Transatlantic Heaven and Hell

Alphen, Netherlands. 15 November.  There is an old Brussels joke about European heaven and hell.  Heaven is a place where the cooks are French, the lovers Italian, the police British and it is all organised by the Germans.  Hell is a place where the cooks are British, the lovers are German, the police are French and it is all organised by the Italians.  This week at a Brussels event organised by the Egmont Institute visions of transatlantic heaven and hell competed.

 

The subject of the discussion was the US ‘pivot’ to Asia and by implication away from Europe.  The trouble with this kind of event is that too often we get the wrong type of senior Americans.  Now, the Americans in question are good friends of mine for whom I have great respect.  However, they are simply far too damned reasonable to Europeans. 

I knew the day was going to be rough when my American friends described EU foreign and security efforts as a “glass half full” and “work in progress”.  Sometimes I think I could be Dutch EU Ambassador Rip van Winkle who dozes off for a century only to awake in 2113 to nice, senior Americans telling the Brussels elite that European ‘external engagement’ is a “glass half full” and “work in progress”.  How long is it going to take to fill this bloody glass? 

What Europeans need to see is more of those nasty, growling, utterly unreasonable Americans that I meet in DC and who permit me to growl back.  I do a good growl.  They are the Americans who think we Europeans are a complete waste of strategic space and that even if late they won all and every war that was ever worth fighting even if they were not actually in it. 

A bit like “Pearl Harbor”, that awful and badly spelt film a few years back in which some farm boy from Ohio looking awfully like Ben Affleck single-handedly won the Battle of Britain from an airfield in front of a stately home complete with its own thatched pub called “Ye Olde Bullshit”.  It was utterly wrong – the Poles did that.

Sadly, these house-trained Americans allow EU officials to bang on endlessly about Europe’s ‘successful’ approach to soft security and talk ‘strategic’, Europe’s most over-used and utterly meaningless word (except that is for ‘solidarity’).  Take the European External Action Service (the EU’s foreign and security policy executive and not an office cleaning company).  It is still designed more to manage crises in Brussels over which member-state is represented where and by whom than to actually manage real crises.  Add never-ending attempts by the European Commission, European Parliament and other assorted super-statists to encroach and the result is a Europe that punches below not above its weight.

To paraphrase a certain American president, “It is about power, stupid”.  Europe must generate real power – soft and hard - if Europeans (however organised) are to generate that most precious of ‘strategic’ (that word again) commodities; influence.  That will mean a Europe prepared to compete and properly engage in the real world rather than talking endlessly about almost empty glasses in the Brussels virtual world. 

Sadly, the Americans are their own worst enemies because they are still not at all clear about what Europe they want; strong, weak or simply irrelevant.  Washington seems to veer between the ‘Europe is a waste of space’ school of thought, the ‘USE is a putative USA’ school of thought and the current fashion for a ‘German empire is a good thing’ school of thought’.  The latter view is killing Britain, leavened by a healthy dose of strategic incompetence from Britain’s useless leaders.  Indeed, as far as the Americans are concerned the British now rank somewhere between Luxembourg which has money and Iceland which has volcanoes.  Britain has neither.   

The trouble is that the American world view and the German world view are just about as far apart as two democracies can be and still call themselves allies.  Trade apart whilst Americans and the rest of the world play global poker the Germans (and ‘friends’) want to play a quiet game of strategic chess…with themselves and forever.  By encouraging Germany to lead the US is contributing to European pacifism.

So, transatlantic heaven and hell.  Transatlantic heaven would be a place where Americans and Europeans together look at the world in a largely similar fashion, invest in largely similar diplomatic efforts with roughly but by no means completely similar armed forces prepared to share the same risks in crises confident in the strength of their mutual support. 

Transatlantic hell would a place where Americans take a very hard-nosed politically realist world view whilst Europeans retreat onto an isolationist/pacifist ‘moral’ upland in which process rather than strategy reigns supreme occasionally launching hysterical tirades accusing the Americans (and British) of dastardly doings whilst demanding self-same Americans (and British) defend them.

