NATO and the Coming Big War

Naples, Italy. 4 April.  Christine de Pizan in her 1412 masterpiece “The Book of Deeds of Arms and Chivalry” wrote “What will the wise prince…do when…he must undertake wars and fight battles? First of all, he will consider how much strength he has or can obtain, how many men are available and how much money.  For unless he is well supplied with these two basic elements, it is folly to wage war, for they are necessary to have above all else, especially money”. 

War is coming, big war. Not here, not now but some time, some place this century it is coming.  The rapid shift in the military balance of power away from the democracies, arms races, climate change and the coming dislocation of societies, the dangerous proliferation of dangerous technologies, demographic pressures, competition for energy, food and water and the hollowing out of states.  All the necessary ingredients for big war exist driven daily by the growing systemic frictions apparent in the world.

As I write this blog the sun is making its lazy way across the Bay of Naples.  The southern Italian sun is in no hurry and takes its time to appreciate the better things in life.  I contemplate a voluptuous glass of Campania as the old castle of Naples sits to my immediate left on the Borgo Marinello.  To my far left broken Vesuvius lies asleep the Ad 79 destruction of Pompeii and Herculaneum but the ancient musings of Tacitus.  In the distance just visible in the sun-fried haze lies the alluring outline of Capri.  It is a picture of Italian tranquillity – la dolce vita?  Or is it?  What I am actually looking at is the ancient remains of a super-volcano with Vesuvius but a pimple on the face of super power. 

Yesterday, I briefed NATO commanders on the role of the Alliance post-Afghanistan.  My message? If the Alliance and its leaders do not face up to the enormity of change in the world and the pressures it is creating NATO too could become a pimple on the face of super power.  Russia’s seizure of Ukraine-Crimea is just a harbinger of things to come in a world in which the West is declining rapidly.  

Military power is of course but one of the many tools the West will need to help manage the coming ruptures. However, military power will remain a critical tool because for many states military power remains the reserve currency of influence and the stuff of prestige. And yet in modern day Europe military power is seen as neither affordable nor useful, a hangover from somebody else’s age that has no place in the new Europe.   

The essential problem is as ever political; a lack of vision, an inability or a refusal of Western leaders and led alike to see the big picture that friction is painting and its possible consequences.  The Russian action in Ukraine-Crimea is but one of the symptoms of an international system under ever growing pressure – a Vesuvius that has begun to smoke and rumble.  Russia took Crimea because it could.

NATO is the world’s big security, big defence alliance, a credible deterrent against extreme behaviour by extremists and extreme states in extremis.  NATO is insurance.  However, the Alliance desperately needs a root and branch reassessment of its role in twenty-first century peace.  Only thereafter could a proper assessment be made of what must be done; the balance to be struck between civilian and military tools, the type of military forces that will be needed and at what level. That will take political courage and strategic vision in our leaders that is not immediately apparent. 

The Alliance must be transformed into a new strategic hub that sits at the very pivot of civilian and military security and defence. Not just in and around Europe but a NATO that also sets a global industry standard for true strategic partnership the world over.  However, for such a NATO to emerge the most profound of mind-set changes is needed at the political and military levels.  Indeed, the challenge now is not to do the past better but to do the future properly.  Strategy can no longer be sacrificed at the altar of expedient politics – the West’s great curse.

Russia is not going to invade the rest of Europe, although the jury is still out on eastern Ukraine.  However, what Russia has done is to end the comforting fantasy that conflicts can always be solved by dialogue alone.  Moscow has reminded Europe in particular that it no longer defines what former US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates called the “rule of the road”.  This is not just about Europe. Sitting over the far horizon China is watching.  How the West responds to this crisis will decide whether China becomes a stakeholder in the current system or a revisionist power.  That is what is at stake.

Something very nasty is happening and it will be coming to a place near you sometime.  Like the doomed of Tacitus if we continue along the road of strategic pretence will we one day find ourselves with nowhere to run.  We need a legitimately strong NATO to stop it!

