The Strategic Influence Game 1: High Noon in the High North

"The view from Moscow is that...decline in Western power makes it more difficult for NATO to ignore co-operation with Russia”.

Keir Giles

Alphen, the Netherlands. 9 October. Who said geopolitics is dead? Ninety-four years on from the October 1917 revolution if anyone had any lingering illusions that Russia is a democracy they were surely dispelled by the 24 September announcement that President Medvedev and Prime Minister Putin would simply swap jobs in 2012. Moscow likes to call Russia a ‘managed democracy’. In fact Russia is a micro-democracy of two…and even that is suspect.

President ‘elect’ again Putin will thus be in power until 2024…at least. Moscow also announced recently an increase in defence spending of some $66 billion over three years, which amounts to some 3% of the Russia’s gross domestic product. With the economy slowing, entrepreneurial activity being squeezed by an increasingly rapacious Kremlin and civil society all but moribund the Putin regime is beginning to look very much like the Brezhnev regime of Soviet old. Then, a self-serving regime sought to offset its lack of legitimacy at home by causing trouble in Russia’s self-designated ‘near abroad’.

The obvious flashpoint will be the Baltic States, the security of which must remain an absolute priority for NATO and the EU. Ukraine is also a worry. However, it is the mineral rich High North of Europe where an increasingly assertive Russia could perhaps play its most aggressive card.

Prime Minister Putin has repeatedly said that Russia intends to defend her strategic Arctic resources with military might. On 28 June the Russians conducted the third test-firing of the new Bulava submarine-launched ballistic missile in the Barents Sea. In July Foreign Minister Ivanov indicated that Moscow intended to extend her territorial borders in the Arctic by some 2 million square kilometres and that Russia intended to keep two brigades of troops at high readiness in the far north, rather than one. In August Russian Defence Minister Bulgarkov announced the decision to acquire 120 more of the highly-capable Iskander M nuclear missiles and that the first battalion had been deployed to the Northern Military District near St Petersburg. With a range in excess of up to 500 kilometres this deployment potentially threatens much of eastern and northern Europe.

Furthermore, the Norwegians are reporting a marked increase in sorties by Russian strategic bombers along the Norwegian coast with simulated attacks now a regular occurrence. On 7 July as the Russian and Norwegian foreign ministers exchanged ratification documents for the delimitation treaty on oil exploration and exploitation in the Barents Sea a Russian strategic bomber formation flew down the Norwegian coast. Nor are the Norwegians alone. Britain has noted a marked increase in Russian air and naval operations against British air and sea space.

Why does Russia do this? Much of this is traditional Russian bluster that anyone working on Russian strategy has come to know well. Some of it is Moscow’s frustration with a lack of progress on co-operation with the Alliance over missile defence and concerns about NATO’s intervention in Libya – Europe’s ‘near abroad’.  Russia sees the West as two-faced. However, strategic opportunism is also a factor.  Moscow’s strategy must thus be seen as a truism most Europeans seems to have forgotten; when one lacks power to make the rules strategic influence is not solely a function of being ‘nice’.

Fortunately for the West Russia is a clumsy exponent of the geopolitical art and too often permits frustration and the power parochial to trump strategy. In effect, it is déjà vu all over again. Declining oil and gas revenues, a hole in Russian Government finances and increasing defence budgets simply did not add up to a sustainable grand strategy – then or now. However, the impules to play Strong Russia is ever-present.

A stable relationship between Russia and the West is clearly in Moscow’s geo-political interest. One only has to look at a map to see the challenges Russia faces to its south and east. However, two things prevent that. First, whilst the 2010 NATO Strategic Concept hinted at better relations with Russia uncertainty, irresolution and retreat has made the West an uncertain partners/adversary. Second, the small Kremlin cabal that holds power have very parochial political and strategic agendas that by and large contradict financial and economic reality. Taken together the drivers of Russia’s strategy in the High North become clear.

Sooner or later there will be a domestic crisis in Russia. The Baltics and the Ukraine are too sensitive for overt adventurism but not the High North. Indeed, in spite of extant treaties boundaries and borders are sufficiently fuzzy for Moscow to exploit if it feels the need to send a message to the West without necessarily provoking a direct confrontation.  It is as ever a high-risk strategy.