Ho hum…

Julian Lindley-French

The Dismal Economist

Alphen, Netherlands. 11 November.  On this day of remembrance when a few miles from here many tens of thousands perished in the 1914-1918 war thoughts of country are particularly poignant, except that is for the few who regard ‘country’ as an anachronism.  On 25 October The Economist’s Daniel Knowles appeared on the BBC’s flagship political programme, The Daily Politics to argue that northern England cities be allowed to die.  Thankfully veteran Labour politician John Prescott was on hand to shred him.  Sadly, Mr Knowles typified everything that is now wrong with a once great newspaper; a detached from reality, ivory tower, elite other-worldliness in which analysis has been replaced with dogma verging on propaganda. 
 

Take propaganda.  This week The Economist suggested that if Scotland left the UK; “At a stroke, the kingdom would become one third smaller. Its influence in the world…greatly reduced”.  This is Scottish elite hubris.  Scotland might comprise 30% of Britain’s landmass but it has only 9% of the population, and whilst more than 60% of its economy is dependent on the British state its 2012 GDP at $216bn was less than 10% of Britain’s.

The Economist’s retreat from the real world of real people has been on-going for some time.  This week Joel Budd argues for Britain to stay in the EU and to open its doors to unfettered immigration.  That saddest thing about the piece is the use of blatant scaremongering and insults to cull proper debate.  Those of us with legitimate concerns about power, democracy and governance in the EU and the undoubted social and cultural impact of rapid hyper-immigration are accused of being “Little Englanders”.  Instead the entire piece relies on a series of prejudices that in the past would never have made it past the reality test for which The Economist was once renowned. 

The Economist also states, “Continental Europeans are coming around to the long-held British view that the EU should be smaller, less bureaucratic and lighter on business”.  If that were true and the EU could be pulled back from its super-state fantasy and replaced with a deeper single market that preserved state independence then it would have my full support.  However, living in Continental Europe and from my travels around Europe and to Brussels I see no evidence of elite Europeans “coming around” to the British way of thinking.  Quite the reverse.

Rather, I see a German-led Europe that in a desperate bid to save the single currency will soon launch a fresh wave of political integration.  Far from The Economist’s idea of a less regulated, more open Europe Europeans are about to be engulfed by a new wave of regulation.  This is because European integration IS regulation.  Indeed, for The Economist’s view to prevail the EU’s entire political culture would have to move decisively away from its statist origins and that is not going to happen.

However, it is immigration where The Economist reveals itself most unworldly.  Whilst I agree that Britain should always be open to the world’s talented the entire point about the EU is that Britain should only be open to Europe – both the talented and the not-so-talented.  Indeed, the essential point The Economist misses is that for the EU Britain can either be open to the world or the EU but not both.  Essentially, the EU remains a protectionist block designed to enable Germans to sell things to a closed market and prevent the excesses of globalisation ‘damaging’ what many European see as their cultural and social patrimony.

Last week The Economist even suggested that EU hyper-immigration was a good thing because “Britain gains from their skills without having to invest in schools”.  What about the one million unemployed British youth?  What such nonsense reveals is that for The Economist Britain’s social and cultural identity count for nothing.  Rather, any level of immigration should be allowed irrespective of the impact on national identity and social cohesion if it adds an extra quarter percentage point on GDP. 

The essential problem is that The Economist today combines two truly dismal perspectives.  First, the paper is a true scion of the ‘dismal science’ of economics which reduces everything to mammon and thus so often misses the very things that make society and strategy tick.  Second, The Economist has become locked into a London liberal elite bubble which sneers at the very idea of national identity and the loyalty which is today celebrated and commemorated.  The paper even goes as far as to call on Britain to “abandon its separatist dreams” as though the world’s 5^th or 6^th largest economy and 4^th defence spender was already a mere province of the EU super-state. 

The Economist is championing an essential nonsense; that Britain can stay in the EU and be open to the world. 

I am a proud Briton and a proud, thinking European.  The Economist?  I wonder…  Expect more of this propaganda.

Julian Lindley-French

Euro-Realism: Germany a la Carte

Alphen, Netherlands. 8 November.  Otto von Bismarck once said, “I have always found the word ‘Europe’ in the mouths of those politicians who wanted something from other powers they did not dare to demand in their own name”.  So often when Germany talks ‘Europe’ Germany means Germany.

