NATO Warsaw: Peace through Strength

Trakai, Lithuania. 18 January. The snow folds and flows down to a small lake deep in the Lithuanian forest. With the sky an azure blue it is a truly beautiful scene and a wonderful backdrop to the ninth Snowmeeting which I had the pleasure to attend these few days past. One of the great annual conferences the Snowmeeting brings together ministers, experts, opinion-leaders from across the West…and me. Given the close proximity of the meeting to the Russian border the main subject for discussion was, of course, Russia. Specifically, the vital need for the July NATO Warsaw Summit to communicate not just cohesion, but strength.

Just after Christmas President Putin signed into Russian law a new decree establishing five new ‘regional maritime counter-terrorist headquarters’. Although not directly aimed at the Baltic States the location and leadership of the centres speak to Russian strategy. Located in Dagestan, Murmansk, Kamchatka, Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk and Simferopol in Crime these isolated centres cover Russia’s borders from the Arctic, through the Black Sea, along the southern border and into Russia’s far-east. Crucially, they will be under the control of the successor to the KGB, the Federal Security Service or FSB.

The centres are all evidence of Moscow’s determination to extend its influence into the maritime domain as a means of strengthening Russia’s ability to contest ‘sovereignty’ at sea, as well as on land and in the air. Critically, the new centres also strengthen the so-called ‘vertikal’ through the FSB by reinforcing direct presidential control over all aspects of strategy and action.  Indeed, the centres further consolidate presidential power over Russia’s sprawling security and defence services. As such they fit into a pattern of such consolidations, led most notably by the creation of the Centre for National Defence Management, at 22 Frunze Embankment in Moscow.

However, the much bigger picture which President Putin is painting is one in which confrontation with the West is central to the very existence of the state he leads. In that context the new centres are key pieces of an emerging architecture for the waging of what the Russians call ‘new generation warfare’; hybrid warfare in the parlance of the West. Indeed, the reason why the centres are under the control of the FSB is precisely because the heirs of Felix Dzerzinsky are the masters of the disinformation and destabilisation strategies which are central to the conduct of hybrid warfare – war at the seams of open societies.  

Some suggest that the collapse of the oil price will force Russia into a period of entrenchment. And, in the past week Russia has indeed cut its public investment budgets. However, even the most cursory study of President Putin reveals a man that is not easily diverted from his strategy of rebuilding Russian influence via intimidation. 

The one word which drives President Putin is ‘respect’. From his earliest days in Leningrad and the stories of Russia’s immense sacrifice during the 1941-1945 Great Patriotic War with which he grew up President Putin has been driven by a vision of Russia as a great power. This ‘vision’ was reinforced by his first-hand witnessing of the collapse of Soviet power as a KGB Lieutenant-Colonel in Dresden, and his front row seat as a senior official during the crises, corruption and chaos of the Sobchak and Yeltsin years during the 1990s.

President Putin is thus a man firm in his determination never again to see Russia humiliated with by itself or others. His aim is the preservation of the Russian state which he believes to be surrounded by enemies. To that end his beliefs can be thus summarised: the acquisitive West is not to be trusted (he has a latent vaguely Leninist belief that Western capitalism is both inherently corrupt and imperialist); that the West talks about a rules-based system but only understand and listens to power; only a powerful Russian state can stop corrupt politicians and officials from destroying the Russian state from within.          

The Kremlin as so often has chosen its timing carefully. The West will be distracted in 2016 with US presidential elections, the ongoing migration crisis and the Brexit referendum. How and to what extent President Putin decides to use his new architecture of confrontation will depend on the extent to which the Russian state is affected by the collapsing oil price. The very fact of it may be enough for a divided West to give Russia more influence over its ‘near abroad’ than should be the case.  Indeed, perhaps Russia’s greatest ‘ally’ is denial in key European states such as France and Germany, allied to Britain’s unprincipled ‘you can have any British policy you like as long as you pay for it’ mercantilism.

Back in September 2014 at the NATO Wales Summit the assembled heads of state and government agreed to some increase in defence expenditure and other measures designed to deter Russia. However, the language of the Wales Declaration is full of ambiguity in the hope that Russia could still be persuaded to deviate from its course of confrontation. Indeed, the very use of the word ‘reassurance’ as opposed to ‘deterrence’ was proof of strategic ambiguity.  In 2016 such ambiguity must be dismissed. Confrontation with NATO and the EU is now central to the very narrative the Kremlin is using to justify an onerous investment in security structures (including defence) that this year could top 10% of Russia’s GDP.

Therefore, the NATO Warsaw Summit must accelerate the increases in defence expenditure agreed at Wales, properly establish counter-hybrid strategies, including cyber defence, and unequivocally restore the link between NATO’s nuclear and conventional deterrence and defence postures. Critically, the Spearhead Force and the enhanced NATO Response Force must be reinforced by the creation of a much heavier force that would look something like the old Allied Command Europe Mobile Force. Such a force would raise significantly the cost for President Putin of any adventurism, demonstrate NATO Europe’s willingness to share US burdens, ease pressure on an over-stretched American military, and create a fire brigade, first responder force that could credibly look east and south with power. Having taken these steps the allies must then talk to Russia. Indeed, peace can only be guaranteed through strength.          

Over the years I have developed not just a political affinity with Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, but a deep personal attachment. They are by no means perfect states, which state is perfect, apart from Britain, of course, which is perfect in all ways…not. However, for me these three re-freed peoples are the very embodiment of what the liberal West should stand for – the sovereign right of peoples to make their own sovereign choices as expressed through freely-elected representatives. However, such freedom cannot be defended by words alone, and aggressors cannot be deterred by well-intentions alone, however well-intentioned.

Therefore, at Warsaw we must all put aside our many petty differences so that our Alliance can stand firm and stand tall. One thing is clear; President Putin will do whatever it takes to remain in power as he has come to see himself as the only true guardian of Russia, Russians, and the Russian state.

As for the Snowmeeting…let it snow!

Julian Lindley-French  

The Strategic Implications of Low Oil

Alphen, Netherlands. 14 January. My VW is so old it does not know how to cheat. However, it knows how to drink. Yesterday, I went to my local petrol station to fill up. Here in the Netherlands this normally involves disbursing the GDP of a small South Pacific economy  to sate my car's petrololism. Not any more. For the moment Western consumers are gorging on relatively low petrol prices as Brent Crude this week went below the previously unheard of $30 per barrel. Last year alone Americans spent some 17% less than 2014 on energy, whilst many Europeans benefitted by a 10% reduction. However, not everyone is a winner. So, what are the strategic implications of low oil?

It would be easy to suggest that low oil has shifted the balance in a world that since 1973 has essentially been divided between oil producers and oil consumers. However, OPEC, or rather its dominant member Saudi Arabia, plus the five other oil-producing states of the Gulf Co-operation Council, have prevented such a neat and dangerous division by managing oil production so as not to damage the economies of their main Western customers too much during economic downturns. Indeed, that is why the West turns a blind eye to some of the more 'conservative' views and actions of Riyadh in particular.

Furthermore, with China emerging to drive much of world economic growth since the 2008 crash Beijing's insatiable need for oil for a time sustained the kind of oil prices that made President Putin believe that Russia could again become a nauseating world power. Some people who live on a well-known rock stuck on the end of England even fantasised about independence and a new sovereign wealth fund based on an artificially high oil price.

However, those days are for the moment well and truly over. The massive rise in US shale oil exploitation and China's economic downturn, the increase in production of states like Iraq, and the pending return of Iranian oil onto the official oil market, all suggest more supply than demand for some time to come.

Good news? Not entirely. Several of the world's most precarious states are one-shot petro-economies that rely on the oil price hovering around the $60 per barrel mark simply to survive. They range from a dangerously hydro-carbon dependent and increasingly nationalistic Russia, to a Middle East in which many of the states are built around super-rich but unaccountable elites that use oil wealth to buy off opposition, but who have singularly failed to reform archaic governance practices, or invest in future societal balance.