In the iconic film High Noon local sheriff Will Kane (Gary Cooper) finds himself alone against a ruthless gang of outlaws. The little man standing firm against the bully eventually wins the day when the local citizenry finally realise that his fight is their fight. Think Finland, Norway, Sweden…and Russia.

High Noon in the High North? It could be coming soon to a screen near you.

Julian Lindley-French

Afghanistan Ten Years On

“They [the Haqqani Network] didn’t agree on several things, so the meetings were without any outcome. That’s why we are seeing now all these reactions and attacks going on.” A senior Afghan official.

Alphen, the Netherlands. 6 October. The first Afghan war of the twenty-first century is coming to an end as the first Afghan civil war begins. Ten years ago today the first Western soldiers were about to set foot on Afghan soil. The Taliban were then routed and it seemed likely that Al Qaeda would soon be denied the space that is Afghanistan from which to launch lethal attacks on Western civilians. Ten years on tens of thousands of Afghan lives have been lost; some 1700 American soldiers are dead alongside 400 of their British comrades, with many more dead from coalition nations. $21 billion of aid has been spent – much of it wasted or spirited away. And still the ‘strategic’ goal of a stable Afghanistan at peace with itself and the world seems an elusive dream. Yesterday’s War?

To talk privately to officials in European capitals Afghanistan has become the non-war. After all, they say, Bin Laden is dead, the Americans want out and Europeans in any case have more pressing matters, such as saving European society from financial ruin. They tell themselves that ‘they’ have done their best for what was after all another failed American war. Of course, in spite of all this no damage has been done to NATO which must now consider other futures.

There is much talk of transition – transition in to Afghan rule; transition out for the West. End 2014 is now the magic date when all major combat operations will end and by which time some grand political bargain will (of course) have been fashioned for Afghanistan. The West will (or course) stay in Afghanistan for years to come offering its aid and advice – members of a well-meaning international community. In reality only the Americans will be formally present on the ground and few at that.

The Afghans, ever-savvy fence-sitters, have not missed the meaning of the moment. The attacks by the Haqqani Network on Kabul are merely the first salvoes of a new power struggle between and within the Pashtun-led Taliban and Afghanistan’s ‘others’ over who will control what bit of the Afghan space, how and at what drug price – fuelled of course by generous doses of mischief from Afghanistan’s ever-interfering neighbours.

The race to fill the Afghan space with something that looks ever so slightly like a functioning Afghan state now enters its final, dangerous stage. What will the end look like? Will it be a formal handover of power with a nice flag-swapping military ceremony, or will it look more like the chaos of 1973 Saigon? Who knows? Whoever does know in Afghanistan?

2012 will be the pivotal year. The trick for the Americans will be to intensify peace-talks whilst fighting. Campaign momentum is everything,  Sadly, it is unlikely the Karzai Government will shift off its own fence. History suggests it will continue with some efforts to establish basic but acceptable levels of governance, whilst cutting informal deals with the members of the not-so-loyal opposition, and prepare to get out.

As ever, the situation in the south will be critical but not exclusively so. It is too early to tell if the Kandahar murder of Ahmed Wali Karzai in July 2011 has eased or complicated what passes for a political process in Afghanistan. The Pashtun represent 42% of the population but are by no means a unified body and whilst they are the political centre of gravity in Afghanistan their appeasement will only lead to conflict with the Tajiks (27%) Hazara (9%) and Uzbeks (9%).

The 2014 state of the Afghan National Army and the Afghan National Police will thus be the true test of the West’s legacy. It is in them the West must now focus its main, last effort. Will they be able to act as a unifying national force? Will they be strong enough for Kabul to exert real control over Afghanistan? Or will they be just strong enough to spare the West’s blushes on departure? The nature of the West's departure depends on the answers to these questions.

It is not Switzerland that is being so painfully constructed in the Hindu Kush but chaos still beckons if we simply walk away. Ten years on all of us in some way engaged in the campaign - from the loftiest politician to the humblest squaddie or grunt - need to grip the importance of this moment. If not, the sacrifice will have been in vain and history will condemn those on whose inattentive watch they perished.

Yesterday’s War?

Julian Lindley-French

Euro-Crash! Now, Britain! Now's Your Time!