 

Imagine one of those posh Paris restaurants.  You sit down ever so slightly nervously because the Maitre D. has given you the strongest possible impression that he will tolerate you only in return for a substantial relieving of the weight in your tattered wallet.  Eventually a supercilious waiter waddles over with a menu the size of the Versailles Treaty.  You open it.  On the left side of the menu is the ‘menu fixe’.  This is for those of you (usually) foreign peasantry ‘doing’ Paris who can just about afford a visit but only just about understand the menu – or at least pretend to.  On the right hand side page after page of delicacy unfolds for the true gourmand...and that is before you have seen the ‘Carte des Vins’.  These pages remind you, the aforesaid foreign peasant, just how far you are from truly deserving of a seat in this palace of cordon bleu. 

Now, I stand out against anti-Germanism which is substantial in Europe these days.  In particular I avoid references to past wars unless they are relevant to  history or today’s politics.  However, it can also be hard to be Germany’s friend these days.    

Take the EU Services ‘menu’.  One thing I regularly hear in Berlin is a complaint that the British seek ‘l’Europe a la carte’ – a European Union in which the British get to choose only the tastiest cuts (and I mean cuts) and discard the rest.  To Berlin’s political mind the British should now take the ‘menu fixe’ like all the other EU peasants because only ‘virtuous’ Germany has earned the right to choose from ‘menu Euro-gourmand’ and thus taste the juiciest morsels of European regulatory cuisine.

The most obvious example of Germany’s preference for ‘l’Europe a la carte’ is Berlin’s continued and determined effort to block the Services Directive essential to Britain’s future membership of the EU and the proper functioning of the Single Market.  Berlin blatantly protects a sector of its economy in which Germany is weak whilst insisting on unfettered access for German goods and services in sectors where Germany is strong.

Germany’s a la carte preferences are also beginning to upset others.  Last week the US Treasury Department attacked Germany’s export-led economic model for preventing the rest of the Eurozone from growing their respective economies out of crisis.  According to the Americans a Germany all too happy to export but none too happy to import is distorting not just Europe’s economy but much of the world beyond. 

German hypocrisy is also apparent in the lengths Berlin will go to instrumentalise the European Commission for its own narrow interests.  Indeed, Berlin has ‘placed’ key officials in the European Commission to act as the Maitre Ds of Europe. 

Earlier this year Berlin leant heavily on the European Commission to prevent a directive on carbon emissions that would have damaged the export of expensive German cars to China and other parts of Asia  It was a crude example of ‘Germany first’ that revealed all too clearly the shallowness of Germany’s Europeanness; yes to Europe but only on German terms.  Most notably Germany’s surplus breaks the Eurozone’s economic governance rules, although as per usual the European Commission will do nothing.  Indeed, there is one set of rules for Germany and another German-written set of rules for the rest. 

The Eurozone crisis is only at half-time no more.  Southern (and some Eastern) European countries must implement painful structural reforms to their societies and economies over many years if the German-centred Eurozone has any chance of long-term health.  These reforms will place the fragile democratic and governance structures of these countries under the most intense strain.  If Germany continues to preach only discipline but refuses to use its surplus to stimulate growth the Eurozone will in time fail as populations lose patience in their mounting desperation.

Germany has a choice. It can join Britain in pursuit of a Europe-lite which will mean taking the ‘menu fixe’ and radically reducing ever more onerous EU regulations that prevent European businesses competing in a hyper-competitive world and thus growing Europe out of depression.  Or, Germany can lead by example to deepen Eurozone and by extension EU integration.  To simply go on dining from a menu that whilst tasty leaves Germany and Europe fat and bloated in a lean, mean world will in time destroy the very Europe Berlin pretends to champion.

Is Germany really willing to pay the price of supping at the leader’s table?  For too many German politicians ‘Europe’ still in fact means Germany.

Germany a la carte; time for die rechnung!

Julian Lindley-French

Euro-Realism: For a Better Life?

