Britain and the EU: The Day of Reckoning Approaches

"It was an illusion to think that we could have a common currency and a single market with national approaches to economic and budgetary policy."

Jose Manuel Barroso, President of the European Commission

London, 29 September. The Euro-crunch is upon us and with it perhaps the most delicate and dangerous moment in the EU’s history. Indeed, the implications of what is about to happen are slowly only becoming apparent. One of the most profound of which could be the withdrawal of Britain from the European Union.

The Euro can only survive if the EU and the Euro become one and that by definition excludes Britain. It also means more integration and that in turn means more power transferred to unaccountable Brussels. Talking to a couple of very senior British politicians in London it is clear that Britain will never adopt the Euro whoever is in power. Nor will London accept the hidden integration necessary to solve the Euro-crisis and Britain’s consequent marginalisation. Least of all will the British pay the price for something of which Britain is not a part.  The alternative is to simply accept leadership by a Germany that does not want it.

A couple of years ago I breakfasted in Washington with former German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer. I made the point to him that the Union had reached the point where London could no longer pretend to the British people that the Union is merely a super-market. If the Union moved decisively towards political and economic union the British would be faced with the worst of all worlds – subject to the Brussels diktat without influence over it. Fischer’s response was blunt; if that is how the British think then very well go. That moment has now arrived.  So long as the Euro was not the Union the pretence of a messy fiction could be maintained and Britain could remain within the EU even if it was not a Eurozone member. Not any more.

The implications of Britain’s departure would be profound to say the very least.  Critically, the checks and balances on Germany’s power that Berlin is rightly conscious of would be profoundly weakened.  Britain’s presence guarantees the essential balance of big state power at the heart of the Union. And, in spite of London’s current travails and its many idiocies Germans have long-understood the importance of Britain’s role, particularly now as Berlin emerges from history to become the undisputed master of Europe.

Is there an alternative to German leadership? Whilst a believer in the concept of a more united Europe of states I have been extremely critical of a system that under the guise of ‘integration’ has emphasised the power of bureaucracy at the expense of democratic legitimacy...and rightly so.  Nothing in European history suggests that such an approach is politically sound. And yet, if the runes are to be read correctly – and one has to read runes on these occasions because of the obsessive culture of secrecy in Brussels which too often sees the European people as enemy – the bureaucracy is about to be given a whole raft of new powers to save the single currency.

The increased commitment to 'communitarianism' called for by Commission President Barroso, is one of those euphemisms beloved of the Euro-Aristocracy which runs the bureaucracy to place themselves ever closer to the very heart of European power for the sake of expediency. The really cheeky bit is that they also want the British to pay for much of it. The call for the Transaction or Tobin Tax on banking transactions to help pay for the European Financial Stability Facility would see the British contributing 80%.  The rest? The Facility might need to be expanded to a staggering €2 trillion if the so-called 'Blockbuster Fund' is set up to cover all debt across southern Europe.  Moerover, with the European Central Bank already swimming under a mountain of junk debt it is I the Dutch taxpayer who will have to guarantee what is in effect going to be a transfer to the south of what little wealth I have for many years to come.

Whatever choice is made it will not be by or for the British and thus the further marginalisation of Britain is inevitable. Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democratic Deputy Prime Minister, believes Britain has more influence by remaining within the EU. However, if the EU core are about to create a system from which Britain is excluded but for which it must pay then that is clearly no longer the case.  In such circumstances EU membership would no longer make strategic sense for London.  Quite the reverse in fact because a future Britain would be better placed to play its vital balancing role outside the Eurozone/EU political singularity.

Therefore, all concerned might need to pause for a moment and consider the consequences.  Commission President Barroso has rightly said that this is the EU’s most dangerous moment. With its coming the EU could now well have embarked on the road to the final reckoning over Britain and its membership. If that is a conscious choice then so be it. However, if it is an unintended consequence then beware.  For all concerned some thinking is needed now about how best for Britain to depart with least damage.

Some of you in Brussels will scoff.  There will be those amongst you who believe that in time the British will be forced to join the Euro and accept more Brussels not less.  That would be a mistake. The appalling mismanagement of this crisis has made that option simply impossible. That was the message of my political interlocutors in London - one Conservative, one Labour.

History also offers a salutary lesson to our European partners. Never under-estimate us!

