“Nostalgia is not a strategy”.
For twenty years
I have had the honour of attending the wonderful Riga Conference in Latvia. Every year I have attended I have used the
conference to pose the Riga Test – are the good citizens of Riga safer this
year than last from their noisy and aggressive neighbour. The answer?
No.
This was
probably my last Riga Conference because for much of it I felt like a spare
part who had outstayed his welcome. There
is a perfectly good reason for that because it is time for a new generation of
leaders and analysts to take over. Any
legacy I may be leaving is in good hands.
There is a lot of strategic talent coming through.
That said,
I left Riga concerned. My concerns are
not with the younger generation but my own and the complacency in which they
seem so mired. Too many senior conference
attendees either in positions of power or recently retired seemed all too comfortable,
certain that they knew what Putin intends to do next to Latvia and its
neighbours Estonia and Lithuania. If I
do not know, they do not know. Their argument rests on the belief that so long as
Russian forces are mired in the mud of Ukraine the Baltic States are safe. They also believe that NATO has Putin exactly
where it wants him. I am not so sure.
The number of times at the conference I heard something along the lines of Putin
will not do this or that seemed to tempt fate to this Oxford historian. The ‘job’
of deterring Russia is by no means done and it is a profound mistake to believe
that just because a Western leader would not take a big risk, a ‘cautious’ (and
quite possibly desperate) Putin would not.
It is
precisely this kind of thinking I have been warning against for years. Putin
does not think like a Western democrat, and it is a profound mistake to
transfer the Western way of thinking onto either Vladimir Vladimirovich or the
men around him. It is also precisely because Putin is mired in Ukraine that makes
him so dangerous. A couple of weeks ago
I wrote about Russia’s way of war and its four distinct elements: wars of
conquest, wars of destruction, wars of coercion, and wars of exploitation. For
Putin war is simply a military means to a grand strategic end – the re-establishment
of Russian control over its ‘near abroad’ by whatever means available. That is what Putin means when he talks of Russkiy
Mir. Ukraine is simply one step towards
that grand strategic end which Putin passionately believes he will one day
realise simply and tragically because Russians are prepared to suffer more than
other Europeans, particularly Western Europeans.
On October
14th, Vyacheslav Volodin, the Chairman of the Russian States Duma
was explicit. Latvian authorities, he said, were persecuting fellow Russians
and Moscow had a duty to protect its “compatriots”. No doubt my conference colleagues would
comfort themselves with the thought that NATO stands ready. Does it?
I have never known the Americans and major Western European powers more politically
distracted and strategically inept and thus open to a Russian war of
exploitation against them. Not since the
Cold War has the Russian state been so geared for a war of coercion on its
neighbours, be it with fighter incursions, drone incursions, sabotage, or a
host of other ‘accidents’. Whilst the
West talks about a counter-drone wall, the Russians are already knocking it down.
Even Russia’s
ability to conduct a war of conquest is not as far-fetched as my complacent
colleagues would like to believe. A former commander of the US Army in Europe
asked me to pose a simple question at the panel on military mobility I chaired.
In the event of a major Russian attack that combined all four wars of coercion,
exploitation, conquest and destruction simultaneously and across the spectrum
of information, cyber, sabotage and military power could Latvia hold out the
two weeks it would take for Allied forces to arrive in strength. No.
Which brings
me to what was really missing at this year’s Riga Conference – any elite sense
of urgency and a lack of what I call a real joined up defence against
exploitation, coercion, conquest and destruction. Declarations have been signed,
commitments have been made but to my trained and experienced eye words still
seem more important than deeds to free Europe. Nostalgia is not a strategy; complacency
is a crime.
Thank you,
Latvia and your mighty Riga Conference. It has been an honour to serve you. Bon
voyage!
Julian
Lindley-French