Another glass of Campania please.

Julian Lindley-French

Europe: Faust or Whore?

Alphen, Netherlands. 31 March.  “Forget these frivolous demands which strike a terror to my fainting soul”. So pleads the Devil’s agent Mephostophilis to Doctor Faustus in Christopher Marlowe’s Goethe-inspired play.  Faustus has just agreed twenty-four years of power and luxury in return for the eternal damnation thereafter of his soul.  The opportunity Moscow seized to annex Ukraine-Crimea was made possible by three factors; Europe’s energy dependency, Russian investments in European financial centres most notably London and European unilateral disarmament. 

 

Today, Russia supplies EU member-states with 25% of their oil and gas.  The Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia and Poland import between 70% and 100% of their gas from Russia.  Russia has also created a very strategic cartel called the Gas Exporting Countries Forum which holds up to 70% of the world’s reserves.  Russia is playing hard poker as Europe as ever plays bad chess.

The other day at a conference a senior British politician called me “sweet, naïve and young”.  As insults go it was a pretty mild attack and I have known worse, although I did object to him calling me “young”.  My naivété to his mind was to rebuke British politicians for their enduring ability to sacrifice the long-term strategic well-being of Britain for the short-term political fixes that have and continue to exaggerate and accelerate the UK’s precipitous decline.  In his utter cynicism he revealed why politics in Europe has become the enemy of strategy. 

The defence figures alone speak for themselves.  The US invests roughly $100k per soldier in 2014 compared with an average European investment of $24k with the interoperability gap between US and European forces growing daily.  And, whilst the US can deploy some 12.5% of its force many Europeans can only deploy on average 3.5% . Moreover, whilst the US spends only 36% of its defence budget on personnel some Europeans are spending between 70% and 75%.  Russia is investing some $700bn in a new military by 2020.

Now, I am no nostalgist about defence.  States should only have the minimum military power commensurate with the achievement of legitimate foreign and security policy goals.  However, not only are Europeans selling themselves body and soul for energy and dodgy money they are fast abandoning the very means to assure their collective defence. The farcical sanctions the EU imposed on Russian officials simply reinforced the sense of dangerous impotence which today characterises Europe in the world and for which Europeans will pay a dear price.

London is a case in point and has become dangerously unbalanced in its strategic prescriptions.  Although the British are investing some $250bn in new defence equipment over the next decade if one listens to British officials it is very hard to understand why.  Indeed, they reject the very idea that the world is returning to Realpolitik even though it is plan to see.  At a meeting in London last week the London Establishment’s obsession with soft power was all too illuminating.  British officials were dismissive of Ukraine-Crimea.  They inferred it was a minor event and that Britain should remain focussed almost exclusively on counter-terrorism and aid and development.  If one fills a government with counter-terrorism specialists then every problem becomes counter-terrorism. 

All of this makes President Obama’s speech in Brussels last week sound not a little desperate. “Going forward, every NATO member state must step up and carry its share of the burden by showing the political will to invest in our collective defence and by developing the capabilities to serve as a source of international peace and security”.  Not a chance!  As he was speaking I was talking to a high-ranking NATO officer who told me bluntly the Alliance can no longer carry out the very collective defence President Obama referred to.  Another senior NATO officer mused with me about how far the new Russian Army would make it across Europe before it was stopped. Capability, will and intent are the stuff of power not wishful thinking.  Now, I do not expect Russia to roll across Europe but the Baltic States are rightfully concerned. 

 

To my British politician friend I say this.  If I am ‘naïve’ to demand leaders confront the world as it is not as they would like it to be then so be it; if I am ‘sweet’ for calling upon leaders to face reality then I am so condemned; and if I am ‘young’ for requiring principles of power and influence are adhered to then guilty as charged. 

