Pom Power! A Cricketing Power Parable for the Twenty-First Century?

Alphen, the Netherlands. 23 August. Good news! Yesterday, at 1658 hours the England cricket team dismissed the last batsman of the Indian cricket team to replace India as the number one cricket team in the world at the very zenith of the world’s most played sport. The natural order of things has been restored. For the uninitiated amongst you – Americans - cricket is the world’s most noble and fascinating of sports. It requires far more guile than the glorified rounders that I used to play at school as a ten year old – baseball. And, lasting five days per match, cricket demands far more stamina than the armoured interruption to US television commercials that is American football. And by the way, a cricket ball is bloody hard – I can testify to that.

Perhaps England’s crushing 4-0 series victory is also a bit of a parable for power in the twenty-first century. The West routinely oscillates between exaggerating its power and a kind of collective power-depression. We in the West also routinely exaggerate the power of the new kids on the eastern block, so as to make our depression seem more comforting. Decline is inevitable we are told by the defeatist Establishment.

No it is not! The much-hyped Indian cricket team proved weak and irresolute, whilst the English team determined, ruthless and organised. Much has been exaggeratedly made of the Asian century. Sure Asia is emerging but as events in Libya over the past few days have demonstrated the old West can still pack a punch.

The best news of all? The hitherto rather smug and irritating Australians were also stuffed by England recently…and in Australia too. This is known down under as Pom Power!

What’s more their team is rubbish! They lost again yesterday – to Sri Lanka.

G’day to yer, mate!

Julian Lindley-French

Libya: Implementing the Peace

“A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse!”  Richard III by William Shakespeare

Alphen, The Netherlands, 22 August. Funny how history plays games. On this day in England in 1485 King Richard III lost the battle of Bosworth Field to Henry Tudor. The rest, as they say (they always say, ‘as they say’) is history. In Shakespeare’s play the defeated king pleads for a horse so he can flee. I would imagine Colonel (soon-to-be retired) Gadhafi probably wishes for just such a beast, and a fast one at that. It is also nigh on ten years since 911 and over the decade that has followed if there is one lesson that has surely been learnt from Afghanistan and Iraq it is this; there can be no ‘victory’ unless the peace has been properly planned for.

Things move quickly when a regime cracks, and with the former rebels now suddenly controlling four-fifths of Tripoli, the immediate end-game is afoot. For a short time celebrations can be permitted. However, the real work starts now and experience from Afghanistan and Iraq suggest planning for the peace will not be easy.

I have just done an interview for the BBC’s flagship radio news programme, “The Today Programme”. I made the following points concerning the bumpy political road that inevitably lies ahead:

1. Establish limits to outside influence: We outsiders need to be clear about our role and our legitimate objectives – to help the Libyan people establish a durable and legitimate political settlement.

2. Experience from Afghanistan and Iraq suggests that all parties to the conflict must be involved in political reconciliation early. If not an insurgency will gain ground. This is a particularly dangerous moment for Libya because if the four key tribes that supported Gadhafi begin to feel grievance an insurgency will develop.

3. Reprisal killings must be prevented and humanitarian suffering alleviated rapidly and even-handedly.

4. A seat of government must be rapidly established and protected.

5. A clear political timetable for transition must be established early. From experience a transitional regime will have roughly six months to a year to establish political legitimacy before inevitably disappointment sets in amongst fellow-travellers. No more than 15% of the population are what might be termed hard-core supporters of the former rebels.

6. Whilst disarmament and rehabilitation must begin early key state institutions such as the armed forces, essential services and the judicial system must be preserved so they can provide stability in transition. To that end, senior members of the Gadhafi regime charged under law must be seen to get a fair trial.

7. National elections must be woven into a new constitution and take place at the very latest two years from today. Safeguards must be built in

8. Outside support for the transitional government must be consistent, commensurate with the immediate humanitarian challenge, but subtle with a clear and stated goal of getting Libya back on its political economic feet early. Like Iraq Libya’s oil revenues will be critical and must be seen to benefit the Libyan people, not foreign companies.

9. International institutions must be seen to lead the support and assistance effort. A new UN Security Council resolution is now needed to legitimise support from key regional actors, the Arab League, the African Union and, of course, the European Union. Libya is, after all, in our neighbourhood.

10. Security, stabilisation and development are not sequential. They must be enacted in parallel.

Finally, the process must be civilian-led and be seen to be so. If the transition in Libya works a shining precedent will be established that burns bright across the Middle East. Fail and this is just the end of phase one in just another grubby, nasty “war amongst the people”, as Sir Rupert Smith once so eloquently put it.

