RAF 150?

“Never in the field of human conflict, has so much been owed by so many to so few”.

Winston Spencer Churchill

20 August, 1940

RAF 100

Alphen, Netherlands. April 3, 2018. The Royal Air Force (RAF) is the oldest, independent air force in the world, and the world’s most iconic. Stood up on April 1, 1918 and formed from the merger of the British Army’s Royal Flying Corps and the Royal Naval Air Service the Battle of Britain image of ‘chaps’ in Spitfires and Hurricanes defeating the might of the Nazi Luftwaffe is an enduring image that underpins a view of Britain and the British even to this day. What does the RAF’s past say about the RAF of today, and what of its future?

The RAF in April 1918 was a massive force of some 22,000 aircraft.  It had established air supremacy over the battlefields of the Western Front, and it had pioneered the use of aircraft as strategic bombers.  On 8 August 1918 at the critical Battle of Amiens the RAF also pioneered what later become known as ‘Blitzkrieg’, the coordinated use by General Rawlinson’s III Army of aircraft, tanks and infantry to blast through the German front-line. Between the wars, the RAF even pioneered the use of aircraft as part of ‘imperial policing’ in places such as Mesopotamia (modern day Iraq).  

A Force for Good?

It was during the Second World War that the RAF really established its reputation as a strategic force.  During the 1930s Britain had steadily developed the world’s most advanced air defence system by combining radar (‘radio detection finders’), a highly-effective command and control system, and state of the art fighter aircraft.  In parallel, slowly but with increasing tempo, the RAF also developed a powerful strategic bomber force capable of striking targets deep in Germany, albeit at first with limited accuracy.

By way of power comparison on the nights of 14 & 15 November 1940 515 light bombers of Luftflotte 3 carried out a series of attacks on the English city of Coventry. Eighteen months later, on the night of 30-31 May 1942, the RAF carried out the first 1000 heavy bomber raid on the German city of Cologne.  As the then Head of RAF Bomber Command, Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Harris said, “The Germans have sowed the wind, and now they are going to reap the whirlwind”.

Many contemporary historians question the strategic utility and indeed the morality of the revenge carpet bombing of German cities.  Even Churchill thought the February 1945 destruction of Dresden by some 800 Lancaster heavy bombers a raid too far, even though he was also aware of the message it sent to Stalin and the Red Army.  There are also questions about the value of investing of so much of Britain’s war effort in the bomber offensive and the butcher’s bill: of the 125,000 Bomber Command aircrew, 55,000 lost their lives.  However, for much of the war, RAF Bomber Command was the only way for Britain to strike at the heart of Nazi Germany.  For much of the Cold War the RAF’s V-Force of Vulcan, Victor and Valiant bomber provided London with a strategic nuclear deterrent that also enabled a declining Britain to use the confrontation with the then Soviet Union to mask its own decline and retreat from empire.  

A Force for Innovation?

For me, the defining feature of the RAF has been innovation. For all the image of British ‘chaps’ and their ‘derring do’ the RAF was (perhaps) the least class ridden of Britain’s three armed forces, the most international (many nationalities either fought with the RAF or in it), and the most technologically innovative.  Two famous squadrons, 9 and 617, point to the centrality of innovation to the ethos of the RAF.  Indeed, innovation was a defining feature of such iconic high-precision raids as the May 1943 destruction of the western German dams and the October 1944 sinking of the 42,900 ton German battleship Tirpitz.  Both squadrons were also comprised of men not just from the UK but also from across the then Dominions and the United States.

It is innovation which must be the defining feature of the RAF over the next fifty years of its story if the force is to remain a major factor in Britain strategic influence and its future defence.  There will continue to be a demand for the RAF to project and supply British specialised land forces the world over and to play its full role in Britain’s future air defence and strike missions – both from land and the sea. However, the challenge for the RAF will be to overcome the very icon it has become – the image of ‘chaps’ – if it is also to reflect and make the most of Britain today, not just Britain past.

RAF 150

Can the RAF meet the innovation challenge?  As I have seen at close quarters over the years air forces tend to be run by fast jet pilots who tend to define themselves and the forces they lead as ‘eyes on/over target’ fast jet forces.  However, technology is fast changing the very nature of air power and the battlespace in which it must contend and fight.  Consequently, RAF 150 must and will be a force able to extend across six other critical ‘spaces’: air, sea, space, cyber, information and knowledge. RAF 150 will also be a force of drones as much as manned aircraft in which sentient machines will provide at least as much of the command picture and command decisions as people.

If politicians give the RAF the means to craft new innovative ways to pursue Britain’s strategic ends RAF 150 will meet the many challenges that will come its way.  Indeed, if there is one British force that is open to talent from wherever it comes and which can rise to the challenge of change and innovation the twenty-first century will impose on Britain and its forces, it is the men and women of Her Majesty’s Royal Air Force.

Happy birthday, RAF!

Julian Lindley-French

Brexit: On the Swiss-Irish Border

“One should not consider that the great principles of freedom end at your own frontiers that as long as you have freedom, let the rest have pragmatism. No! Freedom is indivisible and one has to take a moral attitude towards it.”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Alphen, Netherlands. 29 March. One year from today Britain will sort of leave the EU and maybe begin a kind of transitional/implementation/extrication period.  Last week’s agreement over ‘phase two’ of the almost Withdrawal Agreement opened the door to a hoped for (or not) future relationship between Britain and the EU, which was given a helping hand by the quite definite stupidity and incompetence of the Kremlin.  Still, there are some issues of contention that still need to be resolved, most emotively the future status of the inner-Irish border between Northern Ireland, still part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (to be sure check the front cover of Britain’s still EU burgundy passports) and the Republic of Ireland or Eire (to be equally sure check the front cover of Ireland’s still determinedly EU passports). 