Beyond the Middle East there are populous, poor and often corrupt states such as Venezuela, Nigeria, and Yemen for which the loss of oil income exacerbates existing profound tensions between rulers and ruled, and between the rich and the millions of poor who live therein. Worse, relatively high oil wealth has fuelled a worst of all worlds imbalance between economies and societies. Whilst there has been enough oil wealth to fund basic health systems that have helped, for example, to reduce infant mortality rates (a good thing), the insecure poor have continued to have large families to hedge against a return to deep poverty.

Critically, if low oil persists precarious states will become fragile states, and in time some may well fail. Indeed, several already have failed, most notably Iraq, Syria and Yemen. Whilst the list of precarious states will also grow and may begin to embrace some of the major Asia-Pacific producers.

In such circumstances the tensions between rulers and ruled will grow and, as none of the states mentioned above can be in any way described as liberal democracies, instability would inevitably lead to conflict. Indeed, an already fragile state structure across the Middle East and North Africa is already in danger of collapse, war, or both. History is all too eloquent about such moments. Prolonged economic downturns generate nationalism, sectarianism, poverty, and of course mass uncontrolled, irregular migrations.

There is another factor to throw into the mix; technology.  Past downturns have been tolerated because oil producers were safe in the assumption that come the good times the petro-dollars would once again flow. To manage boom and bust they would use extensive sovereign wealth funds to ease peaks and troughs in income and/or lived on the returns on the huge investments made in places like London. However, current low oil is also likely to see an historic and pivotal twenty-first century shift towards a low-hydrocarbon global economy. Paradoxically, low oil might see the shift slow but it will remain a future trend.

Therefore, if the danger of state collapse across much of the world's midriff is to be avoided it is vital major producers and consumers come together to consider how petro-economies can be better future proofed against the very different world that is coming. If not, and as usual leaders sacrifice long-term strategy for short-term politics and economics, the shock of a coming collapse in key regions will be rendered even more dangerous than it is now.

Power as always is about the interaction between those with wealth and those not, between winners and losers. Still, it is hard to see any real winners if low oil persists indefinitely.

Julian Lindley-French

      


      

Brexitwatch: Brexit Will Make No Difference

“When a man says he agrees to something in principle, it means he has not the slightest intention of carrying it out”.

Otto von Bismarck on David Cameron

Alphen, Netherlands. 11 January. Europe is at the epicentre of a world on the cusp of massive and dangerous structural and strategic change. The EU is in deep crisis and in desperate need of real, structural reform. Over the next decade Europe could lose up to 30% of its current slice of world trade. Power, influence and wealth is fast moving away from Europe. Ageing populations, over-regulation, incompetent governance, a lack of competitiveness, obsolete and weak armed forces, a crisis of democratic legitimacy, the retreat from political realism into fantasy idealism, and a profound split over the very idea of ‘Europe’ between those in the Eurozone and those without have all been laid bare by both the Eurozone and immigration crises. And then there is little David Cameron and his paltry little list of meaningless Brexit ‘non- reforms’. Yesterday in an interview he gave to the BBC the tragic irony of the entire Brexit kerfuffle was revealed. Brexit will not make a scrap of difference to Britain’s place in the EU, nor indeed help Europeans realise a reformed EU. Here is why.

First, Cameron is being completely disingenuous. Indeed, even before he has completed his renegotiation of Britain’s membership of the EU Cameron is already campaigning to keep Britain in. This is because there is no substantive re-negotiation. Rather, like the Grand Old Duke of York. Cameron is leading Britain up a hill to nowhere and once he has declared ‘victory’ he will lead Britain down again. In other words the entire process is a political fraud, and not all all untypical of this most consummate of political gamblers.

Second, Brexit has become a dangerous distraction. Europe is facing very dangerous challenges from security catastrophes to its south and an aggressive Russia to its east, with uncontrolled immigration allowing criminals and terrorists to enter Europe effectively unhindered. And yet Cameron is helping to destroy the very strategic unity of effort and purpose which is vital to ensuring a cohesive European response.

Third, the EU will change with or without Britain. The most bizarre aspect of the entire Brexit fiasco is that in fact the EU is in any case about to undertake a massive reform process that will fundamentally change the relationship between those in the Eurozone and those not. In his September 2015 State of the Union speech European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker laid out plans for a 2017 White Paper on ever closer union. Specifically, the White Paper will call on the 19 Eurozone members to achieve full political and economic union by 2025. In other words, 2025 will see the creation of some form of European super-state in all but, but quite probably with, a name. Those states that reject ever closer union will become ‘Associate Members’ and thus join the likes of Norway and Switzerland in a new grouping on the margins of Europe.

Fourth, any treaty changes to the EU will trigger another British referendum. Britain has a so-called constitutional lock on EU treaty change which means the need for another referendum is enshrined in law should any treaty amendments be agreed by the European Council. And, as Britain has no intention of accepting either the Euro or ever closer union the British will by definition need another referendum. Ironically, given Britain’s relative strategic and economic weight within Europe London will emerge as the leader of such a grouping which will in turn create a new balance within Europe.

Fifth, even if Britain leaves the EU it will still end up in the same place. If Britain votes to stay in the EU Britain will end up as an Associate Member – i.e. with full access to the Single Market but not at the power core of a new German-centric ‘federal Europe’. If Britain votes to leave the EU Britain will end up as an Associate Member – i.e. with full access to the Single Market because Britain is too important a trading partner to Germany for Berlin to countenance restricted access to the British market.

David Cameron? What struck me listening to Cameron on the BBC yesterday is what a little man he is in a very big world. Sadly, a little man leading a big country in an even bigger world renders the country he leads little. That is Britain’s contemporary tragedy. Rather, Cameron seems to treat politics like some form of upper class parlour game, surrounding himself with a ‘chumocracy’ of old Etonians and assorted hangers-on, and more intent on dodging political bullets most of which he has himself fired, than leading a great country.

David Cameron say he wants Britain to stay in a reformed EU, and yet his ‘negotiations’ are really about keeping Britain in an unreformed EU. Yesterday on the BBC Cameron demonstrated yet again both his lack of real influence in Europe, and by extension Britain’s. Worse, Cameron has reduced Brexit to a dangerous nonsense at a time when Europeans should be pulling together to face what is fast becoming a very dangerous world, that in turn is making Europe an ever more dangerous place.

Julian Lindley-French           

The Right to Bear Arms

Alphen, Netherlands. 8 January. The Second Amendment of the US Constitution states; “A well-regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed” (NB: one comma). Last night I watched President Obama make the case on CNN for what are by European standards very modest extensions of background checks in an attempt to reduce the 30,000 or so gun killings each year in the US. As I watched the President make his case to a carefully selected audience I could almost hear Europeans scoffing. Indeed, to most European minds and after several mass killings by gunmen of innocents in America what passes for gun control in the US seems lax in the extreme. However, do Europeans really have the right to scoff so?

The irony with the Second Amendment is that it is in fact an extension of English common law. The 1689 English Bill of Rights came into law shortly after catholic James II was replaced during the Glorious Revolution by the invited (please note that Dutch friends and relatives - invited) protestant William of Orange, who became King William III.  The Bill of Rights suffuses the Second Amendment and in so doing justifies the link between a ‘well-regulated Militia’, and the right of the individual citizen to bear arms. Indeed, the Bill was seen as a safeguard against what the English of 1689 regarded as the danger posed by distant, executive tyranny (???). For that reason the English deliberately established the principle that the right to bear arms was a “natural right to self-defence”, “resistance to oppression”, and a “civic duty to act in concert in the defence of the state”.

In America the right to bear arms was enshrined with the ratification of the US Constitution by eleven states at the Continental Congress of 13 September, 1788. The reason that it was so central to the Constitution was that the young United States had a profound distrust of standing armies. Indeed, so shortly after the defeat of the British and their Hessian allies during the American Revolutionary Wars such armies were seen as tools of tyranny and inimical to the idea of a legitimate force of the citizenry.

