Soft Power Disarmament Will All End in Tiers

Leiden. The Netherlands, 17 June. America’s greatest thinker, Groucho Marks, once famously said that military intelligence is a contradiction in terms. One might say the same about European strategic intelligence. I have now just about read every single European security and defence strategy available and they all share a profound similarity. The joke goes something like this. In chapter one they describe a world getting bigger and more dangerous by the day. In chapter two they promptly cut a critical source of influence, the armed forces.  Conscious that this might seem a little unbalanced in chapter three they speak the language of soft power, i.e. power that has no fuse, to justify disarmament.  Groucho would have found soft power disarmament a scream!

I have just shared a platform with the former NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer in which he echoed US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates by warning of a two-tier NATO.  With an audience of by and large sympathetic Dutch politicians, journalists and academics I too made the case for credible European armed forces so that Europe’s soft power was properly underpinned by credible hard power. Balance was the theme, balance was the aim. Well, that was what I thought.

Those of you who follow this blog know that I do a lot of this kind of professing. What else are professors for? Certainly nothing useful. These days my professing normally involves flying great distances to speak to the same people in different places and normally over a good Bordeaux. Someone has to do it. Indeed, if I redeemed all my KLM air miles they would have to give me the airline!

But herein lies a story all in itself. The security wonks (someone who proffers) speak to the security wonks, the aid wonks speak to the aid wonks, the economists speak to no-one at all, because they are by and large incomprehensible and diplomats speak to each other all of the time but never actually say anything worth understanding.

Sadly, for those of us who believe passionately in balanced security – aid and development, diplomacy and credible, legitimate armed forces embedded in sound strategy driven by proper analysis – these are the wilderness years. Indeed, sometimes in my more hubristic moments I do feel like Winston Churchill (according to my wife as I get older I am increasingly sounding like him). Perhaps I should go away and build a brick wall?

Hang on a bit – there is a point to all of this. Last week Robert Gates said he was a tad peeved with ‘most’ of we Europeans. In fact he is peeved with all Europeans as the ones who don’t care and the ones who used to do a bit but can no longer, are about to be joined by the few doing a little bit at the moment but who in future will be unable to afford it.

But there is a serious point here. Well, two actually. Make no mistake, the Yanks really are peeved this time and it is more than a few grumpy old white men lamenting the good old days when the West was the West and the Soviets could be relied upon to be both dastardly and incompetent (competent dastardlies are never a good idea). Jaap de Hoop Scheffer (or ‘hoops’ as he was affectionately known by those in the rest of NATO who did not speak Dutch – which was just about everybody) made a hugely important point. There is a generational change taking place in American politics and the new, shiny, young American politicos stepping off the Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth gravy train onto the Washington gravy train have little awareness of Europe, little care for Europe and virtually no affection for Europe or NATO. Things are indeed about to change.

So, at this critical moment, as Afghanistan begins to come to an end, as Americans consider their huge budget deficit in the morning and their global responsibilities in the afternoon, the European soft power disarmers are snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.  Getting rid of armed forces not because we are broke, although some of us are but we get around this by fighting wars and hoping no-one will notice we're broke.  You know the old joke - if one owes a bank a thousand Euros one goes to prison; if one owes them two hundred billion they give one a seat on the board. 

No, it is rather because we Europeans have cast ourselves into one of those Merchant and Ivory films set back in the bucolic, upper class comforts of the 1920s - part pacifist, part-isolationist, mainly and usually drunk and more than a little delusional.  We have created a new Ten Year Rule by which we declare that nothing bad is going to happen because in Euro-world it is not allowed.  Beware Greeks bearing debt and all that.

NATO is paralysed, Secretary-General Rasmussen spends most of the time in the gym and getting a tan, whilst his officials spend most of their time creating new headquarters to organise our one soldier.   There is of course the European Onion. You remember, opaque, multi-layered with a centre that stinks. If NATO fades into a multi-tiered nothingness, as threatened by Gates-Gate, then we Europeans might have to really get our act together and finally give the Onion some teeth (an onion with teeth, now there's a thought!).

I have some sympathy with this because if we can no longer get Johnny Yank to pay for our defence then we might have to pay for it ourselves. There is nothing worse than when rich relatives who have all their debt in the bank go all stingy on one. But what makes you think the Onion will be any more immune from the soft power fungus than the No-Go Alliance?

Any chance that our delusional politicos will get it?  Sadly, no.  The voice of we security wonks is no longer heard in European chancelleries. Too dangerous, too expensive, and insufficiently post-modern (whatever that is?).

“Good”, I hear you say.  Not so fast. According to the soft power disarmers realism is militarism, and militarism is what got Europe into its twentieth century mess. Well, er, no, actually. It was the pacifism of democracies and a previous generation of soft power disarmers that enabled the militarists and autocrats to seize the power high ground. By the way, their forebears in the 1920s and 1930s used precisely the same argument – public opinion would not tolerate a defence effort and in any case any transgressor would be held to account in the ‘court of world opinion’. The old ones are the best, eh?

So, Secretary Gates has warned of a two-tier Atlantic Alliance. Jaap de Hoop Scheffer has warned of a two-tier Alliance. Optimists like that really should not be allowed anywhere near real power!

Soft Power Disarmament will not only end in tiers…but tears.

Pass me another brick!

Julian Lindley-French

Is David Cameron another Gordon Brown?