For the Irish and hard-line Remainers, there is apparently no solution to the border issue other than for the British to effectively handover Northern Ireland to the EU and thus Ireland.  And, in so doing, establish the precedent for other parts of the United Kingdom (Nicola Sturgeon’s Scotland???) to secede from Britain to the EU…or scrap Brexit.  This position is, of course, complete nonsense and is simply the latest attempt to overturn the Brexit vote by those implacably opposed to it. 

Why is this nonsense? Two reasons, a Swede and the Swiss. Let me first deal briefly with the Swede. In an earlier blog on the Battle of Brexit (Analysis Paper: The Battle of Brexit, 2 March) I referred to a November 2017 European Parliament report entitled Smart Border 2.0; avoiding a Hard Border on the Island of Ireland for Customs Control and the Free Movement of Persons, written by Leo Karlsson, the former Director of the World Customs Organisation. As I stated, after quoting Karlsson at length, “…the only real barriers to solving the inner-Ireland border questions are the willingness to enact a fudge, and the time it would take to install the Karlsson system. And, of course, the political will so to do”

It is fudge which brings me to the Swiss.  For many years I either worked Geneva and/or lived in the neighbouring Canton de Vaud.  Prior to Switzerland joining the Schengen Zone in 2011 both the Canton de Geneve and the Canton de Vaud had a formal border with France and thus the EU…although at the same time it didn’t.  Drive over the border at, say, Crassier, on the road from Swiss Nyon to French Divonne and rarely would one meet either a Swiss or French douanier.  That said, I can recall one occasion when a Swiss-American friend of mine wanted to show a carpet she had bought in Swiss Lausanne to a friend in French Divonne. About 200m over the border a French douanier was waiting in ambush to undertake a customs spot-check that both the French and the Swiss conducted every now and then.  She had to pay a fine.

In fact, we residents knew of scores of places along the border where one could cross from Switzerland into France at which there was never any controlle.  In other words, for many years both the French and the Swiss adopted an entirely pragmatic approach to the border based on the principle that most decent people observe the law and that douaniers rarely if ever apprehend terrorists or hardened criminal gangs.

The French even turned their pays de Gex north of Geneva into a ‘special administrative zone’ under French control so that frontaliers, expats and French citizens who worked in Geneva, could so with minimum disruption. Every now and then the Swiss and the French would exert tighter, often intelligence-led controls at either Bardonnex or Ferney-Voltaire, but the spirit of free movement drove the border agreement.  There is no reason whatsoever why Northern Ireland could not enjoy the same status as the pays de Gex did, not least because the North is already a ‘special administrative zone’.

One year on from Britain’s sort of departure from the EU my sense is that the experience of the Swiss implies another paradox of Brexit.  Brexit is a symptom of an EU about to undergo significant change.  Some poor states will continue to seek to gather closely around rich Germany and call it Brussels-administered deeper political integration. A couple of other richer states, such as The Netherlands, may go along for the political ride, but that is by no means a cert!  Another group of richer, northern states will seek to avoid such a fate.  Consequently, a new kind of two-speed EU will emerge over the next decade. Indeed, Britain’s departure could well be hastening such change as recent developments have shown.  States that traditionally hidden in Britannia’s skirts are now openly expressing their determination to prevent further integration.

My reasons for rejecting Brexit were because I foresaw the dangerous world into which Europe is heading and out of solidarity with my fellow Europeans in Central and Eastern Europe who had fought so valiantly over so many bloody years for their freedom.  My focus today is on minimising the disruption to European security that could flow from Brexit.  Equally, I have accepted Britain’s democratic decision to leave the EU, unlike increasingly desperate Hard Remainers now calling for a second referendum to overturn the Brexit decision.  Last week’s agreement in Brussels over Britain’s withdrawal has left them whistling in the wind. 

Two things are apparent to me. First, Brexit is not the end of the Brexit story. Second, if the EU is to survive it cannot remain in the hybrid, ineffectual political space it currently occupies. The world is becoming too dangerous for that. My sense is that precisely because of the nature of change in the wider world the EU also stands on the verge of radical change.  And that within the decade there could again be a place for Britain as leader of a looser grouping of states in the EU but not subject to federalist diktat.  If not, and the rest of the EU really does embark on a journey to the centre of political integration then Brexit will simply be confirmed. 

On the Swiss-Irish border between intransigence and pragmatism.

Julian Lindley-French  

Sloan: Transatlantic Traumas

Alphen. Netherlands. 27 March. “Radical centrist populism” is on the face of it an oxymoronic contradiction in terms. And yet, that is precisely what my old friend and colleague Stanley R. Sloan calls for in his new book “Transatlantic Traumas”, which has just been published as part of the Pocket Politics series by Manchester University Press and is no doubt brilliant and very reasonably-priced.  Now, it is not my custom to praise a book I have not as yet read. but I have known Stan for over twenty years since his days at the Congressional Research Service in Washington.  The three things I have always valued in Stan are his intellectual courage, his insight, and his judgement.  Having read about the book I have no doubt it contains all three in abundance.

The focus of the book is the loss of strategic confidence in the West about the West’s role in the world, fuelled by the loss of confidence in each other.  It would be easy to suggest that this loss of confidence in each other is temporary.  There can be no doubt that Brexit and the election of President Trump have reinforced a sense of divergence that have led some commentators to question whether the West exists at all.  Ironically, and in a timely fashion, the co-ordinated and cohesive response of the West to the Salisbury attack would suggest that those predicting the demise of the West, and those seeking to accelerate that demise (Moscow!), maybe premature. 