There are two kinds of state in today’s world; those shaping reality and those denying it.  Unless Europe’s hopeless leaders begin to take a long view about the emerging big global picture then something very nasty is going to happen to Europeans…again!

In his dying hour Faustus faces up to the consequence of his hubris as he watches the hand of a clock move inexorably towards his damnation.  “O lente, lente currite noctis ecquis”, he pleads - “Oh slowly, slowly run the horses of the night”. 

Europe: Faust or Whore?

Julian Lindley-French 

Russia: Hacked Off

Alphen, Netherlands. 27 March. Yesterday my email was hacked by the (or a) Russians. The attack took place as I was briefing NATO commanders at the NATO Rapid Deployment Corps - Italy just outside Milan. 

This was not the now usual bit of e-criminality that daily blights our lives.  The people who know about these things confirm it was a sophisticated and personalised attack from somewhere/someone in Russia.  Clearly something I had written had upset someone.  As that someone said to me this morning - this was a shot across the bows - a warning.

And that is the point; implicit in the current crisis over Ukraine-Crimea is not just the use of force to assert territorial claims which is simply plain wrong.  There is also the big issue of freedom and respect. If this kind of attack is how a Russian Europe would operate then count me out.   

The frustrating thing for me is that I am sensitive to the Russian world view and I really want to understand it.  Indeed, I have a huge respect for Russia and have studied its culture and its history.  Indeed, unlike most Westerners I think I get Russia and understand the frustrations both the Kremlin and Russians feel about their treatment by the West, particularly over the past twenty years.  Last year I had the very real honour of addressing the Moscow European Security Conference and was deeply moved and honoured to visit Victory Park and the War Museum.

However, when Russia makes big mistakes as it has just done by using force to annex Ukraine-Crimea I will call it as I see it and stand firmly with my friends in Eastern Europe who have been left concerned and uneasy by Russia's actions.

The bottom-line is this Moscow; until you engage criticism openly then it will be very hard for those of us willing to engage you constructively but critically to feel a dialogue is worth having.  As for my views Moscow you should read what I say about our Dear Leaders in Brussels!

So long as Russia seems determined to replay the nineteenth century rather than the twenty-first we will simply talk past each other and that would be a tragedy not just for Europe but the wider world. 

So, for the record, I am not in Kiev, I am not on holiday, I have not been mugged and I have not had anything whatsoever to do with the British Embassy therein.  Mind you I was deeply moved by those of you out there offering to help.  My apologies for any inconvenience.

 

Yes, Russia, I am hacked off!

Julian Lindley-French

  

Nuclear Netherlands: Making the World Safe for Power

Alphen, Netherlands. 24 March.  The Netherlands is shut today for a bit of nuclear grandstanding.  The reason for all the chaos is Nuclear Security Summit 2014 which is taking place today in The Hague (as well as a bit of Russia-less G7).  In 1917 US President Woodrow Wilson said that the world must be made safe for democracy.  Implicit in this summit is the need to make the world safe for power. 

 

On the face of it the Summit is one of those strategic photo-ops/jamborees/champagne bun-fights for politicians that promise so much and deliver so little.  However, this one takes place just when the balance between might and right, power and law upon which nuclear restraint rests is again being tested. 

To underline the challenge Russia’s President Putin pulled out of the Summit in the wake of his invasion of Ukraine-Crimea demonstrating the extent to which the world now hovers between might and right.  It could go either way.   

The ‘Nuclear Top’, as the Dutch rather disarmingly call the Summit, focuses on the very real danger of nuclear terrorism.  It should have focused on President Obama’s 2009 vision of a “Global Zero”, a world free of nuclear weapons.  However, that has about as much chance of happening as I have of being NATO’s next Secretary-General (I am still available and at very reasonable rates).

The Summit will address the danger that nuclear material might fall into the wrong hands, which of course implied it was always in the ‘right’ hands.  The specific concern is that terrorists could gain access to sufficient radiological material to make a “dirty bomb”. 