Julian Lindley-French

The SAS War Diaries: Who Thinks Wins

"Let your plans be dark and as impenetrable as night, and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt."

Sun Tzu

London. 26 September. They literally leapt to prominence in May 1980 when Britain’s elite Special Air Service (SAS) stormed Iran’s hijacked London embassy. I was watching snooker on the BBC at the time as coverage was interrupted to cover the assault live. It was the dawn of the 24/7 media age in which we live today. I can still remember the mixture of awe and amazement as masked men swooped down from helicopters armed with stun grenades and light machine guns. This was the stuff of James Bond.

Thanks to the now copious (and mainly bad) books about the ultra-secret SAS and their motto – Who Dares Wins - a mystique has been cultivated in the international public mind that sees these superstars of the British Army less the extremely good soldiers they are and more latter day super-heroes.  Thanks to that the SAS are one of the few elements of Britain’s strategic brand to have survived intact London’s headlong retreat from military influence. Therefore, the revelation that an SAS Trooper had built up a detailed war diary of the regiment’s World War Two activities was to say the least a surprise. What the book demonstrates is the vital importance of the thinking soldier – then and now. Could this offer a way forward for all Europe’s soldiery?

The now sterile debate over Europe’s militaries can be characterised thus; not enough invested in what works and too much in what does not. The same by the way goes for the British Army. I still find it hard to understand why an army with a force in excess of 100,000 people finds it so hard to deploy and sustain 10,000 of their number. The SAS turns all of that upside down and has done since its creation back in 1941. It was not mass that mattered to them, but impact. In a sense they were the ultimate British military caricatures – a Formula One army rather than a mass production army, the latter of which has never quite suited the British.

When I cast my eye across the faded glories of many European militaries it is indeed like wandering around one of those fantastic European war museums - hugely impressive and utterly out of date. It was a world in which army divisions were made up of tens of thousands and in turn formed parts of armies made up of hundreds of thousands.  Any one country may have had several such armies organised into army groups. Today, what were once armies are now battle groups of several hundred or so men, whilst the great regiments have become the battalions of which battle groups are made. As we witness the miniaturisation of Europe’s once great armies it is unlikely European armies will ever again deploy a division. And yet never has something so small cost so much.

So, why not make virtue out of necessity? It was the very smallness of SAS units, allied to their intelligence, that made them so agile and flexible. They could range far and wide behind enemy lines disrupting and destroying and then vanishing. They had the best equipment and knew how to make best use of it and out-planned, out-moved and out-thought the enemy

Today, most European armed forces are trapped between maintaining a very pale imitation of a force Napoleon, Wellington or Blucher would have recognised and an even paler imitation of the SAS. A lack of political leadership, clear military thinking, nostalgia and the political influence of old soldiers has thus turned much of Europe’s armed forces into a series of extremely expensive museums.  They have missions defined by a shrinking list of the things they used to be able to do, rather than the things we would really like them to be able to do. European defence planning is thus in effect a little bit pregnant – incurring the costs of pregnancy without the prospect of bringing forth something that in time might kick, bite and scream.

Defence strategy demands of a society that it exploits comparative advantage. Military strategy requires its armed forces to be able to do exactly what an enemy least desires. European society is educated and technological. It is also individualistic and yet collaborative.  It can think for and of itself but is disciplined and open enough to understand the vital role of partners. In other words, Europe’s comparative advantage is its human capital, which is precisely the comparative advantage of the SAS..

Whether planned for or not the future European soldier will be first and foremost a thinking soldier, aware of the context of his or her actions, able to undertake a wide range of tasks across the conflict spectrum, and connected by technology to other key partners both civilian and military. This is exactly how David Stirling conceived the SAS back in 1941. But can we Europeans design a system in which our soldiers will be best able to exploit that comparative advantage?

Certainly, a pretty radical re-think would be needed. First, all the many legacy units and platforms weighing our armies down would need to be scrapped. Second, all conscripts would need to go. Third, a much more modular command chain would be required to enable smaller units to integrate, detach and re-form as required. Third, a command culture would be needed that emphasised small unit leadership. Fourth, at least twice (probably more) of today’s average investment per European soldier would be needed. Too costly?  In fact, we could afford such a force without spending more.

Today, only 10% of Europe’s 2 million soldiers are of any real use with the €180 billion or so spent annually spent vso badly that it is a criminal waste of European taxpayer’s money.  Look at the alternative.  Spent effectively €180 billion could pay for a force of some 500,000 cutting-edge thinking soldiers.  It is almost impossible to imagine a scenario in which Europeans would need more or any force or circumstance that could defeat it.