Sloan touches on an issue that I have also been long considering – the changing nature of the West itself.  This morning Australia also announced that it was expelling two Russian diplomats for what Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull called, “an unlawful use of force by Russia against the UK and her people”.  The West, it seems, is evolving and has evolved from a place into a world-wide idea of liberal democracy, free speech and a law based concept of international community.

And yet, the central argument of Sloan’s book is that the West and its inherent liberalism is in crisis. Specifically, that illiberalism within the West has brought ‘it’ (whatever ‘it’ is) close to collapse.   At the heart of the book is Stan’s long-standing concern that the threats posed by Islamist terrorism on changing Western societies allied to tailored Russian meddling in domestic political processes is generating illiberal populism of such ferocious intensity that it threatens to destroy the very ideas that the West pioneered and which define its very existence. In such a political context Brexit and Trump are mere symptoms of an illiberal backlash by large segments of a Western populace that has become deeply dissatisfied with the response of traditional liberal elite Establishments to complex problems. 

Here, Stan and I are in complete agreement. However, attractive political demagogues may appear during times of crisis with their neat sound-bites and their even ‘neater’ solutions they, in fact, offer nothing but danger.  The paradox of the West is that complexity and freedom are the twin sisters of liberty. The very pressures faced by Western societies are pressures of success for which neither nostalgia nor simplicity can afford ‘solutions’ or satisfy people many of whom have little idea why they are dissatisfied beyond a sense that ‘things are not as they were’. Welcome to change.

It is change that I think is at the heart of Stan’s thesis, and more specifically how to manage it. Sloan argues that weak and divided political centres across Western states have failed to rise to the challenges that the West’s very success has generated, such as terrorism and immigration. And, that this has created the conditions that Russia has thus far quite skilfully manipulated.

At the heart of the book is a warning: domestic unrest in Western states cannot be separated from the effectiveness of such states in the global arena.  If the liberal centre fails to once again demonstrate it has the political will, the vision and the strategies to deal with the concerns now spawning mass populist political movements the security and defence of the West will be profoundly weakened.  Brexit has already weakened the EU and there are already profound concerns in Europe and beyond that Trumpism could profoundly damage transatlanticism and NATO.

Which brings me back to Stan’s “radical centrist populism”. By employing such a concept Stan is calling upon fellow centrists to recognise that they will only seize the political agenda by recognising the scale of the risks, challenges and threats posed to the West and its societies, and by then taking the necessary radical steps to deal with such threats. The populism?  Populists are great communicators. Indeed, they tend to be little else. Stan Sloan is suggesting a new marriage between centrist policy activism and populist communication. In that case, I am a fully paid up radical centrist populist.

As I said at the outset I have not read Stan’s book, but soon will. There will no doubt be things in the book with which I disagree, possibly profoundly. However, knowing Stan as I have for many years I have no doubt that his book is worth reading and for this reason, I recommend Stan Sloan’s Transatlantic Traumas to you.

Julian Lindley-French

Time for Russia’s ‘Friends’ to Face Hard Truths

To succeed in the world, it is much more necessary to discern who is a fool, than to discover who is a clever man’.

Charles Maurice de Talleyrand

The Danger of Romantic Prejudice

Oxford, England. 22 March. The primary discipline of the analyst is to overcome the romanticism of one’s prejudices and face the hard truth of evidence.  Here in Oxford, I had one such moment of delightful prejudice on an early morning walk in Christ Church Meadow. It was what I call a Vaughn Williams moment. My favourite piece of music is Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis and as I walked in solitude with only a retiring snowscape to keep me company my mind conjured the romantic picture of a Tudor England that inspired Ralph Vaughn Williams to paint his magical 1910 musical homage to a country that never existed. Some Europeans are enjoying their own delightful prejudice over President Putin’s Russia and a really democratic and friendly country that sadly and probably may never exist. It is time for Europe (and the White House) to face hard truths about Russia.

This morning British Prime Minister Theresa May is in Brussels for a European Council meeting at which she will call for non-Russian Europeans to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the UK in the wake of the use by Russia (yes!) of a military grade nerve agent in the heart of Miss Marple England. She will point to a pattern of behaviour since the 2008 invasion of Georgia that shows President Putin has no intention of being a strategic partner of the West in all or any of its now many guises.  Indeed, with every term President-for-Life Putin (let’s not kid ourselves!) has become progressively more anti-Western. She will also suggest that Putin is now locked into a campaign of intimidation, coercion and occasional outright aggression that extends across the new landscape of conflict – from the foothills of information war to possibly one day the mushrooming mountains of nuclear warfare.

She will doubtless receive the support of several central and eastern European states who know only too well the heavy method of Russia when the Siloviki (roughly translated from Russian as ‘those from the force structure’) are in charge in Moscow.  She may even get the continued declared support of the three other members of the powerful Quad Squad – France, Germany and the United States, even though there are profound questions as to just how far Paris, Berlin and Washington will go to support Britain in its hour of need.  Doubtless, she will test to see just how qualified the EU’s “unqualified support”. As she speaks, several other states, most notably Greece and Italy, will shuffle their feet in embarrassment, but say or do little.  

A European Security Order?

This morning much of the British Press is frothing at the mouth, in the way that much of the British Press regularly froths at the mouth, about this week’s post-election letter of congratulations European Commission President Jean Claude Juncker sent to Putin.  The timing of this obsequious letter is certainly unfortunate given that two European citizens are fighting for their lives in a Salisbury hospital alongside one innocent Russian.  The inference of much of the coverage in Britain is that Juncker is more agin democratic Britain than he is for autocratic Russia.  

