning through a lot of goodwill”.  That was both the challenge and consensus of this latest TAG Virtual Conference.

Given that challenge, Europe's future defence must have three purposes: to demonstrate greater European strategic responsibility; to maintain credible defence and deterrence in and around Europe should the US become embroiled in an Indo-Pacific War; and to act as insurance should President Trump withdraw US forces from Europe.

Europeans also need to move quickly. The risk Trump poses to NATO is not so much the US quitting the Alliance but blocking action therein.  Europeans must collectively move to ensure they can still act if at some point the US prevents their use of NATO’s integrated command structure.  A strategic audit of European military forces and civilian assets must now be undertaken now to establish a new European defence concept, particularly strategic enablers (satellite communications, imagery, intelligence sharing etc). A bespoke reinforced European future force that is credible in its deterrence and defence role given the threats would take at least 8-10 years.  In the worst case, there could be a “window of danger” between 2030 and 2035, particularly for Allies on NATO’s eastern and northern flanks.  Any such force would not only take a very significant increase in defence investment, but the effective mobilisation of industry, technology and parts of society akin to the British Shadow Factory Plan of 1935.

Europeans must also seek an accommodation with Trump. Such is the poor state of Europe’s armed forces that Europeans will continue to be dependent on the Americans through NATO for defence and deterrence at least until 2035. This reality makes the provision of a high-end European inter-position force between Russian and Ukrainian forces AND the maintenance of a credible Alliance defence and deterrence posture “a fantasy”. “It is not a feasible course of action and cannot be done”. There are only a maximum of 20-30 deployable warfighting brigades in European armies. The NATO Force Model envisages up to 50 such brigades whilst given force rotation at least 80 brigades would be needed, plus supporting air power which “cannot be done”.

Europeans could help Ukraine by supporting Kyiv’s “ability to deter Russia” going forward. The Ukrainians can also offer Europeans a host of lessons about innovative and affordable battlefield solutions, most notably drone technology.  

A European extended nuclear deterrent faces profound political and operational challenges, not least the effective abandonment by Europeans of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and the very rules-based order they seek to defend. Whilst the British like to proclaim the operational independence of their deterrent the system is wholly reliant on the Americans.  The French have greater independence but only the air component would be credible at the European theatre level and for all the rhetoric Paris remains “very ambivalent” about undertaking such a role.  One option would be to adapt existing dual capable European strike aircraft to carry nuclear-tipped Storm Shadow/SCALP missiles. To do that the run-down British Atomic Weapons Establishment must be rebuilt. I

Who is going to shape the new European security order? Germany is the critical change factor. The adversarial language of Vice-President Vance at the Munich Security Conference was heard by Chancellor-in-Waiting Friedrich Merz. However, Berlin must have the full support of London and Paris given the three countries together represent 70% of all European defence investment.

How is such an order to be built?  SACEUR’s Defence Plan remains a sound basis for reinforcing both the European pillar of NATO and building European strategic autonomy. 

Who is going to pay for it?  A rebalancing of social security with national security will be needed. Defence is no longer “discretionary expenditure”. A new “financial arsenal of democracy” is needed.  It is time for the financial and banking sector to repay the European taxpayer for the bail outs they received during the 2008-10 banking crisis. This could be done through the proposed Defence, Security and Resilience Bank – a kind of 21^st century Lend-Lease Deal.

What European Future Force? Before the transatlantic relationship is prematurely laid to rest Europeans must first seek a new burden sharing accommodation with the Americans.  The January 2025 TAG Atlantic Charter 2025: A New NATO Deal for America https://thealphengroup.com/2025/01/12/atlantic-charter-2025-a-new-nato-deal-for-america/ lays out Europe’s force goals: 4 fully enabled, fully ready mobile warfighting corps (each 30,000 troops minimum), 2 ‘shield’ corps based in Poland and Romania, 3 fully enabled, fully ready Composite Air Strike Forces (CASF) (both aircraft and missiles), and 2  fully enabled, fully ready Non-US Standing Fleets.  In return, the US would maintain in Europe IN ALL CIRCUMSTANCES a fully enabled, fully ready warfighting corps (V Corps), a Composite Air Strike Force and the US 6^th Fleet.

Julian Lindley-French

Trump's NATO?