Sister Summits in Washington and Seoul produced a Framework to combat nuclear terrorism that is being discussed as I write.  The Framework has three elements: reduce the amount of dangerous nuclear material in the world; improve the security of existing material; and increase international co-operation.

Such grandiose great power démarches have a chequered history, particularly when the great powers are at geopolitical odds.  Be it efforts to ban chemical weapons a century ago to the many and varied attempts at conventional and nuclear arms control and disarmament efforts to constrain and restrain massive destruction within laws and regimes has been constant and not always successful.  Indeed, The European Union was born out of just such an effort; to constrain state action by legal precept thus rendering the ability of Europeans to wage war on each other impossible.

Putin’s invasion of Ukraine-Crimea confirms all too eloquently that the twenty-first century could well be little different than the twentieth.  Good old-fashioned Realpolitik is back with a bang and along with it hierarchies of prestige, spheres of influence and balances of bunker-busting power in which how big is one’s arsenal again matters. 

The paradox of this Summit is that it also implies one of the struggles that could well come to define the twenty-first century – the state versus the anti-state.  The presence of China’s President Xi attests to the concern of leaders that mass destructive nuclear power could fall into the hands of terrorists. After all, nuclear technology is now some eighty years old and in the anarchic world of globalisation terrorists could conceivably get their hands on anything with the right contacts, money and time.

And it is the latter threat that so exercises Presidents Obama and Xi, and in the absence of Putin that other titan of geopolitics, President Herman Van Rompuy of Europe (excuse the giggles).  Moreover, it is not just the idea that nuclear-armed terrorists could inflict real damage on societies, but that such groups could also be instrumentalised as proxies by third states and in so doing neutralise great power.

Hard truths abound.  First, hyper-immigration has also made open societies ever more vulnerable to the hatreds that drive catastrophic terrorists with nuclear ambitions.  Second, the weakening of many states in the face of anti-state actors such as Al Qaeda has promoted the ‘anarchisation/democratisation’ of mass destruction as ever smaller groups now seriously seek to gain access to radiological and nuclear capabilities.  Third, leaders of the Western powers in particular feel ever more uncomfortable using force for fear of the retribution it could trigger from enemies within. 

In other words, states and groups that are on the face of it far weaker than some of those represented around the table in The Hague could negate the very influence upon which great power is established if they can successfully obtain such technologies. 

Paradoxically, the vulnerable states include Russia if only Moscow could see it.  Russia may be an autocracy and be far less open than the rest of Europe.  However, in the wake of the disastrous war Russia fought in the 1990s to prevent Chechen independence Moscow now faces the worst of all worlds – Islamists threats along its southern border in the very lawless places where leaking nuclear technology, catastrophic terrorism and criminality co-exist.

In other words, this summit matters.  However, because once again might and right are again at odds terrorists will seek to exploit the seams between them.  As Machiavelli once said, “A prince never lacks legitimate reasons to break his promise”.

Julian Lindley-French

NATO-Russia and the New Cold Peace

Somewhere in Deepest England. 20 March.  Russia has used force in twenty-first century Europe to militarily occupy a significant and strategic portion of a neighbouring sovereign state...and it is about to get away with it.  It does not matter that a majority of Crimeans may have wanted to rejoin Russia. In taking Crimea Russia has made a mockery of several treaties, badly undermined Europe’s security architecture and reopened questions about the relationship between might and right in Europe that were thought to be the stuff of history. What must be done?  

I have just been attending a high-level meeting to consider NATO's strategic narrative and the agenda for the 2014 NATO Summit in Wales.  My colleagues and I talked against the background of a faint but constant drum-beat as Russia consolidated its Crimean land grab.  One must be conceptually clear at such moments; there are few if any short-term actions NATO and its members can take to get Crimea back to Ukraine, but there should be both a decisive response and medium-to-long term consequences for Russia. 

