Alphen, Netherlands. 19
May. “The aim is clear”, said NATO Secretary-General
Rasmussen in a speech I attended Friday in Bratislava. “Russia is trying to
establish a new sphere of influence. In
defiance of international law and fundamental agreements that Russia itself has
signed. This has profound, long-term implications for our security. And it
requires serious, long-term solutions”. Are
the NATO Allies up to the radical changes in strategy, posture, capabilities
and mind-set implicit in Rasmussen’s call?
Calling a spade a spade
is Yorkshire for simply stating fact. Joseph Devlin, in his 1910 book “How to
Speak and Write Correctly” poked fun at the politically pompous and their use
of circuitous language writing “…you may not want to call a spade a spade. You may prefer to call it a spatulous device for
abraiding the surface of the soil. Better, however, to stick to the old, familiar
simple name that your grandfather called it”.
On Friday Rasmussen did something very rare for a leader these days; he called
a “spade a spade”. There were no
eloquent but empty ‘ifs’, no dissembling, emergency exit ‘buts’; just a plain
statement of fact that Europeans and North Americans together must grip if the
world is again to be made secure for freedom and democracy.
Unfortunately, the West
is looking at the Ukraine crisis from the wrong end of the strategic
telescope. Russia’s action is not simply
a one-off function of an opportunist, expansionist, acquisitive regime,
although it is clearly all of the above.
It is also a symptom of the long and dangerous retreat from strategic
first principles by the European democracies.
Sadly, this retreat into a wannabe world is not simply confined to
Europe’s smaller powers. It is the
central theme in my latest book Little
Britain: Twenty-First Century Strategy for a Middling European Power (2014:
www.amazon.com).
Re-establishing the
place of credible and affordable military power at the heart of legitimate and
stabilising influence is the nub of the challenge the Secretary-General has rightly
identified. However, the realisation of such
“solutions” will not be easy and require the kind of strategic vision and
political courage noticeably absent amongst Europe’s current political elite.
Shortly after Rasmussen
spoke I had the honour to share a panel with my good friend US Marine Corps
General (Retd.) John Allen. General Allen
is a very balanced man; a fighting, thinking, humane soldier. He warned of the growing global gap in
military power between the mature democracies and the emerging acquisitive
oligarchies such as China and Russia. It
is a warning worth heeding. Beijing and
Moscow have replaced democratic legitimacy with what might best be termed growth
legitimacy by which the elite hold power in return for improved living
standards. Void of democratic checks and
balances such regimes are inherently hyper-competitive with military power the
central pillar of state influence.
Against the backdrop of
this shifting grand strategic scheme of things there are five solutions the NATO
Allies must urgently and collectively consider at the September 2014 Wales
Summit: re-engaged strategy, a new type of defence, a new type of military, new
partnerships, and above all a new strategic and political mind-set. Each and all of these changes are vital if
NATO and its members are once again to credibly engage dangerous change. Time is running out.
NATO’s 2010 Strategic
Concept provides more than enough strategic guidance but lacks sufficient political
investment. Implicit in the Concept is
the need for the Alliance to generate influence across the mission
spectrum. That means a NATO able to offer
continuing support to a fragile Afghanistan beyond the ISAF mission and at the
same time act as a credible conventional deterrent and if needs be war-fighter to
prevent the kind of adventurism in which Russia is currently engaged.
NATO’s Article 5 collective
defence architecture remains the bedrock of Alliance credibility. However, collective defence is in urgent need
of modernisation based on three elements: missile defence, cyber-defence and
deeply-joint, networked advanced expeditionary forces.
However, it is the
twenty-first century balance between protection and projection which is the key
to NATO’s continued strategic utility. It
is vital that NATO pioneers a new type of deep, joint force able to operate
across air, sea, land, cyber, space and knowledge. It is a force that must also be able to play
its full part in cross-government civilian and military efforts building on the
lessons from the ISAF campaign. To
realise such a vision NATO’s command structures need to be further reformed,
with transformation and experimentation brought to the fore.
Freedom and security in
this age means the rejection of spheres of influence and a commitment to the
right of sovereign states to make sovereign choices. First, NATO must move quickly to formalise
the strategic partnerships it has fostered in recent operations with
democracies the world-over to reinforce the emerging world-wide web of
democracies. Second, NATO must offer a
Membership Action Plan to Georgia at the Wales Summit.
Above all, NATO’s
European allies need to undergo a profound mind-set change if they and the Alliance
are to deal with the harsh realities of the hyper-competitive twenty-first
century and the harsh strategic judgements it will impose. NATO European Allies must finally reinvest
the agreed 2% per annum of their national wealth (GDP) in their armed forces
and drive forward with military reforms, as well as pooling, sharing and some defence
integration.
For too long European
leaders have refused to call a spade a spade and instead retreated into
weakness-masking metaphors and strategic spin.
If NATO is to be rendered fit for twenty-first century grand purpose a
level of strategic unity of effort and purpose will be needed that has been utterly
lacking of late. Only then will the
Alliance’s political mechanisms in such urgent need of reform and streamlining
render the Alliance a credible actor in crises.
Thank you, Mr
Secretary-General for calling a spade a spade. It was about time. NATO is a political
alliance and standing up for freedom and security its core mission. That means action and now. Do we collectively have the ambition and are we up to the challenge? Can we really call a strategic spade a spade?
Julian Lindley-French
