Alphen, Netherlands. 15
August. T.E. Lawrence wrote, “In fifty words: granted mobility, security (in
the form of denying targets to the enemy, time and doctrine (the idea to
convert every subject to friendliness), victory will rest with the insurgents,
for the algebraic factors in the end are decisive, and against then perfection
of means and spirit struggle quite in vain”.
Western leaders should
heed Lawrence’s words but not in the way they may think. Seared by failure in Afghanistan and Iraq,
paralysed by the situation in both Syria and Ukraine the West has retreated
into politics at the expense of considered strategy. Indeed, having understood that the threats
they face from across the great belt of insecurity require a big, long-term
strategy it is as though having batted badly in the first inning they have
decided to leave the field to the opponent.
Indeed, uncertain what
to do political leaders across the West have retreated into a series of military/humanitarian
sound-bites ignoring some catastrophes, focusing on others on the grounds that they
can at least do something. In Britain
these days it is not the government that runs British foreign and security policy,
but BBC Television News.
And yet what is
happening to Europe’s east and in the Middle East is forced change by opponents
with potentially catastrophic consequences for the West. Indeed, far from being the exception to the
twenty-first century rule such conflict is fast becoming one of its defining
features.
British strategist
Basil Liddell Hart wrote in the 1930s that, “In Strategy the longest way around is often the shortest way
there. A direct approach to the object exhausts the attacker and hardens the
resistance by compression, where as an indirect approach loosens the defender's
hold by upsetting his balance”.
The Russians in their crafting of a ‘new’ doctrine of ambiguous warfare
are in fact simply applying Liddell Hart’s dictum. The way for the Western leaders to out-manoeuvre
Russian ambitions in Eastern Ukraine is also (in fact) relatively simple. They must up the Russian ante by offering a
better future for ALL Ukrainians if they remain Ukrainian. Make the costs of ambiguity too high for
President Putin and he will seek a face-saving solution to extricate himself
from bad strategy.
The
Middle East is of course more complex, as indeed it always is. My assertion some time ago that the entire Sykes-Picot
state structure is at risk has now become fact.
Indeed, what the Islamists of Islamic State/ISIS have successfully
achieved is to create a sense that they are unstoppable. They have been allowed to get away with this partly
because politically-correct Western leaders worried about offending minorities
somehow accept that the Western action over the past decade was implicitly
a form of colonialism/ imperialism. They
selected the aim and then abandoned it and now want to keep the threat at
strategic distance by either appeasing it, ignoring it or both.
And yet
what is happening in the Middle East is acutely important. Faced with such circumstances ‘strategy’ should mean a collective
ability to see the very big picture of this very big picture conflict. However, contemporary Western
strategically-illiterate political leaders seem unable to do that. At the very least Western leaders should and must
challenge the two assumptions upon which this grand insurgency is
established. Firstly, that the majority
of people in the Middle East actually want a Caliphate and the return to
medievalism that it entails. Secondly,
that in this struggle between the state and the anti-state the state is somehow
a doomed anachronism.
Of
course, direct engagement of the Islamists by booted and suited Western troops
would give Islamic State/ISIS exactly what they want. It would be presented as a form of anti-imperialist
legitimacy of the kind (not without irony) that Lawrence turned against the
Turks during World War One - hence the need for the indirect approach.
The
problem with Western leaders is that because they routinely put 'no significant military
action too close to an election' politics before strategy they have lost the
will, the patience and the statecraft to deal with complexity. And yet if the West is to re-generate
twenty-first century grand strategy - the pursuit of large ends via large means
– it is precisely statecraft and a new approach to dealing with complexity that
they need. Indeed, complexity is the
very stuff of international relations.
Therefore,
the West must generate its own form of ambiguous warfare by turning the
insurgency against itself. This means in
the first instance properly supporting groups such as the Kurds who can help
stop the advance of Islamic State/ISIS. Over
the medium to long term diplomacy, aid, development and above all consistency
will be central to any such strategy with a particular aim of renovating the
idea of the legitimate state in the Middle East and helping to ease the many
grievances the Islamists exploit. And,
from time to time direct military expeditionary intervention will also be
needed and Europeans in particular must pay heed to the need for such military
capabilities.
The
indirect approach works because as a strategy it implies not just that the ends
are political but also the ways and means.
Specifically, that means Americans and Europeans together engaging to find
a just solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict AND actively helping to
remove the forces that can only benefit from conflict, such as the Assad regime
in Damascus. At times such a strategy
will mean uncomfortable bed-fellows such as Iran; at times it will mean
offending this group or that at home. Above
all, ‘strategy’ will mean a truly joined-up, whole of government approach to
strategy that is so lamentably lacking from the celebrity politics of the age
led by political vision and reinforced by political back-bone.
However,
unless the West together helps the people of the region generate a better future in the Middle East no-one
else will and given the ensuing vacuum spill-over to Europe and beyond could be
catastrophic. In that light the dropping
of aid to ease the plight of the Yazidi people (important though it is) is not
a function of a Middle Eastern strategy but rather a mask for the retreat from
it.
The
strategy-vacuum at the top of Western governments was put best in an email
yesterday from a very senior American friend of mine. “Obama
has no-one to do any serious thinking and doesn't seem to know he doesn't have
it. It is the great "unknown unknown." And the Europeans are not in
the game, not even the Brits, whose government is all talk and no walk”.
Sadly, need I say more?
Julian Lindley-French
