Riga, Latvia. 16 September. The Riga Conference is a jewel in the crown of
security conferences. Yesterday I shared
a panel with the Italian, Latvian and Norwegian defence ministers, together with
Ambassador Sandy Vershbow, NATO’s US Deputy Secretary-General to discuss “NATO
post-Chicago”. Did something happen in
Chicago? I must have missed it. The questions at hand were those great
oxymorons of NATO speak; ‘smart’ defence (they have a good sense humour in
NATO) and NATO enlargement. Being your
faithful and ever heretical Blogonaut I of course ignored all that and asked a more
direct question; can NATO pass the Riga test?
NATO is a bureaucracy,
albeit a bureaucracy with attitude. In
the absence of what was once called ‘leadership’ NATO is forced to search
endlessly for a bureaucratic solution to the world by looking at it through the
wrong end of a telescope. Sadly, if the
good citizens of Riga are to sleep soundly in their beds NATO’s enforced small
thinking will have to change. Indeed,
whilst I remain convinced NATO has and must have a big strategic future the
Alliance must first confront a very big present and the most profound and rapid
rebalancing of world power ever seen. In
other words, NATO’s post-Afghanistan future is one in which China, Germany,
India, Japan and, of course a very near Russia and an over-stretched America tussle to defence influence via soft and hard
power.
Now, let me put aside
the coming contest between established superpower America and coming superpower
China, which was being enacted out by proxy this week over Rock-all in the East
China Sea between Beijing and Tokyo. Let
me focus rather on Europe’s two behemoths Germany and Russia.
The thing about power
is that it is as unforgiving to those that have it as it is to those who do
not. Just across the border from where I
am writing an opponent of President Putin has been unceremoniously ejected from
the Russian Parliament for being less than helpful to the Kremlin. It is clear that President Putin’s world view
is pretty ‘unreconstructed’ (to use the appalling non-speak of modern European
academia). His world is one in which
hard power is used to project soft power into spheres of great power influence and
devil take the small-most.
Looking to the West
between me and home is mighty Germany. Germany does not feel mighty and it
tries very hard not to be ‘mighty’, but at least in European terms ‘mighty’ it
is. And, behind the economic turmoil of
the Eurozone crisis is the re-ordering of European power in Germany’s
favour. A British diplomat recently told
me an apocryphal story about being virtually pinned against a wall by a German
diplomat and told in no uncertain terms that twice before Britain had thwarted
Germany’s attempts to ‘integrate’ Europe and it would not happen again. Said German diplomat is probably right as
Germany and France have successfully used the EU to neuter Britain. Thankfully, there are some very serious
Germans thinking very seriously about all of this and trying to find a solution
to all of this but Germany is having to learn leadership on the job, Not easy,.
And then there are the
Americans (Oh! Oh!). Twenty-first
American grand strategy will demand a shift in both ambition and capability by
Washington if it is to meet the coming Asia-Pacific challenges to the second
American century with profound implications for the security of the honest folk
of Riga.
NATO is today the rather
slim piece of salami in this very particular power sandwich. Indeed, Riga is the crucible in which a new Alliance
will either be forged or die (and why the next NATO Sec-Gen should perhaps come
from the Baltic States). Or, to put it another way, Riga’s credible
defence demands a new strategic bargain between Washington and Berlin and given
events elsewhere the possible re-structuring of NATO into the EUrosphere and
the defence Anglosphere.
The alternative is a United
States pulled progressively away from the defence of Europe by events elsewhere,
a NATO that fades as a result and poor, little Latvia once again trapped
between the Russian (planned) and German (not-so-planned) spheres of influence. History suggests that will not turn out well. Indeed, in the absence of a
shared strategic concept with Washington Berlin will be forced to lead Europe
towards an autonomous strategic defence.
With Europe’s armed forces about to fall over a defence cliff that would
hardly be credible.
The people of Riga need
NATO and today NATO just about passes the Riga test. However, history never stops here and all the
NATO allies must never forget that whatever the distractions NATO’s future will
be decided not in Brussels or even Afghanistan, but right here in Riga. Riga cannot be defended by European complacency.
Julian Lindley-French
