“In
the end, more than freedom, they wanted security. They wanted a comfortable life, and they lost
it all – security, comfort, and freedom.
When the Athenians finally wanted not to give to society but for society
to give to them, when the freedom they wished for most was freedom from
responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free and was never free again.”
Edward
Gibbon “Decline and Fall of the
Roman Empire”
Alphen, Netherlands. 10 August. The West
is in trouble. Whatever one might think about President Erdogan’s post-coup
power grab he understands the ebb and flow of power. This week Erdogan went to
St Petersburg to meet Russia’s President Putin less than a year after Turkish aircraft
shot down a Russian plane. The implications of the trip are clear; given
Turkey’s difficult geopolitical and geographic position Ankara’s best option is
to back the ascendant power. Ever since Turkey joined NATO in 1952 Ankara has
taken the view that alliance with the West affords Turkey the best chance of
security. That assumption would appear to be changing. Why?
There are many afflictions undermining the
power and influence of the contemporary West. The very fact that an insurgent
such as Donald Trump is so close to the White House is already profoundly
shaking the confidence of America’s allies and partners in the value of US
leadership. The obsession of European leaders with Project Europe at the expense of all else is doing real damage to
the West’s strategic brand. It is now obvious that the EU far from aggregating
European power on the world stage is accelerating the retreat of Europeans into
an obsession with values and legalism. However, it is the focus of to many elites in the West on
short-term political and/or financial gratification at the expense of long-term
strategic probity that is doing the real damage.
Let me highlight the point by citing two examples of this problem
over the past week or so from my own country Britain; the
stalled deal with China to build a new nuclear power-station, and a leaked report
on the relative capabilities of British and Russian armed forces.
Last week new British Prime Minister
Theresa May ordered a review of a deal under which China would have funded the construction
of an as yet untested French-designed nuclear power station at Hinkley Point in
return for China being able to build another showcase reactor at Bradwell in Essex. This desperate deal was the brainchild
of the strategically-illiterate Cameron-Osborne duopoly.
The fact that such a deal could have ever
been contemplated reflects the political stupidity of what passes for British
energy policy. When I was a kid I used to work in a pub at Oldbury-on-Severn
right next to a nuclear power station at a time when Britain was the world
leader in civil nuclear power. However, the ‘power’ of the green lobby, and the
political obsession of several governments with renewables when it was clear
such technologies could never meet Britain’s energy needs led Britain down an
energy dead-end. It also highlighted the cost of the 'little politics at the expense
of big strategy' problem that has dogged Britain for years.
As for China there is nothing in Beijing’s
behaviour of late in the South and East China Seas or in the levels of Chinese
state cyber-hacking or Chinese espionage that would suggest Beijing is ever
going to be a real strategic partner of either Britain or the West. London must
understand that Chinese state funding for such projects is only undertaken as
part of what Beijing perceives as Chinese state, i.e. geopolitical interests.
What are Chinese interests? To weaken Britain’s ability to act as an
independent strategic actor by imposing a level of British dependence on China,
and in particular to weaken London’s still vital strategic partnership with the United
States.
Even on commercial grounds this deal is
madness, on strategic grounds it is full on insanity. To then
compound the problem by giving an illiberal power such as China unheralded and
utterly unwarranted access to key components of Britain’s critical nuclear
energy infrastructure simply demonstrates the retreat from sound ‘strategy-fying’
which has afflicted London for far too long.
And then there is Russia. This morning a
leaked report from the British Army’s Land
Warfare Centre publicly confirmed something of which I have been aware of
for some time – Russian forces could now out-think, out-manouevre, and out-fight British and all other European forces. General Sir Richard
Shirreff, NATO’s former military No. 2, and for whom I had the honour of working briefly when he was commander of the Allied Rapid Reaction Corps, is a friend and colleague. He was
attacked by London’s chattering classes earlier this year for publishing a book
entitled 2017: War with Russia. His assailants had clearly not read the book.
What is really interesting was
why Shirreff was attacked. The general thrust of the criticism seemed to be that Shirreff was a warmongering
general who was bothering people with an uncomfortable reality and that he
really did not understand that the idea of war has been banished because it is
neither politically-correct nor politically-convenient. Indeed, the abuse, for
that is what much if it was, was little more than strategic and political
decadence from a political and intellectual class in London too many of whom seem unwilling or unable
to comprehend that really, really bad things can still happen in world affairs. And, that it will fall to states like Britain to stop it and if it happens do
something about it. Syria?
So, decline and fall? Not quite. The good
news is that Prime Minister May seems to have adopted a far more sober view of
British strategic interests than the strategically-illiterate Cameron and the
mercantilist Osborne. The fact that the British Army is beginning to properly
address the issue of relative power suggests strategic realism might be returning.
And, Prime Minister May is surely right to review the Hinkley Point deal and
hopefully kill it; the French reactor does not work, the Chinese must not be
able to use energy as a geopolitical lever on Britain, and the British taxpayer
is being screwed by both.
It is time the West got a strategic grip
and that can only happen when leading powers like Britain start again to put strategy before politics. Then the likes of Turkey will again believe that their security
can only be afforded by allying with the liberal powers against the illiberal
powers for that is the choice all of us must now make.
As for Mr Trump???????????
Julian Lindley-French
