Schiphol Airport, Amsterdam. 27
January. I am sitting in the lounge at
Schiphol Airport en route to Washington to speak at the CSIS-NATO Transatlantic Forum on the
future of the Alliance. This is
fortuitous…for NATO and the Americans. It
is about time Washington was again subjected to the Yorkshire world view. In
the way these things are done in London the Ministry of Defence last week ‘leaked’
a report. It is not clear if this was an
official or not-so-official leak but the message was interesting and speaks
volumes about Britain and the wider West’s future military posture.
The report suggests
that Britain’s ever-expanding kaleidoscope of ethnic minorities have a problem with
British troops tromping around their former/current homelands in the way
British troops tromp. Therefore, the
report suggests, future British operations will no longer be based on the kind
of big footprint one saw in Afghanistan and Iraq.
To be frank this is one
British change that cannot be pinned on immigration. The massive bulk of the population, most
senior officers and even strategy wonks like your faithful Blogonaut find it
difficult to see how sending a small force a long way for a long time into a
hopelessly complex political space makes strategic sense. This is simply another of those moments when
the common sense of the British people regardless of ethnicity trumps the tortured
policy logic of Planet Whitehall.
In my new book Little
Britain (www.amazon.com) my chapter on
Britain’s Future Force calls for a radical rethink about the role and nature of
force and its relationship with a changing world and changing society. It also informs much of what I am going to
say in Washington about NATO.
By 2050 most serious
analysts (Exxon Mobil, CSIS, International Energy Authority, Goldman Sachs and
Citibank) foresee a major shift in power from west to east. To my mind it is exaggerated but it does at least
point to a hyper-competitive and instable 21st century. It is a future that will not only see the
littoralisation and urbanisation of the world population but also the emergence
of peer military power competitors. Indeed, the
military expenditures of China, Russia and other powers are burgeoning.
For military planners
this implies a radical assumption check. First, the use of force to change
societies will become almost impossible even if the friction generated by societal
change will increase. Strategic security
and human security will be clearly one and the same. Second, good old-fashioned geopolitics will
make a stunning comeback and with it Machtpolitik
and Realpolitik. Third, technology
will mass-multiply force. However, given
the nature of future operations it will need to be intelligent
force. Fourth, political will and global
stability will inseparable. Europeans
will not assure security by sticking their heads in the Brussels sand and hoping
change beyond Europe ignores change in Europe.
Small Western
militaries in a huge cross-dimensional strategic space will need a single
strategic mind-set overseeing strategic operating practice via connectivity and
interoperability. Given that assumption
the West’s future force will need to be organically-joint and able to reach and
dominate across air, sea, land, cyber and space. And, given the balance to be struck between
strategy, technology, manpower and affordability the core force will need to be
small, intelligent and demonstrably lethal.
Equally, the force will need to be strategically and intellectually
interoperable across government, with allies and partners and much more deeply embedded
within society.
Forces that can simply
operate to a very limited extent at the lower end of the conflict spectrum to
the effective exclusion of all else will soon be obsolete – much like the Dutch
military today. Indeed, by sacrificing both
capacity and capability even that limited low-end aim is now unachievable for
the Dutch and many European forces. Rather,
the West’s future force must be built around a tight high-end military
capability that can credibly engage to prevent conflict, to stop conflict and
if needs be act as a strategic conventional deterrent.
By hook or by crook
that is where the British are going – and partly why I wrote the book. The British Future Force will be constructed
around two large aircraft carriers. They
will be central to future task groups that can offer power projection and
political discretion at one and the same time.
They will be platforms run by the Royal Navy but from which both the Royal
Air Force and the British Army will operate.
They will also act as force hubs for colaitions. Critically, if the radical new concept of the Reserve Army can be made
to work the Future Force will be plugged into wider society enabling a rapid
surge of capacity if a high-end crisis develops…as it could.
NATO should look hard
at the British experiment. NATO is not
the EU. It is a politically-realist,
hard-edged politico-military alliance built around worse-case scenario planning. Future NATO must therefore be considering how
best to generate and command the West’s future force via a hard-nosed analysis of
the post-2014 world.
Many think the
withdrawal from Afghanistan is the end of NATO’s test. In fact it is just the beginning.
Julian Lindley-French