What is it with British prime ministers? No sooner they scramble over the threshold of Number 10 Downing Street then some strange diseases begins to afflict them. They start wars, cut the defence budget, warn the British people of the horribly painful cuts about to hit them and then start spending billions on foreign nationals.

David Cameron might wish to check the water at Number 10 because he is beginning to behave suspiciously like his predecessor, Gordon Brown.

At the very least hubrisitis seems to have set in, claiming to lead by example a world that frankly finds such claims insufferable and not a little laughable. David Cameron’s latest stunt suggests he may indeed wish to talk to someone. Adding £810 million of hard-pressed British taxpayers money to the already burgeoning aid budget to fund immunization in the developing world suggests something has come unhinged. This figure is some ten times more than richer (and more sensible) France, and four times more than the slightly more mighty United States. Do not get me wrong, child immunization is like apple pie and motherhood; incontrovertibly good. But, as soaring UK Rubella rates suggest, British children could do with a bit of that money.

This decision is all the more strange given the warning by the head of the ever-shrinking Royal Navy that Britain’s sole remaining rowing boat might sink after the summer for lack of funds if the Libya War goes on beyond the summer. And, millions of public sector workers are about to strike because cuts will mean much smaller pensions.

There is of course one rational solution. Why not take the money from the £1.2 billion of British taxpayers money promised to nuclear-arming, space launching, weapons-building India. At the very least Prime Minister Cameron should ask the Indians to take over from the Royal Navy as at the British taxpayer is now subsidising India’s brand, spanking new expanding navy.

Let’s all hope that this serial giving away of the broke British taxpayer’s money gets Mr Cameron the UN job to which he clearly aspires. The sooner the better, as far as I am concerned, as then the burden of debt Britain faces might just get a bit lighter! !

Is David Cameron another Gordon Brown?

Julian Lindley-French

Solidarity: On the Front Line of Freedom's Defence

Wroclaw, Poland.  11 June.  US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates is right. "In the past, I've worried about NATO turning into a two-tiered alliance.  Between members who specialize in 'soft' humanitarian, development, peacekeeping, and talking tasks, and those conducting the 'hard' combat missions.  Between those willing and able to pay the price and bear the burdens of alliance commitments, and those who enjoy the benefits of NATO membership - be they security guarantees or headquarters billets - but don't want to share the risks and costs.  This is no longer a hypothetical worry.  We are there today.  And it is unacceptable".

Here in Poland, for so long on the front line of freedom's defence, where Solidarity was born to defend it, I have just emerged from a session during which Senator John McCain spoke eloquently of the 'power' of Secretary Gate's remarks.  Senator McCain reminded Europeans of the warning from history that is Poland's past.

Last night I attended the Freedom Awards dinner of the Atlantic Council of the United States and its partner the beautiful City of Wroclaw.  Wroclaw is a city which is occasionally potmarked by a violent history, themselves eloquent testimony to a struggle for freedom for which millions of Europeans died.     

It was a great privilege simply to be there. It was a dinner from which this old Cold War worrier came away with a simple life belief restored.  For freedom to be maintained it must be believed in and if necessary fought for.  Ask the people of Egypt, on whose behalf Esran Abdel Fatah was honoured.  Ask the people of Belarus, on whose behalf Ales Byalyatski was honoured.  Ask the people of Poland, on whose behalf Helena Lucyzwo and Adam Michnik were honoured. People who are either fighting for freedom or fought for it.  And, of course, ask the people Libya, Syria, Tunisia and many others.

Secretary Gates is of course right. This is all very 1930-ish - we talk about freedom even as we retreat from its defence.  Freedom will only flower if North Americans and Europeans together tend the lighthouse of hope so many millions want to believe in.  We must therefore face together the world as it is, for it is far too soon to believe the world is as we would like it.

That means a strong West.  But 'strength'  must include in its inventory legitimate armed forces credible and able to act in the world of today and tomorrow, not the past.  'Soft' power is all well and good but all the lessons of the past and the present suggest that without the firm foundation of hard power Utopia will eventually fall.

Frankly, too often the 'strategies' I read to justify the squalid nature of Europe's retreat reveal the lie that is Europe's contibution to defending freedom.  Indeed, in the visionless world of Europe today we only recognise only as much threat as we can afford.  It is thus a short step back to Munich and Neville Chamberlain's grovel that he was unwilling to defend the freedom of a small country far away about which he knew nothing.  The rest is barbarous history.

There is one small country over which freedom is not only being defended, but supported.  Sadly, only eight NATO nations are doing it; with the rest shuffling their collective feet in the shameless defiance of solidarity.  Freedom and solidarity go hand in hand.  Sadly, there is a sub-text in Secretary Gates speech which I see here at this impressive conference.  Too many Europeans either take feedom for granted or simply do not believe in preparing for its defence.

The consequence? A very real danger now exists that in the face of coming challenges European democracies will simply lack the means to defend freedom, even if they want to.  1939 all over again.

The bottom-line is this; no Alliance nor Union can survive both a lack of solidarity and capability over time.  If we collectively fail to lift our heads from the defeatism and short-termism, from the rejection of freedom's projection that is Europe's lot today, the twenty-first century will be every bit as dangerous as the twentieth.

We are still all of us on the front-line of freedom's defence.  If you do not believe me come to Wroclaw.

Julian Lindley-French