Gibraltar: Rock of Power

Gibraltar, 1 December. The Rock stands 426m (1,398 feet) high. This massif of carboniferous limestone is a portal, a great gateway, between the Atlantic and Mediterranean worlds. Since 1713, and the Treaty of Utrecht, Gibraltar has also been both fact and symbol of British power. That was the theme of my talk at a delightful dinner hosted this week at his official residence the Convent by my friend, His Excellency the Governor of Gibraltar, Lt. General Ed Davis. The dinner was held in honour of another friend, General Ben Hodges, Commander, US Army Europe. My theme? The place of Gibraltar in Britain’s past, present and future story of power. It is a story that is far from over.

Everywhere one goes in ‘Gib’ one finds layers of Britain’s power past. Great military bastions of the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries jostle with each other in silent testimony to the waves of history that have crashed upon the rocky shores of the Straits over which ‘Gib’ still stands sentinel. These great bastions underpin new layers of financial and commercial power as an exciting twenty-first century Gibraltar is being cast. Before ‘Gib’ there is the Great Mole that once protected the mighty fleets of the Royal Navy when my grandfather sailed from this place to guard the sea lanes of Empire. Today it protects the mighty ships of commerce that drive the great engines of globalisation.

It would be easy to suggest that as the sun has set on Britain’s once great empire, so it is now setting on Britain as a power. Nothing could be further from the truth. Brexit will soon force London to again think about hard matters strategic and hard matters power.  Russia is snapping at NATO’s eastern heels, whilst much of the Middle East and North Africa teeter on the edge of a potentially abyssal epoch. In the face of such forces Britain and Gibraltar will once again be called upon to stand firm – two rocks of stability in a sea of change.

Britain once possessed many ‘Gibraltars’, a ‘string of pearls’ that stretched from London to Delhi and far beyond. Gibraltar, Malta, Cyprus, Aden, and Singapore all guarded the imperial sea lanes between Mother England, the far-flung eastern Empire and Australasia. Today, only Gibraltar and the British Sovereign Base Area on Cyprus remain, but they are as vitally strategic as they ever were, and London must understand that.   

Indeed, Gibraltar’s vital importance to British, European, and the security of a wider world cannot be over-stated. The great post-Cold War hiatus in power is now at an end. The world is entering a new age of contested power. China understands that, which is why Beijing is constructing a string of power pearls to close off the South China Sea. Britain has no such need to act illegally as she already possesses such a ‘string of pearls’, with Gibraltar perhaps the most important.

Britain herself is now one such ‘pearl’. An island off the shores of Europe that will again underpin and guarantee the defence of Europe as parts of Europe again become contested. Gibraltar, as she always has, still guards the entrance and exit from the Mediterranean, something I am sure Moscow is only too aware off as she seeks to extend her own global footprint. Cyprus, the other pearl, offers Britain (and her allies) a platform from which to see and help influence much that happens in the Black Sea region, the Middle East and North Africa.

Soon the first of Britain’s new super aircraft carriers HMS Queen Elizabeth will visit Gibraltar, the largest British warships ever to have sailed past the Great Mole. My guess is that she will spend much of her life operating from ‘Gib’ deep into the Mediterranean. Critically, such operations will help ease the pressure on the US Navy to be everywhere, in strength, all of the time. Together with HMS Prince of Wales the two ships will also demonstrate the unrivalled ability of America’s British ally to ease the many burdens on an over-stretched United States. If, that is, Downing Street, the Ministry of Defence, and the Naval Staff in London can face down the naysayers, the short-termists, and the whingers to realise just what national strategic assets of power and influence projection Britain is again about to possess. The latter day heirs of a re-building Royal Navy’s once powerful Mediterranean Fleet.

Together with allies and partners the new fleet will be able to project power, influence and stability into the Mediterranean world and thus give real meaning to NATO’s 360 Degree Approach – hard deterrence to NATO’s east, discreet stabilising power to NATO’s south. That is why I plead humbly and respectfully with my great friends in Spain to see the bigger strategic picture in which Gibraltar is a gilded pillar. Gibraltar is not just a vital adjunct to Spain’s economy, but in strategic partnership with Britain and the people of Gibraltar, the Rock will again be vital to Spain’s security. A Spain that is again on the front-line between security and insecurity, stability and instability, poverty and wealth, hope and despair.

Old-fashioned thinking? I can almost hear the decline managers and maudlin soft power merchants of Whitehall tut-tutting at the very idea of British hard power. However, it is they who are out-of-date, not me. The Europe, of which Britain is and will remain an integral part, has made the world a more dangerous place by failing to invest their great institutions of soft power with the necessary hard power. This massive strategic failure makes all the talk of ‘values’ one so often hears from our leaders little more than a hollow lie.

In fact, Britain (and Europe) will need all forms of power in the coming age. For Britain its immense soft power must now be underpinned by credible hard military power. If a new power-balanced Britain again emerges Gibraltar will act as both power platform and power multiplier. As an aside, it is power that will ultimately shape Britain’s future relationship with Europe, not petty-fogging negotiations over irrelevant tactical details.

Gibraltar is a delightful place. It is also an important place. Like Britain, if it so chooses its future lays not behind it, but before it; a rock of stability, a rock of prosperity, but above all a rock of British power in an age when such power must again be to the fore. Indeed, there are two things that clearly never cease here on the Rock; history and power.

Gibraltar: rock of power.

Julian Lindley-French        

                  

Why is London so Crap at Brexit?

“Nature abhors a vacuum”.

Aristotle

Alphen, Netherlands. 21 November. Why is London so crap at Brexit? In my 2015 book Little Britain: Twenty-First Century Strategy for a Middling European Power (which is of course brilliant and very reasonably-priced, and can be bought incredibly reasonably at www.amazon.co.uk) I state, “…managing decline has become the ethos of so many British governments and too often simply masks the damaging lack of imagination of a political class and a bureaucratic elite who have for so long seen strategy made elsewhere that they now take decline for granted”. The book goes on, “Such failings are now apparent across government, reflective of a Westminster culture that routinely places politics before strategy”. I wrote that passage well before this year’s Brexit referendum. Sadly, as expected, London’s political and bureaucratic elite are making a mess of Brexit. Here are eleven reasons why.