First, the West must escalate not de-escalate.  Therefore, the desire to rationalise away what President Putin has done must be pushed away.  This is a strategic power struggle between Russia and the West about influence along the entirety of Moscow’s western and southern borders.  As such Russia’s action has potentially the most profound of consequences for Europe and beyond.  

Second, the invasion of Crimea should not be seen as an event but rather part of Russian strategy.  At the meeting one of my colleagues said that Russia will pay a high financial price to maintain Crimea.  Moscow could not give a jot.  Russia’s invasion is about history and strategy.  As such Putin’s masterstroke has been to destabilise every former Soviet republic with one act.  He has also reinvigorated Russia’s sphere of influence and greatly damaged the strategic credibility of the West of which NATO is a central pillar.  He has also ended any pretence to further EU and NATO enlargement and with it the idea of a Europe whole and free. 

Third, President Putin has also come out of the power closet with a bang and in so doing redefined the meaning of ‘legitimacy’ in Russia.  Any hope that Russia would at some point morph into a liberal European style parliamentary democracy is now gone.  Russia is now a fully-blown aggressive revisionist power on Europe’s border with a classically Russian strong man at the helm who is wrapping himself in the Russian flag to justify power and position.  That might not work for more urbane Muscovites but it goes down a hoot in much of rural Russia.

This precisely the kind of moment NATO is for.  So, what can be done? 

1. NATO leaders must move quickly to place military forces in the Baltic States. This will reassure them and assure their security under Article 5 of the Treaty of Washington. 
2. A Western military tripwire must be established along NATO’s border with Russia to complicate Moscow’s regional-strategic calculation. 
3. The US must quickly bring back two additional Brigade Combat Teams to Europe to reinforce the existing force.
4. Exercises must begin for the rapid reinforcement of NATO forces in Eastern Europe in the event of a crisis as part of a new Forward Deployment strategy.
5. NATO must end its reluctance to base Allied forces in Eastern Europe out of fear it might be seen by Moscow as provocative.  Russia is the provocateur.
6. The NATO-Russia Council must be suspended;
7. The modernisation of Article 5 collective defence must now be urgently reconsidered to include cyber and missile defence.

The invasion also completely resets the challenge NATO will face at the Wales summit in September which must now send a stiff message.  High-level political guidance must be given to the NATO Secretary-General to undertake a broad sweep of the new strategic landscape, Russia’s place in it and thereafter begin the necessary planning. 

Specifically, the Alliance must be tasked with considering all the necessary means to counter Russian intimidation and possible aggression and include within that wider consideration of Russia’s influence, not least in the Mediterranean and the Middle East.  Sadly, Russia will end the weak co-operation of late over Syria and Iran but that was probably intended by Moscow in any case.  Critically, the summit should re-establish the symbolic commitment of all NATO nations to spend at least 2% of GDP on defence.

What will happen?  Sadly, NATO is split right down the middle between Central and Eastern European members rightly alarmed by the invasion and Western Europeans fast rationalising Russia’s action away.  It is that which Putin has understood and it is precisely the seams and grey areas of Alliance resolve that he has brilliantly exploited with speed and to effect. 

Crimea is gone and the fate of Eastern Ukraine probably lies in the resolve and will of Western capitals.  Thus far there has been no will and little resolve, particularly in Western Europe.  Indeed, Ukraine could face a dark fate if Europeans in particular continue to show the almost derisory and utterly spineless response they have shown thus far.   

If all of the above sounds assertive and uncomfortable…it is.  This is not yet a new Cold War but it is certainly the start of a Cold Peace.  It is time for the West to stand up and stand together.  Failure to act and NATO's strategic narrative may well have been written by Hans Christian Andersen.

