Decline and Fall 2016?

“In the end, more than freedom, they wanted security.  They wanted a comfortable life, and they lost it all – security, comfort, and freedom.  When the Athenians finally wanted not to give to society but for society to give to them, when the freedom they wished for most was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free and was never free again.”

Edward Gibbon “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”

Alphen, Netherlands. 10 August. The West is in trouble. Whatever one might think about President Erdogan’s post-coup power grab he understands the ebb and flow of power. This week Erdogan went to St Petersburg to meet Russia’s President Putin less than a year after Turkish aircraft shot down a Russian plane. The implications of the trip are clear; given Turkey’s difficult geopolitical and geographic position Ankara’s best option is to back the ascendant power. Ever since Turkey joined NATO in 1952 Ankara has taken the view that alliance with the West affords Turkey the best chance of security. That assumption would appear to be changing.  Why?

There are many afflictions undermining the power and influence of the contemporary West. The very fact that an insurgent such as Donald Trump is so close to the White House is already profoundly shaking the confidence of America’s allies and partners in the value of US leadership. The obsession of European leaders with Project Europe at the expense of all else is doing real damage to the West’s strategic brand. It is now obvious that the EU far from aggregating European power on the world stage is accelerating the retreat of Europeans into an obsession with values and legalism. However, it is the focus of to many elites in the West on short-term political and/or financial gratification at the expense of long-term strategic probity that is doing the real damage.

Let me highlight the point by citing two examples of this problem over the past week or so from my own country Britain; the stalled deal with China to build a new nuclear power-station, and a leaked report on the relative capabilities of British and Russian armed forces.

Last week new British Prime Minister Theresa May ordered a review of a deal under which China would have funded the construction of an as yet untested French-designed nuclear power station at Hinkley Point in return for China being able to build another showcase reactor at Bradwell in Essex. This desperate deal was the brainchild of the strategically-illiterate Cameron-Osborne duopoly.

The fact that such a deal could have ever been contemplated reflects the political stupidity of what passes for British energy policy. When I was a kid I used to work in a pub at Oldbury-on-Severn right next to a nuclear power station at a time when Britain was the world leader in civil nuclear power. However, the ‘power’ of the green lobby, and the political obsession of several governments with renewables when it was clear such technologies could never meet Britain’s energy needs led Britain down an energy dead-end. It also highlighted the cost of the 'little politics at the expense of big strategy' problem that has dogged Britain for years.

As for China there is nothing in Beijing’s behaviour of late in the South and East China Seas or in the levels of Chinese state cyber-hacking or Chinese espionage that would suggest Beijing is ever going to be a real strategic partner of either Britain or the West. London must understand that Chinese state funding for such projects is only undertaken as part of what Beijing perceives as Chinese state, i.e. geopolitical interests. What are Chinese interests? To weaken Britain’s ability to act as an independent strategic actor by imposing a level of British dependence on China, and in particular to weaken London’s still vital strategic partnership with the United States.

Even on commercial grounds this deal is madness, on strategic grounds it is full on insanity.   To then compound the problem by giving an illiberal power such as China unheralded and utterly unwarranted access to key components of Britain’s critical nuclear energy infrastructure simply demonstrates the retreat from sound ‘strategy-fying’ which has afflicted London for far too long.

And then there is Russia. This morning a leaked report from the British Army’s Land Warfare Centre publicly confirmed something of which I have been aware of for some time – Russian forces could now out-think, out-manouevre, and out-fight British and all other European forces. General Sir Richard Shirreff, NATO’s former military No. 2, and for whom I had the honour of working briefly when he was commander of the Allied Rapid Reaction Corps, is a friend and colleague. He was attacked by London’s chattering classes earlier this year for publishing a book entitled 2017: War with Russia.  His assailants had clearly not read the book.

What is really interesting was why Shirreff was attacked. The general thrust of the criticism seemed to be that Shirreff was a warmongering general who was bothering people with an uncomfortable reality and that he really did not understand that the idea of war has been banished because it is neither politically-correct nor politically-convenient. Indeed, the abuse, for that is what much if it was, was little more than strategic and political decadence from a political and intellectual class in London too many of whom seem unwilling or unable to comprehend that really, really bad things can still happen in world affairs. And, that it will fall to states like Britain to stop it and if it happens do something about it. Syria?

So, decline and fall? Not quite. The good news is that Prime Minister May seems to have adopted a far more sober view of British strategic interests than the strategically-illiterate Cameron and the mercantilist Osborne. The fact that the British Army is beginning to properly address the issue of relative power suggests strategic realism might be returning. And, Prime Minister May is surely right to review the Hinkley Point deal and hopefully kill it; the French reactor does not work, the Chinese must not be able to use energy as a geopolitical lever on Britain, and the British taxpayer is being screwed by both.

It is time the West got a strategic grip and that can only happen when leading powers like Britain start again to put strategy before politics. Then the likes of Turkey will again believe that their security can only be afforded by allying with the liberal powers against the illiberal powers for that is the choice all of us must now make.

As for Mr Trump???????????

Julian Lindley-French  

     

      

Syria is the new Chechnya

Alphen, Netherlands. 3 August. August always fills me with geopolitical foreboding. With the democracies on vacation it is this month that is traditionally the moment for dirty geopolitics. This August is doubly concerning because it coincides with the Brazil Olympics. True to form our old friend Vladimir Putin is using both to ruthlessly pursue his strategic ends in Syria. Remember the Beijing Olympics back in 2008 when he invaded Georgia? This August he is applying the same tactics against Aleppo that he used against Grozny during the two Chechen Wars. The shooting down of a Russian Air Force helicopter some 8 km from where a barrel bomb had just been dropped is eerily reminiscent of the destruction of Grozny. As is the offer to ‘assist’ with humanitarian efforts, but only so long as such efforts are under the complete control of both Damascus and Moscow.

What is the West doing about it? Next to nothing. Limited coalition raids are being mounted against ISIS targets, but nothing to resolve the situation in Syria. There was an interesting piece in the British digital newspaper The Independent last week by Dutch Foreign Minister Bert Koenders. Sad to say it was all too typical of the ‘something must be done, but not too much, and not by me’ nonsense beloved of Europe’s handwringing, strategically-inept political elite.

Entitled Aleppo must not become synonymous with global inaction the title was carefully worded, particularly the use of the phrase, ‘global inaction’. Of course, Koenders should really have said ‘Western inaction’ or to be more precise ‘European inaction’. Why? Because as a foreign minister he knows all too well that without UN Security Council agreement ‘global’ action is a non-starter. Yes, the piece likens Aleppo to Srebrenica and the dark chapter in UN and Dutch peacekeeping when Dutchbat permitted the Bosnian Serbs to murder thousands of Bosnian Muslims. Yes, Koenders makes the valid point that most Syrians want to live neither under the murderous Caliphate nor under the equally murderous Assad regime, and their cynical Russian and Iranian backers who see the Syrian people as no more than very small pawns in a great geopolitical game.

What he suggests as a solution is both clever and disingenuous. Koenders calls for a stepped up campaign against ISIS and a much greater humanitarian effort. However, what he wilfully fails to point out in the piece is that in Syria humanitarian action cannot be effective without strategic action. In other words, any alleviation of suffering and/or defeat of ISIS is not possible without either confronting Russia and removing Assad, or accommodating Russia and talking to Assad. It is a stark choice that has been obvious for some time but which Koenders and his fellow leaders have pretended they need not make.

Confronting Russia and Assad at this stage would require the West to threaten a major military land, sea intervention, involving both Western and Arab forces. That is not going to happen. Turkey is now close to being a failed state and no longer a sound base from which to launch such an assault. President Obama is a lame duck president who can at best order a few air strikes against ISIS in Libya. Europe has become strategic prey and abandoned all pretence of engaging danger at distance and simply waits these days for danger to come to Europe, mitigate the effects, and/or pretend no danger exists.