Devolution: there are now several competing poles of power in Britain thanks to Tony Blair’s disastrous experiment in devolution. The Westminster Parliament looks increasingly like an English parliament in which the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish rule on English matters. One of the many implicit battles of Brexit is the sovereignty of Westminster versus the encroaching sovereignty of politically inimical devolved parliaments and assemblies.

The Ruling Caste: This past weekend Lord Kerr of Kinlochard, the man who drafted Article 50 of the Treaty of Lisbon, said that the British need mass immigration because we British are “so bloody stupid”. Sadly, this comment typifies the arrogance of what has become an unaccountable ruling bureaucratic elite for whom national sovereignty and democracy are simply inconveniences. In Riga I challenged bluntly another member of that EU governing caste who suggested openly that the British people were too ignorant to know why they voted to leave. The EU gets blamed for a lot that is not of its own making, but there is no question that the EU has also fostered a ruling bureaucratic uber-elite that treats the people with utter contempt.    

   

Irreconcilable Remoaners: Such elite arrogance provides the political momentum for the Remoaners. Democracy works by people accepting the results of votes. Too many Remoaners are simply refusing to accept the referendum result thus turning a crisis into a disaster. Forget all the guff about respecting the vote 'but' that one hear’s from such people. There are many Remoaners in very high places determined to ensure Britain never leaves the EU.

Incompetent Brexiteers: Too many of the leading Brexiteers abandoned the political field of battle in the wake of the referendum in the belief the decision had been made. And, at a political level Theresa May decapitated the Brexit campaign by taking three of the leaders into government, in effect muzzling them. This left the field open for Remoaners to cause trouble. A political opportunist if ever there was one it now looks like even Tony Blair senses a chance to return from the land of the walking political dead to scupper Brexit.

A Divided Cabinet: Theresa May’s Cabinet is itself hopelessly split. On one side of the split are the so-called soft Brexiteers, i.e. Remoaners, led by Philip Hammond, who want Britain to remain part of the Single Market. This means Britain would have to accept free movement of citizens (as agreed in the amended 1991 Maastricht Treaty), pay into the EU budget, and remain under the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice. In other words, they want Britain to remain a member of the EU, albeit without any voting rights, the worst of all Euro-worlds. On the other side of the split are the increasingly frustrated Brexiteers. This weekend the latter set up the European Research Group in an attempt to hold Government to account over Brexit.  

   

A Politicised Civil Service: During the thirteen years of the Blair-Brown governments the civil services became progressively politicised. This process was reinforced by the use of legions of so-called Special Advisors (SPADS) and years of politically-correct recruitment. Whereas once the Civil Service was patrician conservative with a small ‘c’, it is now overwhelmingly bourgeois, pro-EU and soft left. Yes, making Brexit happen is technically difficult, and yes, there are still excellent senior civil servants trying to make inchoate politics work in the finest traditions of a once fine service. However, there are too many senior civil servants quietly trying to frustrate Brexit. The extent of this dissembling was made clear by Cameron Downing Street insider Daniel Korski in a recent piece in Politico.

A Hard Brexit or No Brexit: ‘Soft Brexit’, ‘hard Brexit’, ‘clean Brexit’, ‘cliff-edge Brexit’, ‘transition Brexit’, ‘one-minute past midnight Brexit’. There are now so many Brexit options an already complex political challenge is fast becoming a strategic nightmare. In fact, there are only two Brexit options – a hard Brexit or no Brexit.   This reality was reinforced to me by a senior German politician over dinner in Brussels last Wednesday.  For the EU anything else would probably presage the unravelling of an already vulnerable and fragile Union.

The Hollowed-Out British State: The EU has hollowed-out much of the British state through the transfer of ‘competences’ from London to Brussels. Proof positive of how successive British governments quietly transferred huge amounts of British power to Brussels, whilst telling the British people quite the opposite. Two leaked memos this past week have revealed the lacunae in skills in Whitehall needed to negotiate Brexit. This has (of course) been denied by Downing Street, but from my experience it rings horribly true, particularly when it comes to trade negotiators.   

A Politicised Judiciary: I am not one of those who attacks the judiciary for judgements made, as I believe strongly in the separation of powers. However, the same process that shifted the political centre of gravity from soft right to soft left in Whitehall, and all the assumptions that go with it, was also applied to the judiciary by Tony Blair. Unlike many I have read the judgement of the three High Court judges on the case brought by Gina Miller to the effect that the Government cannot use Royal Prerogative to invoke Article 50. Sorry, but some of the ‘legal’ assumptions in the ruling strike me as essentially, and quite clearly political. 

Political Weakness: It may be that in staying ‘mum’ Theresa May is playing a wonderfully canny game in preparing the ground for Article 50 and Britain’s subsequent departure from the EU. I cannot see nor have I heard any evidence to that effect. Rather, the same old Whitehall-Westminster foreign policy tendency of wanting to appease all and sundry without appearing to do so seems to be in play. It is precisely this weakness that has encouraged German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schauble to state this weekend that Britain will be forced to pay into the EU budget even after it leaves the EU. The consequence? Even though Britain is a top five world economic and military power it does not act like one. Britain will need to fight (politically) if it is to realise Brexit.

A Lack of Elite Belief in Britain: At root the Brexit fiasco reflects a London political and bureaucratic elite too many of whom simply do not believe in Britain. Some of them even want to break the UK into its four constituent ‘nations’ so that they could in time become part of a new ‘state’ called ‘Europe’. Too much of the London elite spend too much time lost in the intellectual desert that is universalism having abandoned the very idea of patriotism and the nation-state. This sets them at odds with huge swathes of the British people who remain stubbornly patriotic. It also creates a political gap that the likes of Nigel Farage (and Donald Trump in the US) are filling. If the elite do not actually believe in Britain how can they fashion a sense of the national interest other than some vague extension of their even vaguer notions of universalism and globalism?    