Furthermore, for much of its history the United States saw itself as a pioneer country, a frontier state, expansion of which was partly legitimised by the idea that such expansion was the act of legitimate citizens who needed to bear arms to survive. For those who support minimal gun control in the US, led by that most notable of ‘Militias’ the National Rifle Association, this romantic idea of America’s past together with its concept of the responsible citizen goes to the very heart of their idea of being American. Even if, that is, opinion polls suggest a strong swathe of support for Obama’s planned amendment to the Second Amendment.

So, what has all the above got to do with Europe? The American culture of gun ownership is deeply rooted in the mistrust of distant power and big government. As Europeans are subject ever more to distant power and big government an innate mistrust is developing between the governing and the governed. Moreover, as the ‘state’, in whatever form it takes in Europe these days, is seen to fail to provide for the security of the citizen there is a growing perception that Europeans might need to self-organise to protect themselves and their families.

The need to self-organise would be a dangerous shift towards some form of vigilantism. However, it is something I have already heard mentioned in my own Dutch village. The appalling assaults on women by mainly Syrian migrants (yes, Syrian migrants) in Cologne, Hamburg and elsewhere in Germany on New Year’s Eve, compounded by the attempts of the German authorities to first cover up the attacks is compounding a growing sense amongst many non-extreme Europeans that ‘government’ in Europe has lost control and can no longer be trusted to act in their interests.

Another European conceit is that America is awash with guns and Europe not. In fact, small arms flooded into Western Europe in the wake of the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union and the Balkans Wars of the 1990s. Indeed, I could travel a few hours from my Dutch home to the area around Brussels Midi railway station and after a little digging could probably buy a gun.

If Europe is not to go down the same road as the United States and see the emergence of unregulated militias more gun control in and of itself will be insufficient. By failing to regulate the massive influx of mainly young male migrants from societies which through their attitude to women reflect very different cultural assumptions Western Europe in particular will progressively become a frontier ‘state’.

Therefore, it is vital Western European leaders are seen to get a grip of the migrant flows and quickly and modify their collective narrative that somehow all these new arrivals are good for Europe. If they fail to do this and quickly vigilantism will spread quickly. Sadly, history suggests that right-wing thuggery will follow quickly in the vigilantes’ footsteps. That would be disaster for all.

There is one rejoinder to all of the above. Some time ago I was lecturing in the US. At one point a student, who was clearly not the shiniest silver bullet in the magazine, told me in all seriousness that Britain would not have been invaded by the Nazis in 1940 if the British people had had the right to bear arms. Endeavouring to suppress a smile I pointed out that Britain had not been invaded in 1940 precisely because Britain had at the time a very well-regulated and powerful ‘Militia’ – the Royal Air Force!

Julian Lindley-French                 

Je Suis Charlie 2016

Je Suis Charlie 2016

Rhodesgate: The Judgement of History

“…the judgement of history will…be that he did more than any other Englishman of his time to lower their reputation and to impair the strength and compromise the future of the Empire”.

The Manchester Guardian on the death of Cecil Rhodes, 27 March, 1902

Alphen, Netherlands. 6 January. Just before Christmas I was wandering around the colleges of my alma mater Oxford University as a very typically British university scandal broke. A group of students led by a South African Rhodes scholar demanded that the statue of Cecil Rhodes be taken down from its lofty perch looking down on the learned folk of Oriel College. Rhodes was the arch-imperialist and even archer-capitalist of the late nineteenth century, and founder of said elite scholarship.  By any stretch of the historical imagination Rhodes was not a nice man. Indeed, as his 1902 obituary in the Manchester Guardian implied Rhodes’s lust for ever greater imperial power as an extension of his own imposed misery and exploitation on millions of black Africans and Boer settlers across much of southern Africa.

As I wandered with what I would hope is the educated eye of the Oxford historian I also wondered why Rhodes and why now? In an attempt to answer that question I found myself looking at many of the statues that drip from Oxford like baubles on a Christmas tree. By my estimate at least half of the statues were either of exceptional people who were exceptional precisely because they had either offended or imposed their views on large numbers of others, or been the victims of such views.  

Now, I suppose I could take a very narrow view and suggest that the South African Rhodes scholar in question has much to gain if he seeks a political career back in his native land (as do many Rhodes scholars) by attacking the memory of Cecil Rhodes. However, for the sake of argument I will be generous and accept that the #RhodesMustFall campaign is principled.

Even if it is principled it reflects a very narrow view of history and with the best will in the world must be seen more as an attack on contemporary Britain as much as an attack on nineteenth century British imperialism. What is galling for me and indeed many is how quickly the leadership of Oriel College simply caved in. A plaque honouring Rhodes was almost immediately removed and in February Oriel will start a six month ‘consultation’ in February to decide whether or not Rhodes must indeed fall. My fear is that said consultation will be about as genuine and indeed as effective as David Cameron’s ‘renegotiation’ of Britain’s membership of the EU!

There is however a further question that this storm in an Oxford teapot raises; to what extent can and indeed should one impose contemporary values on past historical figures? History happened, or at least the history from the viewpoint of the victor at any point in history happened. Therefore, the mistake perhaps was not that of Oriel’s current High Table but that of a century ago which raised the statue of a man controversial even at the time, no doubt in return for oodles of his money. Still, look around Oxford today and one will find new centres a-sprouting named after Saudi power-brokers and their ilk, with one that even bears the name of a Ukrainian arms dealer. In other words, British universities have long prostrated themselves before dodgy money.

However, for me the ‘why now’ question is the key to understanding Rhodesgate. There is a strange phenomenon sweeping across and through British universitydom at present of which Rhodesgate is but a very mild variant. It can best be called the intolerant tolerance. The basic premise upon which tolerant intolerance is established is actually quite simple; British is bad, non-British is better, however bad. The most obvious examples of this are the so-called ‘safe havens’ which have been established in certain British universities for those with extreme views, but only if those views conform to a certain brand of extremism. Indeed, to conform such views must normally be of a leftist or Islamist persuasion, which lead on occasions to strange alliances between hard socialists and those with views that by any standards are closer to fascism than socialism.

Thus, the attack on Rhodes is in fact but the latest attack on Britain, or rather the narrative that is Britain, by those with an axe to grind against Britain. Often under the name of ‘restorative justice’ it is an axe that is only sharpened on one side. The aim is to establish a new empire of thought within British universities that is often more about the politics of race than the politics of ideas.

If not confronted by persons of good will à la Burke I fear for the future of British universities. No longer will they be empires of experimentation where intellects freely consider desired future by freely considering the complex past. A place where debate is not shaped by narrow factionalism but rather enlightenment and illumination emerge from open debate between smart good people irrespective or race, gender, nationality and/or orientation.  A place where again the tolerance of informed difference is regarded as sacrosanct. If not, then I fear ‘debate’, or what passes for debate, will only take places be between those of one particular view of power and history. The tragedy of irony is that such ‘debate’ is little more than intellectual fascism. Those who do not adhere to the permitted view-set? They will be either marginalised or keep quiet for fear of being pilloried, or worse.

Walk down Broad Street and just outside Balliol you will find a strange stone cross in the centre of the road.  It is Martyr’s Cross where in 1555 Queen Mary had Bishops Latimer and Ridley burned at the stake for heresy. Perhaps the worse outcome of Rhodesgate would be to turn a ghastly old man into a latter day Oxford Martyr for the silent many who resent the growing attacks on Britain dressed up as pompous PC piety. 

            

So, let me finish by paraphrasing the Guardian’s obituary of Rhodes. The judgement of history is that he is doing as much as any Englishman of his time to impair the strength and compromise the future of his country even over a century after his death.

Let history be the judge of Rhodes, not the mob, however ‘intelligent’.  Let his statue stand as a warning from history.