Thus, there is only the alternative? If the West/Europe is not prepared to act against Assad and Putin it must talk to Assad and Putin if there is to be any chance of an alleviation of the suffering of the Syrian people. There are many factors that have led Syria to this point but Western, in particular European, weakness is a major factor. Sadly, it is weakness typified by a European political elite of which Koenders is a part.  

So, as America blusters the summer away in what is perhaps the worst US general election in American history, and Europe slumbers on what is now a permanent strategic vacation Assad and Putin will continue to act with impunity. No amount of hand-wringing articles by impotent foreign ministers from small European states who have decimated their own ability to influence big, dangerous events will matter a jot.

Let me be clear; Syria is the new Chechnya and Aleppo is the new Grozny. In the two Chechen wars Putin believed that the only way to break the secessionist movement was to destroy Grozny. Assad, with Russian backing, is now determined to wipe Aleppo out. And, like Chechnya, both Assad and Putin will give the West just enough excuse to turn away and do nothing.

The consequences? Many thousands more will die and in October at the latest President Erdogan of Turkey will abrogate the March 2016 deal with the EU and open the floodgates to hundreds of thousands of refugees seeking to escape to Europe. Then, Europe will again see the folly of being too weak to stop what is happening in Syria.

Still, there is always the Olympics to watch.

Julian Lindley-French           

Advance Britannia!

Alphen, Netherlands. 21 July. Britain stands at a grand strategic juncture. In a speech broadcast from 10 Downing Street on VE Day, 8 May 1945, and entitled “Advance Britannia”, Winston Churchill said, “We may allow ourselves a brief period of rejoicing, but let us not forget for a moment the toil and efforts that lie ahead”. Thankfully, post-Brexit Britain does not find itself prostrate on the rocks of penury having fought a six year war in the defence of Europe’s freedom. As Churchill made his famous speech British debt to GDP stood at 250%, compared with a contemporary ratio of a still too-high but manageable 89.2%. However, if Britannia is to advance Prime Minister May must be under no illusions about the culture, thinking, and groups she must either change or face down if Britannia is truly to advance. Who are they?

Scottish secessionists: The Scottish Neverendum Party (SNP) represents a clear and present danger to the Union because they will use any excuse to secede. Secession is, after all, why they exist. Prime Minister May must face them down, not least by pointing out the inconsistencies in their case, and not just about Scotland’s economic fundamentals. The SNP fought the 2014 independence referendum with a clear understanding that if they succeeded they would take Scotland out of the EU. Now, they are claiming to fight for independence to keep Scotland in the EU. Worse, by campaigning in the UK-wide Brexit referendum SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon legitimised the vote as a UK-wide vote. To claim now it legitimises her call for a second independence neverendum might be clever politics, it is also rank hypocrisy. A renewed clash over the future of Britain is now inevitable.

Remoaners and lawyers: My on balance preference was for Britain to remain in the EU. However, I am a democrat and accept the decision of a majority of the British people to quit, as I would have accepted the settled will of the Scottish people had they voted to quit the UK in the 2014 once-in-a-generation referendum. Efforts by those on the losing side to change the result by legal hook or political crook are appalling. If they succeed democracy will be well and truly dead in the UK, to be replaced by legal fiat. This is a battle that has been long in the making between Parliament and a section of the judiciary who routinely seek to use European law to erode parliamentary sovereignty. Brexit must indeed mean Brexit, and democracy must indeed mean democracy.

Little Britons: Some of the post-Brexit commentary about a post-EU Britain demonstrates the extent to which many in London do not understand power. One of my critiques of the EU has been the extent to which Brussels has hastened the retreat of many Europeans from power in favour of often vague, vacuous, dangerously self-defeating and self-deluding ‘values’. Too often the EU has failed to aggregate the power of its member-states into strategic influence and effect. This has contributed markedly to the culture of decline management one finds at the heart of Westminster and Whitehall, and which has done so much damage to Britain and its strategic brand.

Little Englanders: Then there are triumphant little Englanders, some of whom seem to think a post-Brexit Britain is on the verge of rebuilding the British Empire. There are signs that the clunkily-named (I think I named it!) world Anglosphere is beginning to swing behind Britain. However, the Anglosphere must not be seen as an alternative to engagement with Europe. Little Englanders are particularly deluded over immigration. Britain’s power is established on its facility and ability as a trading nation. Given the link between trade and the free-ish movement of peoples the only real choice, and by extension control, post-Brexit Britain will have over immigration is from whence it comes and for what purpose. The real choice Britain faces in this world is between wealth and power or poverty and weakness.

Vengeful Europeans: There are those in Europe, particularly in the Élysee Palace it would appear, who want Britain ‘punished’ for exercising democracy. They and their ilk should be left under no illusion that whatever the domestic pressures they face a pragmatic and respectful Brexit is in the best interests of all. The alternative is the mutual impoverishment and weakening of the democracies, and the strengthening of real adversaries and enemies. Thankfully, Chancellor Merkel appears to understand that, even if she will do all she can to protect German interests during the Brexit negotiations.

Economists: …because all things being equal they do not understand power and are wrong about everything.  

          

The May Strategic Agenda: Prime Minister May must now rebuild the very idea of Britain and build it on power fundamentals. Britain is the world’s fifth biggest economy and the world’s fourth biggest defence spender. Britain is not the small island that some would have it and in any case power not geography (Mackinder or no!) dictates influence and effect. From a defence-strategic viewpoint the British armed forces will have a particularly important role to play in rebuilding the idea of Britain. This is not because the future Britain will be militaristic or nationalistic, heaven forbid! However, a country needs a sense of moderate patriotism to function and such patriotism must identify with a legitimate strategic brand that is built on power. And, given the dangerous world into which Britain is moving the armed forces must combine with Britain’s amazing soft power to communicate to the world British strength and stability. When Britain’s strategic brand is strong, Britain and the world are a safer place.

      

To succeed Prime Minister May will need to combine strategic imagination, purpose and resolution. For too long the very idea of Britain has been suborned by political correctness, nationalist secessionists, those for whom the very idea of country is bad, nostalgic idiots, and short-termist, visionless politicians who have allowed the very idea of Britain to whither, and for whom Britain is mere balance-sheet. From the conversations I have had it was precisely such views of Britain that were rejected by the pragmatic and informed many in my native Yorkshire, the heartland of the Great Revolt.

Churchill finished his VE Day broadcast with a call to peaceful arms that is no less relevant today. “We must now devote all our strength and resources to the completion of our task both at home and abroad. Advance Britannia! Long live the cause of freedom! God save the King!”

Julian Lindley-French

Two Coups Turkey

“My people are going to learn the principles of democracy, the dictates of truth, and the teachings of science. Superstition must go. Let them worship as they will, every man can follow his own conscience provided it does not interfere with sane reasons or bid him act against the liberty of his fellow men”.

Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, Founder and First President of the Turkish Republic

Alphen, Netherlands. 18 July. Two coups took place in Turkey this past weekend. The first coup was an exercise in military incompetence. The second coup is still underway and as coups go it is being exercised both brilliantly and ruthlessly. As a friend of Turkey both coups sadden me, not only because 265 people were killed and over 1400 wounded, but Turkey this weekend could well have ceased to be a strong Western state, and instead become a weak Middle Eastern potentate. With the arrest of over 6000 people, some 3000 of them members of the judiciary, this weekend could also mark the final, irrevocable eclipse of President Mustafa Kemal Ataturk’s visionary 1923 constitution and his dream of a secular Turkish state which he crafted from the wreckage of the Ottoman Empire and which sought to uphold the rights of all Turkish citizens.