In spite of my profound misgivings about the EU, its governance, its efficiency, its unworldliness, and its erosion of democratic oversight and political accountabuility I eventually turned against Brexit. This was partly due to reasons of geopolitics, but also because I foresaw the almighty strategic and political mess Brexit is fast becoming.  Soft Brexit? Hard Brexit? No, we need quick Brexit, not lingering death Brexit, which is what the elite is now conspiring to deliver. 

For the sake of Britain, the EU, and indeed NATO, it is vital that Brexit is resolved in a quick, orderly and friendly manner. A responsible elite would recognise this strategic truism, honour the vote that was taken on June 23^rd as I have, and move to re-establish a new relationship with the EU outside of the institutions. In so doing they would pull together to realise the will of the people in what was a UK-wide vote and make it so.

Is that going to happen? No. Why? Brexit is precisely the big, complex, strategic, substantive process London has become useless at. And, because too much of the British political and bureaucratic elite is not only irresponsible…it is also crap!

Julian Lindley-French    

NATO-EU: Cybrid Jawfare?

“Boost our ability to counter hybrid threats, including by bolstering resilience, working together on analysis, prevention, and early detection, through timely information sharing and, to the extent possible, intelligence sharing between staffs; and cooperating on strategic communication and response. The development of coordinated procedures through our respective playbooks will substantially contribute to implementing our efforts”.

EU-NATO Joint Declaration, 8 July, 2016

Alphen, Netherlands. 18 November. On Wednesday, in my capacity as Vice-President of the Atlantic Treaty Association (ATA), I had the honour of chairing a meeting at the European Parliament in Brussels on NATO-EU co-operation on hybrid warfare. To be honest, as someone who knows a bit about hybrid warfare, my definition of it – the use of all state and many extra state means to exploit the seams and vulnerabilities of an opponent via disruption, destabilisation and disinformation – was also a pretty good description of NATO-EU relations up until recently. Anything changed?

In fact, the ATA pulled off something of a coup in having such a meeting take place in the august if somewhat labyrinthine bafflement that is the European Parliament. The fact that a NATO Assistant Secretary-General spoke at the meeting was also a sign that relations between the Alliance and the Union are improving.

Here’s the ‘but’. Many people think hybrid warfare is cyber warfare. And yes, in an age of ‘digitisation’, as outgoing President Obama yesterday called it in Berlin, cyber is a very important line of hybrid warfare operations. However, cyber warfare is only a part of hybrid warfare. The problem with the meeting was that I got the distinct impression that apart from me very few of the speakers knew what hybrid warfare actually is, and just how dangerous it can be if practised by an opponent that does know what it is – Russia. Consequently, what happened is what happens at all such meetings when those present do not really know what they are talking about. The meeting rapidly elevated into the upper atmosphere of strategic semantics, whilst at one and the same time retreating into the weeds of technical cybernetics.

One reason much of the meeting focused on what I rather disparagingly call ‘cybrid jawfare’ is precisely because ‘we’, be it the Western ‘we’, the NATO ‘we’, the European ‘we’, or the EU ‘we’, (and therein lies a very big problem) simply lack a counter-hybrid strategy worthy of the name.  Yes, we have the EU-NATO Joint Declaration and it is a start, but there have been so many starts in EU-NATO relations. Speak in the margins of any such meeting and as ever the gap between rhetoric and reality is precisely one of those seams adversaries can exploit.

There was the usual talk about the need for accelerated decision-making, better sharing of information and intelligence, the enhancing of societal resiliency, and the reinforcing of national efforts. However, when I pushed it was clear to me that far from preparing both the Alliance and the Union for a new form of warfare, much of it is still simply jawfare.  Why? Because the single most effective defence against hybrid warfare is still missing – political solidarity.

This is dangerous. The time for talking about doing needs to be rapidly replaced by simply doing. Yesterday, the Lithuanian Foreign Minister Linus Linkevicius said he was very worried that Russia would ‘test’ NATO before the Trump administration is sworn in on January 20^th next. So am I. That ‘test’ could well come in the form of hybrid warfare and an attempt to destabilise the Baltic States via an aggressive strategic communications campaign, cyber-interference, and the use of military power to intimidate the three countries. This week the Estonian government fell giving Moscow a gold-plated opportunity to interfere in the coming elections.

The threat is profound. If ‘we’ cannot protect the home base, ‘we’ will be unable to project power. Hybrid warfare is not half warfare, or pretend warfare, it is part of full-on warfare. Quite simply, we Europeans are still unable to protect our frighteningly open societies from destabilising political and social penetration. As such we are also unable to safeguard the political and societal resilience which effective policy and strategy requires. Therefore, we are unlikely to be able to project the influence, power and effect vital to preserving a credible security and defence, let alone a credible defence and deterrence posture.

The good news was that such a meeting took place at all in the European Parliament. It simply would not have been possible even five years ago. For that reason I very much applaud the initiative and it was an honour to chair it. However, the dictates of institutionalism come well before the rigours of policy and the disciplines of action. That can only happen because those in power see inter-institutional games as more important than forging a real partnership. In other words, complacency still reigns precisely because power does not as yet take the threat seriously enough.

There can be no security in contemporary Europe without the creation of a new ‘iron triangle’ – the US, NATO and the EU. Right now, ‘reality’ looks more like a meringue triangle – the appearance of a hard crust on the outside, very soft in the middle. Until the hybrid threat is seen as the strategic threat it is NATO and the EU will continue to act like two wary bull elephants dancing around each other on the head of a shrinking pin. Real progress will only be seen when effective and real strategy is crafted and the agility and adaptability central to the conduct of effective hybrid warfare is realised.

In May 1935, Winston Churchill wrote: “There is nothing new in the story. It is as old as the Sibylline Books. It falls into that long, dismal catalogue of the fruitlessness of experience and the confirmed unteachability of mankind. Want of foresight, unwillingness to act when action would be simple and effective, lack of clear thinking, confusion of counsel until the emergency comes, until self-preservation strikes its jarring gong, these are the features which constitute the endless repetition of history”.

EU-NATO: cybrid jawfare?

Julian Lindley-French           

Teddy Trump?