Julian Lindley-French

2016: Power, Weakness & Realism

Alphen, Netherlands. 4 January. The task of the strategist is not to predict but rather to consider how best to achieve desired outcomes given a range of load-bearing assumptions about relevant circumstances. However, for the sake of argument I will take a punt on 2016. One thing is clear; 2016 will as ever be about power, weakness and political realism.

Headlines: According to the World Bank the global economy will grow by about 3% in 2016. However, it is a fragile economy subject to shock, the most notable of which could be a war between Iran and Saudi Arabia, two of the leading oil producers which would particularly impact China and Europe. For 2016 at least the new systemic fault-line between the state and the anti-state will mitigate but not stop the growing hyper-competition between liberal and illiberal great powers. There will be no decisive action or policy undertaken by the West in 2016 primarily because the US will be on hold for much of 2016, even as friction and tensions continues to grow in the international system. However, 2016 will again see political realism re-emerge in a new West that will be more idea than place.  With America otherwise engaged the key political figures in 2016 will be President Xi of China, Chancellor Merkel of Germany and the leaders of Europe’s outlier powers – Britain, Russia and Turkey – all three of whom in their own very distinctive ways are finding it hard to respond to liberal Germany’s liberal dominance of Central and Eastern Europe. With the International Organisation of Migration estimating some 60 million people to be on the move in 2015 mass uncontrolled migration will again be focussed on Europe, but by no means exclusive to it.

China and Russia: At the grand strategic level the economic weakening of the world’s two leading illiberal powers, China and Russia, will see both regimes resort to more nationalism and militarism to maintain control. In spite of the World Bank’s suggestion that China grew by 7% in 2016 the true figure would appear closer to 3%. This marks a distinct contraction in China’s economy which was reflected in the 4 January suspension of the Shanghai Stock exchange which fell by over 7% in one day.

China will continue efforts to exclude the US from East Asia and by so doing continue its attempts to force all the states in the region to recognise Beijing’s regional hegemony. To that end Beijing announced that China had increased its defence budget by over 10% in 2015 and on 4 January said its aim was to surpass the US as the world’s pre-eminent military power, with military power projection at the centre of a new military-strategic concept.  Such ambitions will inevitably lead to deepening tensions across Asia-Pacific and intensify the military over-stretch of a United States that remains for the moment the only truly global power. In 2016 growing tensions between China and the US will also begin to define a new global bipolar power order focussed on Asia-Pacific, but which in time will force all states to make a strategic choice. To ease the pressure on the US and to counter China, Japan and South Korea will further boost their own defence forces.

China and Taiwan: Beijing will be particularly focused on Taiwan in 2016 given the 16 January elections for the 14^th president of the Republic of China (ROC). Indeed, the People’s Republic of China sees the ‘reunification’ of the ROC with the mainland as an historic duty the securing of which will also demonstrate to the region and the world China’s ability to influence events at the expense of the United States and its regional allies. 

Russia: According to the World Bank the collapse of the oil price will see Russia lose between 1% and 2% of its economy in 2016 making Moscow’s unpredictability predictably unpredictable. Although defence expenditure has declined President Putin’s drive to re-militarise the Russian state will continue as a ‘strong Russia’ is defined in military terms and remains central to the narrative of the Kremlin. To reinforce that narrative Putin will seek to maintain domestic political momentum through the politics of nationalism and by consolidating his own power-personality cult. Specifically, President Putin will continue in his efforts to exclude the US from Europe and to keep the major European powers politically off-balance.  The Machiavellian but strictly limited strategic alignment with China will also continue in 2016.  

Russia will consolidate its hold over Ukraine-Crimea and seek to detach much of Eastern Ukraine from Kiev as part of his stated aim to recreate a buffer zone between Russia ‘proper’, NATO and the EU. Putin will continue to warn Finland about joining NATO, and will continue to employ ‘new generation warfare’ (destabilisation, disinformation and intimidation) against Estonia, Latvia, and Estonia, with a particular emphasis on cyber-destabilisation. Expect some move to further militarise Kaliningrad and the High North.      

Strategic Bipolarism: The new strategic bipolarism will also influence the choices available to regional actors. India and Pakistan will again face off in Jammu-Kashmir, as well as in Afghanistan where they will compete for influence over a failing Ghani regime in Kabul. However, the peace agreement between the two is likely to hold. That said, as China builds an exclusive zone of power in and around the South and East China Seas India will further strengthen its armed forces and continue to emerge in its own right as a major regional power. New Delhi will also move to again lead what might be best termed as the strategically non-aligned states, even as India implicitly but not explicitly moves towards the West.

NATO: NATO will hold the Warsaw Summit in July 2016 faced with an aggressive, instable Russia, a strategically dysfunctional Europe, an America yet to decide its new political direction, and against the backdrop of world-wide rearmament. At the Summit there will be much talk of Spearhead forces, strategic reassurance, and the need to build on the ‘commitments’ made at the 2014 Wales Summit to militarily strengthen NATO’s European pillar. However, in the absence of strong US leadership, and indeed another strategic shock, much will be talked about, but little decided. 

United States: President Hillary Clinton will take office in January 2017 having been elected the 45th President of the United States on 8 November after a tight, divisive and disruptive general election in which she narrowly defeats Republican nominee Marco Rubio. With this return to dynastic succession in the US the British will understandably ask what all the fuss was about back in 1776. In 2016 Donald Trump will say one dumb thing too many exciting his right-wing base but alienating the centrist voter he will need to win both the Republican nomination and the general election. A lame duck President Obama will seek and fail to impose gun control and dogmatically stick to his ‘avoiding dumb wars’ legacy, exacerbating the sense of an America withdrawing from leadership.

Nuclear Cheating: The 2015 Review Conference of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty will begin to look like one of those 1920s treaties that foreshadowed appeasement, so far were they from strategic and political reality. Indeed, with President Obama determined to protect his ‘legacy’ the White House will ignore Iran’s cheating on the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the July 2015 nuclear agreement forbidding Tehran nuclear weapons. Tehran will continue to test a three-stage intercontinental missile and become bolder regionally as oil sanctions are removed and its relationship with China deepens. In response Saudi Arabia will further invest in the Pakistani nuclear programme as a short cut to its own future nuclear capability.  North Korea? Kim Jong-Un will continue to descend into dangerous fantasy and Pyongyang will continue efforts to weaponise its existing nuclear programme.  Russia will also continue to test new short and intermediate range missiles that breach the 1987 Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty.

Syria & the Levant: In the Middle East whilst there will be much talk of peace agreements the Syrian civil war will continue unabated. Indeed, the Syrian conflict will be further complicated in the collapse of relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia which could well scupper the Vienna process in 2016. Worse, the Syrian conflict will continue to suck in and affect actors both in the region and beyond. The anti-Assad ‘moderate’ opposition will continue to be split along ethnic and tribal lines. Russia and Iran will ensure that any agreement that suggests Assad goes will falter, and the Syrian conflict will continue to destabilise Lebanon, Iraq, and Jordan, exacerbate the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and push huge numbers of migrants towards Europe, aided and abetted by criminal smuggling gangs.

Sunni v Shia: There will be growing tensions between Sunni and Shia as the fourteen century old dispute over observance intensifies between powerful Middle Eastern states with contending strategic agendas. The January 2016 execution by Saudi Arabia of prominent Shia cleric Nimr al-Nimr and Riyadh’s expulsion of Iranian diplomats will deepen the tensions between Shia Iran and the emerging Saudi-led coalition of mainly Sunni Arab states.  Indeed, a regional bipolar power contest will emerge across the Middle East organised by and around Saudi Arabia and Iran, with Israel an unlikely but de facto partner of the former.  