“I never worry about action, but only inaction”

Winston Churchill

Alphen, The Netherlands. 3 October, 2011. At the climax of the Battle of Waterloo Napoleon’s Imperial Guard tried to force the road to Brussels.  The Brigade of Guards was waiting in ambush. “Now Maitland! Now’s your time!” Wellington thundered. Immediately the Guards emerged from the long grass and fired volley after volley into the Old Guard until for the first time it broke and ran. The Battle of Waterloo was won and Brussels was saved. It is time again for Britain to save Brussels...from itself.

Throughout Europe’s long and turbulent history the English/British have always been the guarantor of Europe's stability. The British have stepped in at critical moments of crisis either to prevent an overweening neighbour from dominating the Old Continent or to prevent the worst excesses of an unhinged ideology. It is a mark of Britain’s decline and the lack of leadership at the top of power in London that David Cameron and his team have been reduced to talking about the Eurozone crisis as if a) it is ‘nuffing to do with us, guv’; b) something to be swept under London’s increasingly threadbare political carpet; and/or c) wailing like some latter day Cassandras from the rapidly eroding margins.

The bottom-line is this; as Europe’s second or third largest economy, biggest financial market and Europe’s most capable military power it is precisely at this moment of existential crisis for the EU that Britain must show its traditional genius for pragmatic leadership…or leave the EU. That is effectively the choice on offer to London. No ‘ifs’ or ‘buts’.

Britain still has real political and popular influence over here but it is fast waning. My Dutch neighbours are puzzled by Britain’s impotence, and not a little offended by it. Where is the country that twice in the last century saved Europeans from servitude? The village in which I live was liberated by a huge British-led army that swept through here in 1944. Much of the democratic shape of modern Europe is down to Britain’s leadership. People are again looking to Britain and Britain is failing them.

The good news is that Britain has not had such an opportunity to lead for at least a generation. For my Dutch neighbours it is precisely because Britain is not in the Euro that Britain should lead. People all around me are suddenly volunteering the belief that Britain was right after all – the Euro as conceived back in the 1990s simply does not work and never will. And yet, more or much more Brussels seem to be the options on the table and the Dutch, that most European of nations, have no appetite for more Brussels.

Britain thus needs a plan to return the EU from whence it came; to enable Europe’s democratic nation-states to influence better together today’s hyper-competitive world under the leadership of Europe’s democratic nation-states. The mantra? More cooperation, less integration.

Britain’s plan would re-assert national sovereignty over key areas of European policy and strategy.  To that end Prime Minister Cameron should first join Chancellor Merkel and President Sarkozy to stabilise the immediate crisis, even if that costs money. In return Cameron must insist on the repatriatriation of key areas of policy, such as social, labour, foreign and security policy - even if that means a new treaty.  He should move decisively to end ever closer political union, i.e. more political integration, and insist that the European Commision's powers of decision-making be returned to the European Council  - where the will of the member-states is enacted.  The European Commission should be reduced to a much smaller enabling body with its powers of policy initiation removed.

The size and cost of all European institutions should be reviewed so that the damaging confusion over 'competence' is brought to a rapid end.  Many of the meaningless but expensive posts and structures created by the Lisbon Treaty should be scrapped; such as the European President and the European Foreign Minister and the hopelessly Byzantine European External Action Service (EEAS). The European Parliament should be reformed and reduced in size so that real politicians, i.e. national parliamentarians, rotate through a much smaller consultative institution that sits solely in Brussels. The pretentions for the EU to have a separate legal and political identity on the international stage should also be scrapped. Finally, Britain should agree to a revised monetary union for those who a) want it; and b) agree to fiscal harmonisation but insist that ALL EU member-states have a say over the running of such a union.

If not the unelected Euro-fanatics could well win the day in the name of short-term expediency.  That will mean an even more unaccountable, ‘communitarian’ Brussels.  In time, it will also mean more national sovereignty will vanish down a Brussels black hole and thus be lost to incompetence and secrecy. It will certainly mean that any pretence to a link between European power and the European people will vanish leading to a ‘Europe’ run by faceless Eurocrats overseen by toothless and meaningless institutions dangerously far distant from the ordinary citizen.

What gives Britain the right? As one of my Dutch neighbours said to me, “We could not understand when the Euro was created why you British did not want to join. Now we do and you were right, just as you were right about the Constitutional Treaty and European defence”. This crisis is too important for Britain to stand aside. London must lead the EU or leave it.

Now Britain! Now’s your time!

Julian Lindley-French