Alphen, Netherlands. 28 December. This is getting
to be like one of those end of year ‘hits of…’ TV programmes. After my Twelve Failures of Christmas (which Judy
Dempsey cites in today’s Washington Post)
blog, my old friend and America’s former top man at NATO Ambassador Robert
Hunter has emailed me with a few more yuletide failures to add to my own.
Robert has kindly given me permission to publish them in this blog:
“13. Failure of the United States to get a sensible
set of policies for the Middle East that let Syria get out of control
and thus produced so many of these migrants (forget about the gross failure by the
US, aided and abetted by Lap Dog Blair, in invading Iraq).
14. Failure of the Obama administration to keep a
steady focus on Europe, in its entirety. And ignoring all advice to do
something about it.
15. Failure of the Obama administration to do
things that might, just might, have prevented Putin’s actions in Ukraine (e.g. trying to
mastermind a coup.) As a result, US military leaders call Russia an
“existential threat” to the US (nonsense) as opposed to seeing the
mess in Europe, partly of America’s causing (and with no American effort to
help out), as far more important and “existential,” thus taking the American
eye off the ball and failing its European partners, and thus the West as a
whole.
16. Putting in senior foreign policy positions in
the US, beginning late in Clinton, accelerated in Bush, and continued in Obama,
people who were over their heads, with no capacity to fit pieces
together, while meanwhile keeping at arms-length people who know what they
are doing and have proved it.
17. The failure of the US (and Western) foreign
policy establishments to do any serious and original thinking since the late
1990s on the grounds that history has come to an end, Russia is of no account,
and we are on top.
That’s enough to be getting on with…..and I haven’t
even got to Putin and Trump playing with their nuclear toys.
The Grinch won!
But Happy Christmas, anyway. The world has
seen worse”.
Sadly, Robert is to a large extent right. Some
years ago another old friend Chris Donnelly tried to establish a think-tank
that could ‘think the unthinkable’ at the heart of the British security and defence
establishment. It was shot down precisely because it thought the unthinkable
and was thus deemed politically unacceptable, even though much of the thinking has
since been proven entirely credible. And,
because such thinking was rejected much of Britain’s security and defence is
today increasingly incredible.
Another old and trusted American friend, Hans
Binnendijk, challenged me over Christmas to focus on the positive in 2017. Fair
point. The ‘positive’ will (sort of) come from me in January with the
publication of my new book Demons and
Dragons: The New Geopolitics of Terror, which is of course brilliant, very
reasonably-priced, and can be pre-ordered on Amazon! Well, Hans, I will do my
best, but in the end all any of us can do is call it as we see it. Right now,
Western security and defence is not a pretty picture.
Still there are two bits of good news. First, Sheffield
United beat Oldham Athletic 2-0 on Boxing Day to remain second in League One of
the English Football League. ‘League One’ is a bit like Britain’s defence
policy – the third rate misleadingly described as first rate. Second, there
will be much for me to write about in what is going to be a 2017 every bit as
bumpy as 2016.
The retreat of the Big West from strategy into
process and wishful thinking has accelerated the West’s own decline and
bolstered posturing mini-powers such as Putin’s Russia, and micro-powers such
as IS, and made them far more dangerous than need be the case.
Happy New Year!
Julian Lindley-French
