Alphen, Netherlands. 10
March. Thomas Hobbes once wrote that “covenants
without the sword are but words and of no strength to protect a man at all”. One hundred years ago in Britain Asquith’s
Liberal Government was about to face the most terrifying decision of all –
whether or not to go to war with Germany.
The Cabinet was deeply split. Foreign
Secretary Sir Edward Grey believed that Britain had no alternative but to
honour treaty obligations to protect Belgian neutrality from German aggression and
a secret 1912 commitment made to protect French ports in the Channel and the Atlantic. Others in the Cabinet tended towards the view
that ancient and/or secret obligations were but words and should not commit
Britain to war. Thankfully, whilst war
is not imminent Russia’s invasion of Ukraine-Crimea has once again demonstrated
Hobbes’s truism; if treaties are not reinforced by all means of influence then
might prevails.
In 1994 America,
Britain, Russia and Ukraine signed the Budapest Memorandum. In return for the abandonment of Soviet-era nuclear
stockpiles that for a time made Kiev the world’s third nuclear power Ukrainian
sovereignty was to be protected.
Ukraine, of which Crimea was clearly a sovereign part, duly fulfilled
its obligations. France and China later
gave similar assurances. Sadly, Russia’s
invasion of Ukraine-Crimea has demonstrated that such assurances are as empty
as the old Soviet nuclear silos that still pockmark the Ukrainian landscape.
The Kremlin has also
revealed something else; Europe’s much-lauded soft power is simply a metaphor
for empty power. Indeed, if Hobbes were
alive today he would write that civil power is of no strength at all. EU leaders can make all the phone calls they
like to to a dissembling President Putin but the Kremlin knows such bluster is
but words. Worse, by allowing a Moscow
that sees the world purely in term of power to ensnare Europe in energy
dependency there is nothing that can be done to stop Russia from annexing
Ukraine-Crimea.
What will it take for
Europeans to wake up and realise that investment in armed forces is not blind
militarism but rather part of the essential strategic balance? Indeed, such investment is vital to
demonstrate to the Kremlin and others a clear determination that all covenants
will be honoured. And yet it is precisely
the abandonment of the hard strategy that underpins such covenants that made
the invasion of Ukraine-Crimea possible.
This is typified nowhere
more pointedly than in London where hard strategy has been replaced by hard
accountancy. Phillip Hammond, Britain’s
Secretary-of-State for Defence last week made one of the most dangerous assertions
I have heard in recent years to justify the abandonment of strategy. Hammond warned of the danger of setting
strategy without knowing first how much money could be spent. It is precisely the abandonment of long-term
strategy for the sake of short-term politics that I write about in my new book Little Britain? Twenty-First Century Strategy
for a Middling European Power (www.amazon.com).
The first duty of any government
is the security and defence of its citizens.
What Hammond is really saying that Britain’s government will only
consider security and defence investment after it has paid for welfare, health
and everything else that might just keep has government in power. Only then will
the British Government consider how much threat they can afford. This is precisely how accountants corrupt
strategy. And, given than NATO and the
EU are central to British security strategy Britain’s non-strategy damages both
and has undoubtedly encouraged the Kremlin’s taste for military adventurism.
This is also tragic for
Russia. Last year I had the very
distinct honour of addressing Russian leaders at the Moscow European Security Conference.
I am no Russophobe. In typical fashion I
was blunt. “Get over the Cold War”, I
said. “The only stable border you have
is with us in the West”. They did not
listen. Shortly thereafter I made a
speech in Riga, Latvia entitled NATO’s
Riga Test. In that speech I said
that the true test of NATO’s worth was whether the good people of Riga and
across the region could sleep soundly in their beds secure in their own
security.
Russia is not about to
invade Latvia. However, if Europeans continue
to arm covenants with words only then an unstable Kremlin might, just might, be
tempted at some point to exploit “Sudeten Russians” to boost its nationalist
credentials. The use of the
ethnic-Russian card to justify invasion is no different from Hitler’s demand
that Sudeten Germans be united with the Reich in 1938.
In the wake of Russia’s
invasion real leaders would urgently undertake a scan of the strategic horizon and
re-consider their respective defence postures.
Such a scan would demonstrate to all but the strategically-myopic the
dangers that are growing in the international system and the extent to which
such dangers are exaggerated by Europe’s self-generated inability to uphold the
very international law it claims to champion.
And yet nothing…
Peace in our time? Make no mistake; Ukraine-Crimea could be Munich
revisited if Russia is simply given a slap by the strategically
limped-wristed. It will be seen as
simply another “quarrel in a faraway country between people of whom we know
nothing” that gets in the way of short-term strategic convenience. If that is indeed the case then all the
solemn treaties Europeans have signed since the end of the Cold War will be
seen by the likes of Beijing, Moscow and others to be covenants without the
sword.
At the very least NATO
nations must commit to the agreed 2% GDP expenditure on defence. That alone will send the necessary signal
that covenants such as Budapest and indeed international law in general really
do matter.
What will it take
indeed?
Julian Lindley-French