Julian Lindley-French

 

Floriat Etoniae? Throwback Dave

Alphen, Netherlands. 15 March. One of those peculiarly British spats boiled up this morning. The Education Secretary (Minister) criticised his boss David Cameron for the "preposterous" number of old boys from Britain's poshest school Eton that he has silk hankerchiefed into his inner circle.  Five out of the six people charged with writing the Conservative Party manifesto for the 2015 General Elections are 'OEs', one of whom recently told a friend of mine of his contempt for the electorate.  This is not only bad politics on Cameron's part, it demonstrates the degree to which the Prime Minister and his clique are out of touch with the reality of the very people he needs to keep him in power.

 

OEs will no doubt respond that Gove's jibe and my concerns are the politics of envy.  And it is certainly the case that some of my best friends and their children either went to or are currently at Eton.  However, those that would accuse me of inverted snobbery should pause a moment.  For my sins I was one of the first if not THE first Comprehensive School pupil/'oick' to go up to Oxford in 1976. 

 

Gove also had a swipe at 'Oxbridge' in his remarks. When I arrived at University College, Oxford ('Univ') in September 1976 I suffered an enormous culture shock.  Indeed, had I not been an athlete I probably would have jacked the whole thing in during my first year because of the appalling upper class, public (private) school snobbery I suffered from some (by no means all).  Thanks to a few good people some of whom were indeed public school boys and the US, Canadian and Australian Rhode Scholars I persevered.

 

 However, if I look at Univ today the efforts the college has made to reflect a changing society are legion.  Yes, more can always be done but I am intensely proud of Univ for such efforts to cope with 'oicks' like me.  Indeed, when I go to Univ today it is much nicer place and for me a better college for it than back in 1976.

 

It is therefore a profound shame Cameron has surrounded himself almost exclusively with old 'chums' and chums of chums.  It gives the impression of a throwback prime minister, a man who is only comfortable amongst his 'own'.  Sometimes Cameron's inner-circle exudes the impression of a cast of characters that have escaped from a Tom Sharpe novel suffering from various degrees of noblesse oblige.  Or perhaps I mean School for Scoundrels?

 

Now, I am as critical of the tyranny of diversity as I am of self-perpetuating class-based elites.  One only has to look at the way in which 'diversity' has become a metaphor for the Left's growing control over England's judiciary and the promotion in some sectors of mediocrity for the sake of it.  Any artificial filters on progression and promotion must be removed.  

 

However, Cameron's anti-diversity is equally inexcusable. By surrounding himself with Old Etonians and perhaps the odd Old St Paulian (I do not know the collective noun for those blessed with an education at St Paul's School) David Cameron confirms the suspicion of many that he is a self-promoting upper-class 'hooray henry' who had a helping hand into the upper echelons of politics and is now doing similar favours for his chums.  It is as though Britain is being cast back into the politics of class which profoundly undermines the idea that Britain's best and brightest can make it to the top if good enough.

 

My own absolute belief is that for Britain to compete and survive in the twenty-first century the Whitehall Establishment will need to be truly open to the best irrespective of class, race, gender or orientation.  Too often whenever I attend meetings in Whitehall class is all too apparent.  The bosses speak with cut-glass, upper class, Eton (or some other posh school) educated accents.  The 'gofers' tend to be from the bourgeoisie or perhaps the lower middle classes.  The lower levels?  Draw your own conclusions.

 

The strangest thing of all is that the Whitehall elite are forever talking about 'access'  whilst quietly ensuring it is only their own they allow past the pearly gates of power. 

 

Cameron's cliqueism sends all the wrong signals.  Cameron's clique is totally incapable of picking up the real signals modern Britain sends. 

 

Floriat Etoniae?

Julian Lindley-French

"Time to Face Reality": The World's Rapidly Shifting Military Balance

Alphen, Netherlands. 13 March.  Four events this past month have highlighted the rapidly shifting balance of military power in the world.  Yesterday General Sir Peter Wall, Head of the British Army, warned that “moral disarmament” would be exploited by Britain’s enemies and that he could not rule out future “force-on-force” conflicts.  In fact, Britain is morally and actually disarming along with much of Europe.  According to US think-tank CSIS cuts to European defence budgets between 2001 and 2013 represented a per annum compound reduction of 1.8% per annum or about 20% over the period. 

