“Were you proposing to shoot these
people in cold blood, sergeant?"
"Nossir. Just a warning shot inna head,
sir”.
Terry Pratchett, Jingo
Alphen, Netherlands. 18
April. Professor Joseph S. Nye defined for the world Grand Strategy, although the idea has been around for a long time.
According to Nye Grand Strategy is
the organisation of immense means in pursuit of world-bending ends. Professor
Dr J. S. Lindley-French, that’s, err, me, is today giving the world the idea of
Grand Asymmetry; a vaguely oxymoronic
concept whereby actors with relatively few means also seek world-bending ends. That
is, I think I am giving the world the idea of Grand Asymmetry. I would
certainly be mightily peeved if someone else had got there first.
Let me first put Grand Asymmetry in context. On paper at
least there is something Gilbert and Sullivan about North Korea threatening the
United States. There is definitely something Rudyard Kipling about the threat Al
Qaeda and Islamic State poses to the West. Even Russia’s implied threat has
something of the Mel Brooks about it. After all, North Korea has an economy
that is probably less than that of Columbus, Ohio, whilst the one thing Islamic
State is not is a state. As for Russia it threatens the very people whose
income it relies upon to feed its own.
It is the ‘on paper’
thing that is the problem for the West. Grand
Asymmetry works because we in the West, or rather our leaders, have over
the past forty or so years been busy making most of our states far weaker and
far more fractured than need be the case. Indeed, we do not so much have
nation-states these days, as nations-states full of so-called ‘communities’ who
more or less talk to each other. Consequently, Western society is far less
cohesive and robust than it was even a generation ago. It is the precisely the
many seams of mistrust that now run through our open societies that makes the
West so vulnerable these days to Grand
Asymmetry.
The strategic
implications of Grand Asymmetry are
profound. Unable to protect such fractured societies Western states,
particularly European states, are finding it ever harder to project power and
influence for fear of offending growing constituencies of dissent, some of whom
not only disagree with policy and strategy, but now challenge the very founding
principles of the societies of which they are now a part. The result is Western
states that ‘on paper’ look far stronger than their adversaries and enemies,
but which in reality are less so because of the grand vulnerabilities from
which they suffer make them prey to Grand
Asymmetry.
Grand
Asymmetry can come in many forms. There is the hybrid warfare
currently being conducted by Moscow, using disinformation, destabilisation, and
distortion to keep vulnerable Western states politically off-balance, even the
mighty United States. There is the wars of religion being conducted by Al Qaeda
and Islamic State aimed at undermining the very concept of national society in
Western states, and the nation-state itself across the Middle East and North
Africa. An individual Jihadi armed with no more than a truck bomb and the hair-trigger
media can cause strategic impact out of all proportion to the act, however tragic
that maybe for the individuals caught up in such attacks. And then there is the
threat of thermonuclear Armageddon threatened by a political minnow such as the
Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
There is, of course, another
way of looking at this. Western societies may have become far more vulnerable,
but the ideas the West espouses are stronger than ever. One reason for Grand Asymmetry is that the West is no
longer a place, but an idea. It is the World-Wide West that is the true revolutionary
force in twenty-first century international politics. Grand Asymmetry is, in fact, the chosen weapon of war of the Grand
Reactionaries who are essentially on the decline and the defence. Russia is an
Ersatz Superpower that is desperate to mask the reality of its decline for fear
the Putin regime collapses. Islamic State wants to return the Middle East, and
much of the world around it, back to some form of idealised medieval Caliphate.
Pyongyang is a dynasty masquerading as an ideology desperately trying to hold
back the change that will in time sweep it away.
How can the West combat Grand Asymmetry? Western leaders must consciously
set out to reinforce protection and tailor projection based on a far better
understanding of the nature and scope of the threats they face. The sense of uncertainty
such threats engender is compounded by a sense of unease about the nature of
the threat. Leaders must also be honest and
realistic about just what can be achieved. There will be few clear cut
victories. Above all, leaders must be far clearer about the distinction between
threats that attack vital Western interests, and thus need to be confronted,
and those that offend Western values but do not in and of themselves threaten
the West.
The real challenge will
be creating more secure societies that feel better protected. First, leaders must avoid nostalgia and consciously
build new societies for a new age. Second, a twenty-first century idea of ‘patriotism’,
i.e. love of society, must be built upon the very ‘vulnerability’ that makes
the West strong – liberal democracy, tolerance and openness. Above all, a new ‘contract’
is needed between power and people. No longer can elites treat citizens like children
as they have done in Europe for far too long. Citizens must become partners in
security.
Leaders must also recognise
that ‘peace’ is a long game and properly invest in relevant strategy together
with the means to prosecute and measure it; good intelligence, more resilient critical
infrastructures, targeted aid and development that helps turn potential enemies
into friends, and the kind of police and armed forces that can flexibly engage
a raft of threats across a broad spectrum of conflict.
And yes, such strategy will
also include the use at times of the kind of US Navy battle group that is now steaming
towards the Korean Peninsula. This is because however clever one’s use of soft
power it rarely works against those who oppose it unless those that have it
also possess the relevant ‘if all else fails’ tools of hard power.
Indeed, unless people in
Western societies understand and support the use of such hard power, however
hard that power may be it can rapidly become soft if not supported, in which
case Grand Asymmetry will succeed in
deterring, denying, and in time destroying our own capacity to legitimately
protect ourselves.
Julian Lindley-French