 

What would Trump-friendly NATO look like? In January, The Alphen Group published Atlantic Charter 2025: A New NATO Deal for America in which we laid out a clear plan written by NATO planners. Under the TAG plan the Europe Future Force would build on NATO’s current Force Model particularly the Allied Reaction Force to generate 4 fully enabled, fully ready mobile warfighting corps (30,000 troops minimum), 2 ‘shield’ corps based in Poland and Romania, 3 fully enabled, fully ready Composite Air Strike Forces (CASF) (both aircraft and missiles), and 2  fully enabled, fully ready Non-US Standing Fleets.  In return, the US would maintain in Europe IN ALL CIRCUMSTANCES a fully enabled, fully ready warfighting corps (V Corps), a Composite Air Strike Force and the US 6^th Fleet.

For details read Atlantic Charter 2025: A New NATO Deal for America at https://thealphengroup.com/2025/01/12/atlantic-charter-2025-a-new-nato-deal-for-america/

Be Careful, Mr President!

 

Never has so much been owed to so many by so many?

To paraphrase Winston Churchill on another occasion

Dear President Trump,

Be careful! There is a fine line between rightly getting Europeans to do more for their own defence and destroying the transatlantic relationship. The latter would be the greatest act of self-harm since Americans were expelled from the British Empire for uppity behaviour (I jest).  For all our peskiness the United States needs allies more not less today than at any time since 1945.  The very argument you are making about burden-sharing cuts both ways. Those burdens feel heavier precisely because the US needs capable allies and partners ever more for the realisation of America’s own critical interests. Americans have earned the right to capable allies and are entirely correct that European military weakness risks making America weaker due to overstretch thus imposed on US forces.

Several points

The very fact that in 2025 560 million Europeans are dependent on 340 million Americans for their defence against 140 Russians is frankly pathetic. It is not helped by 80 million Germans who demand the right to a seemingly eternal Pilgrimage to Redemption whilst happy to sell arms to all and sundry.  I once wrote in the International Herald Tribune that for 50 years Americans, Britons and others told the Germans they could not do very much because of World War Two. For the past 10 years the Germans have told the rest of us they cannot do very much because of World War Two. Twenty years later Berlin is still telling us they cannot do very much because of World War Two. Germany is the deep hole in the defence of Europe and Berlin’s free riding an autobahn to Nemesis. It is not good enough, Germany.

With respect, sir, you seem to forget that one of the reasons so many European states are deeply in debt is because American banks swindled European banks. By wrapping toxic sub-prime loans within complex inter-bank arrangements, you Americans almost destroyed the Western financial system. European governments had to bail out both European AND American banks with taxpayer’s money. Where do you think that money came from?  Defence budgets of course.

In a blatant case of responsibility without either power or authority a ‘defence summit’ of European heads of state and government took place in London.  The aim was to create a ‘coalition of the willing’ to ‘lead’ peace enforcement (not peacekeeping) when some kind of ceasefire emerges from the carnage on Europe’s eastern flank.   The reality is that no such force could be credible without a very strong, visible and present US military reserve, far more than a guarantee. Given the likely length of any demilitarized zone and the nature and capability of the parties to the conflict any such European force would collapse like a house of cards without real American support. As an aside, to not invite the leaders of the Baltic States to the London meeting was the equivalent of Western Europeans ordering takeaway for the Russians!

NATO. It is true that you Americans bear too much of the cost of the Alliance. Still, it is a fool’s errand to simply compare either the US defence budget or the cost of US forces in Europe.  First, the bulk of EUCOM forces are in Europe in pursuit of US interests. It is no coincidence your AFRICOM is also based in Europe. Imagine, Sir, if Europeans responded by ordering American forces our of Europe. Washington would find American security and defence policy far harder to realise. Far from paying for 67% of NATO the real figure is closer to 25% although Americans are right to point out that US forces available to the defence of Europe should also be counted.

