Gibraltar, 1 December. The
Rock stands 426m (1,398 feet) high. This massif of carboniferous limestone is a
portal, a great gateway, between the Atlantic and Mediterranean worlds. Since 1713,
and the Treaty of Utrecht, Gibraltar has also been both fact and symbol of
British power. That was the theme of my talk at a delightful dinner hosted this
week at his official residence the Convent by my friend, His Excellency the
Governor of Gibraltar, Lt. General Ed Davis. The dinner was held in honour of
another friend, General Ben Hodges, Commander, US Army Europe. My theme? The
place of Gibraltar in Britain’s past, present and future story of power. It is
a story that is far from over.
Everywhere one goes in ‘Gib’
one finds layers of Britain’s power past. Great military bastions of the
eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries jostle with each other in
silent testimony to the waves of history that have crashed upon the rocky
shores of the Straits over which ‘Gib’ still stands sentinel. These great
bastions underpin new layers of financial and commercial power as an exciting twenty-first
century Gibraltar is being cast. Before ‘Gib’ there is the Great Mole that once
protected the mighty fleets of the Royal Navy when my grandfather sailed from
this place to guard the sea lanes of Empire. Today it protects the mighty ships
of commerce that drive the great engines of globalisation.
It would be easy to suggest
that as the sun has set on Britain’s once great empire, so it is now setting on
Britain as a power. Nothing could be further from the truth. Brexit will soon force
London to again think about hard matters strategic and hard matters power. Russia is snapping at NATO’s eastern heels,
whilst much of the Middle East and North Africa teeter on the edge of a
potentially abyssal epoch. In the face of such forces Britain and Gibraltar
will once again be called upon to stand firm – two rocks of stability in a sea
of change.
Britain once possessed
many ‘Gibraltars’, a ‘string of pearls’ that stretched from London to Delhi and
far beyond. Gibraltar, Malta, Cyprus, Aden, and Singapore all guarded the imperial
sea lanes between Mother England, the far-flung eastern Empire and Australasia.
Today, only Gibraltar and the British Sovereign Base Area on Cyprus remain, but
they are as vitally strategic as they ever were, and London must understand
that.
Indeed, Gibraltar’s vital
importance to British, European, and the security of a wider world cannot be
over-stated. The great post-Cold War hiatus in power is now at an end. The world
is entering a new age of contested power. China understands that, which is why
Beijing is constructing a string of power pearls to close off the South China
Sea. Britain has no such need to act illegally as she already possesses such a ‘string
of pearls’, with Gibraltar perhaps the most important.
Britain herself is now
one such ‘pearl’. An island off the shores of Europe that will again underpin and
guarantee the defence of Europe as parts of Europe again become contested.
Gibraltar, as she always has, still guards the entrance and exit from the
Mediterranean, something I am sure Moscow is only too aware off as she seeks to
extend her own global footprint. Cyprus, the other pearl, offers Britain (and her
allies) a platform from which to see and help influence much that happens in
the Black Sea region, the Middle East and North Africa.
Soon the first of Britain’s
new super aircraft carriers HMS Queen
Elizabeth will visit Gibraltar, the largest British warships ever to have
sailed past the Great Mole. My guess is that she will spend much of her life
operating from ‘Gib’ deep into the Mediterranean. Critically, such operations
will help ease the pressure on the US Navy to be everywhere, in strength, all of
the time. Together with HMS Prince of
Wales the two ships will also demonstrate the unrivalled ability of America’s
British ally to ease the many burdens on an over-stretched United States. If,
that is, Downing Street, the Ministry of Defence, and the Naval Staff in London
can face down the naysayers, the short-termists, and the whingers to realise
just what national strategic assets of power and influence projection Britain is
again about to possess. The latter day heirs of a re-building Royal Navy’s once
powerful Mediterranean Fleet.
Together with allies and
partners the new fleet will be able to project power, influence and stability
into the Mediterranean world and thus give real meaning to NATO’s 360 Degree
Approach – hard deterrence to NATO’s east, discreet stabilising power to NATO’s
south. That is why I plead humbly and respectfully with my great friends in
Spain to see the bigger strategic picture in which Gibraltar is a gilded
pillar. Gibraltar is not just a vital adjunct to Spain’s economy, but in
strategic partnership with Britain and the people of Gibraltar, the Rock will again
be vital to Spain’s security. A Spain that is again on the front-line between security
and insecurity, stability and instability, poverty and wealth, hope and despair.
Old-fashioned thinking? I
can almost hear the decline managers and maudlin soft power merchants of
Whitehall tut-tutting at the very idea of British hard power. However, it is
they who are out-of-date, not me. The Europe, of which Britain is and will
remain an integral part, has made the world a more dangerous place by failing
to invest their great institutions of soft power with the necessary hard power.
This massive strategic failure makes all the talk of ‘values’ one so often
hears from our leaders little more than a hollow lie.
In fact, Britain (and
Europe) will need all forms of power in the coming age. For Britain its immense
soft power must now be underpinned by credible hard military power. If a new
power-balanced Britain again emerges Gibraltar will act as both power platform and
power multiplier. As an aside, it is power that will ultimately shape Britain’s
future relationship with Europe, not petty-fogging negotiations over irrelevant
tactical details.
Gibraltar is a delightful
place. It is also an important place. Like Britain, if it so chooses its future
lays not behind it, but before it; a rock of stability, a rock of prosperity,
but above all a rock of British power in an age when such power must again be to
the fore. Indeed, there are two things that clearly never cease here on the
Rock; history and power.
Gibraltar: rock of power.
Julian Lindley-French