“Speak softly, but carry a big stick”.

President Theodore Roosevelt Jr

Alphen, Netherlands. 14 November. Last Thursday I had the honour of addressing some six hundred mainly British military personnel on Russia. Not surprisingly, the issue of President-elect Trump came up. This was hardly surprising given I presented a worse-case scenario which I suggested ‘President Clinton’ might need to deal with. Oops! The subsequent derision was the cause of much fun and ribaldry, and yes I am as surprised as anyone that Donald J. Trump now stands at the portal of the Oval Office. However, it did get me thinking about which POTUS Trump is most likely to, or rather should, emulate. The nearest I can come up with is the 26^th President of the United States Theodore (‘Teddy’) Roosevelt Jr.   

Teddy Roosevelt was Republican president between 1901 and 1909 during which time he endeavoured to drive forward an activist, progressive agenda, but was consistently thwarted by a ‘conservative’ Congress??? Whatever one may think of President-elect Trump’s presidential campaign it could hardly be called ‘progressive’, at least in the contemporary understanding of the term.  Trump will certainly be activist, pending activism reinforced by the appointment yesterday of right-wing firebrand Steve Barrons as his Chief Strategist.

And, I accept that my analogy is not neat as there are many differences between Roosevelt and Trump. The former was 42 when he came to power, the latter 70. Teddy Roosevelt was acknowledged as something of a scholar having published his book The Naval War of 1812 in 1882. Whilst the name of Donald J. Trump adorns the front cover of many books, one would hardly call him a scholar.

Roosevelt was also a soldier and an adventurer. Having served as Assistant Secretary to the Navy he resigned to fight in the Spanish-American War and in 1898 he led the 1^st United States Volunteer Cavalry (‘The Rough Riders’) with distinction at the battles of Las Guasimas and San Juan Hill in Cuba. Roosevelt was also awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1906 for helping to bring about the end of the Russo-Japanese War.

So, what similarity, if any’ could (and I stress ‘could’) link Teddy Roosevelt and Donald Trump. Trump, like Roosevelt, is an adventurer, albeit a business adventurer, although ‘Teddy’ too was an entrepreneur. To suggest Trump will be an isolationist seems to contradict the global nature of much of his business empire and the President-elect’s use and understanding of power.

Roosevelt was also an exponent of American power, which I think will come to define the Trump foreign policy far more than the feared/hoped for isolationism. In 1907 Roosevelt ordered the United States Navy – the so-called Great White Fleet – to circumnavigate the world. It was a statement of American power. In the Mediterranean the British made a counter-statement about the limits to then American power by lining up the mighty Royal Navy’s entire Mediterranean Fleet on either side of the American fleet. Still, both sides really knew America’s presence in the Mediterranean was a sign of things to come. President Roosevelt was speaking softly to the British, but the ‘big stick’ was clearly implied.

So, what could this mean in practice for Trump? Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov is causing a lot of mischief by suggesting a de facto Putin-Trump alliance could a) happen; and b) implicitly accept a Russian sphere of influence over Eastern Europe and much of the Middle East. Let’s see. Like many American presidents on taking office President Trump could well seek to find a new way forward in US-Russian relations. After all, that is precisely what President George W. Bush tried as well.

And yes, there is every possibility Transactional Trump will try and do a deal with President Putin. However, far from being a sell-out he will see it as the best way to both protect the NATO allies and reduce the burden of European security and defence on the American taxpayer. What the rest of us have to do is to try and ensure President Trump is not out-manoeuvred by that wily old fox Putin. That important aim has not been assisted by the silly name-calling too many of continental Europe’s leaders have indulged in over the past few days.

  

It is over the role of institutions in security where there is marked difference between the Trump world-view and the European elite world-view, and thus the most likely source of friction. Trump, like Roosevelt before him, has little understanding for, or empathy with, the values-driven institutionalism of Europeanism (and the Obama foreign policy).

Which brings me to the real challenge of Trumpism for America’s allies; if institutions like NATO can prove they act as multipliers of American power and influence then the Trump administration will likely back them. Allies will be treated in much the same way. If they can add value to American power, as Trump sees it, then they will be listened to by the Trump White House; if they cannot they will not be listened to.

Ultimately, President Theodore Roosevelt Jr, and President-elect Donald J. Trump were/are deal-makers who trade in power and results. Yes, President Trump will likely be an uncomfortable partner, and for the British trying to get close to him will be the political equivalent of riding a tiger. However, if President Trump finally forces Europe’s elite to awake from the slumber of its own self-obsession and re-connect European security with world security then he might just do Europe a favour.

There is one thing President Trump might learn from President Roosevelt – power is best exercised when it speaks softly and the stick is implicit rather than explicit. During the campaign President-elect Trump too often spoke too loudly, and too often threatened a big stick against all and sundry. However, unlike many Europeans I have faith in both Americans and the American political system, and as a matter of principle I always start from a position of respect for the office of president. For that reason I am far less concerned or shrill in my concerns about the Trump presidency than many of my rather silly fellow Europeans.

What can Europeans do? President Trump is fact. We are already suffering from Brexit-denial and too many European leaders seem to be now suffering from Trump-denial. So, stop whingeing Europe and start investing in the power that will both enhance Europe’s security and buy Europeans influence in the Trump White House - be that individually or collectively.

As for President-elect Trump, he could do far worse than try to emulate President Roosevelt.

Teddy Trump?

 

Julian Lindley-French

     

Trumxit!

“We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual and it is those interests it is our duty to follow”.

Lord Palmerston

Amsterdam Schiphol Airport, 9 November. Well, that went well didn’t it? I am sitting at Amsterdam Schiphol Airport about to cross the new inner-West border by flying to London. In June large hordes of British people told Brussels where to go with Brexit. Now, large swathes of the American people have told Washington where to go with Trumxit. Some Chicken Littles here in Europe are already screaming ‘the sky is falling, the sky is falling’. But is it? What are the ‘strategic’ implications of President-elect Trump’s victory? What would a Trump Doctrine look like?

