Why is China Dangerous?

 “Because other people are fools, must you be so too?”

Emperor Marcus Aurelius

What does China want?

April 17^th.  What does Xi’s China want?  1. To create the conditions for the ‘safe’ military subjugation of Taiwan. 2. To coerce states in the Eastern Pacific and South and East China Seas spheres of Chinese influence to accept Beijing’s de facto control because the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) are control freaks, and its leadership fears any system – domestic or foreign – that might challenge its control. 3. To use the global geoeconomic system to fund its geopolitical ambitions by fair means and foul. 4. To use Russia and Iran to fix US forces in theatres away from the Eastern Pacific and ensure the Americans cannot intervene in force. 5. In the longer run to curb US power in the Pacific to the point where the Americans are effectively excluded from the Pacific east of Pearl Harbor.   

Dead historians tended to divide the history of the Roman Empire into three eras: the Republicanate, Principate and Dominate.  The Republicanate (which I just invented) is seen by some as a glorious era during which Rome functioned like some latter day Western European democracy but in fact did not.  This glorious era made all sorts of allusions to ancient Greece but was destroyed in the First Century BC by over-mighty citizens such as Sulla, Pompey and Caesar who seized power from the Senate and squabbled mightily amongst themselves but still ruled under the pretence that they were merely primus inter pares and were in fact defending the Republic.  This was the Principate. Then there was the final phase of Rome’s glory which also marked its decline, division and eventual collapse – the Dominate.  During the Dominate the emperors abandoned all and any attempt to pretend some residual constitutional propriety existed and ruled by naked mainly military power.  

The cause of the Dominate was Rome’s so-called Third Century Crisis.  This was caused by the end of imperial expansion, the growing costs of maintaining imperial power across the known world, growing incursions into said Empire from emerging competitors, the breakdown of trade, inflation due to the printing of money by emperors with no understanding of economics, and the myriad political divisions that decline is father to and the growing influence of the military in politics.

How is the West complicit?

Take China today. For thirty years China has been content to get rich and powerful by helping Western leaders maintain the Potemkinesque façade of material prosperity. Under this arrangement, known by the rather misleading term globalisation when it was really Chinaisation the West was made to feel materially comfortable in return for paying China to accelerate its own development and construct an enormous military machine.

As long as the West was content to consume huge amounts of Chinese goods and Western leaders were happy to turn a blind eye to Beijing’s coercion, spying, stealing and all-around collective bullying China was happy to get richer and more powerful.  Some states, such as the strategically illiterate British, even sold their industrial crown jewels and much else to China, such as British Steel, which should have been renamed Chinese Steel. 

There was a problem.  The Chinese Communist Party which controls China with an iron fist, particularly since it crushed (literally) a bunch of students in 1989 who had the temerity to challenge the absolute power of the CCP, needed globalisation. This is because so-called post-Tiananmen deal between the CCP and the burgeoning Chinese middle class involved the latter never questioning the power of the former in return for making the latter ever more materially more comfortable.

The Chinese Dominate

During this period of the Chinese Principate CCP leaders continued to pretend they were ‘of’ the people. Hua Goufeng, Jiang Xemin, Hu Jintao and others all claimed they were children of the proletariat.  Then came Xi Jinping, China’s wannabe Caesar, who in 2018 became “President for Life”.  Xi, a princeling of the Party, crossed the Chinese Rubicon in two ways.  First, he replaced any legitimacy conferred on him by the ‘Party’ by establishing his power on the People’s Liberation Army and showering the armed forces with glittering new weapons. Second, he abandoned any pretence to be the Chinese heir of Karl Marx and replaced Communism with old-fashioned Han nationalism reinforced with a strong dose of Xenophobia.

The reasons for this became apparent during the COVID catastrophe.  Xi realised that one day the West would wake up and finally understand that it had been feeding a dragon that could one day consume it.  When that happened the West’s growing transfer of supply chains to China would stop.  Starved of Western money China would face a problem transferring export generated income into domestic development unless Xi could find alternatives.  The route Xi took was effectively force smaller and poorer powers into China’s orbit through debt.  The problem was that most of the West woke up too early (except the British whose leaders continue to try and sell themselves to China) and Russia, China’s useful idiot, screwed up.

Now, China is faced with a situation not unlike Rome during the Third Century Crisis. It has built an enormous military which is very impressive, but which will soon decline because it will need to be constantly re-capitalised.  However, unless the CCP can maintain at least 6% per annum growth the only way to do that would be to shift money away from social development. When that happens XI will face growing discontent in both the Party and the country and will doubtless seek to suppress dissent.  He will also be tempted to embark on military adventurism to burnish his Han nationalist credentials, with Taiwan clearly in the crosshairs of Chinese gunsights, and maybe others.

Action This Day!

1. Prevent China from creating the conditions for the ‘safe’ military subjugation of Taiwan by US Allies helping to keep America strong where she needs to be strong. In Europe, that means European Allies must deliver two thirds (67%) of NATO’s combined operational capacity for collective defence by 2035 at the very latest, as measured in rapidly usable forces, enablers, and other capabilities to execute advance plans across SACEUR’s Area of Responsibility. America’s European allies must also collectively provide at least 50% of all NATO Defense Planning Process (NDPP) designated capabilities by 2030.

 2. Prevent China from coercing states in the Eastern Pacific and South and East China Seas spheres of Chinese influence to accept Beijing’s de facto control.  This can only be achieved by a new concept of Global Democratic Alliance built around the US and with strong democratic allies in Europe and the Pacific.