A few years back I stood on the towering spot where Ataturk had commanded his troops during his brilliant defence of Gallipoli just over a century ago. His eyes were cast to the West even as he defended his country against the forces of France and the British Empire. Strategically, Turkey is just as important now as it was back then. Indeed, Turkey is the pivotal power, sitting at the strategic crux of east and west, north and south.

For many years I have cut President Erdogan political slack. Turkey is not a Western European state and governing Turkey has never been easy, and in any case the rest of Europe has been utterly duplicitous in its dealings with Ankara. For years the EU has pretended to promise eventual Turkey membership, and Turkey has pretended to believe the EU. Now, incompetent elements of the Turkish armed forces have helped President Erdogan step over the threshold between democracy and autocracy upon which he has been standing.

The irony is that President Erdogan can also legitimately wrap himself in Ataturk’s flag in the wake of the coup and claim he is protecting the very Kemalist constitution he could well now destroy. as Turkey shifts from parliamentary democracy to presidential fiat. A kind of ‘sovereign democracy’ beloved of the likes of Russia’s President Putin.

So, how could this happen? The failed military coup followed the same pattern as the ‘interventions’ by the Army in 1960, 1971, 1980, and 1997, all of which were designed to restore Ataturk’s order. It is also hard to avoid the conclusion that that elements within the officer corps were goaded into this coup. For months now Army officers have been complaining that President Erdogan was weakening the Army, purging secular officers, and side-lining the Army from its self-appointed role as ‘guardians’ of Ataturk’s republic. Suspiciously President Erdogan issued several warnings that some form of coup was imminent.

   

What are the implications for Turkey? Contemporary Turkey is split roughly three ways between a European-leaning, more liberal west, a conservative heartland from which President Erdogan draws much of his support, and the Kurds in the south and east of the country. The speed with which President Erdogan has moved to round up opponents has the feel of a pre-planned operation. In the short-term there is no doubt Erdogan’s power will be further enhanced. However, as it becomes clear that the Turkish Republic is slipping into a kind of democratic dictatorship wrapped in a pale green cloaks of Islamism then the acute divisions within the country will likely become more evident. At the very least tensions between President Erdogan’s APK government and the Kurdish PKK will increase.

The implications for the West are equally profound. Turkey has the second largest army in NATO. It is an army that has been weakened, and will be further weakened, as President Erdogan purges any elements in the officer corps he suspects of complicity in this plot. Worse, a powerful cornerstone of European security has been weakened and will continue to be weak for some time to come. This raises a host of questions about the viability of the West’s anti-ISIS and anti-Assad strategies. Operations against ISIS have already been disrupted with the temporary closure of the vital Incirlik air base this weekend. There are also now real questions as to the willingness of Turkey to assist in managing the migrant flows from the Levant to Europe. Certainly, much will now depend on the tone and tenor of criticism from a Europe, not a few leaders of which probably hoped the coup might succeed, if it had led to a more amenable Turkish leader with which to deal.

Therefore, Turkey’s two coup weekend has winners and losers. The winners are President Putin’s Russia and ISIS as both benefit from a divided Turkey no longer anchored as firmly in the West as it was even last week. The loser is the West, as it could well be that Turkey ceased to be a member this past weekend. At the very least there will need to be a lot of patient and clever diplomacy to keep Turkey looking westwards.

However, the biggest loser will be democracy and the Turkish people. Indeed, Turkey’s Great Man must be spinning in his magnificent marble tomb in Ankara this morning. As President Ataturk once said, “Victory is for those who can say “victory is mine!” Success is for those who can begin saying “I will succeed” and say “I have succeeded” in the end”.

Julian Lindley-French         

China; Might or Right: EU; Right or Might?

Alphen, Netherlands. 13 July. Geopolitics is a permanent power struggle between symmetry and asymmetry. There is certainly a certain symmetry in the delicious coincidence of the launch of the new EU Global Strategy and the rejection yesterday in The Hague by the UN’s Permanent Court of Arbitration of China’s feisty claim to some three million square kilometres of the South China Sea, through which some $5 trillion of trade passes every year, and under which huge oil and gas resources are believed to be oozing and bubbling invitingly away.

Whereas Globstrat is the usual blah blah that passes for ‘strategy’ in the EU, China’s quick denunciation of The Hague judgement, and de facto rejection of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), suggests a twenty-first century that could be every bit as cold as the waters Beijing claims as its own. For Europeans events in the South China Sea are equally momentous and beg THE geopolitical question; are pious words ever going to be matched by real power? It is EU yawn versus Chinese brawn.

China has certainly acquired a lot of brawn of late. In 2016 China will increase its defence expenditure by 8% to around $150 billion. Paradoxically, an 8% increase in Chinese defence expenditure is the lowest such percentage increase since 1989.  Between 1989 and 2015 the Chinese defence budget grew year-on-year by more than 10%. The key stat is this; in a conservative estimate CNN values the size of the US economy in 2016 at $19 trillion, with the Chinese economy worth some $12 trillion. The US will spend some 3.4% of GDP on defence in 2016, with the Chinese spending 8%. Therefore, one has only to do the ‘math’, as the Yanks say, to realise the trouble that could well lie not too far ahead.      

Furthermore, whilst Chinese defence expenditure would appear to be far below 2016 US defence expenditure of $573 billion, the gap is not as wide as it appears. First, the US must spread its forces and resources across the globe; China concentrates its military power by and large on East Asia. Second, declared Chinese defence expenditure is believed to be far lower than the actual amount Beijing invests in ‘defence’, particularly in defence research and development. Third, China would appear to get more ‘yang’ for each yuan invested, than the Americans get bang for each buck. Pork barrel politics and sequestration have done terrible damage to the US military.

The EU? Lots of yawn. In 2016 EU members will spend some $200 billion. However, that expenditure is badly fractured and generates nothing like the same bang for each euro/pound etc., spent as either the Americans or the Chinese.  Moreover, the British 25% of EU defence expenditure is about to quit the Union, taking with it some 40% of defence research and technology investment.

Taken together Globstrat and The Hague judgement suggest a geopolitical tipping point which could point to either peace…or war. Read the official Chinese government statement on The Hague judgement and it is uncompromising. However, read between the lines and Beijing clearly leaves some wriggle room for a negotiated settlement with Brunei, the Philippines, Malaysia, Taiwan, and Vietnam all of which contest the Chinese claim. However, if China continues to turn the series of reefs it has seized of late into military bases, and then moves to exclude the air and sea forces of other states from the South China Sea, then Beijing will be set irrevocably on a collision course with other powers, most notably the United States.

As for the EU if ‘discourse’ is not matched by force and resource then Globstrat will be yet another one of those European exercises in empty geopolitics that sooner or later collapses under the weight of the very meaningless acronyms it generates. If the EU strategy was indeed ‘global’ EU foreign and security policy ‘supremo’ Federica Mogherini would be meeting with European leaders this morning to consider the EU’s position on the South China Sea, and what support Europeans could offer the democracies in the region. There will of course be a statement, but the very idea of ‘EU action’ is absurd, which is precisely why the EU is NOT a global actor.

Globstrat will certainly spawn a lot of talk.  Endless Brussels meetings of endlessly ambitious young think-tankers will now ensue in which the illuminati try endlessly to find signs of grand substance where in fact there is none. Globstrat will be minutely examined with each word parsed for signs of life in the corpse that is Europe’s ‘strategic culture’. Brexit happened because too many in Brussels and elsewhere refused to heed warnings of impending disaster, choosing instead to shoot the messenger. If Europeans continue to merely talk about geopolitics, but not act on them, a far greater disaster awaits       

However, China too must also face realities which begs another question; why is China so determined to control the South China Sea? Beijing believes that only a state with access to assured natural resources can assure power and influence in the twenty-first century. The Communist Party believes the only way to maintain power is to honour the post-Tiananmen 'contract' by which the Party retains unquestioned power, in return for guaranteeing improving living standards. That 'contract' can only be honoured if China controls 'strategic' resources.