US grand strategy: President Trump will certainly abandon the values that infused the ‘Obama Doctrine’ and likely adopt a hard-headed interests-led foreign and security policy. However, he alone will decide just what the US interest actually is. Certainly, there will be more money for the US armed forces, but probably also a surprisingly ‘pragmatic’ approach to dealing with the likes China and Russia. As for ISIS there is nothing Trump has said thus far that suggests he either understands the issues implicit in the threat, or is willing to commit the immense forces and resources over time and distance needed to deal with it.

Brexit: Britain suddenly has a powerful ally in the White House for the coming Brexit negotiations with the EU, if for once London can exploit such an opportunity. Trump made no effort to hide his admiration for the decision of the British to quit the EU and even claimed Brexit was an inspiration for his campaign.  The Special Relationship might linger on a little longer if Theresa May’s Cabinet can hold its nose long enough to make use of it. If I were London I would get that British new super-carrier over to the US pronto! After all, President-elect Trump clearly enjoys the theatre of power.

NATO: Much will depend on how the Allies react to President Trump. As I wrote in a piece earlier in the year President Trump is likely to adopt a transactional foreign and security policy. As such he will hold the Allies to a far greater degree of burden sharing if the US is to remain the security guarantor of Europe. He will certainly demand the Allies at the very least fulfil and quickly the commitment made at the 2014 Wales Summit to spend 2% GDP on defence of which 20% must be spent on new military equipment. However, comments this morning that NATO is finished are as ever premature.

The West: The old West is dead, long-live the new West? The West was born of an Anglo-American partnership that spawned a global institution-based security order. It is not a little ironic then in that it is the Anglo-Americans who are fast killing it off, which from a British viewpoint is actually a disaster. President Trump will probably accelerate a trend toward Machtpolitik which has sadly been underway for some time, and which speaks to the very nature of a transactional foreign policy. A shared understanding of, and penchant for, big, uncouth power seems to be the spring of Trump’s bromance with Putin, and seems to be how he conducts his business empire.  Equally, if the idea of the West as a bloc is to survive under President Trump, then the Europeans will at least have to abandon some of the overdone institutionalism that passes for foreign and security policy in Europe, and properly reinvest in tools of power and influence.

There is of course a big ‘but’ with all of the above. As I write this it looks like Republicans are making gains in both the House of Representatives and the Senate. With people like Senator John McCain (R-Az) likely to hold key positions on the Senate Armed Services and other important congressional committees, the confirmation process for the new Administration will impose at least some level of balance. In any case, for all Trump’s fiery rhetoric during the campaign from about America’s place and role in the world his emphasis is likely to be overwhelmingly on undoing Obama’s domestic legacy, most notably the Affordable Healthcare Act.  Yes, the armed forces will get a boost to shore up the support of his base, but foreign policy will not be President Trump’s over-riding concern. In any case, he will be mired in endless battles with a Washington that he regards as a ‘swamp’ and which he has vowed to ‘drain’.

Which brings me to the real danger; there will be no Trump Doctrine. Rather, a Trump foreign policy could well descend into a mix of bluster, opportunism, isolationism, idiosyncratic activism, mercantilism, and trade protectionism, but offer little or no coherent or consistent strategy. Given how dangerous uncertainty is already making the world there is little question that President Trump could make the world more, not less dangerous. That is why European leaders far from rejecting President-elect Trump must now hug him close.

When Lord Palmerston made that famous statement about British interests at the height of Empire he did so firm in the belief that it was in the British interest to maintain strategic balance. President-elect Trump has as yet to evince any suggestion that he understands America’s pivotal role in the maintenance of today’s strategic balance. One can only hope he develops such a vision and quickly…for all our sakes.

Plane to catch!

Julian Lindley-French    

Closing NATO’s Deterrence Gaps

 “Russia is using the whole range of of state organs and powers to push its foreign policy in increasingly aggressive ways”.

MI5 Director-General Andrew Parker. 1 November, 2016

Alphen, Netherlands. 3 November. Russia is exploiting NATO’s many deterrence gaps because the Alliance no longer understands deterrence. Back in 1959 Bernard Brodie defined deterrence as a strategy designed to dissuade an adversary of an action not yet taken. Then deterrence was seen as what Herman Kahn infamously called the Homicide Pact Machine. However, contemporary deterrence requires far more than mutually assured nuclear destruction. Deterrence today is a complex mix of political will, conventional armed forces, nuclear forces, societal resiliency, new technology, and even psychological robustness. Moscow understands that and has embarked on a counter-deterrence influence strategy so that relatively weaker Russia can systematically undermine inherently far stronger NATO.

Moscow’s strategy operates at several levels. Russia is seeking to weaken NATO conventional military deterrence by establishing local, temporary military superiority and implying the threat of a long war that would force the Alliance to trade space for time. Moscow’s aim is to establish a virtual buffer zone of influence, not to trigger a war with the Alliance as a whole. Russia would either lose such a war, or trigger a nuclear conflict which Moscow understands would be a disaster for all. However, that does not preclude Moscow from embarking on a ‘limited’ Baltic land grab if it deemed the circumstances to be sufficiently propitious. Around the Baltic States Russia now enjoys local military superiority.  And, whilst NATO conventional forces look strong on paper, many of them are either not equipped, ill-equipped, or simply unable to move quickly in support a major crisis in NATO’s east.

However, it is Alliance nuclear deterrence where Russian strategists are employing their considerable intellectual, strategic, and indeed psychological skills. By introducing illegal short and medium-range nuclear weapons back into Europe, and by suggesting they might have a warfighting role, Moscow is trying to break the continuity link between NATO’s conventional and nuclear deterrents. Moscow is also only too happy to leave an implied threat of nuclear war hanging toxically in the minds of its fellow Europeans.

 

The strategy is working. Apart from a limited French mid-range airborne nuclear capability, and some ancient American assets based in Germany, there is no credible political link between NATO’s conventional and nuclear forces. If ‘enhanced forward presence’, i.e. the conventional deterrent failed the US, Britain and France would be faced with the prospect of resorting to the use of their strategic nuclear forces. Such forces could in theory play a ‘sub-strategic’ role given that most of them can carry a range of warheads with different levels of destructive kilo-tonnage and mega-tonnage. However, these systems are submarine-based and in a sense self-deter as Moscow have to assume that if such a missile appeared on its radars it would herald a country-busting strategic exchange. Given that reality the idea that such weapons could deter a ‘limited’ war in Eastern Europe let alone be used is not only politically ‘incredible’ (in the real meaning of the word), it is unthinkable.