The Oscars took place last night but that is no reason to believe Hollywood History.  Americans tend to write Allies out of history and then complain too much of the burden falls on America. Eighty years ago, this month Operation Varsity Plunder took place.  Forget The Bridge at Remagen (a strategic dead-end) or Patton’s absurd coup de theatre (Patton’s ego) the true crossing of the Rhine in strength began at 2100 hours March 23, 1945, under the command of Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery and the 2nd British Army, 21 Army Group. Operation Varsity was the airborne assault led by the British 6^th Airborne Division and the 1^st Canadian Parachute Battalion alongside the US XVII Airborne Corps. The drop was well over twice the size of the D-Day ‘drop’ and far bigger than the Market Garden operation. Operation Plunder saw the crossing of the Rhine at Wesel and the successful exploitation of the bridgehead thereafter. Plunder was led by the British XII Corps and XXX Corps, as well as the US XVI Corps. It also included the 1^st Commando Brigade, Royal Marines as part of the spearhead. My point is that Europeans have done ‘heavy lifting’ for many years but rarely been given any credit for it, not least by ‘not invented here’ American historians. American leadership in Afghanistan and Iraq did little to impress Allies. You need to up your game if we Europeans are still to follow you Americans.  Indeed, I wrote a couple of reports to that effect. 

Stronger together

In conclusion, Mr President, be careful what you wish for, which appears to be the maintenance of American control over ever greater European military capability and capacity. Forget it! The more capable Europeans become the more say they will demand over US campaigns and operations.  Still, that is a bridge yet to be crossed. A Bridge Too Far?

Sir, I am no shrinking European strategic wallflower. Some would say I have been at the very forefront of efforts to get Europeans to get their defence strategic act together. If you read my latest book with General Lord Richards – The Retreat from Strategy (which is brilliant and very reasonably-priced) you will see what I mean. We do not pull our punches.

Still, as a friend of America let me be Yorkshire blunt: Americans will not Make America Great Again by Making America Alone Again!

Respectfully,

Julian Lindley-French

Fog in the Atlantic, America Isolated?

“The settlement of the Czechoslovak (Ukrainian?) problem which has now been achieved is, in my view, only the prelude to a larger settlement in which all Europe may find peace”.

Neville Chamberlain, were he attending the Munich Security Conference 2025

February 17^th.  Fog in the Atlantic, America isolated? That seems to be the response to the Vance-Hegseth assault on European fantasies at this year’s Munich Security Conference.  This is not the first time ‘Munich’ has made history and all for the wrong reasons. It did so in 2007 when Vladimir Putin told the rest of us his plan for Europe…and then did what he said he would do.  It did so in 1938 when Chamberlain announced “peace for (not ‘in’) our time”, as he sold out Czechoslovakia to Hitler.  If he was still with us he might talk about pieces in our time because that is precisely how Vance and Hegseth left the pathetic European security establishment last week – in pieces!  

Back in 1938 and 2007 Europe’s historically and strategically illiterate leaders, along with much of the Kommentariat, chose not to believe either Hitler or Putin. Surely not, was the whisper. He wouldn’t, would he? He did.  The same could be said for this year’s assault on Europe’s fading strategic wallflowers.  The first assault was by US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth who told the assembled not so great and not very good that Europe might have to defend itself. How dare he! Then came J.D. Vance and his suggestion that not all of Europe’s people might be thrilled by the failure of EUTOPIAN elites to protect them from the downsides of mass uncontrolled immigration and the use of law to suppress legitimate dissent and thus mask the consequences of an historic political and strategic mistake.

This may make me sound like a recruit to the growing Trump inspired MEGA (Make Europe Great Again) movement.  I am not. Still, out of the mouths and all that. For the wallflowers the problem with the ‘truths’ proffered by Hegseth and Vance is not that they were wrong, but it was they who were saying them.  After all, is not part of Europe’s strategic vacuum a result of terrible American leadership over the past 25 years?   

What Hegseth and Vance have done is expose Europe’s big lies.  Much like Chamberlain in 1938 the simple and hard truth was that the British and French were prepared to sacrifice Czechoslovakia to the Nazis in 1938 because neither were ready nor willing to fight a big war.  I did my Oxford thesis on this stuff and it was clear from all the British Cabinet minutes I read that Chamberlain wanted to both buy time and direct Hitler elsewhere. Stalin was at least right about that. You see, the hard truth was that Czechoslovakia really was a small country far away about which we knew little and as far as Chamberlain was concerned (and to mix my historical references) not worth the bones of a single British Grenadier.