However, there is one phrase in the letter which captures the essence of the dilemma Russia poses to Europe and the wider West when Juncker calls on Putin to help re-establish “…a co-operative pan-European security order’. A word of caution here: Juncker’s deliberate wording has for Russians a very clear meaning and implies a new Europeans security order that excludes the Americans. If Juncker really is going down that long Russian road then he is, even more, the inappropriate man holding inappropriate office that I have always held him to be.  If ever there was a leader prone to romantic prejudice it is Jean-Claude Juncker. Indeed, Juncker seems incapable of grasping the plunging cynicism of President Putin, which is ironic. 

Putin’s Strategy

Putin’s strategy is to weaponise the rules-based system of international relations that the European Union embodies by defecting repeatedly from agreed norms and treaties.  For Putin to accept a new European security order he would need to abandon a strategy that has come to define him and his Russia.  More likely, Putin sees Juncker as one of the many useful idiots there are across Europe that serve him – directly or indirectly. As an aside, the Chinese seem to concur with Britain and other Western powers as Beijing’s ambassador to Moscow yesterday refused to attend a briefing at the Russian Foreign Ministry at which Britain was accused of carrying out the Salisbury attack.

For sake of argument, let me assume for once that Juncker and the Commission have a point by seeking to maintain dialogue with Moscow even in a crisis, and even as EU member-states consider further steps to punish Russia for an egregious act of aggression.  For some time now my friends in Italy, Greece and elsewhere have told me that I am too pessimistic about Russia and that Moscow poses little or no threat to Europe or Europeans…anywhere.  That, the only way to engage with Moscow is to befriend the Kremlin as threats only reinforce the romantic prejudice therein and its belief that Russia is still an encircled and threatened superpower.

Friends, Russians, Bogeymen?

My response? Now is the moment for such friends to demonstrate their influence in and over Moscow and convince President Putin of the benefits of co-operation with Europe and the wider West.  If they succeed, and Moscow abandons its use of coercion as diplomacy, I will be the first to congratulate and thank them for helping to lift Europe upwards towards a new era of security and stability.

Equally, the same friends need to be clear about the implications of failure. If they are merely blustering because they are too dependent on Russian energy, or simply lack the political backbone to denounce any Russian act however aggressive then they are simply victims of their own romantic prejudice. And, in their weakness, they would not only undermine the security and defence of Europe but reveal NATO to be little more than an expensive bluff, something that would certainly make the day of President Putin.

It is time for Russia’s ‘friends’ to face hard truths…and take firm action. If not, as one senior British official put it yesterday, Russia is a ‘strategic enemy’ with all the implications that has for Europe and the world beyond.

Julian Lindley-French

Skripal: NATO’s Next Steps?

“Beware the ides of March”

Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare

Geneva, Switzerland. 15 March. Prime Minister Theresa May’s statement to the House of Commons yesterday on the Skripal attack was proportionate given the status of the investigation and the need for an initial response. The 15 March use of the Russian nerve agent Novichok in the English provincial city of Salisbury during the attempted murder of one Russian citizen and another former Russian turned Briton is an outrageous act of aggression that must be countered.  The next step is to consider a subsequent and consequent set of responses. Yesterday, I was contacted by a senior figure at NATO and asked what I would suggest the Alliance should do in support of the UK. Given that NATO is likely to be in the vanguard of the international response my considered reaction is set out below.

Investigation and Action

In the wake of this attack, a thorough investigation must necessarily form the basis for action. The aim of any response must be to assert that NATO will respond to any attack on an ally in a robust but proportionate manner and to uphold international regimes and law relating to the use of biological and chemical weapons.  May’s decision to expel 23 Russian ‘diplomats’ from London as part of a suite of measures is just such a proportionate response. She cleverly left open the option to escalate to further measures if and when the available evidence hardens as to the source of the attack, whilst offering Moscow the chance to climb-down by ‘admitting’ it had lost control of the nerve agent.

The response must be further divided into two distinct tracks – investigation and action.  The investigation would see NATO in support of the British seeking to establish exactly the sequence of events that led to the attack and identify those who designed and carried out the attack. Whilst there is overwhelming circumstantial evidence that Russia, in some capacity, is responsible for the attack the legitimacy of any subsequent response will be strengthened if due process has been seen to have been followed.

Specifically, it would be useful to set up two expert panels, one under the auspices of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (OPCW), and another conducted by NATO allies, possibly led by France which has a similar capability to Britain in countering chemical and biological hazards. Past experience would suggest that Russia will doubtless try to interfere with such an investigation and such efforts will need to be resisted.  Equally, prior to the 2003 Iraq War London was not sufficiently skeptical about Iraq’s supposed WMD capability and locked itself into a political position from which it could not retreat.  

The Maintenance of Proportionality

There has been some suggestion that NATO triggers the cornerstone collective defence Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, the so-called doomsday article the invoking of which during the Cold War would almost inevitably have led to nuclear Armageddon. At this stage, such a response would be disproportionate given the scale of the attack and thus enable Moscow to suggest the Alliance is the aggressor.  On the eve of Sunday’s Russian presidential elections, it may well be that the Kremlin would like nothing more than to suggest to the Russian people that Russia is under attack from NATO. Given the extremely high likelihood that Moscow was involved in the attack it may also be that triggering such a response by the Alliance was central to the political design of the attack.

To invoke Article 5 would also devalue its importance and thus the gravity of its invocation in a crisis. In a sense, the Alliance is already preparing a response that is in the spirit of Article 5. The North Atlantic Council has met and offered its support to Britain re-iterating that an attack on one ally is an attack on all. NATO has also confirmed Britain’s right to self-defence under Article 51 of the United Nations Charter. The attack has been reported to the United Nations Security Council and the Alliance is considering the subsequent and proportionate action it could take.

NATO Action?