 3. Turn the global geoeconomic system back in the West’s favour and thus legitimate Western geopolitical ambitions by providing both carrots and sticks to China. The Trump administration is using tariffs and reshoring of industries as a blunt tool to create such a shift but as yet there is no apparent geopolitical end such policy aspires.

 4. Blunt the ability of Russia and Iran to fix US forces in theatres away from the Pacific. For example, the NATO European allies must aspire to the creation of an Allied Mobile Heavy Force by 2030 that could deter, defend and defeat the Russians irrespective of US force commitments.

 5. Strengthen US power in the Pacific to the point where the ends, ways and means of Chinese policy and strategy are impossible to realise because the cost of doing so would threaten the hold of the CCP over the Chinese people.   

The curse of empires

China is not intrinsically bad. It is simply behaving like all ultra-nationalists behave when they have the power to impose their will on others. What is bad is the inability of democratic leaders to face uncomfortable truths. This is something I saw last week when I chaired a meeting last week at NATO HQ in Brussels. Ultimately, the Middle Kingdom sees itself as precisely that – the centre of the world, an empire. 

Empires are of course dangerous when they expand, but they are particularly dangerous when they begin to decline, and the settled order of power therein is challenged.  That is exactly what happened in the Third Century to Rome and may well happen to China now as those in power seek to re-establish ‘order’.  Therefore, we are just entering peak danger as far as China is concerned but with strength there is still a good chance Beijing can be persuaded that mutual coexistence is better than mutually assured destruction. Face it, leaders!

Julian Lindley-French 

Trump, Tariffs, Geoeconomics and Geopolitics

What does Trump want? Power is back, red in tooth and claw. When US presidents meet with President-for-Life Xi Jinping there is something telling in the respective body languages of the leaders. Unlike in the past it is the American who wants something. They both see themselves as Masters of the Universe, President Trump because he cannot help himself, President Xi because he is, at least the Chinese universe. The more President Trump tries to emulate President Xi, by governing through Executive Order and ignoring both Congress and the Supreme Court, he simply cannot.  President Xi, the unelected victor of a thousand Party power struggles, is self-promotingly, self-assured precisely because he is not bound by such constraints.

 

Why the tariffs? What is self-evident is that the world is back in the old-new age of bipolar competition, but what kind of competition?  This past week has seen geopolitics and geoeconomics merge.  Geoeconomics has been the essence of the tariff wars Trump has unleashed on the world, but geoeconomics is merely the harbinger of geopolitics and the struggle for supremacy across the broad canvas of power both soft and hard. The epicentre of this struggle will be the Pacific but it will also affect the world.

 

The facts speak for themselves. Deluded Western fans of globalisation (often economists) have overseen the greatest transfer of wealth and power from the US and the wider West to China since a similar transfer from Britain to the US in the first part of the twentieth century. Today, the US, the Apex Market and once THE creditor nation has a national debt of some $36.8 trillion or around 122% of GDP and a budget deficit of $2 trillion.  China also has a national debt of $9.9 trillion, which is some 110% of GDP, and a budget deficit of some $570 billion. Beijing is trying to cut its budget deficit caused partly by bailing out major companies caught up in a disastrous property asset bubble.

 

Whilst the figures may seem roughly comparable the key figure of comparison is the annual budget deficit. By holding large amounts of US dollars in the Chinese Central Bank and continually breaking World Trade Organisation rules on tariffs and by imposing tariffs which effectively prevent access to China’s internal market Beijing has gained an unfair advantage.  It also explains why China’s budget deficit is only 25% of that of the US. The most obvious beneficiary of this highly successful Chinese strategy to exploit Western consumerism is the growth in Beijing’s military capability which the West has effectively paid for. In 2025 alone, Beijing increased the defence budget by 7.2%. This means China now has effective and comparable defence budget of $411 billion compared with the US defence budget in 2025 of 883.7 billion.  

 

Moreover, whilst the US economy remains significantly bigger than China’s nominally with a 2024 GDP of around $28.8 trillion compared to $18.5 trillion, if power purchasing parity is used as a yardstick the figures change markedly. ‘PPP’ compares productivity and standard of living. According to the IMF in 2025 China has a economy worth $39.44 trillion compared with a US economy worth some $30.34 trillion.  The figures do not mean China is richer per capita than the US because its population is 4 times greater, but it does demonstrate the rate of growth in relative Chinese state wealth and power. For example, in 2000 the nominal GDP of the US was $10.2 trillion whilst that of China was $1.2. Even using PPP China’s economy was only some 30% that of the US.       

 

Beijing clearly understands the relationship between geoeconomic and geopolitics. In March 2025, China warned the US on X that it was ready to “fight any type of war” with the US. Under instructions from Beijing the Chinese Embassy in the US even went as far as saying, "If war is what the US wants, be it a tariff war, a trade war or any other type of war, we're ready to fight till the end."   This was before Trump’s April 2025 decision to slap 67% tariffs of Chinese imports to the US, and China’s response.  China’s point was clear: the battlefield in this phoney war may be tariffs but as far as Beijing is concerned it is already at war with the US not just over Taiwan but Beijing’s determination to impose its ‘rules’ about power and wealth on the world and Trump’s determination to prevent it. In other words, the struggle is systemic and dangerous.

 

As J.K. Galbraith once said, “Power is as power does”.

 

Julian Lindley-French  

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