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