Proportionality does not preclude the preparation of a robust and timely set of actions to deter Russia, or any other state actor, from ever again contemplating such an attack on a NATO ally. Indeed, even if due process has yet to be completed it is reasonable for the Alliance to assume the identity of the attacker and prepare measured and appropriate responses. There is a range of actions I have proposed that would provide a credible considered escalation in the wake of such an attack and thus reinforce deterrence: 

Reinforce the agenda of the NATO Brussels Summit: The Alliance should immediately introduce onto the agenda of the July 2018 Brussels Summit an assessment of the threat posed by what appears to be illegal Russian use of chemical weapons.  Such a debate should also perhaps take place in the context of Moscow’s deployment of new nuclear weapons systems that are illegal under the 1987 Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty.

Better coordinate and share intelligence: Prevention of attacks on the Alliance’s civilian population would be best facilitated by an effective intelligence-led defence.  Efforts are underway within NATO to improve such co-operation but if such intelligence is to be properly actionable the Alliance needs to become far more effective at gathering, collating and distributing intelligence.

Re-establish effective consequence management: Most NATO allies have lost the ability to quickly identify and thus respond quickly to biological and chemical attack on either military or civilian targets.  In close conjunction with the allies, NATO must move to close that gap in its defences. One idea could be to create bespoke quick response teams of experts that could support national authorities in the wake of a biological or chemical weapons attack.

Instigate a strategic review of Alliance defence and deterrence: A vital question NATO needs to answer is this: in the face of a new concept of coercion how can the Alliance’s citizen be defended against an adversarial strategy that combines disruption, destabilisation, and destruction? Such a review would consider the implications of such an attack across the new spectrum of warfare that Moscow is purposefully engineering and which extends to and weaponises information, cyber, biology, chemistry, space, as well as the eventual or parallel use of conventional and nuclear forces.

Make the Alliance more resilient: The Alliance as a whole must now properly consider how to make critical structures and infrastructures upon which society depends to function far more resilient to an attack. The Salisbury attack might be small in scale but it implied the ease with which a perpetrator could inflict mass casualties on a NATO ally without the use of nuclear weapons.

Enhance NATO’s Enhance Forward Presence: The threat the Alliance is facing involves an adversary who is merging hybrid, cyber and hyper warfare into a new concept of warfare.  Therefore, it is impossible at this stage to know if the Salisbury attack was a one-off or part of some new form of conflict escalation.  It would thus be prudent to strengthen the military defences of the most vulnerable allies Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

Accelerate NATO force mobility: NATO is already considering how to better facilitate its ability to move forces across the Alliance in an emergency and how best to reinforce its forces in Europe from across the Atlantic. This attack underlines the importance of that work and the reform of the NATO Command Structure.

Close the NATO deterrence Gap: By deploying short and intermediate range nuclear systems in Europe Russia is both skilful and illegal.  The aim is exploiting a clear gap in Alliance deterrence between NATO’s conventional force and its strategic nuclear forces and thus enhance Moscow’s ability to intimidate allies in a crisis. As I written in these pages before, NATO must actively consider the role of new technologies in closing that deterrence gap using non-nuclear capabilities without joining Moscow in the destruction of treaty-based security.

Power Politics, Russia & Salisbury

When, and frankly from what I have been told it is a question of ‘when’, Russia is confirmed as the perpetrator of the Salisbury attack it will be but the latest of a now long-line of flagrant and blatant flouting of international regimes and law by the Kremlin. Let me be clear; I have a deep respect for Russia and I am firm in my belief there can be no security in Europe without Russia.  My desire is to seek an accommodation with Russia via dialogue to establish a new peaceful order in Europe with which Russia is comfortable and from which Russians benefit.

Russia is also a great power and must be respected as such. However, the attack on my country was an attack on other great power with an economy roughly twice the size of Russia’s.  If Russia really has abandoned a rules-based international order in favour of the anarchy that is geopolitics democracies likes Britain will respond. Like all democracies, there has been a time-lag in that response but when it comes Moscow will quickly discover that whilst Russia might be a great power it is no longer a superpower.  In any such struggle, Russia will lose unless the Kremlin is mad enough to even contemplate that it could win another European war.  

Therefore, whilst Britain and the NATO allies must follow due process, for such process is in effect what divides the Putin regime from its neighbours, and never stop seeking dialogue with Russia, the Kremlin must be under no doubt that the NATO allies accept that the Novichok attack on a quiet provincial English city was both an attack upon them all and an egregious act of aggression that must not and cannot go unpunished. If they do not such weakness would mark the beginning of the end of NATO…something the Kremlin no doubt will also have considered at some length.

Julian Lindley-French

The Skripal Attack: Britain's Options

Britain “is just a small island…no-one pays any attention to them”.

Alleged 2013 comment by Dmitry Peskov, Official Spokesman of President Putin

The Skripal attack

Alphen, Netherlands. 8 March. Let me assume that in some manner or other the Russian state or those close to it were behind the poisoning of former Russian GRU (military intelligence) officer, Sergei Skripal, his daughter, and a Wiltshire police officer in Salisbury last Sunday.  Moscow will, of course, publicly deny all and any involvement in the attack, even as it leaves open the chance for people (particularly its own) to draw their own conclusions.  So, what options does Britain really have if it is to respond ‘robustly’, as Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson somewhat theatrically suggested in Parliament this week?

Why attack Britain?