 

Last month American Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel announced further cuts to the US armed forces.  Hagel said it was “time to face reality”, as he followed Britain in announcing a 15% reduction in the size of the US Army, as well as other cuts. 

Russia’s February 2014 invasion of Ukraine-Crimea should have reminded Europeans of the inextricable link between military power and political ambition, particularly for the non-democracies.  Indeed, what was thought unthinkable in Europe even a month ago is very clearly thinkable in the Kremlin.  

In the immediate aftermath of Russia’s bungled 2008 invasion of Georgia the Kremlin ordered a major review of the Russian Armed Forces. It was not a pretty picture.  On 31^st December 2010 Moscow launched a massive military equipment programme for the ten year period 2011-2020 that was to cost some $775bn.  The investment envisioned annual average growth in the Russian economy of around 6.5%.  In the event Russia is likely to grow more modestly over the period at between 4-5% per annum.  Such growth will still result in some $700bn of military investments by 2020 or an increase in defence expenditure from the current $90.7bn per annum to around $122bn.

Affordability is a (not THE) key criteria for military expenditure.  Contrast the Russian figures with France.  In 2012 the CIA estimated the relative purchasing power of the Russian economy to be some $2.6tr whilst France was valued at $2.3tr.  If Moscow is right and the economy does indeed grow at 4-5% per annum up to 2020 the Russian economy would then be worth some $3.5tr.  Given the Eurozone crisis the best that can be hoped for France (and many European economies) is 1-2% growth per annum (if lucky). Even at 2% growth per annum the French economy will only be worth some $2.5bn by 2020. 

Last week Beijing announced that the 2014 Chinese defence budget will increase by 12.7% to $132bn per annum.  Beijing has been growing the defence budget by at least 11% per annum since 1989.  If China continues to grow the military by about 12% per annum, which is implied in the China’s 2013 Defence White Paper then by 2020 China will be spending $230bn on defence. 

Whilst such expenditure will not match the planned US c$560bn of expenditures in 2020 taken together the combined Chinese and Russian expenditures on their respective armed forces will total some $350bn.  Many of those forces will be modern.  And, whilst the Pentagon’s January 2012 “Defense Budget Priorities and Choices” paper points the way to a future US force that will be cutting edge most European armed forces will remain at best only partially modernised.  This will mean that each euro/pound spent will in effect generate far less capability than Europe’s American, Chinese and Russian counterparts.  Given that Britain and France represent some 50% of all European defence expenditure and much of the c200bn spent each year by Europeans on defence is wasted the Euro-strategic balance is shifting markedly and rapidly. 

The world strategic balance is also shifting.  Read between the lines of both Chinese and Russian military strategies and their aim is clear; to complicate America’s strategic calculation by forcing the US to stretch its armed forces the world over.  With most Europeans wilfully refusing to help resolve Washington’s deepening and acute strategic dilemma $560bn will by 2020 be worth far less dollar for dollar and Chinese and Russian investments worth more.

Sadly, autocratic regimes are being emboldened the world over by the West’s moral and actual disarmament in what is fast becoming a new Tepid War.  The signals being sent of US retrenchment and European disarmament have clearly encouraged Moscow, Beijing and others to up the military ante.  Only the most strategically-illiterate of political leaders could now discount the established link between military power and policy goals.  And yet in Europe illiteracy rules the day; hard power thinking offends the high priests of soft power.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine-Crimea and China’s serial hiking of defence spending really should mark the end of the fantasy that the ideal of a new liberal world order is shared by all.  It is power that is shaping the twenty-first century not values.  And, if values are to mean anything they must be backed by power.  

It is indeed time to face reality.

Julian Lindley-French