London,
England. 22 November. Sea Sense 2013. Fifty years on from the assassination of
President John F. Kennedy and the ending of what Jackie Kennedy called the
Camelot presidency I was asked to consider “NATO in the Future Maritime Domain”
at the NATO Maritime Commanders conference here in London. The link is important because in the wake of
the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, the moment the world came closest to nuclear
annihilation, NATO politics were by no means easy. Indeed, the tension between the Americans and
British one the one side and President de Gaulle’s France on the other would
lead France in 1966 to quit the Alliance’s military core. Back then NATO took the idea of strategy
seriously. Today I really wonder.
Entitled
Sea Sense 2013 this fleet commander’s conference should really have been called
(finally) Sea-ing-Strategic Sense. I
carefully noted down the issues discussed: high north, Gulf security, Asia-Pacific
power shift and the US pivot, friction in the East China Sea, Baltic security,
the Middle East and the end of Sykes-Picot, the Horn of Africa, piracy, drugs,
terrorism, trade security, the littoralisation of world populations etc. etc. However, instead of seeing them as part of an emerging
strategic picture many of the admirals present chose instead to
break them into short-term ‘manageable’ events. If navies do not think
strategically who will?
This management
approach to world security is killing NATO.
It is a failing that was brought home to me when someone suggested that
as there were no clear threats there was little or nothing to plan for. Nonsense!
By the time a threat is apparent it is too late for sound defence strategy. It is friction that one must consider if one
is to successfully set strategic priorities and use sound strategic judgement thereafter
to make the necessary decisions.
And that is
what struck me about yesterday’s debate when one sets it alongside a strategic
giant such as John F. Kennedy. Kennedy
made mistakes – the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba and Vietnam to name but two. However, they were mistakes of ambition. The cycle of strategic retreat that is
killing NATO is established first and foremost on a denial of ambition.
When I rose
to speak I wanted to achieve two things.
First, place NATO navies in their true twenty-first strategic
context. Second, establish a new set of
principles of for how navies, armies and air forces work together to maximise
peace-building and affordable strategic influence.
As I spoke
I could feel the resistance to what I was saying and I knew why. Fleet commanders, like their counterparts in
armies and air forces, have been utterly bruised by a political class that
really no longer wants to hear uncomfortable strategic reality. Indeed, one does not build a career pointing
out such truths unless that is you are me…and I have no career. This culture of strategic denial is reinforced
by the legions of civilian advisors around leaders who wilfully confuse politics with
strategy. The
maritime domain will be critical to a strategically-renovated NATO but that in
turn will means a non-US NATO that has sufficient ‘high-end’ naval and amphibious
assets to be credible in what is going to be a new age of power.
Back in
1963 NATO’s maritime strength was built on what was then a very genuine special
relationship between President Kennedy and Britain’s Prime Minister of the day
Harold MacMillan. Indeed, the two had
last met at MacMillan’s Birch Grove estate back in July 1963 not knowing it
would be the last time they would meet.
Today the special relationship is not-so-special, hollowed out by a
disinterested Obama and a Britain that has devalued its all important strategic
currency – its armed forces.
That is
about to change. With the launch next
June of HMS Queen Elizabeth, one of two giant aircraft carriers, and with a new
Royal Navy under construction, Britain is finally making a statement of real
strategic intent that will force both an over-stretched US and an utterly un-strategic
Europe to take note. Britain should use
the occasion of next year’s launch in Portsmouth to bring political and military
leaders together from across the Alliance and beyond to consider NATO’s (and the EU's) real
strategic role in the world’s maritime domain.
There is a
profound irony that stalked this conference.
NATO has an immense strategic opportunity if only its leaders can seize
it. The West is no longer a place it is
an idea as evinced by the presence of so many partners from the world over. And, much of that global idea is at sea.
As a
citizen and tax-payer I call upon NATO leaders to end this appalling cycle of short-termist,
strategic retreat and finally Sea Strategic Sense.
You can start by reading my January book – Little Britain: Twenty-First Century Strategy for a Middling European Power…for
that is what it is about.
Julian
Lindley-French