First, why attack Britain?  If the attack was sanctioned at a high level in the Kremlin the consequences would have been carefully considered.  It is unlikely that Moscow would risk such an attack on the United States, given the consequences if an American police officer was infected in a similar fashion to that unfortunate British police officer.  Moscow is also unlikely to have sanctioned such an attack on Germany, France or, Italy as all have shown themselves sympathetic and/or understanding of Moscow in the past.  Indeed, their collective refusal to back Britain in the wake of the 2006 Russian attack in London on Alexander Litvinenko in which highly-radioactive Polonium 210 not only killed Mr Litvinenko, and which put many Londoners at risk, demonstrated all too clearly the fragility of European solidarity.  It also demonstrated just how ‘uncommon’ the EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy really is at times of crisis.  The Baltic States are already under daily attack from Moscow across a range of forms and means.  The rest of Europe?  Too small and insignificant to send the message Moscow might wish to send to the Russian people on the eve of the presidential elections about Russia’s ability to cower enemies and punish traitors.  Therefore, Russia’s much self-reduced and vulnerable old Cold War foe Britain, with a now sad ‘tradition’ of spinelessness in the face of a host of similar such attacks in recent years, thus presents the perfect target.  

Second, the attack might involve the sending my Moscow of more than one message.  On such occasions one needs to think somewhat laterally because the circumstances that inevitably surround cases of espionage are inevitably murky, with the public utterances of government often hiding a whole other story. Certainly, I am (again) angered by the prospect that (again) the Kremlin, one of its agencies (the fearsome GRU?), or one of the factions close to President Putin, seems to have carried out another possibly deadly attack on British soil. Equally, I am curious at the coincidence that such an attack should take place in Salisbury, just next door to Britain’s highly-secretive Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl). Could it be that Skripal, who betrayed Russia, was the unwitting messenger in some other hidden conflict between Moscow and London?

Hinting at just such a conflict General Sir Chris Deverell, Britain’s Joint Force Commander, said this week that Russia has developed the ability to cripple a dangerously open Britain, particularly via a cyber-attack. Cryptically and coincidentally Deverell also said that Moscow “did not care about civilian life…They care only about what is in the interests of their elites…They are quite capable of anything”.  Was that the message Moscow was sending London?

Retaliation?

Britain now knows the specific nerve agent used in the attack.  Given the sophisticated nature of the compound it is likely to be only a matter of time before the British identify the source of the attack, no doubt with the help of the Americans. So, let me break Britain’s possible responses down into two parts: retaliation and policy.

London’s immediate responses to such an attack would need to be necessarily and consequently theatrical. In addition to issuing pointless indictments against those Russians London identifies as suspects, Britain would first likely withdraw its ambassador from Moscow and/or expel a host of Russian diplomats, as well as declare a few Belgravia oligarchs persona non grata.  However, with the Russian presidential elections nine days away President Putin would probably be only too happy to expel a similar number of British diplomats to demonstrate graphically to the Russian people the ‘real’ enemies of the Russian state.

London might also seek to increase the severity of the sanctions on Russia imposed in the aftermath of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine and the July 2014 shooting down of Malaysian Airlines MH17.  However, it would be pointless for Britain to do that on its own.  And, as in the aftermath of the Litvinenko case, it is likely that only the United States (or possibly not!) might be willing to join Britain.  Of Europe’s major powers Germany’s Russia policy is far too tied up with Berlin’s economic interests to consider further sanctions against Russia, particularly the Nordstream 2 pipeline.  France at times talks tough about Russia but is similarly ambivalent, and Italy has just seen the political influence of pro-Russian Silvio Berlusconi markedly increase. 

Even Britain is ambivalent about its own sanctions on the Russian elite.  The City of London represents 11% of the British economy affording it significant influence over British foreign policy. Even after a High Court judge in 2016 implicated President Putin directly in the Litvinenko murder London has done little or nothing to prevent the flow of dodgy ‘no questions asked’ Russian money into London, and would probably be loath to do so even now. The EU? Even if the EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy amounted to more than an extended budget for think-tank meetings London is hardly the flavour of the month in Brussels and is unlikely to get much support therein.

What about direct retaliatory action? London is certainly not in the business of poisoning people on foreign soil, whatever RT, Sputnik et al might imply.  Could Britain mount some form of retaliatory cyber-attack?  This is unlikely. First, Britain is only in the process of developing an offensive cyber warfare capability. Second, the failure of successive British governments to ‘harden’ Britain’s critical infrastructure makes the country uniquely vulnerable to a whole host of attacks Moscow has been working up for some time, and which now extend across the twenty-first century hybrid war, cyber war, hyper war spectrum. 

Policy Responses?

If the ability and capacity of London to retaliate is limited what about policy options?  Here, if ‘Whiteminster’ (Westminster and Whitehall combined) for once responds with a) some backbone; and b) investment in new capability, capacity and structures the attack could be the catalyst for Britain to finally abandon its appalling ‘policy’ of recognising only as much threat as HM Treasury says it can afford. Rather, Britain should move to establish a new principle in its dealings with Russia: if Moscow attacks, London responds with policy across the conflict spectrum and as part of a new, twenty-first century concept of escalation. 

At the lower end of escalation London could move to re-capitalise the Russian-speaking service of the BBC World Service and start again to fully engage/interfere in Russian domestic affairs. Britain could also move faster to balance the counter-terrorism focus of its Secret Intelligence Service with a born-again counter-Russia capability – both offensive intelligence and counter-intelligence.

London’s strategic blindness has also left Britain far too vulnerable to externally-induced chaos.  Therefore, London should also begin the systematic hardening of critical infrastructures from cyber and actual attack.  If past Russian tradecraft is anything to go by there is likely to be a significant number of well-placed Russian sleeper agents in Britain ready to help foster such chaos.   

Above all, and by way of considered policy response, London needs to strike a new balance between the protection of its people and its ability to project coercive power, particularly within NATO.  Deductively, it is in the specific realm of defence policy that London should respond most forcefully. For too long successive British governments have played at coercion as Whiteminster has steadily retreated from strategic realism into strategic political correctness. Moscow has observed this Little Britain retreat with contempt.