Ukraine is a large country not so far away that too many Western European leaders only pretend matters.  They utter strategically pretentious nonsense about being in the struggle for ‘however long it takes’.  However, what takes?  The Starmer Government even signed a 100-year deal with Ukraine.  Imagine if Chamberlain had signed a 100 year deal with Prague in 1938! 

Ukraine’s hard truth is that eastern Ukraine is not of existential importance for much of Western Europe which is why they are not willing to give Kyiv what it needs to expel Russian forces.  In other words, if Berlin, London and Paris really did see the fate of eastern Ukraine as vital to them the gap between words and deeds would not be such a gulf. It is not even clear that the rest of Ukraine is seen as sufficiently important to be given NATO membership, for all the hot air to the contrary.  Russia does see Ukraine’s future as existential to Russia!

The latest nonsense is that Europeans will send troops to some inner-Ukrainian border to police a Korean-style ‘DMZ.  Really? First, what troops?  Such a force would need to be deployable, capable and credible but so hollowed out have Western European forces become they simply lack the resources to undertake such a role.  Second, the front-line is some 1300 miles/1500km long.  The scale of force needed to police such a border would need to be divisions strong.  NATO Europe would need to strip all of the forces currently assigned to NATO.  Where would that leave the Baltic States, Finland and the Black Sea Region, not to mention the Arctic?  Third, Western Europe’s leaders have for decades demonstrated the strategic backbone of an amoeba. Are they really willing to put the bulk of their armed forces between the Russian and Ukrainian armies on territory both regard as sacred?

Both Munich and this week’s Paris Conference laid bare the absurd virtue imperialism from which Macron, Scholz and Starmer suffer in which Europeans further enfeeble themselves for no clear defence-strategic gain simply so they can posture. The hard truth is this: Trump will enable Putin to keep much of his ill-gotten gains and declare victory because he has the power to do so and Europeans do not. After all, if eastern Ukraine does not really matter to Western Europeans it surely does not matter one jot to the MAGA White House.

When Chamberlain made his “peace for our time” it was only 20 years since the carnage of the First World War. A good man like Chamberlain (and he was a decent man) simply could not envisage a resumption of the slaughter that wiped out much of his generation. What Hesketh and Vance did in Munich is challenge the strategic vacuity of Western European leaders with a simple reality: don’t look to Americans to go on turning a blind eye to your wilful weakness so your citizens can live in a fantasy at America’s expense.  

The fog?  It is at its thickest in the chancelleries and palaces of Western Europe!  It is not America that is isolated, it is Europe due to muddled strategic thinking and the fantasy that soft power can replace hard power. Wake up you fools!  

Julian Lindley-French

 

Paper Leviathans: Lawfare does not stop Warfare!

“Covenants with the sword are but words and of no use to any man”.

Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan

 February 14^th. There is nothing so galling as to listen to people who have told me I am wrong for so long suddenly popping up in the media to say they knew what was coming. Or, to put it another way, I was right all along. Two questions. Why are politicians so stupid? Will Trump use tariffs to force Europeans to increase defence expenditure?

The answer to the first question is that they are not stupid. Take Britain’s Starmer government. One could be forgiven for thinking that Downing Street is staffed with ideological twelve-year old ‘Special Advisors’ (SPADS) given the nonsense that comes out of it. The latest ‘wheeze’ is that Britain has to give away the Chagos Islands to China puppet Mauritius because the International Telecommunications Union might rule against Britain and that such a ruling might thus put broad spectrum military communications at ‘legal risk’.  You really cannot make this stuff up.

Yes, Starmer has surrounded himself with unworldly left-wing lawyers such as Lord Hermer, who fellow Labour man Lord Glasman this week called the epitome of the arrogant progressive fool.  That is not the real issue.  The hard truth is that Britain and other major western European powers have so neglected their armed forces over so many years they cannot afford to recapitalise them.  British defence chiefs this week warned Starmer that an increase to 2.5% GDP on defence "would not even touch the sides", partly because the cost of the nuclear deterrent means Britain only spends 1.5% GDP on the NATO-usable conventional force.   So, Starmer is hiding behind the fantasy that soft power and lawfare can replace hard power and defence as a protection against high-end warfare.  To mix my metaphors they suggest a Paper Leviathan can replace American military power because Europeans cannot defend themselves.  Such self-delusion will be front and centre in Britain’s forthcoming Strategic Pretence Review.   

