The Appeasement of Extremism and the Defence of Europe

 

“An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile in the hope it will eat him last”.

Winston Spencer Churchill

Civilisational decline?

President Donald J You-Know-Who has suggested Europe is in “civilisational decline”.  It is easy to dismiss such comments because they come from President Donald J. You-Know-Who.  Western Europeans liberal political leaders would like their citizens to do just that – nothing to see here.  But does he have a point and what are the implications for NATO and the defence of Europe?

By “civilisational decline” Trump means that the historically large scale and rapid immigration of the past 25 years has had a corrosive effect on the cultures and unity of Western European countries.  He is specially referring to the three backbone European powers in Europe, Britain, France and Germany, which he expects to step up and do far more for the defence of Europe. He bases that view on the mass immigration of documented and undocumented people from outside Europe.  As an inner-European migrant myself I do recognise there is a problem. 

Defence and extremism

The fact is it is hard to separate acts of violent extremism such as the disgusting anti-Semitic attacks on Bondi Beach this past week from mass immigration, particularly mass uncontrolled immigration.  Such attacks are only a relatively recent phenomenon as is mass immigration from outside Europe. But, such a separation must be made if defence too is not to be corroded and eroded by extremism. Sadly, there is a very real danger that Western European governments by appearing to appease extremists are effectively doing their job of inter-communal hatred for them by worsening the divisions within society upon which extremism feeds.

In the wake of the Bondi Beach atrocity one British Labour Party politician trotted out that tired old mantra of the Left that “diversity is our strength”.  It is a patently ridiculous statement if such diversity leads to division.  Worse are reasons the Labour Government makes such claims because it does not want to offend one voter base – Muslims.  Muslim voters represent over 15% of the electorate in almost 100 parliamentary constituencies out of 650 at a time when much of the population dislikes the Labour Government intensely.  Similar patterns can be seen across Western Europe and explain why the rise of so-called rightist populism is evident and persistent.

Defence and solidarity

Mass immigration is perhaps the most important strategic trends of the age given the impact it has, And yet few experts dare talk about it for fear of career extinction unless they follow the official Kumbaya mantra. The strategic impact on defence is a case in point. There can be no credible defence in the contemporary sense of the word unless the home base of European countries is reasonably secure and society reasonably cohesive.  There is a reason a patently weaker Russia believes it might get away with future land grabs even in EU and NATO Europe. Moscow believes that the multiculturalism that is a consequence of mass immigration has led to disjointed open societies that Russia can exploit in a digital age, possibly catastrophically.  

This is not a party-political point.  Such disjointedness is the direct result of a strange alliance between the Business Right and the Ideological Left.  The former sees immigration as a source of cheap labour, whilst the latter sees immigration as totemic of the open borders in which they believe. Both the Business Right and Ideological Left have also done their level best to prevent people from talking about the impact of mass immigration on Western European societies by implying racism.  In fact, I am deeply comfortable with Britain’s multi-racial society even if I am concerned with the ghettos in which hate incubates and which multiculturalism seems to have spawned.  There is a profound difference.

Liberalism, immigration and multiculturalism

If social liberals like me want liberalism to survive then Western European governments and the liberal Establishments of which they are a part are going to have to address the relationship between extremism, mass immigration and multiculturalism.  Thus far, they have chosen not to and the consequences are self-evident.  Millions of decent Muslims across Western Europe feel that they are being identified with Salafist extremists by an increasingly large number of their fellow citizens of all colours or creeds.  My own country, Britain, has seen leaders actively rubbish patriotism to make all feel welcome but have instead made no-one feel welcome.  Britain is today a country profoundly divided into those who see British history as heroic and those who see it as criminal.  As an Oxford historian who has studied this stuff, I can tell you the truth really does lie in the moderate middle.

And it is moderation which is most at risk in this most important of debates – a debate so vital there can be no sound defence without it.  This is because by appeasing extremists on both Left and Right governments in Western Europe have silenced the moderate majority. Worse, by refusing to do something about the legitimate concerns of the moderate majority as they see their countries change rapidly around them moderates are also becoming radicalised.

The absence of leadership

It is the absence of leadership which is the root cause of this most strategic of malaises.  And here's the rub – most people want to rub along and do.  They also want to share a basically similar view of what it means live in a pluralistic society and believe their leaders share the same ideals.  They do not want to be told that their country is criminal or have their children told that in schools by ideologically driven leaders or teachers.  They also do not want to be told that mass immigration is vital to the economy by venal leaders when huge swathes of the population are trapped on social welfare and hopeless.  In other words, they want to believe again in their country. 

Western Europeans will be incapable of leading the future defence of Europe UNTIL that social compact with leaders and establishments is re-established.   Until it is many moderate people, the backbone of any defence, will not be willing to risk themselves or their children in defence of establishments that they believe to be actively inimical to their interests. There can be no place for nostalgia in the defence of Europe but there must be pride. That means building a new moderate shared patriotism with the citizens of today not of the past.  For too long Western European governments have quietly killed such pride by seeking to accommodate the unaccommodatable – extremism.   Those who shout the loudest.  

If not, however strong Europeans may look on paper, Russia will eventually get what it wants because it knows that without the support of the people ‘Europe’ is in fact something Moscow knows well – a Potemkin village.  A Potemkin house divided against itself…

Julian Lindley-French

US National Security Strategy 2025: The Shining City?