Therefore, Prime Minister May should announce as a direct response to this attack that Britain will move to prevent Russia’s continuing ability to carry out the low-level war it is currently conducting at Britain’s many seams. Critically, in addition to strengthening the resilience of British society to attack London should also announce an immediate increase of its defence budget to 2.5% GDP to close the massive gap that has opened up between the stated missions of the British armed forces and their ability to undertake them.  That such an increase would be the direct consequence of Russian action would not only be something Moscow would understand, it would also be an unintended consequence that Moscow would not welcome. After all, it takes two to message.

Britain must prove it can still sting

If London’s response to this attack is that it finally gets serious about security and defence and demonstrates to Moscow that there is a price to pay for its aggressive and unlawful actions then, just then, Russia too might want to talk.  Ironically, only then will the Foreign Office’s preferred policy of talking to Moscow, rather than isolating or threatening it, have any chance of success.  Sorry, Foreign Office, speaking softly, carrying a little stick, and turning a well-educated blind eye will no longer do.

What frustrates me most about my country is the false Little Britain narrative that not only have so many Britons bought into, but which Moscow exploits.  If one combines economic and military power with the experience and systems of engagement Britain should still be able to sting and sting hard. Sometimes in international relations, particularly when dealing with autocrats, democracies must have the proven ability to sting.  We do not as yet live in Utopia. However, only if Whiteminster stops behaving like a strategic amoeba, re-injects some strategic backbone into its policy and responses, and makes an adversary pay a price for such an attack will Britain stop this kind of attack.

Hard at times though it is to believe Britain is still a top five world power but needs to start behaving again like one.  As for Mr Peskov, Britain might well be a small island, but it is a bloody powerful one with an economy twice the size of Russia’s. Now is the moment for Moscow to be reminded of that fact…should, of course, it is demonstrated that Moscow was complicit in some way in the Skripal attack.

Julian Lindley-French

Chairman Xi's Bipolar Disorder?

“Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun”

Mao Zedong

President-for-Life Xi

Alphen, Netherlands. 6 March. Two things concern me about President Xi Jingping’s China this week and can best be summarised as a lot of rubber-stamping. First, at a meeting this week the rubber-stamp National People’s Congress is expected to scrap presidential term limits. Second, the Congress will further rubber-stamp the decision of President Xi to further increase the Chinese defence budget by 8.1% to an official $175 billion per annum.  Whilst that figure pales alongside the $600 billion or so the US spends each year on defence, China’s actual defence expenditure is probably far higher than the official figure suggests, as many new defence projects are not included in the defence budget. 

President Xi’s move to enshrine himself as President-for-Life at least has a greater ring of political honesty to it than the electoral manipulations of that other strategic autocrat-for-life Russia’s President Putin.  Still, past experience in China and elsewhere suggests this landmark decision does not bode well for the Celestial Empire, the Asia-Pacific region, or the wider world.  Indeed, President Xi’s consolidation of his personal power in the age-old name of ‘stability’ suggests not only the creation of a new power dynasty in China, but also hints at a return to the bad old days under Chairman Mao when de facto one man rule led to deadly extremes, such as the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. 

Political Legitimacy Chinese Style

Among contemporary China’s many achievements are its relative stability and growing prosperity. Since the 1989 massacre of students in Tiananmen Square the Chinese Communist Party has also enjoyed a strange (by Western standards) kind of political legitimacy.  This was achieved by offering the burgeoning Chinese middle class prosperity in return for their unquestioning acceptance of the Party’s political supremacy.  Such ‘legitimacy’ has been further reinforced by strict term limits on office for the procession of grey men who have led China in the intervening years. Now, with President Xi’s power grab (for that is what it is) that legitimacy is again open to question, and it will be interesting to see how a changing China adapts.

For a time President Xi’s personal supremacy may well buttress ‘stability’ within China. However, past experience in China, the Soviet Union/Russia and elsewhere suggests that over time such a retreat from what limited political legitimacy existed in China will be covered by the fostering of a personality cult which will doubtless increase the distance between this ‘Princeling of the Party’ and the people. There is also a danger that Xi’s move will further reinforce a tendency towards more nationalism and militarism in Beijing.

A Revolution in Chinese Military Affairs

President Xi’s power base is, and has always been the People’s Liberation Army or PLA. For decades the Chinese armed forces were essentially designed to assure the control of the Party within China, and assure the borders from threats without China.  China’s foreign military adventures were relatively limited, strategically-constrained and close to China itself.  Then Peking intervened in the Korean War in 1950 against US-led United Nations forces, fought and won a short border war with India in 1962, and in 1969 entered a border conflict with its ‘fraternal’ Communist partner, the Soviet Union. Chinese forces also entered Cambodia and Vietnam in the late 1970s.  Today, China’s strategic ambitions extend far beyond its neighbouring region, as exemplified by Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative.

A revolution in Chinese military affairs is also underway. Beijing’s now smaller (2 million), leaner and more agile Armed Forces are currently taking possession of a whole raft of power projection military capabilities, including new aircraft carriers and nuclear attack submarines, whilst at the same time exploiting space-based and other advanced technologies, such as cyber and artificial intelligence.  The People’s Liberation Navy is fast developing into the main regional challenger to the United States Navy. The PLN also has global ambitions, as the joint 2016 exercise in the Baltic Sea with the Russian Navy revealed.  Like the emergence of Kaiser Wilhelm’s Imperial Germany Navy from 1898 onwards which had but one purpose, to challenge the might of the then Royal Navy, it is clear that the PLN is also being prepared with one military-strategic purpose in mind; if Beijing so decides to one day fight and defeat the United States Navy.