The hard truth is that Starmer, Scholz and the ever more diminutive Macron and the indebted nations they lead cannot square the financial circle between social security, domestic security and national security even though they and their fellow members of the political class are responsible for imposing ever greater risk on the citizens they are meant to lead. Only the Poles and other Central Europeans get Europe’s new and very dangerous reality. Given what is likely to be imposed on Ukraine by Trump this is a tragedy about to get distinctly Greek.  Like it or not, Europeans are going to have to defend Europeans by Trump, who has told Europeans they cannot rely on the Americans for their defence. ‘Der’, I think the SPADs might say if they actually understood how the real world works.

Will Trump use tariffs to force Europeans to increase defence expenditure? Yes, in a word.  At the NATO Hague Summit in June the Americans will likely do the following.  First, talk about the need to spend 5% GDP on defence as part of a negotiating ploy. Second, emphasise how much Europeans spend on defence using American (not NATO) definitions of defence expenditure. Third, reject the idea that Europeans will further increase defence expenditure to 2.5% or 3% (absolute maximum) “but”, to use the British trick, “only when economic circumstances permit”. Fourth, link tariffs to defence expenditure and offer tariff relief to those Europeans who commit immediately to spending more than 3% GDP on defence with a sliding scale thereafter for those who spend more.

Finally, they will put real pressure on Britain, France and Germany who spend some 70% of European defence expenditure and, critically, 90% of defence research and technology investment. They will also demand access for US companies as part of the ‘defence tariffs’ deal. NATO?  Expect the Americans to call for a strategic audit to see how Europeans can get more bang for their existing buck and match what they say they are going to deliver with what they actually deliver. They will also demand accelerated fielding time-limits for new equipment will be vital with buying American off the shelf another way to, buy, tariff relief.

The irony is this: for decades the Americans have been Europe’s defence Leviathan but they cannot and will not fund such a role any longer.  China’s rise makes it impossible. So, Europeans, no more empty words and no more soft power as real power. Above all, no more Paper Leviathans.  Time to step up!

Julian Lindley-French

Oslo Security Conference Speech, February 3, 2025

 

February 7^th, 2025. I have just got back from the superb Oslo Security Conference. So refreshing compared with the bloated and self-important Munich Security Conference at which too often performative politics dressed up as grand strategy. Real people who know about real things dealing with real issues. Not a parade of subject lightweights with over-mighty egos talking nonsense about things they really do not understand or really care.   Here is my speech to the formal dinner of the Oslo Security Conference.

“Kate, Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen, thank you. My theme is the one that Prime Minister Gahr Store gave to us, “a Europe able to cope”.  That begs a question: cope with what?

My takeaway is this: there is no crisis of leadership on security in Europe. There is simply no leadership. Western Europe has become a black hole of strategic pretence with leaders who talk of defence but never walk the walk, as you will see in Munich (again) next week. They still really believe defence is discretionary expenditure and that they need only recognise as much threat as they believe they can afford.  Nowhere is this utter stupidity worse than in Britain, France and Germany – Europe’s Plastic Powers.

NATO likes to talk of an eastern flank and a southern flank.  In fact, it has a northern flank as you here in the Nordic states know only too well and with the election of President Trump a western flank.  You see, Trump or no Trump, the Americans are ever busier and Europeans have no right to make Americans weaker simply because our strategically illiterate leaders cannot be bothered to defend we the citizens.

Take my own country, Britain. It is engaged in yet another exercise of pretend strategy (the fourth such exercise in as many years) – the Strategic Defence Review.  Don’t get me wrong it is led by a good man, one of my political heroes, George Robertson.  And yet for all of George’s efforts it will be yet another exercise in British defence pretence.  Worse, the Starmer government, which wants little to do with defence, will very quickly distance itself from the ‘SDR’ and it will soon become known as the “Robertson Review”.  

My latest book, The Retreat from Strategy, co-written with my friend General Lord Richards, charts the decline into deceit of British foreign, security and defence policy and the appeasement of dangerous reality that has gone with it. Flying in the face of hard facts has become the Whitehall Way when faced with uncomfortable political and strategic reality.