Deterrence is not simply about weapons – far from it. Russia is employing a range of irregular methods to undermine Alliance deterrence. This includes hybrid warfare, a range of soft power tactics, through the use of social media to sow disinformation, and direct efforts to exploit the political divisions in already divided European societies.  Strategic miscommunication and disinformation is spread via a ‘hybrid truth’ strategy using television networks such as RT and Sputnik that are little more than instruments of Russian propaganda. Moscow has also bought some misguided academics and commentators in Europe to help ‘multiply the message’.

   

Russia’s use of cyber-warfare is proving particularly adept. Andrew Parker’s statement coincided with this week’s announcement by the British Government that it will spend some £2bn/$2.4bn on a new cyber-warfare capability that would, in the words of Chancellor Philip Hammond, enable Britain to “strike back” against attackers. Russia already has a major offensive cyber capability focussed on its mammoth Ministry of State Security, and is about to invest another $250m.

Why is Russia for the moment succeeding? The strongest/weakest pillar of deterrence is politics. Political deterrence worked during the Cold War because Moscow believed credible the NATO Article 5 premise that an attack on one Alliance member would be regarded as an attack on all. Today, the automaticity of NATO collective defence is not so clear. Last week I was in Italy. Many senior Italians simply dismiss the Russian ‘threat’ as the hysterical ramblings of a few, small Baltic States. It is a point of view held elsewhere in Europe, most notably in France. Critically, NATO’s eastern, southern, and western members are profoundly divided over where to make the Main Effort. Worse, the two traditional bastions of the Alliance are either distracted, as in the case of the US, or politically-broken, as in the case of the UK. Brexit is proving to be precisely the strategic disaster I predicted, and which forced me to abandon any support for it.

So, what to do? At the July NATO Warsaw Summit the Alliance agreed that, “NATO’s capacity to deter and defend is supported by an appropriate mix of capabilities. Nuclear conventional and missile defence capabilities complement each other. NATO also maintains the freedom of action and flexibility to respond to the full spectrum of challenges with an appropriate and tailored approach, at the minimum level of force”.

In such political circumstances NATO’s room for deterrent manoeuvre is limited. However, if the Alliance is to plug its deterrence gaps there are some things the alliance, or at least its more powerful members could do, if one assumes that a weak Russia does not actually seek all-out war. First, contest the cyber-battlespace. Do not leave the field to the Russians to exploit cyberspace at will. Second, contest the hybrid information-space. Deconstruct Russian propaganda and actively promote a message of strength and friendship to the Russian people. Third, mean what we say. Alliance members must actually fulfil the commitments they make at NATO summits.  Fourth, forge a new Resiliency Pact between NATO and the EU to render European society more robust in preventing Moscow’s efforts to divide and distract.   Above all, NATO members must prevent the strength/weakness balance of power to reach a point anywhere in the Alliance where Russia’s own internal self-contradictions might lead a Kremlin in crisis to chance a nationalist-adventurist gamble.

If NATO is to fulfil its mission the Alliance must not only fill the deterrence gaps, it must think anew about just what deterrence actually means and demands in the twenty-first century. Then, just then, we might convince President Putin to avoid actions not yet taken, and which may lead who knows where...

Julian Lindley-French

The Riga Test 2016

Alphen, Netherlands. 31 October. I have just returned from this year’s outstanding Riga Conference in the beautiful and historic Latvian capital. My sincere congratulations to Toms Baumanis and his team of young professionals and volunteers at the Latvian Transatlantic Organisation for putting on such a great event.

Some years ago I established the Riga Test. It is a simple test; can the good citizens of Riga sleep soundly safe in the knowledge that their liberties and freedoms are protected and defended? When I established the test some ten years ago it was a very different world. My purpose was to say to NATO and the Allies that this is the real test of Alliance defence and deterrence. To be frank, I did not expect at the time the Riga test to become active. Now, I am not so sure.

Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea, the shooting down of Malaysian Airliner MH17, the cyber and ‘hybrid’ harassment of Baltic allies, the interference in Western elections, and the soon-to-be unleashed massive Russian assault on Aleppo, quite possibly on Wednesday, the deployment of treaty-busting nuclear weapons into central Europe, all suggest a Moscow that believes Machtpolitik and Weltpolitik are one and the same thing.

However, in saying that I must also confront a dilemma. To what extent does my Riga Test actually contribute to the unease, even the fear that those charge with Russian propaganda clearly want to instil in the people not just of Latvia, but wider Europe?    One of my best friends, a senior Latvian diplomat, reminded me over the weekend that the Riga Test also imposes responsibilities on me. He is right and there is a point for me to answer.

In fact this is a responsibility which I take very seriously indeed. You may have noticed that for a bit of fun I style myself a ‘strategic hooligan’. This is to demonstrate my fearless determination to confront power with hard realities, and believe me I did not hold back in Riga.  However, the only real strategic hooligan around at present is Russia. My overriding feeling about this is one of sadness as I have great respect for Russia and Russians. Still, Russia’s strategic hooliganism is an observable fact.

There are three things that really worry me about the Riga Test today. The first two are European elite complacency and Russian economic weakness.  The third issue I will come to in a moment. Too much of Europe’s leadership simply do not lead when it comes to the defence of Europe. They are utterly complacent about all the challenges Europe now faces, and not just from Putin’s Russia. It is that complacency which creates the space for Putin to cause strategic mischief.

My second worry is not Russian strength, but Russian weakness. For all Russia’s appalling behaviour of late it is no Soviet Union and we are not about to enter a new Cold War. For all the military sabre-rattling Russia’s economy is about half the size of Britain’s economy. Unfortunately, like the Soviet Union before it, Russia’s military-industrial complex is consuming an ever-greater amount of the Russian economy.