Now, China has as much right to invest in such forces as any Western country. However, the strategy behind such investments must be of concern to both neighbours and the rest of us. First, Beijing has shown scant ‘might is right’ regard for international law by employing a host of spurious claims to illegally-seize and militarise a string of islands in the South China Sea.  The strategic aim is clear; to turn one of the most lucrative trading routes in the world into China’s Mare Nostrum.  Next month, like something out of a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta, the ageing Royal Navy Type-23 frigate HMS Sutherland will conduct a ‘freedom of navigation’ exercise in the South China Sea. Regrettably, and in spite of some talk of a new Asia-Pacific focussed Franco-British alliance, far from being impressed the Chinese will no doubt conclude it is an exercise in British strategic pretence, and that the under-funded Royal Navy poses little or no threat to China. Expect Beijing to ignore the ship.

Chinese Might is not always Right

However, it is the mid-to-long term consequences of President Xi’s ‘might is right’ strategy both at home and abroad that should most concern the West. History suggests that autocratic, one-man regimes sooner or later resort to adventurism when the political and economic going inevitably gets tough. This is what President Putin did when he attacked Ukraine in 2014 after falling oil and gas prices undermined his domestic political and economic strategy and threatened the Kremlin’s control. 

For as long as the Chinese Communist Party continues to deliver prosperity to the Chinese middle class and the wider country it is likely that the Party’s grip on power will endure.  And, as long as China can continue to feed off Western technologies via strategic investments in companies in debt-ridden European and other countries, China will see no reason to become overly aggressive. And yet there are clear dangers implied by such investments. Last week it was discovered that Chinese investment in a small British semi-conductor company may have helped Beijing to develop a new naval ‘super-gun’ that will soon pose a distinct threat to US carrier battlegroups.

The dilemma for Beijing, as one Chinese official once told me during a visit, is that China has to grow at at least 8% per annum simply for the economy and prosperity to stand still. Sooner or later such growth will cease, a prospect made more likely by China’s burgeoning corporate debt. Sooner or later the militarised super-presidency of President-for-Life Xi could well seek to bolster its power domestically by further embellishing its nationalist credentials. In such circumstances Taiwan (the Crimea of Asia-Pacific?) would be first in the firing line, closely followed by Japan and South Korea, something that that other President-for-Life Kim Jong-un has no doubt considered.  

Chairman Xi’s Bipolar Disorder?

There is another even greater danger, or rather combination of dangers that really worry me about President Xi’s power-grab, which could threaten the world order.  The defining strategic relationship for much of the twenty-first century will be that between the United States and China.  They are the two power poles around which other lesser powers are already coalesced or coalescing.   It is a complex relationship and that could spawn a dangerous bipolar (dis) order, particularly if China and Russia define their relationship as inherently anti-Western.

In some respects the world is already beginning to look eerily like Europe in the first decade of the twentieth century when the Triple Entente of the British, French and Russian Empires, ‘balanced’ the Dual Alliance of Imperial Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire.  Whilst this was an essentially European-focused power struggle it had global reach because of empire.  Given the West itself is now an idea rather than a place with liberal democracies the world-over, and centred on the American system of alliances, the threat of systemic conflict can no longer be ruled out. Indeed, whilst Russia may pose a regional threat to certain NATO and EU members, in combination with China that threat becomes a wholly different ball-game, particularly for the Americans.      

It is a threat compounded by the West itself.  First, too many debt-ridden Europeans seem only too willing to see the ‘opportunities’ afforded by rich China, but at the same time refuse to recognise the risks that an increasingly autocratic and aggressive China poses.  Second, President Trump seems more interested in disrupting the West than reinforcing it.  This most idiosyncratic of American presidents this week decided to threaten trade wars with most of his major allies so, apparently, he can secure an improved NAFTA. Sadly, at times the White House seems more interested in disaggregating the very system of alliances that helped make America great. Alliance which America will again need if Washington is to reassert the very considered leadership that was, is, and always will be the true source of American greatness. 

A Global Triple Track

Is war with China inevitable? Certainly not. Having worked with seasoned diplomats and practitioners over many years I have learnt that the expectation of the worst is the surest fire way to guarantee it.  And, whilst I harbour profound concerns about the direction of travel of the Xi regime, it is vital the West continues to talk to Beijing.  Beijing is not simply a richer and more powerful version of Putin’s Russia, and because a set of circumstance and patterns of power occurred in the past they are by no means doomed to reassert themselves in the future.

Rather, Americans and Europeans should seek strategic balance in their respective engagements with Beijing.  Deterrence, defence and dialogue were the triple themes in a narrative that emphasised just such a need for strategic balance in the GLOBSEC NATO Adaptation Initiative, for which I had the honour to be Lead Writer.  Realising such balance demands that Europeans see their security and defence not just in regional, but global terms. It also demands of Europeans a willingness to better support, albeit not uncritically, Washington’s lead in dealing with Xi’s China if they want the Americans to continue to underpin Europe’s own security and defence.

All of the above will certainly demand that Europeans finally get serious about their twenty-first century defence and invest sensibly, although not excessively, in such a defence.  Equally, Europeans also have something to contribute in ensuring Xi’s China maintains a nuanced understanding of the contemporary West. Indeed, it is precisely the bloc-forming experience of Europeans prior to the First and Second World Wars, and during the Cold War that places Europeans in a responsible position to promote dialogue with China, whatever past imperial insults Europeans have committed.

What is happening in Beijing this week is a cause for concern. Equally, Beijing is inherently cautious and remains for the moment open to dialogue, particularly if it believes an adversary respects its legitimate interests and has the power and coherence to counter its own ambitions.

Therefore, President Xi’s bipolar disorder is not a given.  However, to paraphrase one of the Roosevelt’s the global West together, Europeans included, should speak softly, politely and firmly to President Xi, and help America carry not just its big stick, but its many burdens.  It would also help if America learnt again to speak softly. Over to you, Mr President.

Julian Lindley-French