Islamic State: Islamic State will continue to be pushed back in both northern Iraq and Syria as a better understanding of how IS functions will lead to more effective action against it. Indeed, the insertion on Western Special Forces as ‘trainers’ into the Iraqi Army, Kurdish Peshmerga and other groups will help their military effectiveness. However, it will be a hard fight and there are several major rejoinders: first, that a growing Shia-Sunni split does not fracture the anti-IS coalition; second, that Turkey does not see a stronger Kurdish force as a greater threat than IS; and, third, that powerful Sunni tribes in Iraq can be persuaded to withdraw their support. Even if IS is pushed back Islamism will continue to spread across the Horn of Africa, the Sahel, and into parts of Sub-Saharan Africa. However, as IS falters in Syria and Iraq many of its fighters will move across North Africa towards Tunisia and Libya and back to Europe as part of the uncontrolled migration flows which will continue unabated.

European Union: Two crises and two issues will be at the core of what is now an endless EU mega-crisis will dominate Europe in 2016; Brexit, mass uncontrolled migration, and the relationship between ever-closer-union and German power. Indeed, the 2016 Dutch and Slovakian presidencies of the EU will be dominated by both crises, and will reflect the search for a new political balance between political union, state sovereignty, Eurocracy, German leadership, and democracy.

Prime Minister David Cameron, ever the political gambler, will fail in his efforts to reform the EU even as he suggests he has succeeded in the wake of the February 2016 special European Council meeting. However, the British people will still likely vote to remain within an unreformed EU having been subjected to what can only be described as the propaganda of exaggerated fear by an ‘in’ campaign that will be allowed to massively outspend the ‘outers’.

However, the Brexit referendum will be a close run thing as it will likely take place in summer 2016 just at the height of renewed migration chaos in Europe. Given Cameron’s self-imposed deadline to hold the presidency before the end of 2017 the vote will need to take place before the April 2017 French presidential elections, the September 2017 German federal elections, and Britain’s EU presidency in the second-half of 2017. Indeed, it would be a tad embarrassing for the British to quit the EU in the middle of Britain’s EU presidency. However, Brexit is not without strategic irony; given current projections by the World Bank, IMF and others if the British can survive their poor quality leaders (a big if) Britain is likely to re-emerge over the next decade or so to challenge Germany as Europe’s leading economic and military power. Can Britain best influence Europe from within the EU or without – that will be the simple question the referendum will decide.  Whatever happens Cameron will be a political lame duck by the end of 2016.

Over the next year liberal, northern, western European states will bear much of the brunt of the ongoing mass influx. This will increase popular unease and frustration with political leaders as the fear of terrorism grows and the link between uncontrolled migration and terrorism becomes entrenched in the popular mind. Sadly, terrorist attacks will take place in 2016 that will see possibly hundreds of Europeans die and which will further undermine trust between leaders and led.

In 2016 an unchallenged Chancellor Merkel will continue to exorcise German history on the rest of Europe. Indeed, her leadership will demonstrate the dangers of grand coalitions in democracies. “Wir schaffen das” (“we can do this”) will remain her mantra as she justifies her open door policy to mass uncontrolled immigration in an attempt to assuage Germany’s Nazi past. However, another million plus people move towards Northern and Western Europe. According to a professor at the University of Munich some 70% are young men, of whom 63% are functionally illiterate in Arabic, and thus extremely hard to integrate into German society. Consequently, Berlin will face growing popular unrest in Germany and political opposition from states around Germany.

Critically, Merkel will seek to begin to ease the political impact on Germany of the migrant crisis prior to the 2017 federal elections. She will do this by threatening to withdraw EU structural funds from Central and Eastern European states (whereby ‘richer’ Western European taxpayers subsidise poorer Eastern and Southern European taxpayers) if they continue to refuse to accept more migrants. For a time she will likely have some limited success before those migrants sent to less wealthy European states simply up sticks again and move back west.

Turkey: Turkey, or more precisely that other European President-for-Life Reccep Tayyip Erdogan, will emerge as a pivotal strategic player, due to Istanbul’s proximity to Islamic State and Syria and its control over ingress and egress from the Black Sea. 2016 will see Erdogan drive a particularly hard bargain with Chancellor Merkel; free movement for all Turks within the EU, or free movement of uncontrolled migrants to Greece. Turkey will also demonstrate to Russia that the use of its Black Seas Fleet in Sevastopol is entirely at the discretion of Istanbul. The fleet is the key to Russian military influence in South-Eastern Europe, the Mediterranean and the Middle East.         

The New West: The good news? Out of the many, multiple crises now facing the West a new political realism will emerge. With the November 2016 election of a new US president an American-centric new West will slowly form that is more idea than place and which contains and engages China and Russia in equal measure.  The new West will express itself first via mercantilist structures such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership which will slowly morph into a kind of global New Deal. TTIP and TTP will counter Chinese-led constructs such as the BRIC. Japan will emerge as America’s strongest strategic partner in Asia-Pacific, and London will again slowly emerge as America’s strongest strategic partner in Europe. In Europe a new political settlement will be found to again balance power within the EU. This will see Europeans finally begin to awake from the torpor of institutionalism to once again to consider their collective place in the world and the role of power, influence and realism in their security and defence.

Hold on to yer hats!

Julian Lindley-French

Ed Lucas: Back in the EUSSR

“If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever!”

George Orwell, 1984

Alphen, Netherlands. 30 December. Ed Lucas wrote a piece in The Times this morning which left me saddened and worried. Entitled, The EU empire’s a mess but we must stick with it, Lucas offered a vision of the future EU ‘empire’ that was closer to fascism and sovietism than liberal democracy. Now, I must confess I know, like and respect Ed Lucas and most of the time agree with him. His writings on Putin’s Russia are both realistic and persuasive. However, when I read this morning’s piece I wondered at times if Ed was describing Russia rather than the EU and had somehow got the titles wrong. Indeed, I searched in vain for irony which might have redeemed the future EU Ed has on offer.

Democracy is dying in Europe. That is in effect the central argument of the piece which can best be described as “oh well, democracy was not that important”. Rather, the piece implies an Orwellian vision of an EU that sacrifices democracy for efficiency and influence as something we are all simply going to have to accept. Never!

Ed’s EU ‘empire’ is constructed on three mini-empires – singlemarketland, euroland, and Schengenland.  He suggests that in the emerging blocworld (my invention) such structures will be the only way Europeans can be a) efficient; b) competitive; and c) free (to move). His central assumption is that by aggregating European state power via supranational structures Europeans will retain not only credible influence over big power, but the capacity for decisive action.

The assumption is dangerously flawed. First, the Soviet Union also contained diverse and disparate cultures many of which were forced into a currency and trading union that was inherently unsustainable. Second, the assumption that by aggregating power said power can then be turned into decisive action is also nonsense as it is more likely to simply become unwieldy. Indeed, the EU bears greater resemblance to Terry Pratchett’s Discworld carried as it is on the back of three giant elephants, themselves atop a ginormous and lumbering turtle, than anything vaguely resembling the US.

Only finally does Ed admit that democracy is a “problem”. However, he then goes onto say ‘tough’. If ‘you’ want singlemarketland, euroland, and Schengenland then such ‘considerations trump democracy”. In any case, he suggests, there is always the European Parliament. Oh really? Is that what passes for democracy in your vision Ed? A packed assembly that dilutes the value of citizens’ votes tenfold and which spends more time legitimising distant power than holding it to account.  

There is an implicit irony in the piece which is unless challenged by democrats Ed’s Orwellian vision may be proven correct. Democracy is indeed dying in Europe for the same reasons it died just after it began in Russia, and died before it even got started in China. Europe’s elites are offering people a choice in the form of the European Project; security and prosperity or democracy. It is of course a false choice and it is a choice dictators have offered over the ages to justify the over-concentration of power in a few inefficient self-serving hands.  However, that is the choice on offer as we Europeans enter 2016.