Ledbury, England. 4 November.  “Britain is a shining apple…with a rotten core”, the damning verdict of a cousin of a bright, decent Sri Lankan IT student murdered last week in my home town Sheffield.  In the Saharan desert almost one hundred migrants died of thirst and hunger making their desperate but illegal way from Niger to Europe.  To what extent can society cope with large numbers of people from very different cultures and with very different values before that host society is profoundly damaged?  And, what can be done to stop human trafficking that is doing so much damage to both immigrants and target communities?

 

Like most Europeans the sight of bodies floating in the Mediterranean or wasting in the Sahara Desert fills me with horror.  My innate humanity wants to reach out and help.  Indeed, like many Europeans I face a daily battle between my humanity and my intellect over immigration.  These sad people are just a tragic few of the 80,000 or so that the EU borders agency Frontex claim are trying or have tried to enter Europe illegally this year. 

In Rome last week I saw the impact of illegal immigration on Italian society – crime, misery, poverty and exploitation.  80,000 over ten years becomes 800,000 very close to the 860,000 illegal immigrants the British Government admitted last week were living in the UK, a complete collapse of border controls.  The Economist also suggested this week that the foreign born population of England will be 25% by 2015.  Moreover, the self-same European societies that are mired in debt and youth unemployment are struggling to cope with inner-EU migration from Europe’s poor to Europe’s formerly rich.  Another wave is predicated in January as Bulgarians and Romanians have the right to move west. 

One of the most pervasive false mantras of the liberal left is the idea that diversity increases societal strength.  It is utter nonsense.  Yes, at some level societies are enriched by a controlled level of immigration and the diversity it generates.  However, the sheer scale of immigration over the past decade, the importation of intolerance and traumatised peoples from the world’s most damaged societies, allied to society destroying, ghetto-building multiculturalism has left too many British and other European cities too often microcosms of the broken places that surround Europe – including my beloved Sheffield. 

For many years dissent has been crushed by suggesting any criticism was racism.  Slowly reasoned voices are emerging that suggests popular concern about the impact of hyper-immigration on social cohesion must now be confronted.  This argument is even backed up by several reports from the Left - the main sponsors of hyper-immigration.  Sadly it may all be too little, too late.

How has this happened and what must be done?  Take Sheffield.  When I was a kid Sheffield’s permanently-embedded Labour politicians were part of Sheffield’s common sense, working class community.  That is very much my own heritage and was informed by a pragmatic sense of politics and its application.  Today too many politicians come from the theoretical university-educated left and right for whom politics is simply an extension of the unworldly politics of the campus.  For them society is simply a never-ending social experiment rather than real people trying to cope with the real world. 

During the Blair/Brown years such ‘experimentation’ led to a series of dangerous nonsenses such as the sending of British troops to Afghanistan to keep Islamism at “strategic distance” whilst simultaneously importing Islamism into Britain in significant numbers.  Just yesterday another Islamist on a terror watch-list absconded. Today, Washington regards Britain as one of the main source of Islamist threat to the US.  The EU and its ivory tower demand for uncontrolled borders has only made matters worse.

Consequently, the breakdown between what are now euphemistically called ‘traditional communities’ and politicians who do not have to live with the consequences of their social and political experiments has proved disastrous across Europe.  It is a gap that is widening as the space between the European elite and the European street yawns. 

Hard though it may seem there is simply no way Europe can afford to lessen controls over immigration.  These brave, sad, tragic people are simply the harbinger of many millions who would seek to move to Europe from its fractured and broken periphery if the door was truly opened.  Therefore the most compassionate act would be for Europe to re-exert control over such migrations. 

First and foremost that means reducing the false pull factors that make people believe they will have a better life in Europe.  It also means rolling back the pipelines of misery that lead to such tragedies by breaking up the criminal networks that traffic people and investing in properly secure borders.  Above all it means trying to alleviate the suffering around Europe’s borders that move people to make such dangerous journeys.  That means applied aid and development.

Given the scale of disorder and disaster around Europe’s borders and beyond to expose already vulnerable European societies further to the population flows of misery would to be to destroy the very societies migrants seek to enter.

For a better life?  Britain like much of the rest of Europe is indeed a shining apple with a rotten core as too many decent, desperate people are discovering to their cost.

For a better life?