Beijing has a choice to make. China is not a liberal democracy, but nor is President Xi a President Putin, for all the former’s strong ties with the People’s Liberation Army. For the past thirty years China has done well by supporting and often exploiting the ‘rules’ of the international system. However, China’s extra-sovereign behaviour and its ridiculous ‘historical’ claim to almost the entirety of the South China Sea, based on no more than a spurious nine-dash line on a strange map that appeared from nowhere in the 1940s, suggests a China for which might is fast becoming right, even if for China it is patently wrong.   

China must seek a negotiated settlement to the South China Sea dispute for such a settlement is in the Chinese national interest and would demonstrate the real leadership to which China rightly aspires. As for Mrs Mogherini and her Globstrat at some point she will be forced to answer the same question Stalin once asked of the Vatican; how many divisions does it have?

China might or right; EU right or might?

Julian Lindley-French 

Iraq: The Strategic Lessons of Chilcot

“The danger is, as ever with these things, unintended consequences”

Prime Minister Tony Blair, 2002

Alphen, Netherlands. 7 July. It is 12 volumes and 2.6 million words in length and took 7 years to prepare. Yesterday afternoon I spent reading the 150 pages of the Executive Summary of Sir John Chilcot’s magnus opus The Iraq Enquiry. The strategic implications of what is a damning report into Tony Blair’s leadership of Britain at the time of the 2003 Iraq War are profound. Indeed, given the report’s condemnation (not too strong a word) of the failings of Britain’s political, intelligence, and military elites Chilcot brings into question the very utility in any circumstances of Western intervention in the Middle East and elsewhere. Indeed, Chilcot begs a question that the good knight himself does not answer; how do western states deal with the very real threats that do emanate from such places?  The West intervened in Afghanistan and Iraq and stayed; the result was disaster. The West intervened in Libya but did not stay; the result was disaster. The West did not really intervene in Syria; the result was disaster.

In recent (and not so recent history) few such Western efforts to shape the Middle East have achieved their stated objectives.  Indeed, in what is now a history of ill-considered consequences there is a certain tragic symmetry in the fact that the July 2016 Chilcot Report was published a century after the May 1916 Sykes-Picot Accord, which led to the creation of Iraq and so many other troubled Middle Eastern states. 

Chilcot underpins the need for sound strategic judgement that was lacking at times in the post 911 political environment. Chilcot reinforces the need for political leaders to understand what is possible on the ground. For example, there is a marked contrast between the 1991 Gulf War and the 2003 Gulf War. Whereas the 1991 war was undertaken to uphold the Middle East state structure, the 2003 war set out to change the very nature of the Middle Eastern state. Powerful unintended consequences ensued because powerful unwanted forces were unleashed because powerful people, especially in Washington, refused to confront powerful realities.  Indeed, Iraq was too often more about politics inside the Beltway, rather than security outside of it.

Chilcot firmly asserts that if such an intervention is to be launched it must be properly planned, resourced and forced. None of the West’s post-911 interventions have been properly planned and all have failed, including Afghanistan.  In fact, sound planning was indeed undertaken for post-‘conflict’ Iraq by the State Department’s ‘Iraq Shack’. However, President George W. Bush took responsibility for such planning away from State because he did not trust it and handed it to the Donald Rumsfeld’s Pentagon, which had no experience of such work. The subsequent Coalition Provisional Authority was a disaster.

Chilcot also warns of the dangers of politicising intelligence. Tony Blair had a whole raft of reasons for wanting to stay close to Bush, not least maintaining US support for the peace process in Northern Ireland. However, his lack of influence in the Bush White House was in stark contrast to his desperate need to remain close to Bush. This helped lead Blair to interpret the work of the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) purely through the lens of the transatlantic security relationship rather than wider British interests. It is certainly to the chagrin if not the shame of the elite British civil service that so many did not challenge the Downing Street clique, most notably the British Intelligence services. Iraq revealed the politicisation of the once masterful British civil service which continues to this day, and which even today too often prevents truth being spoken to irresponsible power.

Chilcot is also clear about British military failure. The British Army was humiliated in Iraq, a humiliation that perhaps marked the beginning of the end of the special ‘Special’ US-UK Relationship. The gap between the military power Britain’s leaders said Britain could exert in support of the US soon proved to be false, even though the Americans must also take a lot of the blame for going into Iraq before all the forces and resources necessary to succeed were in place. Britain’s influence in Washington was sorely damaged as a result, and has never really recovered.

One has only to look at the Defence Planning Assumptions in the UK’s 1998 Strategic Defence Review to understand that putting a front-line force in excess of 40,000 troops into Iraq would break the troop bank, to then ‘plan’ in 2006 to go to Afghanistan as well before the mission in Basra was complete was dangerous military nonsense. The Defence Logistics Organisation effectively collapsed in 2003. That is why the occupation force was far smaller than the invasion force and why good military commanders and their civilian counterparts struggled to create a secure space in which stabilisation and reconstruction could take place. However, Britain’s top military commanders at the time must also shoulder some of the blame because they went into Iraq not to succeed but to get out as quickly as possible.

The failure in Iraq may have also marked the beginning of the end of Britain’s membership of the EU. After championing Britain’s future in the EU, and being seen as a de facto leader by many of the new Central and European members of an enlarged EU, Blair’s failure effectively ended Britain’s influence in the EU and ceded leadership to Germany. The opposition of France and Germany to the war proved to be correct, although the motivations of President Chirac and Chancellor Schroeder were complex.  The subsequent split between Britain on one side, and France and Germany on another, has never really healed and the slide towards Brexit accelerated.

Chilcot addresses another issue – method. In 2008 I wrote two reports following a fact-finding visit to Afghanistan. Both reports highlighted the same problems of commission and omission. Put simply, if a Western state or group of states is going to intervene in places like Afghanistan or Iraq it is vital the ‘human terrain’ is properly understood and all national and international means – civil and military – are applied carefully and rigorously to generate outcomes that give the inhabitants hope of positive change. This all-important unity of effort and purpose backed up by sufficient forces and resources was never achieved in either country leaving military commanders to try and close an impossible gap between intent, capability and capacity.

There is also a dangerous flip-side to Chilcot. In the wake of Iraq Britain steadily lost strategic self-confidence, the elite belief in Britain as a power collapsed, and with it there was a loss of British popular faith in both US leadership and in Britain’s own Establishment. It also demonstrated the extent to which keeping on the right side of a poorly-led Washington led Blair and his close clique to lose the strategic plot as the relationship between ends, ways and means descended into political fantasy.

At the start of this piece I raised a question implicit in Chilcot about the very principle of armed intervention; how do western states deal with the very real threats that do emanate from such places?  A hard truth is that there will be occasions in future when such interventions will sadly be necessary. The world is a dangerous place. If Chilcot leads to improved strategic judgement, better understanding of the challenge, the proper political use of intelligence, the re-establishment of appropriate distance between politicians and civil servants, and the closing of the gap between the roles and missions political leaders expect of armed forces, and the forces and resources needed to do the job asked of them, then all well and good. If, on the other hand, Chilcot leads British and other Western political leaders to conclude that they never want to find themselves alongside Blair facing a political, media and public opinion ‘lynching’ and abandon the very idea of military interventions in extremis then the post-Chilcot world is suddenly more not less dangerous. Reading Chilcot I was struck at times just how political the report is.