 

December 8^th. President Harry S. Truman once said that “If a man is acquainted with what other people have experienced at this [the Resolution] desk, it will be easier for him to go through a similar experience. It is ignorance that causes most mistakes. The man who sits here ought to know his American history, at least.”  US National Security Strategy (NSS 25) is built on myth and President Donald J. Trump’s many prejudices about allies and others.  

Now, I am too old to get too excited about such documents even if US National Security Strategies are meant to be the distilled essence of an Administration’s grand strategy – the application of immense American means in pursuit of high strategic ends.  They are a bit like London buses – one waits for ages and then when one finally turns up it is going in the wrong direction. And yes, NSS 25 is meant to set the scene for the forthcoming National Defense Strategy which will matter to NATO.  It is not all bad, even if the US support for “our allies in preserving the freedom and security of Europe” could be more J.D. Vance than John F. Kennedy. 

 An America divided...

The biggest concern NSS 25 reveals is the enormous divide in US domestic politics and the virtual civil war taking place in the Washington Establishment over America in the world. Normally, US domestic politics only interests me in so much as American choices affect my country and NATO.  The more dependent Britain and other Europeans have become the more subject we are to America’s politics.  When the Americans sneeze and all that. What makes NSS 25 so radically different from past such efforts is the strangely parochial mix of politics and personality both implicit and explicit in the leadership of the world’s only global power.  

Is NSS 25 thus just a temporary phenomenon reflective of a radically capricious president.  Yes and no. America is changing fast and is no longer led by a White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) cabal for which the ties with Europe were both cultural as well as geopolitical.  NSS 2025 thus marks something that has been building for a long time - a radical departure from post-war American internationalism built on a sense amongst many Americans that they can simply no longer afford other peoples’ problems.

Furthermore, having effectively stated that the US is no longer a European power NSS 25 then proposes a view of American power that Bismarck or Metternich would have recognised.  As much as NSS 25 does vision Viscount Lord Palmerston would have concurred for according to NSS 25 America no longer as either permanent friends or permanent enemies, just interests.  Really?

Another paradox of this very un-American strategy is the very real damage it does to the American strategic brand.  NSS 25 abandons any last remnant of the Shining City on the Hill by explicitly re-casting America as simply yet another power-obsessed ‘European-style’ bottom-feeder. In other words, NSS 25 is a very depressing document for those who have long believed in American the Idea because it trashes the inspirational American belief that if others prosper America prospers.

What should particularly concern Europeans is Trumps adherence to the balance of power? Let’s face it European efforts to built ‘stability’ by balancing power has not always ended well.  This is particularly the case given that it is now Europeans who like to cast themselves as a Shining City on the Hill, even if in fact ‘Europe’ is little more than a collection of weak villages on a bit of a bump in somebody else’s road. Perhaps one can only shine on a hill if one had no power and faces no threats? 

The myth of history

 It is the failed understanding of American history in NSS 25 which is most galling. It also reveals the extent to which Trumpian foreign and security policy is built on a kind of Hollywood history of America.  A history in which the Americans win everything without the help of anybody for the good of all, even those who lose.  Take for example the reference to the Monroe Doctrine. NSS 25 states, “After years of neglect the United States will reaffirm and assert the Monroe Doctrine to restore American pre-eminence in the Western hemisphere”.  Sorry, but that is not what the Monroe Doctrine did.  What eventually became known as the Monroe Doctrine followed a speech in December 1823 by then President James Monroe in which he effectively called for a new balance of power between the New World and the Old World, by which he meant Britain and the US. 

 In effect, Monroe was offering a deal to the British to build three new empires.  First, the Americans would promise not to interfere again in British North America.  In 1812, the Americans had tried to take advantage of Britain’s wars against Napoleon by trying to seize parts of what is today Canada. The British punished them by burning down the White House and Congress in 1814.  Contrary to American myth the government of Lord Liverpool in London had no ambitions to destroy the United States. 

 Second, the British agreed to let the Americans have a free hand in what is today Latin America. By 1823, the Spanish Empire of the Americas was crumbling and Monroe and his Administration wanted to exploit that.  Third, the British would leave the Americans to colonise what became eventually the United States and exploit newly independent states in what became Latin America.  In return, the British, safe in the knowledge that British North America no longer faced an American threat, could turn south and east. Between 1815 and 1890 Britain built the Second British Empire.  In other words, whilst all other European powers were recovering from a systemic war Monroe made America complicit in British imperialism by figuratively and literally having Britain’s grand strategic back.  

The new Atlanticism

 Old-fashioned Atlanticism is dead, long live the new Atlanticism! NSS 25 simply confirms in an extreme way what Europeans should already know – that the US domestic politics is driving Americans into a strange kind of isolationism whilst still obsessed with its fading exceptionalism. Trump is the embodiment of that. 

 NSS 25 is full of paradoxes but perhaps the most egregious paradox is the relegation of Europeans to the third rank of American interests after the Indo-Pacific and making money. If one looks at the ends, ways and means of NSS 25 the only way the Americans will ever realise their grand strategic goals is with the support of allies. That means America needs NATO.

The missing message of NSS 25? The Americans still need Europeans, as much as Europeans need Americans. And, with a relatively modest collective effort Europeans could show just how indispensable they are to the US?  Let’s get on with it!

 Just a thought.

 ulian Lindley-French