Julian Lindley-French

What US Intelligence Really Says About Europe

Rome, Italy. 31 October. In Blazing Saddles, an old Mel Brook comedy western, a black sheriff is pursued by a racist crowd intent on lynching him.  Just as he is caught he puts a pistol to his head and says “no-one move or the black guy gets it!”  In fact the sheriff uses the ‘N’ word which will never be seen in this blog. The crowd stop and plead with him not to pull the trigger.  European hysteria over revelations of US spying is a bit like that stupid crowd: “If you Americans spy we Europeans will refuse to be defended by you”.  This crisis speaks volumes about disconnect between the Euro-world and the real world, the information anarchists who are driving it and the nature of European politics these days.

 

Yesterday in Rome I spoke with a former European intelligence chief who told me that European hysteria is pure theatre.  He was clear.  “There is a big difference between the public outrage of politicians and the day-to-day reality of intelligence co-operation between Americans and Europeans”.

Some of aforesaid politicians talk of blocking US access to critical intelligence on money flows in Europe that might support terrorist networks. Some members of the European Parliament are even threatening the US with suspension of Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership talks.  This week a group of Euro-parliamentarians are in Washington to talk to anyone who will listen.  European parliamentarians must seek re-election next year and most Europeans have not the faintest clue who these people are so manufactured outrage is very useful. 

This is but the latest attempt by the EU to insert itself into matters of hard national sovereignty – both big and small.  Yesterday it was announced the European Commission wants to regulate how Europeans flush toilets, which I suppose one would call soft sovereignty.   

The crisis has also revealed the relationship between  journalism and information anarchism. According to the BBC The Guardian’s soon-to-be departed Glenn Greenwald and Le Monde’s Jacques Follorou reported that an alleged NSA eavesdropping in France had collected more than 70 million recordings of telephone conversations between French citizens.  This was not true and demonstrates the very political motivations of the information anarchists and the lengths to which they are prepared to go; putting lives at risk. 

In fact the NSA regularly builds a meta-data picture of communication patterns to help thwart terrorist networks many of which are embedded in Europe…just like 911.  Here’s the irony; much of the information provided to the Americans came by way of intelligence services in the very countries now clamouring for sanctions to be imposed on the US.

The crisis says much about German sensibilities and Germany’s growing power in Europe, which is why Chancellor Merkel is worth bugging.  Indeed, Germany has shown itself both responsible and calculating in this crisis.  The despatch to Washington of the eminently-competent Christoph Heusgen, Merkel’s National Security Adviser to meet with his American counterparts was sensible.  However, implicit in comments emerging from Berlin is a German tendency to instrumentalise the EU for narrow German political and strategic ends. 

Here's the Euro-twist; Britain's intelligence services are the real target of both Berlin and Brussels, something my contact made clear to me.  He advised me to expect calls from factions in the European Parliament close to Berlin (and the European Commission) demanding EU oversight of all Europe’s intelligence services within the framework of European data protection legislation.  For once Prime Minister Cameron must stand firm (not something he finds easy) and make it abundantly clear that any attempt to extend the EU’s writ into the intelligence domain would damage the US-UK special intelligence relationship and constitute a clear and present danger to Britain’s vital security interests.

‘Outraged’ Europeans must also be careful what they wish for.  Push too hard and many on Capitol Hill will invite Europe to defend itself.  That would mark the effective end of NATO which given the meltdown in Europe’s security and defence would be a disaster.  Those are the stakes and yet some of Europe's politicians seem willing to countenance that risk. 

US intelligence like all intelligence services in democracies must be properly overseen and monitored. There is no question that the explosion of borderless information strewn across the internet and mobile phone networks is both a Spooks dream…and nightmare.  Naturally, intelligence agencies will seek to exploit this enormous domain (and prevent enemies from exploiting it).  However, transatlantic intelligence co-operation is now at risk and given the very real dangers out there that makes sense only to the dangerous and the self-interested.

Too many Europeans and their politicians refuse to face reality preferring instead to retreat into a dream-like state of security ignorance. For Snowden and his fellow information anarchists the damage they have caused is beyond their wildest dreams.  Today terrorists and the less democratic the world over are smiling contentedly.

Sleep well Europe.