At the core of the whole effort there would to be something very new; a defence education system that took the best and the brightest and gave them not only what they needed to know to succeed, but better enabled them to know how to know. Knowledge power and fighting power are the twin barrels of SAS effect and will be so for Europe's future warriors.

The SAS are a legend. However, there is nothing Arthurian about them. Veiled in an almost impenetrable mask of necessary secrecy the Hereford Men generate respect and fear in friend and foe alike. Ultimately, what the diaries reveal is something quintessentially simple; a force that was simply extremely good at soldiering in all its forms, employing something for which armed forces have not always been renowned for – brains.  And, it still is.

Who thinks wins – this is a lesson that should be grasped by all Europe’s armed forces.

Julian Lindley-French

Beware Julians Bearing Gifts

Alphen, the Netherlands,

24 September, 2011

Dear Greeks,

I have just been listening to more Euro-twaddle from one of your ministers on the BBC. I suppose it is my warped sense of humour but I just love the twisted metaphors those responsible for this disaster employ to avoid the simple truth. To bail you out of the mess you created I will have to spend much of my hard-earned money with absolutely no guarantee that a) you will be grateful; or b) you will change. And, I will have to do it for a very long time.   So, what do you want?  Do we get the pain over with quickly and kick you out of the Euro, do I suffer the pain of your financial toothache for years to come, or are you really prepared to make the sacrifices that will justify my funding you?

To help you clear your thinking let me as a Dutch taxpayer explain to those of you in Greece about to take to the streets to demand more of my money to fund your lifestyle something you may wish to know about my lifestyle. I am not a rich man so the money you take from me matters. I earn most of my money as a freelancer and as I have no generous safety net I just have to get up early in the morning and work hard. Much of my day is spent writing reports, advising, writing papers and looking for new ways to earn money. The blogs you read are often written in the dead of night when I have the time. I am 53 years of age and will be working until the day I drop. Now, as I understand it you want me to fund a lot of you so you can retire at 55. I rather think not.

Sadly, the market in which I must today operate is becoming progressively worse and my income is falling as a result. This is partly because the bankers who got us into the 2008 disaster refuse to lend to each other let alone to little people like me who are trying to make a go of it. No problems, the bankers know how to look after themselves.

But let us be clear. It is also because the government I fund has to cut its budget hard and raise my taxes to pay for the consequences of a life-style that too many of you seem to regard as your right. Not all of you. I have too great a respect for Greece to blame you all for this mess. Nor do I view all southern Europeans as one.  Each case is different.  Spain, for example, is relatively sound to my mind and Italy a big enough economy with sufficiently strong fundamentals to pull through.

Moreover, I am even prepared to accept another dose of the one-way ‘solidarity’ beloved of the European Onion and its Euro-Aristocrats if I could be sure that once and for all you would get your financial house in order. But that’s the point, I cannot. How can I be sure that a couple of years downstream you will not come back to me and demand more of my hard-earned money? Give me some hope here.

Nor do I wholly blame your government for putting all that I have worked for at risk, even though they are a pretty rum lot. Our own Dear Leaders should have stopped you from running away with my money a long time ago. Sadly, at the time the Euro-Aristocracy of which they are a part were too busy slapping each other on the back for their ‘vision’ whilst of course quaffing another glass of that very good Dom Perignon 53, which had been paid for by my hard work.

Of course, the greater the disaster the more opaque the metaphors leaders retreat into to avoid the hard facts of failure. The European Central Bank is moving to calm the markets, we are told. The European Central Bank needs the ‘support’ of the Onion’s richer member-states, we are told. Governments are working hard to agree the terms of the latest bail out, we are told. What they really mean is that they are all working hard to deprive me of more of my hard-earned money so they can spend it on you.

So, my dear Greek friends remember when you are protesting for the protection of your living standards what you really want is more of my money so I can lose my living standards. Ask yourselves just what it is you are going to give me in return. At the very least a few of you could carry placards saying “We demand more of Julian’s money”. At least it would be honest. Above all, remember that old Greek saying – Beware Julians bearing gifts! If you have my money there will be a price to pay.

Pass the Ouzo, I need it!

All best,

Julian Lindley-French