However, what disappoints me most about Ed’s piece is a complete lack of alternative vision. How about this? Political union is scrapped. The EU reverts back to a European Community of states. Some states able to qualify agree to a single currency, but under the control of nationally-elected parliamentarians who rotate through an oversight body.  Other states remain part of a single market which is the core of the project. There is a new political settlement between those in a shared currency and those without to ensure legitimacy, accountability, representation and influence are distributed in a manner befitting a super-alliance of democracies.

In the wake of the November Paris massacre I said I would abandon my support for Brexit. I had seen what damage the Scottish independence referendum had done to Britain’s capacity to act in a crisis. Make no mistake Europe is not just in one crisis but several and Brexit will indeed critically undermine the capacity of Europeans to deal with them. However, the solution is not to abandon everything that we stand for, to spit on the legacy of my forebears who fought and died in the fight against Fascism and sovietism only to create an EU that looks very like Orwell’s Big Brother.  If that is what is on offer I want out of the EU and my country with it.

In 1984 Winston Smith works in the Ministry of Truth. He is tasked with re-writing history to justify the current political position of the Administration. Smith changes newspaper and magazine articles to remove ‘unpersons’. However, in the end Smith is broken by ‘the Party’ and forced to accept the assertion that 2+2=5.  Sadly, I fear something not dissimilar is going to happen during the run up to next year’s Brexit referendum now that it has emerged that both Downing Street and the European Commission are going to rig the vote by massively outspending those campaigning for Britain to leave.

2+2=5? Is this all we have to aspire to in Europe, Ed? Is the only justification you can come up with for your ‘empire’ is that its collapse could be marginally worse than its survival? You are right, the EU Empire is indeed a mess and needs fixing. However, we must not “stick by it” at any cost, which is precisely what you appear to be suggesting.

Happy New Year, Ed!

Julian Lindley-French 

2016: Ttipping Point?

Alphen, Netherlands. 23 December, 2015. 2016 will be a tipping point for the West between power and weakness. The other day I spoke at an event at the Clingendael Institute here in the Netherlands on the planned Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). Most of my colleagues were focused on technicalities and what for me are justified concerns about the relationship between power and the individual in the West. The elite penchant for grand architectures such as the EU and TTIP are shifting the balance of power away from democracy towards bureaucracy; efficiency at the expense of accountability through the creation of sham democracy.

Equally, in a room in which there were many elephants implicit in the debate over TTIP was the creation of a new American-centric West. Indeed, if one combines TTIP with the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) a new form of West becomes apparent, one which is more idea than place. All well and good? Well no. The problem with such grands dessins as TTIP, TPP and indeed the EU, is that far from aggregating the capacity of states to act experience suggests such architectures exaggerate inaction. The EU is the most obvious and dangerous example of that. 

Western powers will need to act. From Libya to Syria and on to Afghanistan the anti-state is defeating the state and by extension the West.   This morning David Miliband, Chairman of the International Rescue Committee, described the world as “interlinked but instable”. In Afghanistan the Taliban are threatening to take Sangin, a key strategic town in Helmand province in Afghanistan which over 100 British soldiers died defending between 2006 and 2014. If Sangin falls the chances of President Ashraf Ghani creating an inclusive Afghan state in which the Pashtun tribes invest will be much reduced and Western strategy will again be seen to have collapsed.

And yet 2016 will see the West on strategic hold. The US presidential elections will consume much of America’s political energy. Sure, the US administration will go onto automatic and holding operations will be conducted across the world. However, as America debates its next president much of the world’s many contended spaces will be vulnerable to adversaries. Russia will continue to be the West’s ‘frenemy’, co-operating on Moscow’s pro-Assad terms in Syria (forget the talk of a new peace process as Russia is not going to abandon Assad), whilst seeking to extend its influence over an arc from the Baltic States in the north through to Georgia and Central Asia to the south. Eurasian Union? China will continue its efforts to exclude the US from the East and South China Seas and in so doing push forward its long-term strategy to establish strategic hegemony over Japan, the Koreas, Taiwan, Vietnam and the Philippines.

That EU will also continue to fail in the face of an unfixed Eurozone and a chronically mismanaged migration crisis. Then there is Brexit. It was strange listening to former British Prime Minister Sir John Major the other day suggesting that the EU had made Britain more prosperous, more secure, and more influential.  The EU is hopelessly over-governed, uncompetitive and insecure with much of the problem the EU itself! The EU’s open borders have helped migrants and indeed terrorists march at will across Europe. As for Britain Germany continues to block key areas of the Single Market which favour Britain, whilst France and Germany force Britain into a form of serfdom by denying Britain its rightful leadership place.

The only way to fix these dangerous structural problems is to create a new EU. Moreover, experience suggests a new EU will mean a) a new treaty; b) more elite bureaucracy in the guise of ‘ever closer union’; and c) less democracy. The new EU will also need a new political settlement for Britain and all non-Eurozone member-states if cost is to be matched by benefit of membership which frankly is ever harder to see.  Whatever happens it will take years before Europe’s infernal, eternal struggle over internal ‘ordnung’ is resolved and Europeans can at last play the role to which they should aspire in the world.   

With an EU unable to act, and major Europeans rendered incapable of action, Europe has been rendered effectively impotent. Worse, two of Europe’s major state powers Britain and France are too often constrained to act by the EU, whilst Germany now apparently takes it for granted that European ‘integration’ should effectively mean the abandonment of sovereignty by all other EU member-states abandon so that Berlin can govern Europe through Brussels. Reminds me of something.

Worse, the very existence of European states is now threatened by the Balkanisation of Europe. The EU helped almost destroy my country Britain in 2014 and could do so again if England votes to leave the EU next year and Scotland does not.  Indeed, all European states with significant minority groups are now threatened because minority nationalist groups invariably look to Brussels as an alternative to national capitals. This week Corsican separatists were elected in what is a region of France.  

For all the above reasons 2016 will be a tipping point. Until and indeed only if, the Americans elect a president willing and able to re-commit the US to leadership and the major European state powers break out of their EU-induced strategic torpor my fear is the West will continue to retreat.  Sadly, the world will be a far more dangerous place for the West’s retreat.

Hold on to your hats! 2016 is going to be a bumpy ride.

Merry Christmas!

Julian Lindley-French

2015: The Best Case for the Worst Case

Libenter homines id quot volunt credunt – Men freely believe whatever they want.

Gaius Iulius Caesar – De Bello Gallico

Upper Reading Room, Bodleian Library, Oxford, England. Another world, another time. This is quite simply my favourite room in the world. Oxford’s oldest library drips with past learning. Before me the spires and cupolas of All Soul’s College stand proud. To my right the Radcliffe Camera soars in its Enlightenment certainty. Sadly, it is that very ‘certainty’ that today seems so alien in a world that teeters between the spires of creation and Stygian destruction. Last night I was a guest at the Royal United Services Institute to listen to the Annual Christmas Lecture by General Sir Nicholas Houghton, the UK Chief of Defence Staff. His subject was Britain’s newly-minted Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR 2015) and his theme “Interesting Times”. I think that was British under-statement as I came away somewhat impressed, but also worried.

The test of good strategy is what happens when it fails.  Sir Nick delivered a solid speech that tip-toed between Britain’s invisible dividing lines of strategy, politics, diversity, and hard reality. At the end of his speech I posed a question. It was not perhaps one of my better conference questions as to put it bluntly I am knackered (tired). It has been a long year, I have worked and travelled extensively, and I need a break. However, Sir Nick clearly missed my point which was this. There is no mention of ‘war’ in SDSR 2015 beyond dismissing it out of hand. This to my mind suggests little appetite for the kind of worst-case planning upon which all sound defence reviews should be established. My question couched the challenge of ‘war’ in the context of Russia and the possibility of a major war in the Middle East. Thankfully, my friend Professor Paul Cornish added acuity to my rather blunt edge by raising a potentially aggressive China.

My point was not to suggest that Russia is about to embark upon a major war, but rather that such a war should no longer be dismissed as a planning scenario. To my mind there is a critical weakness in SDSR 2015 and the thinking behind it, in what is otherwise a solid security and defence review.  Moreover, it is a weakness that is not exclusive to SDSR 2015 and which helps to explain the failure of Europe’s elites to deal with the crises that are now breaking over and upon Europe.