Ultimately, Tony Blair achieved the exact opposite of what he said he set out to achieve in Iraq and went to war on a false premise.  Over 150,000 Iraqis died, together with some 179 British military personnel, whilst over one million people were displaced. Blair and the Britain he led must bear full responsibility such for failure. However, the real blame ultimately lies with President George W. Bush and Messrs Cheney and Rumsfeld who at the time confused the need for revenge and ideological fervour for sound statecraft.  The threshold for Western military intervention in the Middle East or anywhere must be necessarily high. Chilcot may now have set that threshold impossibly high.

Julian Lindley-French

        

   

NATO: The Enduring Alliance 2016

Alphen, Netherlands. 4 July. On the eve of the NATO Warsaw Summit it is my honour to announce the publication of my latest hard-hitting report: NATO: The Enduring Alliance 2016: Twenty Vital Defence Planning and Related Questions the NATO Warsaw Summit Should Address…but will probably not.

Launched last week in Warsaw for FWPN the report considers the questions the political leaders of the Alliance should answer given the threats posed to NATO and in light of Brexit:

Is NATO fit for twenty-first century purpose?
Who has real power?
What if war breaks out in Europe?
Just how dangerous is Russia?
Can NATO defend itself?
Is Europe serious about defence?
Is the NATO defence and deterrence posture credible?
Do political NATO and military NATO agree about war?
Can Central Europeans influence Europe’s defence?
Is the balance of power in NATO Europe shifting?
What is the EU planning?
What are the strategic implications of Brexit?
Can Germany lead European defence?
Would a European Defence Union work?
Are NATO and the EU compatible?
Has NATO the strategic imagination to fight a new war?
Do NATO Europe’s leaders have the political courage to think about war?
What price will the Americans demand?
What critical defence planning issues must Warsaw address?
Is NATO the enduring Alliance?

You can download the full report for free via the Atlantic Treaty Association website:

http://atahq.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/FWPN-JLF-NEA-2016-FINAL-230616.pdf

Julian Lindley-French 

Brexit: I Told You So!

Dear All,

Below is a segment from a paper I wrote for the French think tank Fondation de la Recherche Strategique in Paris in February....I told you so!

"It is the morning of 24^th June, 2016. Britain and the rest of Europe, indeed the rest of the world, are coming to terms with the shock result of the Brexit referendum the night before. By a majority of 52% to 48% the British people voted to quit the European Union. Prime Minister David Cameron goes before the TV cameras to announce that he has accepted the settled will of the British people. He takes full responsibility for the result and announces that Britain will invoke Article 50 of the Treaty of European Union and begin the two-year ‘deaccession’ of the United Kingdom from the European treaties and institutions. He also announces his resignation forthwith as prime minister...

The rest of a shocked EU is faced with a quandary. Conscious that on this grey June morning the EU’s erstwhile second power might have set a dangerous precedent for withdrawal an emergency EU summit is called. Reactions across Europe range from pleading with the British people to think again, to outright condemnation of the British as ‘traitors’ to the very idea of a Europe Britain helped forge in blood. Quietly, some hard-line Euro-federalists express satisfaction that political integration can now proceed without the applied brake that London has come to represent for decades.

Berlin and Paris are under no illusions about the strategic and political implications of Britain’s split, especially so as President Putin continues to exert pressure on Europe’s eastern flank, and migrants continue to pour in from Europe’s southern flank. Privately, Chancellor Merkel and President Hollande admit they should have tried harder to bring Britain into the Franco-German directoire. Across the Atlantic a lame duck President Obama joins presidential candidate Hillary Clinton to express regret having pushed hard for Britain to remain within the EU. After all, Washington have long seen the British as a strategic convenience and a tool to influence the EU. However, Obama also expresses confidence that now the issue has been ‘settled’ the transatlantic relationship in all of its myriad economic, social, political, and, of course, military forms can move forward. Donald Trump, just anointed Republican presidential nominee, says he really does not care, and that he will be happy to work with Britain as president. Mischievously, President Putin congratulates the British people for having chosen the path of ‘sovereignty’. In fact, for all the concerned leaders Brexit is a leap into the political dark for no-one knows what the strategic implications of Britain’s historic decision to quit EU will be".

Not that I am gloating...the situation is far too serious for that. Well, just a little bit.

Julian Lindley-French

The Battle of the Somme

“The English generals are wanting in strategy. We should have no chance if they possessed as much science as their officers and men had of courage and bravery. They are lions led by donkeys”.

General Erich Ludendorff.

1 July, 2016.  Zero Hour One Hundred Years plus Two. It was the bloodiest day ever for the British Army. A century ago some 300 kilometres/190 miles to the south of me the “big push” was underway. Twenty-nine British Army divisions were advancing across no man’s land in the face of heavy machine gun, mortar, infantry and artillery fire laid down by seven defending German divisions across a 50 km/30 mile front. By Zero plus Five the British had taken some 55,000 casualties, of whom 20,000 were dead.

The reason for the Battle of the Somme was the Battle of Verdun. By 1 July, 1916 the French Army had already been fighting on the charnel fields of Verdun for 134 days. German commander General Erich von Falkenhayn reportedly said his aim at Verdun was to bleed France white. Between February and December 2016 the French Army would suffer up to 540,000 casualties, of whom some 150,000 would be killed.

The French commander-in-chief Marshal Joffre pleaded with the British to launch a major offensive in the west to ease the pressure on French lines at Verdun. Crucially, British commander-in-chief General Sir Douglas Haig believed German forces had suffered sufficient attrition at Verdun to believe a combined Anglo-French assault on the German lines would succeed. Haig even believed it might be possible to enact a complete breakthrough of German defences and commence a rout. The Somme area was chosen for the offensive because it was where British and French forces stood alongside each other.

Five days prior to the offensive the British started an enormous artillery barrage that saw over one million shells fired at the German defences right up until the commencement of the advance. The fact that such a barrage could be mounted was proof the British had overcome the crippling shortage of artillery shells from which the British Army had suffered since the outbreak of war in August 1914.

The British offensive should have succeeded, at least on paper. British forces enjoyed more than a three-to-one superiority in men and materiel. However, the offensive failed. The reasons for failure are manifold.  However, in the intervening century the myth of the Somme has become overpowering and made it hard to discern fact from fiction.

The British Army at the Somme included in its ranks a significant number of Kitchener’s New Army. This was a newly-formed, ‘green’ (inexperienced) ‘citizen army’, which included the Sheffield City Battalion, from my own home town, and which fought with distinction on 1 July at Serre.  However, there were also a large number of battle-hardened British, Australian, Canadian, New Zealand and other forces committed to the Somme offensive.

Marshal Joffre had promised the British that the French force on Haig’s right flank would be equal in size to that that of the British. However, by late June the French Army was simply unable to put such a force into the line such was the pressure being exerted on them by Falkenhayn at Verdun.

However, it was not green pal’s battalions or the French that did for Haig’s Somme offensive. It was Haig himself who doomed the Somme offensive to failure through bad strategy and over confidence.  By committing to a front some 30 km/50 miles wide the British force was spread far too thinly. The artillery barrage whilst impressive did nothing like the damage expected to the well-engineered German trenches and forewarned the enemy as to the scale and location of the offensive. Cohesion between the British divisions, and communications between high command and operational commanders was via a rudimentary command chain that was unable to withstand the confusion of a dynamic offensive after so long having been committed to a relatively static defence.

By November 18, 1916, when Haig called off the offensive, the British had gained an area some 12 km/9 miles deep and some 25 km/20 miles wide, but had suffered 623,907 casualties at a rate of some 3000 casualties per day. However, German losses also numbered 465,000 casualties. Conscious that the German Army could not suffer such losses again over the winter of 1916/1917 the Germans engineered the fearsome Hindenburg line behind the Somme battlefield to which they retreated in February 2017. Crucially, the Somme offensive did indeed help relieve pressure on the French Army at Verdun.