The hard fact is that we Europeans are today faced by a relentless Russia led by people who are not only at war with us but are imposing war on their own people as well as Ukrainians. The Kremlin elite have so betrayed their own people that all they can offer is the lie of ultra-nationalism and the despair of decay.

The threat is made worse because Russia is China’s useful idiot. It thus matters not the ultimate price Russia will pay for Putin’s historical and imperial fantasy, because China will underwrite it so long as the war makes America’s strategic life more complicated.

Sadly, China’s strategy is being enabled by angry Americans too many of whom have watched too much Hollywood and believe making America great again can only be done by making America alone again.  The US needs allies, but it has a right to capable allies.

This takes me to the very crux of the crisis in Atlanticism. The paradox of the Alliance is that President Trump sees the world very much likes Putin and President Xi: a game of power poker, hard power poker! Why, because China and the US have the power to play such poker, and so long as China backs it so does Russia. Western Europeans, who should be at the very core of strong European defence still believe they can play soft power chess and that they are an example to the world.  They are fools, living in a fool’s paradise. One only has to look to London for the virtue imperialism of soft power and the ridiculous offer to pay Mauritius, a Chinese puppet, to take Diego Garcia off British hands. This is despite Diego Garcia hosting a vital UK-US base, Mauritius having no legal claim over the Chagos Archipelago, and what legal imperative there is only advisory.  If economists do not understand the value of defence, lawyers do not understand power.

From the High North to the warm south, from the high frontier of space to the gutter that is social media Europe and Europeans are daily under attack – misinformation, cyber, sabotage and threat.  And yet, Western Europe’s foolish leaders somehow believe they are still in a kind of 1990s Groundhog Day.  They are not. We are not.  Russia believes it is at war with free Europe, a serial strategic predator who espies naïve prey. What could possibly go wrong?

Worse, Europeans may take comfort in being able to complain about Trump, but he is essentially correct. Our leaders do lack strategic ambition, and they do take the Americans for granted. It is a situation made worse by Europe’s lack of leadership, or rather confusion about who actually is in charge. In the past thirty years we have seen the eclipse of the European political class by the bureaucratic class. Brexit failed because whilst it was a revolt against distant power laden bureaucracy the same bureaucrats are still in charge. What is happening in Britain is little short of a civil war between the political class and the bureaucratic class who got used to holding the reins of power when the British were still in the EU. Bureaucracies do not lead, they organise, and they organise to their own advantage.  Wherever you are in Europe, it is a struggle that is coming to a country near you.

Nor do bureaucrats do strategy because their focus is inexorably upon the internal not the external. What they do is triangulation, a term taken from mapping, which seeks out a route of least resistance to any issue.  The objective is to maintain and expand their power. Their focus is also inevitably on the short-term and the longer-term. It is why Europe is the mess it is today, and it is a mess. The strategically necessary is sacrificed for the politically convenient.

We got away with such nonsense in the 1990s because we could.  It is not only the unforgiving and inexorable shift of the global balance of power that is to blame. It is the changing character of war.  Today war is conducted across the broad vulnerabilities-scape with every one of our many vulnerabilities mapped and exploited across the hybrid, cyber and high-end war spectrum.  The speed of effects war seeks to impose is also accelerating exponentially, and yet most of our leaders are asleep at the wheel of their chugging analogue establishments.

The consequences for NATO? First, the US and its armed forces are ever more stretched across an ever broader and digital space. Second, NATO now has more multi-domain frontiers than capacity, capability or creativity to defend them.  Third, NATO’s real strategic reserve is not the US, which remains the world’s strategic reserve, it is the ‘Big 3’ Europeans Britain, France and Germany…and all three are strategically AWOL.     

Europe’s leaders like to point to increases in defence expenditure but it is nothing like enough.  Most European armed forces are horribly hollowed out, dependent on the busy Americans for undertaking anything but the most permissive of operations and in desperate need of re-capitalising if they are to close the only gap that matters – the ability to deter a future aggressive Russia if the Americans are forced to be elsewhere.  We Europeans are thus facing a catastrophic failure for which our politicians must and will take the blame if they do not up markedly their security and defence game. 