Any worst-case strategic analysis worthy of the name would have suggested that a) Russia under President Putin was eventually going to prove difficult; b) in the wake of the 2010 Arab Spring parts of the Middle East and North Africa were going to explode/implode; and c) given the complex nature and interaction between Middle Eastern, North African, South Asian, and Western European societies political Islamism would create some friction. 

Unfortunately, the refusal to think worst-case is compounded by worse-case change. An over-stretched American military, a rapidly shifting balance of military power between the non-US liberal ‘West’ and an illiberal Rest, and a financial crisis that devastated European security and defence credibility is pushing the worst-case ever closer to being the here-and-now case.

Just look at the 2015 (about to become the 2016) migration crisis. Given the mix of rapidly rising birth-rates, failing states, proximity, access, organised crime, and the gulf between rich Europeans and poor Arabs and Africans, it should have been clear to Europe’s that sooner rather than later huge numbers of the latter would up sticks and move to the lands of the former.

European leaders even had advanced warning of mass migration a decade ago when western European labour markets were opened up successively to eastern Europeans. What leaders had hoped for was the managed movement of a relative few. What they got was mass movement to the West took place which in Britain’s case has been so badly managed it could actually drive the UK out of the EU.  The tragic irony is that freedom of movement within Europe is one of Britain’s great triumphs in helping to win the Cold War.

The essential problem is that to think worst-case one needs a political culture robust enough to countenance the worst-case. However, because politicians so assiduously avoid the worst-case (even in private) the strategy piece of a defence review is rarely permitted to demonstrate that thinking is being conducted into the unthinkable. Rather, too many European politicians see the worst-case as devil’s work; as though those of us prepared to think the unthinkable actually want the unwantable. In fact we think the unthinkable precisely to ensure it remains at worst thinkable. The failure to think the unthinkable is now all too plainly visible in the form of the migration crisis.

The reason Europe lacks the systems and controls to cope with mass migration is precisely because European leaders refused to think the unthinkable, just as they did with Russia’s seizure of Crimea. This is because much of the European Project and the culture it espouses is built on an incredibly rosy view of how people behave. Consequently, EU structures, such as they exist, are often a series of Potemkin villages, flimsy facades which stand proud in the good time but have little or nothing to prevent them from collapsing in a storm.  Schengen is the most obvious example; a non-structure that ISIS is exploiting to deadly effect.

In a recent blog I gave SDSR 2015 7 out of 10. Sure, SDSR 2015 contains all the right buzzwords, as did Sir Nick’s speech; ‘utility’, ‘agility’, ‘strategy’, ‘diversity’, ‘innovation’, and that hoary old favourite ‘partnership’.  However, like much that passes for strategic thinking in Europe SDSR 2015 is still grounded in a culture of best-case planning, or how much threat can we afford.  Indeed, the review too often smacks of the old Ten Year Rule. Adopted in August 1919 the Ten Year Rule stated that “…the armed forces should draft their estimates on the assumption that the British Empire would not be engaged in any great war during the next ten years”.  2015 is not 1919, or even 1989.

SDSR 2015 is certainly better than SDSR 2010 but it still too easily allows SDSR 2010’s Future Force 2020 to now morph into Joint Force 2025.  Given what has happened over the last 15 year defence planning cycle can we really afford to be so complacent about the next 15 year defence planning cycle?

2015 has highlighted the strategy malaise at the top of European power and the refusal of leaders to countenance the worse-case. Surely, if 2015 has taught us anything it should be that we must collectively return to worst-case, not best-case planning. The latter will inevitably create structures and forces which will fail. Only the former can generate the necessary strength ad redundancy upon which sound security and defence are necessarily built.

2015: interesting times indeed. And surely the best case for the worst case.

Happy New Year and all that!

Julian Lindley-French    

Europe: Between Republic, Empire and Chaos

“…no amount of power can withstand the hatred of the many…For fear is but a poor safeguard of lasting power; while affection, on the other hand, may be trusted to keep it safe for ever”.

Marcus Tullius Cicero

Alphen, Netherlands. 14 December. Ten days ago on a flight from Amsterdam to Rome I re-read some of the Phillipicae; the fourteen great orations made by Marcus Tullius Cicero between 44 and 43 BC condemning Mark Anthony for his campaign to replace the Roman Republic with a permanent ‘Dictatorship’ in the wake of the March 44 BC assassination of Julius Caesar. One of Cicero’s many conceits was his belief that he could protect the Republic by supporting the adopted son of Caesar, Octavian. It was to prove one of history’s great miscalculations.  Octavian went on to become the emperor of emperors and destroyed what was left of the Republic, albeit in the very name of the Republic. A crude form of representative politics was thus replaced by the executive power of one man; Octavian became Caesar Augustus.

Last week in Bucharest I warned of the dangers of power without strategy. Watching Europe’s leaders and the EU fail to grapple with a succession of crises - the Eurozone, Libya, Ukraine, the migration crisis, IS, and Syria - reminded me of the dangers of making strategy without power. This week one of those seemingly interminable EU Summits will take place after another momentous year of momentous elite failure. One reason for the serial strategic failure of both the EU and European leaders is a Europe that hovers dangerously and ineffectively between an uber-pluralistic ‘Republic’, an ever-more centralised ‘Empire’, or just plain chaos.  Europe really is at an historic tipping point.

The EU has become a bloody awful way NOT to do things. This week’s Summit will no doubt continue that dubious tradition. EU leaders will no doubt talk at great length about the Eurozone crisis, the migration crisis, Syria, Russia, and no doubt agree some Euro-technocratic issues. David Cameron will no doubt prattle on about Brexit and plead with his politely-disinterested fellow leaders to get him out of a political mess that is entirely of his own making. Never has a leader believed less in a policy of his own making, or defended it so badly. The Presidency Conclusions of little Luxembourg will then be briefly discussed, before the Netherlands is invited to sort out this unholy mess during the first half of 2016…and report back next June.

However, the one thing assembled leaders will not discuss will be the greatest challenge the Europe and the EU faces; how to aggregate enormous effective power through new ‘architecture’ without in so doing rendering said power so far from the individual citizen that the EU becomes a bureaucratic empire, and a representative democracy in name only.  One of the many reasons the Roman republic collapsed was the inability of Rome to govern an increasingly diverse empire, preserve the delicate balance between Rome’s aristocratic families who held power through the Senate, and hold meaningful elections that gave the Roman citizenry some sense that they too had a say in and over power.

The essential question is what balance to strike between collective and common action. The High Priests of Project Europe would suggest the only way is for the collective approach itself to be abandoned and ‘common’ policies be adopted in their place. In other words, if Europe is to deal with big challenges it must create a big new state called ‘Europe’.  However, the notion of ‘Europe’ is theology not action and in any case its very forced creation (for that is what it would have to be) would effectively mark the end of ‘Republic’ and the creation of ‘Empire’.

The genius of Caesar Augustus was to continue with the form of representative politics, but destroy the substance. Citizens stilled queued on the Campus Martius to vote, and Senators still met to debate. However, neither group had any power or any real influence. Indeed, the ballots they cast were meaningless, and the ‘laws’ they enacted simply rubber-stamped the will of Caesar, much like the European Parliament does today. 

Rome’s Imperial system worked for a time because it was led by able emperors who understood that efficiency and effectiveness were vital to ensure and assure one-man rule via the ‘legitimacy’ of delivery. Indeed, Roman ‘virtue’ became for a time equated with imperial efficiency, effectiveness and, indeed, expansion. In effect Caesar Augustus offered Roman citizens the same deal the Chinese Communist Party offers the Chinese middle classes today – slavery in return for prosperity and stability. However, the moment the emperors were no longer able to offer such a deal, or when absolute power corrupted insanely and the likes of Nero and Caligula gained power by right of succession, then Rome began its long descent to collapse and chaos.

