Creating solutions for a
secure Europe
What must be done?
What must be done to make
Europe secure in the twenty-first century? A resurgent, nationalist Russia,
systemic terrorism, mass barely-regulated immigration, strained transatlantic
relations, the revolution in military technology, the threat of pandemics, warfare
that stretches across the social bandwidth from fake news to new nukes,
transnational crime and a host of other challenges, hazards and threats with
which a divided Europe must contend.
Paul Cornish, Judy
Dempsey, Ben Hodges, Julian Lindley-French, Holger Mey, Andrew Michta,
Alexandra Schwarzkopf, Jamie Shea, Anna Wieslander and Rob de Wijk are the
Alphen Group, or TAG to its friends.
Representing decades of advanced thinking and doing at the highest levels
we share a profound concern about European security and defence. Therefore, we
have come together to seek solutions for a more secure Europe. Our aim is to
move beyond the discussion culture in Europe that so rarely sees words become
action and offer leaders a grounded vision for our future security and defence.
Why now?
The need for action has
never been greater. The dangers Europeans and their allies face span the new
threat-scape from aggression by hostile Great Powers waging ‘war’ on our
politics and our media systems to global reach terrorists seeding hatred and
instability at the seams of our increasingly complex and diverse societies and
far beyond. Disinformation, destabilisation, disruption, deception and implied destruction
are be the ‘stuff’ of a new/old war as information is weaponised to become the
agent of fear, challenging our confidence in conventional politics.
The Internet is
revolutionising society in every conceivable way, and on every level. It is
also revolutionising the way we must defend society, undermining the very concept
of loyalty, identity and agency upon which any state must depend if it is to
mount an effective defence. The Internet of Things (or Everything), artificial intelligence (AI) and new 5G technology
will make security more immediate, more automatic and far more brittle. It will
also become increasingly difficult for Europeans, acting in concert, to ensure
the active defence of their values and interests. Active defence will require
the projection of power, but this will not be feasible if Europe is seen by its
people to be weak, uncertain and incoherent.
A new Pearl Harbor?
The prospect of a ‘new
Pearl Harbor’ – a surprise attack launched from cyberspace and beyond – is
controversial. Some see it as ill-informed scare-mongering, others as a cynical
device to secure investment in key sectors of the technology industry. It
remains, nevertheless, a very useful metaphor. The attack on Pearl Harbor in
December 1941 was a strategic surprise not only militarily but also
diplomatically, politically and technologically. The attack ‘broke the rules’,
contravening the prevailing (and arguably, in retrospect, rather complacent)
norms and expectations of conflict and competition between states. It is not
far-fetched or alarmist to imagine something similar happening in Europe today
– and happening at such pace and with such scope that there would be little or
no chance of defending or fighting back.
Technology is fast
changing the battlespace in which any future European war would be fought The so-called
Fourth Industrial Revolution is revolutionising warfare to such an extent and
at such pace that future war will be conducted simultaneously from the low end
of the conflict spectrum to the high end.
War will also come in many forms and be defined by the distance from which
an attack is launched, the difficulty of openly attributing an attack and the
need for hyper-speed decision-making in the face of AI-informed hostile
operations. The very idea of conflict, of what constitutes an ‘attack’ will be
questioned. Political and military leadership will demand far swifter
decision-making often in the midst of engineered uncertainty and insecurity.
Self-reinforcing new
technologies led by AI, machine-learning, hypersonic systems, drones and
quantum computing will further blur the already vague distinction between the
civilian and military worlds. These
innovations will demand new armed forces able to operate effectively across
seven enormous domains – air, sea, land, cyber, space, information and knowledge.
Such forces will require different types of combatant (or ‘operator’) than
hitherto, with new technologies applied across new capabilities and capacities,
and led by new ideas of strategy.
In the face of such
pan-dimensional threats the US security guarantee to Europe also faces a
growing crisis of credibility. American
forces are now stretched thin across a multi-dimensional strata-scape of space,
time, technology, cost and people. Most European
forces are at best museum pieces; increasingly analogue in a hyper-digital
world. And yet, in the worst-case they would be Europe’s valiant first
responders, even though the ‘worst-case’ has been banished from the European post-modern
strategic lexicon. Such concerns are all too politically and economically
inconvenient for Europe’s current leaders.
Creative solutions for a
secure Europe
The Alphen Group will begin by contributing a series of informed,
high-level blogs on the major strategic issues confronting Europe and its
security and defence, of which this is just the first. Guest contributors will
reinforce the work of the Group and at the end of the year the first of a
series of annual Alphen Group reports will point the way to the future. There will be one unifying theme throughout
the work of the Group: What is to be done…and now?
The security and defence
of Europe is in danger of failing. Europe’s political leaders fail to
understand either the changing or the enduring character of conflict and the
big, strategic choices they must make, and soon, if Europeans and their allies
are to be secured and defended in the twenty-first century. Business as usual is
not an option.
Welcome to the Alphen Group. Welcome to an informed and
provocative discussion of Europe’s security and defence future.
The Alphen
Group
April 2019