Julian Lindley-French

Euro-Realism: Blind Integration and the 'One Truth' Danger

Alphen, Netherlands. 28 October.  Machiavelli once wrote; “States suddenly acquired, like all else that is produced and that grows up rapidly, can never have such root or hold as that the first storm which strikes then shall not overthrow them”.  France’s President Hollande says the rise of Euro-sceptics could bring “regression and paralysis” (sounds like his government) whilst Italian Prime Minister Letta has warned that Euro-sceptics could win up to a third of seats in next May’s elections to the European Parliament.  Both reflect the now ignoble elite European tradition of the ‘One Truth’ mantra – there is no alternative to more ‘Europe’…whatever the people think.

 

One Truth reflects the acuity of the existential battle between the nation-state (and its people) and hard-line integrationists and federalists who dominate Brussels and some national capitals.  It is a struggle intensified by the profound lack of consensus between EU member-states over Europe’s future and a deepening split between those paying for the EU and those not.   

One Truth also reveals a deeply insecure Euro-elite.  Indeed, one can smell the faint, rotting odour of Spanish Inquisition hanging in Europe’s air these days as all and any critic of integration are dubbed ‘populist’, ‘nationalist’ or both by Europe's High Priests.  To be accused of ‘populism’ or ‘nationalism’ in Europe is akin to being called a Fascist or Nazi.  Indeed, I have found myself accused of being somehow in league with truly fascist nutters such as Greece’s Golden Dawn simply for expressing my legitimate concerns about the concentration of elite power in Europe.

One Truth is an old technique – quell debate over an important, controversial question by suggesting any criticism is an aberration in the face of ‘truth’.  The most recent example of One Truth was the attempt by Britain’s last Labour Government to quash legitimate concerns over the hyper-immigration they oversaw as racist.  By the time they admitted such concerns were legitimate the damage to social cohesion had been done.

Britain should be playing its traditional ‘hold on a bit’ role with Prime Minister David Cameron positioning himself as the champion of the disempowered concerned across Europe.  However, Cameron again fails to see the bigger, strategic picture and is only acting on the most tactical, narrow and short-term of political impulses.  In his January 2013 “Europe speech” Cameron laid out a series of principled battle-lines for the reform of Europe and the ending of blind integration.  Since then he has been in retreat captured by Europe’s true power-broker Chancellor Merkel for whom further political integration is vital to impose discipline over the Eurozone, the only bit of the EU that really matters.   

Sadly, any hope that Cameron had of driving forward a state-friendly reform agenda were killed at last week’s Brussels EU summit at a meeting he hosted for his fellow ‘reformists’ (I will not dwell on the utter hypocrisy of Europe’s leaders over ‘Snowden-gate’).  The French Government flatly opposed any cull of EU regulations (now there’s a surprise) and afterwards Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said Cameron had no chance.  The now inevitable showdown between Britain and the rest of the EU just moved one step closer with the British faced with a simple choice; leave the EU or surrender.

Still, by way of responding to Cameron’s call for a regulation cull Commission President Barroso said some 5590 regulations had already been cut.  However, Barroso failed to point out that the aforesaid regulations had been either temporary or obsolete whilst new regulations take the Commission into the very heart of state competence – finance, justice and even defence.  Given Britain’s ‘constitutional lock’ on future integration the Commission is now looking at every possible way to deepen Europe by stealth.  Watch this space!

This danger is reflected in a new report by the normally slavishly pro-EU Centre for European Reform which warns the European Commission that its job is not to act as captain for the integration team.  It is refreshing to see a European think-tank for once not trumpeting the Commission’s line just so they can get their grubby hands on the next dollop of Commission (sorry my) cash. 

The Oxford English Dictionary describes a ‘populist’ as “an adherent of a political party seeking to represent the whole of the people”.  This is something President Hollande, Signor Letta and Mr Barroso would be well-advised to consider.  Indeed, as Machiavelli wrote, “…a man who is accustomed to act in one particular way, never changes…However, when times change and no longer suit his ways, he is inevitably ruined”.

Blind integration and One Truth politics is the real danger to Europe’s liberty and democracy and millions of Europeans instinctively sense that.  Therefore, Cameron, Rutte and other reformers need to start building a new pan-European movement of Euro-Realists before it is too late.