Liberal democratic state power is the key to meeting Europe’s crises.  Indeed, Europe needs less common action and more collective action. Indeed, if Europeans are to be led back to safety, starting right now, it is vital Europe’s power states – Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Poland and Spain - act. Only then will decisive action be at all possible and even vaguely legitimate. The EU would continue to function as a Senate and debate and advise power. And, of course, this new power oligarchy would need to be utterly sensitive to the views of other Europeans. It would also help if the three seriously big powers - Britain, France and Germany - could actually agree on big things and the need for solidarity at this time of crisis. However, as the risks and threats Europeans face together become ever more apparent Europe’s big powers will have little alternative but to stand together or fall divided. As for the EU, it is incapable of dealing with the crises Europe faces today, and too often is part of the problem.

Getting that balance right between power, action and legitimacy is the single most important strategic and political challenge the EU faces today.  It is a challenge that must be met by power.  

The EU: republic, empire, or just chaos?

Julian Lindley-French    

Hollow Politics: Power without Strategy

“Never was anything great achieved without danger”

Niccolo Machiavelli

Bucharest, Romania. 11 December. Credibility is everything in strategy. Watching John McCain, Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, savage US Secretary of State Ashton Carter this week as I was about to brief Alliance commanders on NATO’s southern flank was sobering.  The argument between McCain and Carter essentially boiled down to the search for a ground force that could do the West’s bidding in Syria and how to pay for it.  However, implicit in the stand-off was a dangerous malaise that now afflicts all Western powers; how to achieve large structural changes in international strategy for the least effort and the lowest political cost. If Joe Nye once defined grand strategy as the organisation of large mean in pursuit of large ends what was witnessed in Washington this week was hollow politics or power without strategy.

For much of the Cold War NATO’s Southern Flank incorporated Spain, Italy, Greece and Turkey. Today, it stretches across the Middle East and North Africa and indeed beyond. Much like Europe’s Thirty Years War between 1618 and 1648 NATO’s southern flank incorporates a plethora of tensions and conflicts all of which will require sustained strategic engagement by the West in support of regional states over decades if legitimate stability is to be re-established. However, the West has become a lame duck with lame duck leaders bereft of clear strategic or political objectives who are simply not up the challenges now posed. Perhaps it was a mark of how desperate things have become that Germany’s Chancellor Merkel was this week named by Time magazine as “Person of the Year”, having narrowly beaten IS leader al-Baghdadi to the accolade.

McCain also berated Carter and by extension the Obama administration for having no timeline for the campaign against IS. After all, the timeline is the essential backbone of any strategy. Critically, there is no absolutely sense of power applied over time, distance and cost towards any real end, other than the vague hope that air containment (for that is what the strategy amounts to) will somehow ‘degrade’ IS. In other words, a real anti-IS strategy would necessarily need a ground force that goes significantly beyond Carter’s suggestion of a “Expeditionary Targeting Force”, which sounds like something out of a Jason Bourne movie.

Such a strategy would also need a defensive as well as an offensive component, and far more joined-upness with allies than exists if it is to be sustainable. The Lebanese Prime Minister told David Cameron recently that he believed for every 1000 migrants entering Europe illegally there are at least 2 Jihadis embedded therein. This means some 16,000 IS fighters have probably entered Europe this year alone and now. And yet, all Europe’s leaders can seem do is quibble over which European institutions and which European borders should be strengthened and how best to get the ongoing influx off TV news. Talk about rearranging deckchairs on the Titanic. Or is that ostriches sticking heads in the deck of the Titanic?   

The reason for this political nonsense is that no Western leader wants to be honest (so few are these days about anything of substance) about the vital strategic end implicit in the fight against IS; the restoring of stability across the Middle East and North Africa. Specifically, they do not want to admit they a) have no clue; b) cannot agree; and c) even if they could agree the time and cost required to achieve such an end. Air containment is thus the latest of the strategic placebos Western ‘leaders’ prefer to real strategy and action. Hollow politics means if a problem cannot be resolved before the next election ignore it as much as possible and use the words ‘long’, ‘term’ and ‘strategy’ endlessly.  When something ghastly happens express condolences in grave tones, talk vaguely about doing everything that can be done, and then move on.  

Take last week’s extension of Britain’s air strikes against IS from Iraq to Syria. To what end? Yes, attacking the oil exports from which IS benefits might help at the margins. Stopping financial flows to IS and disrupting IS cyber-propaganda might disrupt the group for a time. Professor Rosemary Hollis of City University, London made the valid point that stepping up air containment can only be a first step. That begs a question; what are the second, third, fourth and indeed many more steps that will be need to achieve the ultimate goal of returning political stability and physical security to Syria, the wider Levant, and in time the Middle East? Well, there will be no strategy until Sunni states across the Middle East agree to form an international coalition to fight IS on the ground, restore stability to the Levant, and stop the funding flowing out of them into IS coffers.

A coherent Western strategy? Hollow politics means that beyond the re-stating of lofty, ill-defined ends there will be no commitment of diplomatic, economic, let alone military means, because there is no political commitment to necessary ways, beyond symbolic air containment. First, there can be no strategy without US leadership and there will be no such leadership until at the very earliest after the November 2016 US presidential elections. Second, Europeans are incapable of crafting such strategy, due to both political and military weakness, and cannot even agree how to defend their own homelands and against which adversary – Russia or IS.

There is another essential Western dilemma reflected in and by hollow politics; the eternal confusion of values with interests from which Western power suffers nowadays and which render all strategic ends broad in scope, but limited in commitment. Contrast Western ‘strategy’ with contending Russia strategy. Russia has established limited strategic objectives on a relatively narrow end designed to leverage much wider strategic effect and is investing the necessary means to establish the strategic end as credible. However, the Russian end is not the preservation of the Assad regime, which is merely the means, and most certainly not the destruction of IS, which for the Russians is merely a sideshow. The end is the preservation of a Russia-friendly Syria and specifically an air and naval base in Syria which Moscow sees as vital to ensure Russian influence and interests can be maintained across the Mediterranean basin and much of the Middle East.  In other words, Russia has little concern for the broader stability of the Middle East so long as it does not affect Russia’s ability to use the Middle East as a platform for its interests.  

What air containment also reveals is a refusal to confront cause and effect beyond the ‘something must be done’ manta central to hollow politics. IS only numbers some 30-40,000 fighters which could be defeated in relatively quick order on the battlefield, especially so if they continue to aspire through the Caliphate to the creation of a relatively conventional military force. However, implicit in the Syria conflict is the very real prospect that the West could soon find itself not only embroiled in a general Middle Eastern war between states, and a simultaneous religious and sectarian war, that would look much like the gruesome 1618-1648 Thirty Years War. Sadly, such a war could be hastened not delayed by Western inaction and irresolution.

In that light air containment is merely the putting of a small Western toe into very hot water. As such, unless the air containment of IS is accompanied by revealed strategy and commitment, precisely because there is no revealed relationship between ends, ways and means it will soon come to be seen as an extension of weakness, rather than a statement of strength. ‘Strength’ in this instance would need to include a demonstrable determination by Western powers to use ‘all necessary means’.

Now, there are times when sound statecraft demands military action in a political and strategic vacuum. There are indeed times when power must be used in the absence of strategy in an effort to change the relationship on the ground between ends, ways and means.  Such action is taken precisely to create the conditions for successful strategy. However, the current action masks no such intent. Rather, they are the lame duck actions of lame duck leaders either clueless as to the reality of the threat posed to and by what is happening in the Middle East, and/or determined as ever to keep reality filed in the too politically difficult file. In other words, it is hollow politics masquerading as strategy.

Talking of lame duck leaders. David Cameron was also in Bucharest this week pretending to negotiate a new relationship for Britain in the EU. At least I was in Bucharest doing something serious!

Julian Lindley-French