Lessons were learned from the failed Somme offensive. In March 1918 Ludendorff launched Operation Michael, a last desperate attempt by the German High Command to split British and French forces which were being reinforced daily by the arrival of US forces. German Stormtroopers were unleashed across what had been the old Somme battlefield. At first the British reeled back but crucially did not break.

At the Battle of Amiens, which commenced on 8 August, 1918, on what Ludendorff called the “black day of the German Army”, an exhausted German force faced a new new All Arms assault by the British. Out of the mist an enormous artillery barrage was unleashed, but this time British, Australian, Canadian, Indian and New Zealand forces, supported by American and French forces, and all under a ‘supreme’ unified command, advanced right behind the barrage employing new flexible ‘grab and hold’ infantry tactics. The force was also supported by a large number of tanks and massive air power.

Crucially, the assault took place over a much narrower front than the Somme offensive enabling the British force to punch through German lines. The German Army true to its tradition fought bravely but as an offensive force it was broken at Amiens. German commanders of a later generation studied the All Arms Battle very closely, but they gave it another name – Blitzkrieg! 

                    

In memory of all the fallen on all sides at the Battle of the Somme which began one hundred years ago today.

Julian Lindley-French

      

Brexit from Poland

Warsaw, Poland. 29 June. It has been an interesting couple of days. My reason for coming here on the eve of the NATO Warsaw Summit was to present my new paper, NATO: The Enduring Alliance 2016 for the German Polish Co-operation Foundation. However, the 65 million person elephant in the room for much of the debate was of course Brexit. Part of me wondered what kind of reception I would get. After all, in the past I called for Britain to leave the EU, I predicted Brexit, before I decided after talking to a lot of people, and in the wake of the Paris attacks, that on balance Britain should remain. My concerns were misplaced. Poland of all countries understands the difficulty of balancing patriotism, interdependence, and membership of an institution a significant part of which would like to replace the democratic state with an oligarchic super-state.

What I found instead this morning at the Sjem, Poland’s parliament, when speaking to senior parliamentarians, was a respect for the democratic decision of the British people. What I also found was Polish pragmatism. Poland deeply regrets Brexit. However, there was absolutely no sense that the British people should somehow be punished for having the temerity to have expressed a majority opinion on a matter of fundamental import to them. Rather, there was a genuine commitment to forge a new relationship for Britain with the EU, and to confirm Britain’s existing relationships with friends and allies on the Continent. The terrible events in Istanbul last night served as a stark reminder of the dangers we all face and must all face together.

Encouragingly it was also an opinion of hope and goodwill expressed by Ambassador Rolf Nikel, Germany’s envoy to Poland, at a delightful reception held last night at the German Embassy. Indeed, the only humiliation to which I was subjected concerned the tactical withdrawal from the European football championships by England following their defeat by mighty Iceland. Don’t worry.  I immediately countered by enquiring as to the state of Berlin’s new airport!  

Poland is committed to keep the British fully engaged in the security and defence of Europe. They are right. To that end the forthcoming NATO Warsaw Summit must to some extent be a Brexit summit. Indeed, it will be a chance for London to remind it allies and partners that Britain remains a power and is utterly committed to the security and defence of Europe. There is one caveat. David Cameron and George Osborne are talking of more cuts to public expenditure in light of Brexit. It would certainly be a mistake to cut the British defence budget any further. It would also be advisable to re-invest in Britain’s diplomatic machine as London will need all the tools of influence at its disposal in the coming years.     

So, Poland need not worry…too much. However, Poland’s help would be much appreciated, recognising Warsaw faces its own political challenges at present. Forget all the pre-negotiation posturing. As France and Germany have proven in the past it is amazing how flexible European ‘principles’ are when it comes to power. A post-Brexit deal is possible. That was also the view of my Polish counterparts.

Which brings me to Scotland. If European partners such as Poland want to find a solution with and for the UK to the mutual benefit of all they must be careful how they respond to the political manoeuvrings of the Scottish Nationalist Party leader, Nicola Sturgeon. Her political mission is and always has been to destroy the UK. The Scots had a referendum in September 2014 which saw a decisive 55%-45% rejection of Scottish independence. Above all, Sturgeon legitimised the UK-wide Brexit referendum as a UK-wide referendum by campaigning in it, and by campaigning outside of Scotland for the Remain side. She can hardly cry foul simply because she lost a vote that she legitimised. She might have had a case if she had ordered the SNP to abstain on the grounds that such a referendum had not been formally endorsed by the Scottish Parliament. She did not. Therefore, countries like Poland have a choice to make; London or Edinburgh.

What struck me most about this visit is the deep and enduring human relationship between Britain and Poland. What rightly matters to Poles is the proper and respectful treatment of the up to one million Poles now living in mainly England. However, if Poland really wants to help a friend at this difficult time it could do so by recognising that it was the sheer scale and pace of inward migration that drove much of the Brexit vote. It was also the refusal of fellow Europeans to heed warnings about this.

Britain will not get access to the single market unless it upholds the principle of free movement. A huge swathe of British people will not accept a new deal with the EU unless and until some degree of pragmatic management of immigration is in place. Absolutism on either side right now will simply entrench already entrenched positions. It would be better for all of us to properly explore the possible, not retreat behind the barricades of the impossible.

So, the message from Warsaw?  Let’s all calm down, those trying to stir the pot cease and desist, and those responsible for moving us all forward…get a grip!  There will be a solution but together we must fashion it.

Julian Lindley-French    

Causes of Brexit

Warsaw, Poland. 27 June. The causes of Brexit that I have heard thus far are as follows:

The politics of austerity, the collapse of the Labour Party and the loss of the white working and not-so-working class, splits in the Conservative Party, Tory grandees, David Cameron’s political gambling, David Cameron’s ‘deal’ to the keep Britain in an unreformed EU, English political culture, the erosion by the EU of national democracy and sovereignty, popular demands for ever more devolution, elite demands for ever more centralisation, the Euro, the growing gap between the Eurozone and the non-Eurozone, the 1991 Treaty of Maastricht and the UK opt-outs, the marginalisation by France and Germany of the UK within the EU, immigration and the refusal of the political elite in London and Brussels to address popular concerns over many years, the sheer pace and scale of immigration, failure to prepare sufficient housing, schools and public services to cope with mass immigration, refusal of Brussels to be flexible, the failure to make the case for immigration, Commonwealth immigrants who did not like a perceived bias in favour of migration from the EU, Jean-Claude Juncker, the 1973 lie that ‘Europe’ was only a common market, the 1957 Treaty of Rome, a nostalgic view of English and Welsh history, a lot of Westminster politicians, some Whitehall bureaucrats, the Establishment in general (both British and EU) which many in England just wanted to give a good kicking to, the collapse of political integrity spectacularly revealed by both the Leave and Remain campaigns, Martin Schulze, Tony Blair, George Osborne, Nigel Farage, Boris Johnson, Michael Gove, Jeremy Corbyn, protectionism, the European Commission and interfering Eurocrats, the European Parliament and its lack of political legitimacy, Iraq, Afghanistan, President Obama, globalisation, blaming globalisation, the British media, de-industrialisation, patriotism, fat cat employers, multinational corporations, the European Court of Justice and the dictatorship of legalism, the European Court of Human Right, because it got confused with the European Court of Justice, ignorance, bigotry and downright prejudice, and from a personal point of view the Eurovision bloody song contest, Sheffield Wednesday which I blame for everything, and me because I predicted it!