Off to Rome today if the storm here blows out...

 

Julian Lindley-French

Twenty-First Century Strategic Cyprus

British Sovereign Base Area, Cyprus. 25 October.  150 miles from Beirut, 197 miles from Damascus, 206 miles from Tel Aviv, 1030 miles from Tehran, 241 miles from the Suez Canal, 566 miles from Athens, 336 miles from Ankara and some 388 miles from the narrow channel that connects Russia’s Fleet from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean. Britain’s military bases on Cyprus enjoy an unrivalled strategic view of the Middle East and beyond.  Indeed, they are amongst the most strategic of strategic assets the world over and about to become more so. 

 

Sitting in the cockpit of a British Typhoon fighter at RAF Akrotiri with a UN-supporting American U2 spy plane close by the importance of Britain’s continued strategic presence in the eastern Mediterranean was all too clear to me.  On a radar screen I could see all air and ship movements in the region.  Indeed, the strategic importance of Cyprus to future humanitarian operations and strategic stability in a region undergoing the most profound of political transformations was reinforced through my chats here with the British Ambassador to Beirut.

Cyprus also poses a real strategic challenge for Britain.  There is much talk these days of ‘grand strategy’ – the organisation of large means in pursuit of large ends.  However, my friend and colleague Professor Paul Cornish at the University of Exeter makes a critical point; it is not so much grand strategy that Britain needs as much as the ability to think and act grand strategically – to organise large means in pursuit of large ends. To that I would add the vital British need to see strategic partnerships and the assets they provide as such and thereafter preserve and develop them.  That means an end to London’s endemic short-termism.

Both Cyprus and British strategy will be tested in the years to come.  As the Americans pivot to Asia-Pacific (as they must) they will look to Britain and the other European allies to be credible actors in the promotion of peace and stability in Europe’s dangerous strategic neighbourhoods – North Africa, the Middle East and Eastern Europe.  Britain's bases on Cyprus cover all three neighbourhoods.

Of course the Americans will maintain a presence in the region not least because Israel is as much US domestic policy as foreign policy.  However, America today is a bit like Britain in 1925 when Cyprus became a Crown Dependency – apparently strong on paper but wracked by financial challenges and spread far too thinly the world over. 

The world’s future stability is dependent on a strong America and Britain must be seen to invest in assets such a Cyprus as proof of that.  This is something EU leaders might wish to ponder as they manufacture a crisis over US spying simply to prevent David Cameron raising the issue of EU reform.

Given the twenty-first century context the strategic partnership with Cyprus is not some vestige of imperial past.  Cyprus is a vital British strategic partner and fellow EU member-state.  London must understand the importance of that partnership and continue to maintain its commitment to the security and well-being of all the Cypriot people as agreed in the 1960 treaties of London and Zurich.  It was therefore good to see London playing an under-stated yet critical role in the recent financial crisis.  Britain also has a vital continuing role in helping Cyprus, Greece and Turkey come to a new understanding so that EU and NATO allies and partners can work together for peace and stability in the region.

 

Britain’s bases also need to be brought into the twenty-first century.  Sitting in the delightful garden of Flagstaff House, residence of the Commander, British Forces Cyprus gazing down on the azure blue eastern Mediterranean there was a sense of genteel decline about both the house and the bases.  British bases have played a critical role in support of operations in Afghanistan but will need to be modernised for the coming test.  Part of that means a Britain willing to up its presence in both Cyprus and the region.  The recent visit of HMS Dragon, a brand new, state-of-the-art British destroyer was a good start, together with the potent presence of RAF Typhoons.  Critically, Britain needs to reinvest in the bases as a strategic hub.

The friction-full, hyper-competitive world that will become all too apparent in the aftermath of Afghanistan will see big power contest big power, the state contest the anti-state and much of that competition will take place on Cyprus’s doorstep.  Indeed, the Syria tragedy demonstrates all too graphically a Middle East once again the crucible of contest and change. 

The British bases on Cyprus are vital to British, European and Alliance strategic interests and a critical pillar of stability in an inherently unstable region.  Cyprus is a vital twenty-first century strategic hinge at the threshold of European, regional and world security.  Just look at a map!

Julian Lindley-French