Let me conclude with the speech of Leo Amery MP to Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain during the disastrous 1940 (appropriately) Norwegian campaign:
“Somehow or other we must get into government men (and women) who can match our enemies in fighting spirit, in daring, in resolution and in thirst for victory. We are fighting for our life, for our liberty, for our all.  We cannot go on being led as we are…This is what Cromwell said to the Long Parliament when he thought it no longer fit to conduct the affairs of the nation. ‘You have sat here too long for any good you have done, depart I say and let us be done with you. In the name of God go!’”

That will be the fate of Western Europe’s political class if it does not step up now, here, there and everywhere in defence of Europeans.  Yes, we really are stronger together, but what I can promise you is coming at us in the years to come, only if together we do what is required to preserve a just peace.

If not, the retreat from strategy will become the retreat from sanity.

Julian Lindley-French

ATLANTIC CHARTER 2025: A NEW NATO DEAL FOR AMERICA

 

“For the pace is hot and the points are near, And sleep has deadened the driver’s ear; And signals flash through the night in vain. Death is in charge of the Clattering Train”.

The Alphen Group, which I have the honour to chair, has drafted Atlantic Charter 2025: A New NATO Deal for America https://thealphengroup.com/2025/01/12/atlantic-charter-2025-a-new-nato-deal-for-america/ and which has been shared with very senior members of Washington’s incoming Administration.  

The Problem

Why await a train wreck when you can see it coming…and stop it! One does not have to look hard for the causes of European free-riding on the US.  In November 2024, the Frankfurter Allgemeine pointed out that whilst Europeans are 9.3% of the global population they spend 60% of the world’s expenditure on social welfare.  Add that fact to the combined effects of the 2008-2010 Banking and Financial Crisis, Brexit, COVID and the Russo-Ukraine War most European states are deeply indebted. This is why in this new age of nationalism those with power, such as America and China, play poker, whilst Europeans pretend they can play chess. Russia?  It just pretends it is powerful and is dangerous because of it.

Free-riding is about to come to a crashing halt with the inauguration of second-term President Donald J. Trump with NATO facing. However, the rebirth of appeasement in Europe’s Body Politic desperately hopes that covenants without the sword will be enough. It is an obsession with lawfare which increases rather than decreases the likelihood of warfare.  

The Challenge

Canadians and Europeans face three converging challenges that together require a renewed resource commitment to defence: 1) extreme Russian military aggressiveness and revanchism as displayed in Ukraine, and which if unchecked could extend beyond Ukraine, 2) rising Chinese military power and China’s ‘no limits’ partnership with Russia, and 3) the need to rapidly rebalance and redistribute NATO defence responsibilities in light of America’s growing global defence commitments.

While the Charter contains recommendations for detailed benchmarks, metrics, roadmaps, and force structure; its principal focus is to accelerate significantly Europe’s ability to execute SACEUR’s Family of Defence Plans and reduce today’s excessive dependence on the United States. This is consistent with President-elect Trump’s notion that European defence contributions are wholly inadequate to meet current and future needs.

Implemented properly, the recommendations in the Charter would significantly strengthen European defence capabilities and reduce worldwide pressures on American forces. Global security and transatlantic solidarity would be enhanced as a result. The implicit deal would be that America’s strong commitment to NATO’s Article 5 would be sustained in return for a European defence buildup leading to a more capable and balanced Alliance.

Resourcing the recommendations contained in the Charter will be difficult given European economic problems, so the Charter endorses the creation of a Defence, Security and Resilience (DSR) Bank designed to expedite and expand financing for NATO’s defence requirements going well beyond Allies’ 2024 defence investment pledge.

In addition. the Allies must commit themselves to helping Ukraine defeat Russian aggression as a critical requirement for the future of transatlantic security and preservation of the rules-based international order.  Therefore, it is vital NATO leaders at the June 2025 Summit in The Hague commit to rapidly building European and Canadian capabilities and thus consider creation of a new Defence, Security and Resilience Bank to help finance this effort.

The Mission

In August 1941, Prime Minister Winston Churchill and President Franklin Delano Roosevelt issued the Atlantic Charter which established a politico-military relationship which in time became the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and endures to this day.  The Charter was made credible by the March 1941 Lend-Lease Act which established the United States as the Arsenal of Democracy and enabled the British to maintain the fight against Nazism. The Charter was built on American potential – both economic and military.  Today, a new Atlantic Charter is needed built on European potential and greater European strategic responsibility within the broad framework of NATO.