As for who voted for what and for what reasons please take your pick. However, be careful. The latest I have heard from our Dear Leaders today is a) that the referendum should be re-run so that the peasants can this time get the answer right; b) the referendum should be re-run because it upset Martin Schulze who injured his fist banging a table; c) the referendum should be re-run because the peasantry were so stupid that they ticked the ‘leave’ box when they meant to tick the ‘an awful lot more Brussels’ box, d) the referendum should be ignored by Parliament because Britain has a representative democracy even if it is not very representative; and e) the EU would like the British to pretend the referendum never actually happened at all.

Happy days…not!

Julian Lindley-French   

Brexit: Some Personal Reflections

Alphen, Netherlands. 25 June. It is 30 hours or so since Britain’s historic decision to leave the EU and the fallout and backlash is just beginning. What do I feel now about Brexit? Over those hours I have been saddened but little shocked by the vitriol sent my way. One email even suggested that Britain has become an enemy of Europe, whatever that means. Emails have been refused, and one good friendship lost, which I regret. But don’t worry, I can take it. After all, I am cut from the same Yorkshire oak as the many of the people that drove this decision, and I have always taken responsibility for my writings.

I am an analyst and my job is to analyse. Back in 2010 I did believe Britain should leave the EU. Britain was mired in a massive banking crisis, and the Eurozone was mired in a massive debt crisis. The Eurozone faced a choice; integrate or collapse. Britain did not face such a choice.

Back then it was clear to my mind that the only way for the Eurozone to resolve the crisis, and indeed make the Euro work was a deepening of European political and monetary union, including a banking union. Eurozone leaders still face that choice, they just haven’t taken it. And so the Eurozone crisis bubbles away below a thin crust of apparent political stability ready to explode at any moment. Given that Britain was never going to part of deeper political integration my on balance sense was that back then Britain should leave the EU.

What has I admit irritated me throughout this entire intervening period is the extent to which some senior Americans have treated my country as a strategic public convenience; Britain and the British people as mere instrument of American grand strategy. In so doing they have denied that Britain is a living, breathing democracy with its own issues, and its own tensions, its own interests, and its own political identity. The Obama administration has routinely dismissed British concerns about the direction of travel of the EU as some kind of post-Imperial psychosis rather than seen such concerns for what they are; a complex reflection of the same distrust of distant power that drove their own revolution back in 1776, and about which Americans are so proud. Indeed, far from backing British calls for EU reform the Obama Administration tried to force Britain into into simply accepting a status quo that was never sustainable over the longer term. Still, one can hardly blame the Americans for that Little Britain view of Britain. Too many needy British leaders have convinced American leaders to think of Britain as little more than an American strategic public convenience.

Several events led me to shift my position on the EU. The outbreak of the Syrian war and the emergence of ISIS began to change the strategic environment in which Britain and Europe reside, and threatened the collapse of states across the Middle East and North Africa. In 2014 Russia seized Crimea and began the long dissection of Ukraine which continues to this day. Moscow also began to threaten and intimidate Central, Eastern and Northern Europe. Huge flows of desperate people forced their way into Europe and compounded the many problems faced by countries in southern Europe. In November 2015 ISIS terrorists attacked Paris and then Brussels. Whilst I retained some sympathy for the frustrations many feel in Britain about the EU. and the way it is run, in such circumstances I could not countenance Britain leaving the EU.

        

There will be some Americans who will also blame Brexit for the weakening of NATO. OK, I will admit that there can be no EU Common Security and Defence Policy worthy of the name without Britain. But then, there never was going to be a truly ‘C’ CSDP with Britain because to make the ‘C’ word mean something a European government would be required. How many of you out there really want a European government? Your call.

As for NATO it is not Britain that has weakened the Alliance. After all, under NATO rules the British are one of of only four Allies who actually meet the target of 2% GDP to be spent on defence with 20% on new equipment. If there is any one factor that has prevented so many Allies meeting what should be a minimum commitment to the Alliance it is the Eurozone rule that prevents a state ratcheting up a budget deficit of more than 3% GDP, even at a time of crisis.  Don’t blame Britain for that.

          

Next week President Hollande and Chancellor Merkel will hold one of their directoire meetings to discuss the post-Brexit EU. Years ago I called for a trirectoire and the inclusion of British prime ministers in such meetings. After all, Britain is Europe’s second biggest economy and strongest military power. That call was rejected. It has always seemed to me one of the EU’s many contradictions how European ‘integration’ has always been defined by two major powers and their national interests in the name of ‘Europe’.

Here’s the irony. At that meeting Merkel and Hollande will call for a more flexible Europe. They will not agree on much else. Had they done that even a few days ago they may have swung enough undecided British voters (you know the people who are meant to matter, but to much of the elite do not) to back Remain.

Brexit also marks a moment of opportunity. With Britain about to leave the EU we will see just how enthusiastic those Europeans (and Americans) who have long blamed Britain for blocking ‘progress’ really are for some form of United States of Europe. This is your moment, guys. No longer can you Euro-federalists blame us British for blocking your glorious Project Europe. I suspect, however, we will soon discover just how many of you do not actually want ever closer political union.

Brexit was long in the making, but too many refused to see it coming. Read my blogs and other writings and I warned people that Brexit could happen because for years Britain and the Real EU, the Eurozone, have been drifting apart. Brexit has now formalised what for a long time has been an observable fact on the ground. Indeed, those that argued that by remaining in the EU Britain would be upholding the status quo were talking as much rubbish as those that argued leaving would mark the start of a new Elizabethan age for Britain, or more accurately England. The EU was never going to, nor could it ever, remain where it is today; trapped between debt, integration, and impotence.

So, we all have a choice to make right now. If the blame game of the past 24 hours gathers pace then Brexit will indeed weaken Europe, Britain and the West and there will be no winners at all. If, however, common sense prevails and a period of calm reflection is then followed by sober considerations of how best to proceed mutually beneficial outcomes can be crafted and at least some positives will come out of this mess. The next two and a half years would then be about the nature of Britain’s future relationship with a future EU. Good sense would ensure such a relationship works for all – Britons (even Scots), other Europeans, and even Americans.

As for Britain as enemy, really? There are plenty of those elsewhere. So, keep calm and carry on talking.

Julian Lindley-French        

Brexit: For Better or Worse, For Good and Ill

“Oh what tangled webs we weave when at first we seek to deceive”.

Alphen, Netherlands. 24 June. Why did Brexit happen?  Peering through the grey drape of fatigue in which I am cloaked having spent the night watching history being made (or is that unmade) the decision the British people have taken last night is quite simply momentous. To be honest I felt something like this might happen the moment I saw people in a working men’s club in my native Yorkshire declare for leave to a man and woman. I know these people. Part of me is hewn from their stock. This was the English, and I stress the English, at their stubborn best and bloody-minded worst. An Agincourt-beckoning two fingers (the English don’t do one finger) to distant Establishments from people who have for too long felt ignored, bypassed, and don’t give a damn who tells them what they must do however exalted.  

It would be easy to blame a lot of people for Britain’s decision. And yes there are many who should be looking hard at themselves this morning. French and German leaders who for years excluded Britain from the leadership of the several European projects always implicit in what eventually became the EU. A Brussels Establishment impervious to all and any argument that did not fit into their ‘one size fits all’ idea of ever closer political union.  A kommentariat of which I am in some ways a minor part who simply could not believe the peasants would ever revolt.

In reality none of the above were really the cause of Brexit. Britain’s departure began the day Britain joined the then European Economic Community back in 1973. Ticking away deep in the heart of Britain’s accession was a political time-bomb with a delayed fuse that last night exploded. To convince the British people to accept a new idea of ‘sovereignty’ then Prime Minister Edward Heath and his ministers simply lied. They knew that the EEC was far more than a ‘common market’. Indeed, one had only to read the preamble of the 1957 Treaty of Rome to realise that Britain was joining a political project.