In the 1980s Europe ‘got away with it’ because Gorbachev came to power in Moscow and tried to reform an unreformable Soviet state. One of Gorbachev’s aim was to open the Soviet economy up which eventually rendered Moscow amenable to a new relationship with the West. President Putin seems intent on driving the Russian economy in the opposite direction, which will not end well.

Which brings me to my third worry; Brexit and NATO. Britain is committing a significant force to the defence of the Baltic States and rightly so. And yet at the conference there was a distinctly anti-British tinge. Indeed, I became increasingly irritated by the disrespectful tone of many comments about my country. People may not like the democratic decision the British people have taken to leave the EU, and on balance I agree it was a mistake, but that is democracy. Get over it!

There is an even more serious point at stake here. If people expect and want one of the world’s top five powers to go on defending them, to put the lives of their young people on the line in pursuit of their defence, then at least show some respect! There seems to be a disconnect in the mind of many Europeans between Brexit and NATO. The two are entirely connected. If EU member-states who are also NATO members believe they can drive a hard bargain over a soft Brexit AND expect the British to continue to defend them; think again. There could well come a point when the British people get so fed up at the attitude of certain allies that they will begin to ask why Britain should bother. To use the language of my native Yorkshire, the British people might invite them to bugger off and defend themselves! 

What is really needed is a new relationship between Britain and the EU as quickly as possible. This will end the uncertainty, the growing irritation, and prevent Brexit becoming an almighty strategic distraction. Britain, after all, is not the enemy!  

Ultimately, it is my job to call it as I see it. After all, informed citizens speaking their minds should be how Western democracy functions, however inconvenient oft-too-distant, elites find such challenge. My purpose is to not to make such elites weaker, but better. Therefore, I will of course continue to consider carefully what I write and how I write it, as I do all the time. However, I will not, nor will I ever, demur from my citizen’s right to speak hard truths to lacklustre power. Especially when it concerns the freedoms and liberties of my friends in Latvia and the other Baltic States.

After all, that is ultimately why I established the Riga Test.

Julian Lindley-French          

Is 'Rome' About to Fall Again?

“…the vicissitudes of fortune, which spare neither man nor the proudest of his works, which buries empires and cities in a common grave”.

Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

Rome, Italy. 27 October. It is eerie.  The extent to which contemporary Europe appears to look much like the Roman Empire on the eve of its demise. Rome’s fall began with the loss of Britannia in 383 AD, Rome’s decline took far longer. Over many years the Empire became de-stabilised by Visigoth hordes driven from the east by horse-mounted Hunnic warriors pushing into Europe from Central Asia. For a time Rome tried to integrate the Goths, or at least work with them. Alaric, the great Goth king famously forged an alliance, and indeed a friendship, with Roman General Flavius Stilicho. However, when Stilicho was murdered in 408 AD by those close to the Emperor Honorius it was the last straw and Alaric broke completely with Rome. Alaric’s willingness to work with a perfidious Rome had been declining for some years. He tired of being promised a homeland within the Empire that never came to pass, and he grew bitter that his forces were used as front-line cannon-fodder in Rome’s seemingly interminable border wars. Finally, in 408 AD Alaric marched on Rome, and in 410 AD he sacked the Eternal City.

Rome never recovered. Between 410 AD and 455 AD the weakened Empire faced repeated attacks by the fearsome Huns, culminating in the massive Battle of the Cataulanian Plains in 451 AD, in what is today modern day France. It was an unlikely alliance of Roman General Flavius Aetius and Goth King Theodoric I that defeated Attila the Hun. However, for the Empire it was a Pyrrhic victory. Rome lost six of its best legions in the battle which effectively sealed the Empire’s fate.

However, it was not military might alone that defeated Rome. In October 439 AD the Vandal King Gaiseric, one of the most under-estimated strategists in history, captured Carthage in what is today Tunisia. Back then Carthage was the bread-basket of Rome, supplying the vast bulk of the city’s food. For years Rome had been suffering economic shocks. Without Carthage Rome simply starved.       

Why did Rome decline? There were many reasons. Edward Gibbon put it down to the adoption of Christianity as the ‘state’ religion and the loss of Roman virtues. However, perhaps the most compelling reason was that by the fifth century Rome was politically decadent, led by a deeply divided and utterly self-obsessed elite totally focussed on the inner politics of Rome. It was arrogance that brought Rome down reinforced by a firmly held and misplaced belief that it was superior and thus destined to rule.

In fact, Rome’s decline had been evident for at least a century. In 286 AD Emperor Diocletian had split Rome into an Eastern and a Western Empire because it had become effectively ungovernable. The East and the West then went their own ways even fighting civil wars with each other.  Rome’s day was done.

Now, scroll forward some sixteen hundred years to modern day Europe. Look at a map of Europe and even today the borders of many European states still reflect the tribal borders carved out with blood in the fifth century AD. The similarities do not end there. ‘Europe’ has been the dominant world grouping for some 500 years. Even the US was, and is, created in Europe’s image. The ‘Empire’ today is, of course, the EU. Like Rome before it the EU is about to lose ‘Britannia’. And, like Diocletian Brussels is simply unable to govern effectively the whole of a Europe that remains very different from one end to the other. Today, the ‘barbarian hordes’ (the word barbarian derives from the Latin word meaning to ‘babble’, i.e. not speak Latin) come not from the east but from the south. And, like Roman citizens before them, many Europeans see such illegal mass migration as akin to an invading horde.

Then there is the latter day Geiseric, President Putin, who seeks to control much of Europe’s power and energy supplies (look who sponsors the Champions League – Gazprom). For Putin, like Gaiseric before him, control of a vital commodity is simply a means to a strategic leverage end.  Like Gaiseric, Putin seeks at the very least an inflated ‘tribute’ from ‘Europe’, or like Attila the freedom to ‘sack’ bits of it when and as he so pleases. Attila would have fully understood the Putinian concept of ‘changing facts on the ground’ because that is what he did.   