 Atlantic Charter 2025 thus builds on the TAG Transatlantic Compact 2024 by looking beyond the debate over spending 2%, 3% or even 5% of GDP on defence by the Canadian and European Allies. To that end, the Charter focuses on the minimum military capabilities, capacities and structures NATO will need to do the job both implicit and explicit in SACEUR’s Family of Plans as adopted at the 2023 Vilnius Summit.  The Charter is also crucially based on a worst-case analysis of the contingencies and assumptions with which NATO’s defence and deterrence posture could have to contend.  

Critically, the Charter constitutes a New Deal for America in NATO because it envisions an Alliance built on strengthened European and Canadian forces and much greater interoperability with US forces in all contingencies. If adopted and implemented by America’s NATO Allies, with the support and encouragement of the United States, it would ease growing world-wide pressure on US forces and resources through a much-strengthened NATO European Pillar that would by 2030 be able to act as a high-end, first responder force in and around the European Theatre of Operations (ETO) and in all circumstances.  The reinforced European pillar would be balanced by a reconceived NATO North American pillar in which strengthened Canadian forces focus on high-end interoperability with their US counterparts with a particular focus on the Arctic and the North Atlantic.

Atlantic Charter 2025 is a reconfirmation of the Alliance’s critical importance to the security of all the Allies, including the United States, guiding the way for NATO transformation. The Charter thus offers a substantive roadmap with specific capacity benchmarks and metrics that calls upon the Allies to focus on the requirements necessitated by the new Russian threat and to reinforce and accelerate implementation of the Strategic Concept and the decisions made at the Madrid, Vilnius and Washington Summits, via more balanced and effective Alliance defence and deterrence.

 How can European allies that struggle to realize the 2% GDP target meet a defence investment challenge that implies an even greater financial commitment?  The answer is a new kind of Lend-Lease Deal. A Defence, Security and Resilience (DSR) Bank would provide demand-side financing for Nations by offering Collective Debt Issuance. The DSR Bank concept has been championed by the Atlantic Council and has been studied by NATO’s International Staff for five years. This Charter endorses the concept of a DSR Bank and urges NATO leaders to consider it at the June 2025 NATO summit. The DSR Bank would pool the creditworthiness of participating nations to raise funds in global financial markets. This collective debt would provide nations and defence industries with access to the cheapest possible financing (AAA credit rating) for long term, predictable and reliable defence procurement. A DSR Bank would also offer Loan Programmes. Funds raised would enable nations to purchase armaments, modernize defence systems, and invest in dual-use technologies without significantly increasing their direct public debt. This money would further complement existing defence budgets and any national contributions to the bank would support defence investment policy goals such as defence spending targets. 

The Caveats

 

There are caveats. First, if Europeans do share more of NATO’s many burdens, they will expect more say over how the Alliance operates.  The US cannot expect the same level of control it enjoys today.  Second, the quality of American leadership will also need to improve.  Afghanistan and Iraq damaged European trust in US leadership which was often poor. Third, increased European military capability cannot simply be a metaphor for ‘Buy American’.

 

There is one final caveat. Americans must also change their mindset. There is an apocryphal story from World War Two.  US tanks, such as the Sherman, were notoriously under-gunned in the face of Wehrmacht Panthers and Tigers.  To counter this problem the British came up with an ingenious solution. The British 17-pounder gun was the best anti-tank gun on the war. So, they put it into the Sherman chassis and called it the Sherman Firefly. It saved the lives of countless British and Canadian tankers in Normandy and beyond and became feared by their German counterparts.  The British also offered the adapted tank to the US but the Americans turned it down. US commanders claimed it was due to doctrinal differences and a desire to focus on inferior US guns, such as the 76mm.  The real reason was hubris and a refusal to believe an ally could have developed a superior weapon.  ‘Not invented here’ is a theme that has run through American leadership ever since. It has led at times to an exaggerated sense of American superiority and helped depress European military ambition. That too must end.  Who is in charge of the Clattering Train?

 

Julian Lindley-French