And one final parochial thought. The British Armed Forces have played a critical role in enabling the former Libyan rebels to regain their country from Gadhafi. They remain a superb tool of and for British influence. I only hope the British Government now realises that and stops cutting them to the point of impotence. The world will never permit we British simply to get off the roundabout. Nor should we ourselves countenance such a retreat.

Julian Lindley-French



Libya: Carpe Diem Europe...For Once!

“No-one starts a war-or rather, no one in his senses ought to do so-without first being clear in his mind what he intends to achieve by that war and how he intends to conduct it." Karl von Clausewitz

Alphen, the Netherlands. 21 August. Make no mistake; what is happening in Libya right now has the most profound of grand strategic implications for Europe and its future relations with the Arab world AND the future division of security responsibility with the United States. It could well come to define the transatlantic relationship of the twenty-first century.

This is a grand strategy defining moment taking place in Europe’s backyard and Europe in particular must for a moment put aside self-obsession and strategic political correctness. For once Europe as Europe must be clear about the outcome it wants in Libya. Indeed, what happens over the next fortnight is vital to Europe’s vital interests. Europe after all is the economic and to a significant extent the political centre of gravity for the entire Maghreb and Middle East. Look at a map!

However, time is short. We are fast approaching Europe’s maximum moment of influence over events in Libya. It is a moment that history suggests will soon pass. Get it right and Europe’s relationship with the Maghreb and the wider Middle East could be definitively re-defined for the better. Get it wrong and what Churchill once called the soft underbelly of Europe will face dangerous instability from the south for a generation to come.

The war in Libya could go two ways. Either it is approaching what Clausewitz called the culminating point, when the rebels reach the very limit of their advance and can go no further. Or, this is what Malcolm Gladwell calls the tipping point, "the moment of critical mass, the threshold, the boiling point." Either way, NATO’s air support for the rebel movement, allied to the arms embargo on the regime, seems to be critical.

Clausewitz also suggested that war is the continuation of policy, i.e, politics, by other means. War should thus only been seen as violent means to a political end. Thus far the mainly European coalition, albeit supported strongly by the US, has been focussed on the removal of Gadhaffi and his cohorts. Little attention has been paid to Libyan politics after the Fall. The true nature of the National Transitional Council or the forces behind it is little understood. This has been partly due to the politically correct and indeed correct desire to let the Libyan people settle this and for the Arab/Muslim world to see that to be so. The West is not very good at nation-building. However, European distraction also plays a part, allied to a chronic inability to think strategically collectively. The French and the British have driven this and with at best partial and lukewarm support from many Europeans. Indeed, for too many Europeans war has become the continuation of a strategy vacuum by other means.

It has also been a hot summer. The European Onion and its member-states have spent much of it variously engaged in trying to put out fires at home, literally, or saving its currency experiment from meltdown. No-one said leadership would be easy. This is one of those moments when leaders must give back for the fancy titles, officers, free first class air trips, fancy limos and free dinners. Call me a cynic if you must.

There are four possible outcomes all of which will have profound strategic implications for Europe and its Arab neighbours. First, stalemate continues, in which case more refugees flood across the Mediterranean. Second, the Gadhaffi regime collapses and in the aftermath the loose rebel coalition fractures, a general civil war ensues and Libya breaks up into a series of warring tribal fiefdoms. Third, the Gadhaffi regime again falls but in the absence of sufficient humanitarian and economic assistance from Europe a weak transitional government fails with Islamism taking hold in key centres. Fourth, Europe moves swiftly to replace military support with humanitarian and economic assistance under the existing UN Security Council mandate, in close co-ordination with the Arab League and African Union, and a transitional government is established which begins moving towards some form of democracy. Hard planning is now needed to ensure Option Four is realised.

Why Europe? Because we are here and because we are not America! For once therefore Europe must not simply react to events. The long-promised and seemingly fabled EU humanitarian force must now be readied and for once given the mandate and the resources to act the moment NATO suspends its air campaign. The critical commodity at this critical moment will be political legitimacy. That is why any such action must be taken by the European Onion, not simply a loose coalition of former European imperial powers. Put simply, this is a chance for the Onion’s hitherto meaningless and hollowed out Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) to actually do something beyond the exaggeratedly rhetorical.

Thus far CSDP has been an empty policy led by empty people. The Onion’s two Dear Super-Leaders, President Van Rompuy and the Onion’s foreign and security policy supremo Baronness Ashton, have thus far proven themselves unwilling or unable to rise above the normal fray of national super-pettiness that marks the normal day in the normal life of the Onion. Indeed, if ever there was a time for the Lady from Lancashire to show leadership it is now.

Europe; carpe diem! Baroness Ashton – seize the moment!

Julian Lindley-French