The EU? Like Rome Europe’s latter day ‘senators’ seem obsessed with the inner-workings and politics of Brussels, are utterly divided over the future of the EU, ever more subject to repeated economic shocks, and unable or unwilling to see the dangers lurking beyond Europe’s borders. Chancellor Merkel as Caesar Augustus? I don’t think so.

In fact history does not repeat itself, because by definition it cannot. Europe today is very different from is fifth century predecessor, and in any case we Europeans are not organised into tribes, are we? Moreover, to condemn all migrants as being part of one almighty invading horde would not only be inaccurate, it would also be utterly unfair. But then again the Huns, Vandals, and Visigoths were themselves very different, and in the early days at least sought very different relationships with Rome.  Critically, if Europe is to cope with massive immigration surely the first duty of those in power is to separate good people from bad people, irrespective of race, creed, religion etc.

What do repeat themselves are patterns of power, and it is the ‘pattern’ of Rome’s fall that is perhaps most germane to contemporary Europe. President Putin’s Weltmacht and the growing challenge of illiberal power to the Western liberal order, and the other-worldly fanaticism of IS and its ‘fighters’ both reveal one great weakness that is shared by modern Europe and pre-medieval Rome. They both refused to face up to reality. In Rome’s case by the time Aetius eventually convinced the imperial family to face the precarious reality Rome was facing it was far too late. In any case, like Stilicho before him, Aetius was murdered by the Emperor for becoming too powerful.  Rome lost its last great general.

It is not yet too late for modern Europe to face reality. However ‘tempus’ does indeed ‘fugit’.

Julian Lindley-French

Demons and Dragons: A Marshall Plan for the Middle East?

“We are in the middle of a world revolution, and I don’t mean Communism. The revolution I am talking about is that of the poor, little people all over the world. They’re beginning to learn what there is in life, and to learn what they are missing”.

General George C. Marshall

Alphen, Netherlands. 25 October. With the Battle of Mosul in full swing the next stage of the war between the Middle Eastern state and anti-state IS forces is about to begin. This stage could well see more attacks launched around the periphery of the Middle East, most notably in Europe. On Saturday I listened to US General John Allen speaking on BBC Radio about what he warned could be a potentially ‘interminable conflict’. General Allen has kindly written the foreword to a new book William Hopkinson and I have written entitled “The New Geopolitics of Terror: Demons and Dragons” (Routledge) which will be published in January 2017.

The book is sub-titled Demons and Dragons because it refers to the range of multifarious and nefarious actors (demons) involved in the war and which make the struggle for Mosul just one, albeit deadly element, in what is a generational struggle over faith, ideas, territory and power. It is a struggle that will not only shape the future Middle East and much of North Africa, but also much of the geopolitics beyond.

 

And then there are the dragons. This is not simply a war between Iraq, Syria, IS, and a host of other rebel groups. As the involvement of Iran, Turkey and other regional power attests; the current struggle could simply be the prelude to a general Middle Eastern war between states. And, beyond the dragons there are the super-dragons, global powers for which the Middle East is again a theatre for geopolitical competition, and not just between Russia and the West.

     

What to do? Perhaps America’s biggest-thinking and most considered military man what General Allen told the BBC might surprise some and should be a lesson for all Western leaders.  There will be no military solution to the conflicts in the Middle East and terrorism will never be defeated. What matters instead is a sustained coherent, cohesive grand strategy, and billions of dollars of investment to partner forces for good in the region (and there are many) that could offer the region’s millions of people some hope for their future. In other words, what is needed is thus a new Marshall Plan for the Middle East it could well be the defining foreign policy mission of the coming US Administration.

The European Recovery Program or Marshall Plan (named after its architect General George C. Marshall) was launched in April 1948. Eventually Washington pumped some $12 billion dollars (about $50 billion in today’s money) into a European economy shattered by World War Two. Critically, the Plan was not simply an act of American altruism. Rather, it was a crucial ‘weapon’ in the early Cold War with the Soviet Union because it was an investment in European freedom and future prosperity. That is precisely why Stalin and Molotov rejected the Plan.

Now, one can argue about the efficacy and wisdom of Western-inspired plans to impose democracy on Middle Eastern societies. However, if one looks at global mega-trends that are also driving conflict in the Middle East the need for socio-economic reform looks ever more critical. This means at the very least improved education, prospect of jobs, reduced corruption and the just rule of law.

  

Here is where the challenge really begins. Of late the approach of the US and the wider-West to the grand challenge posed by the Middle East has been little more than a hand-wringing counsel of despair. If Western leaders really want to end conflict, humanitarian suffering and the seemingly endless flows of society-bending migration flows into Europe then a radical policy shift is needed in which they invest political, as well as real capital, over the short, medium and long-run. This is after all a generational challenge.

Paradoxically, for such a plan to work it would also need NOT to be a Western plan, with a name that was of the Arab people not of the West. There would also be a vital need to link local community-based activism to grand strategy via grand policy in much the same way as the European Recovery Program. The role of charities and other legitimate agencies that make life bearable in the region would be pivotal, many of which are Muslim. Work would also be needed to support regional states and institutions such as the Arab League to see the money regional powers invest are matched and that political reforms bolster rather that weaken partner states. Iran and Russia? Like the Marshall Plan Moscow and Tehran would be invited to participate to demonstrate the Plan favoured neither Shia nor Sunni, neither East nor West. If, like Stalin and Molotov, Moscow and Tehran refuse to co-operate then they would be frozen out.

The consequences of failure? Yet another Western failure in the Middle East would be disastrous, most notably for Europeans, but above all the people of the region itself. Indeed, the Plan would be as much about securing the citizens of Berlin, Paris, London et al as those in the Middle East. And it is this bigness of vision that would perhaps be the greatest challenge to a generation of post-Cold War European political leaders long on rhetoric, very short on action and delivery, and even shorter on political vision and courage.  

For such a plan to work it would need to be very big and very long. For, as General Allen said on the BBC, such a Plan would in turn require politicians to “embrace enormity of newness of thinking, planning and structure and think very differently”. Is the West up to it? If not the twenty-first century will be a very cold and a very dangerous place. What alternative do we have?

Julian Lindley-French