As the ambition of that project grew over the years stepping, sometimes stumbling, forward from treaty to treaty successive British leaders wriggled and struggled to maintain that original lie. An opt-out here, a special ‘deal’ there, all to defend a political space that over years steadily shrank. Finally, the idea that Britain could be in the EU but outside the European Project could no longer be hidden and began to look like the absurdity it was. In the end the original lie came to be seen even by some members of the British Establishment, as an original political sin.

The problem with the lie was that it eroded one vital conversation and replaced it with another. Since at least the English civil war British democracy has been established on what Abraham Lincoln would describe in his magisterial Gettysburg Address as government of the people, for the people, by the people. However, as British politicians danced ever more clumsily on the head of a hot political pin to maintain the original lie the conversation with the British people itself became a lie.

Rather, for the British Establishment the traditional conversation between power and people was replaced by a more ‘important ‘conversation with Brussels and the leaders of other EU member-states. And, as the gulf in importance between the two conversations became ever wider it become ever clearer the European elite conversation was far more important than the British political conversation. Worse, too much of that elite conversation took place behind closed doors in a secrecy-obsessed Brussels. This exacerbated a gnawing, growing sense in the political instincts of millions that Europe was not for the people but against the people.  That democracy was being eroded with the Mother of Parliaments reduced to little more than a political reality show.

The die is now cast. My arguments against Brexit have been confounded. This is a moment for calm reflection. Given the dangerous world into which Britain and states and peoples that this morning remain friends and allies are moving, it is vital a new relationship between a post-Brexit Britain and the EU is quickly established. The British people cannot be punished for democracy. Britain must also sail towards new horizons with countries with which it shares old visions.

The bottom line is that with respect Britain is not Norway or Switzerland. Britain is a major power, the world’s fifth biggest economy and fourth biggest defence spender. Turbulence is of course inevitable. However, it is surely in the interest of all Europeans and indeed the world-wide West to re-embed Britain in new relationships, not least with what will soon inevitably be a new Europe. The British people have exercised their democratic right. Other Europeans will exercise their own right as they see it. That, after all, is why Britain fought and helped win two world wars this century past. Britain has not suddenly become an ‘enemy’. There are plenty of those elsewhere.

         

That Agincourt-beckoning two fingers has in the past saved Europe from slavery. It maybe that last night the English helped break the Europe that could not have been built without Britain. I hope not. But, for better or worse, for good and ill Brexit is now fact and I am very, very tired, and very, very sad. And, I now need some sleep. As clearly does David Cameron for he has just resigned.

Julian Lindley-French 

Russia: The Italian Job

“I am a fool with a heart but no brains, and you are a fool with brains but no heart; and we’re both unhappy and we both suffer”.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Idiot

Alphen, Netherlands. 20 June. It seemed, I suppose, fitting. In a speech to President Putin at the St Petersburg Economic Forum Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi reminded the Russian President that Dostoyevsky had written The Idiot in Florence. Who is playing the idiot now? Certainly not President Putin. As Renzi announced deals in St Petersburg with Russia worth some €1.3bn it was as though Russia had done little to concern anyone of late; the illegal annexation of Crimea, the forced detachment of much of eastern and south-eastern Ukraine, the downing of MH17 by an anti-aircraft missile from a missile battery belonging to the Kursk-based 53^rd Anti-Aircraft Missile Brigade, the treaty-busting stationing of treaty-illegal nuclear weapons in Kaliningrad, and the almost daily illegal incursions by the Russian Air Force into the air space of Baltic and Nordic EU and NATO members.

In a breathtaking act of political insincerity Renzi danced on the head of a legalistic pin to justify the deals. The deals were not technically in breach of EU sanctions, he said, because they cover infrastructure and energy. And yet everyone in St Petersburg with half a brain knew exactly what Renzi was doing. The only ‘strategic’ matter of import to him is that on his watch in 2015 the Italian budget deficit ballooned to a record (even by Italian standards) 132.7% of GDP. Italy is broke, the Italian debt crisis will soon break, and Renzi will do whatever deal he can, with whoever he can, to delay what is now the inevitable.

President Putin understands all of the above, precisely because President Putin understands power…and weakness.  He certainly understands the strategic implications of his Italian Job which is why he is pushing it. Moreover, the deal could not have been announced at a worse time for NATO, something which is not lost on Moscow. With the July NATO Warsaw Summit beckoning the Italians have at the stroke of a misplaced pen revealed there is little or no strategic unity of purpose in the Alliance.  To Rome the Russians can intimidate Eastern European allies all they like just so long as Italy can get down and do a dirty deal with Moscow.

Consequences? Putin has brought a political cleaver down right through the middle of NATO and prized open an existing cleavage. There will be much empty rhetoric at the Warsaw Summit about NATO’s so-called 360 degree adaptation; that through political solidarity and the efficient use of Allied forces credible deterrence will be afforded the Eastern Allies against Russia, and a credible defence mounted in the south against ISIS. Many words, little meaning, even fewer forces.

Rather, Renzi has demonstrated there are two NATOs. One NATO defends Eastern Europe against Russian aggression, about which Italy cares little. The other NATO helps defend against ISIS and threats from the south to Italy, of which after the Renzi deal Eastern Europeans will also care little.

Renzi has also revealed the essential and dangerous contradiction, dare I say lie that is European defence. Europeans are all too happy to defend their own bit of Europe, but not each other. After all, is not defending Europe what the American taxpayer is for?

If the St Petersburg kow-tow to Putin was Renzi alone then maybe the damage to Alliance and EU strategic unity of effort and purpose could have been contained. However, just when one thought it was safe to go out up pops ‘President’ Juncker to imply that EU sanctions on Russia might soon be lifted. You can always count on good-old Jean-Claude, the former prime minister of superpower Luxembourg, to put his political foot in his strategic mouth. Worse, German Foreign Minister Franz-Walter Steinmeier even suggested that by undertaking Exercise Anaconda in Eastern Europe NATO was “warmongering”. This is the stuff of Monty Python, the political equivalent of being forced to apologise to a bully for striking one in the face. "Run away!"

By the way, you might like to know Herr Steinmeier that since 2014 Russia has conducted twelve major snap exercises all of which have been designed to intimidate Eastern European allies and partners from Tallinn to Warsaw. Moreover, your government agreed to Allied exercises at the 2014 NATO Warsaw Summit as a necessary demonstration of Alliance solidarity and strategic reassurance. There are also some 120,000 Russia troops if not threatening the Baltic States, at least implying a threat. They are all peacekeepers of course.

Statecraft 101: it is enough to make this seasoned strategist weep. Juncker, Renzi and Steinmeyer all share a desperate desire to promote dialogue with Putin by sacrificing strategy to short-term politics, and security for trade, in the hope that trade can provide security.

Dialogue with President Putin is needed but must only take place as part of considered statecraft and from a position of strength. Such dialogue begins first with confidence-building measures being undertaken by both sides. Kind words are then matched with good deeds, and then built-up over time to a moment when both sides deem a formal codification of bona fides to be appropriate.

Instead, Prime Minister Renzi has sold Italy, the EU and NATO down the Tiber, Juncker seems to have forgotten not just the threat to EU citizens Russia continues to pose, but how many died due to Russian military incompetence, whereas Steinmeier clearly does not understand statecraft. We British remember a word for that from our own history; appeasement.

President Putin says Russia demands respect. Why would he want respect from European leaders who repeatedly and consistently demonstrate that they fail to understand power, statecraft, and the considered application of both?

Who indeed is the real idiot now?

Julian Lindley-French