NATO TECHNOLOGY TRENDS 2023-2043

 

“Significant or revolutionary disruption of military capabilities is either already ongoing or will have considerable effect over the next five to ten years”.

NATO Technology Trends 2023-2043, March 2023

 

Train-spotting

 

March 31^st. Let me admit something terribly embarrassing at the outset of this missive: I was a train-spotter. Yes, in my now distant youth I would stand at the end of still sooty station platforms wearing the eponymous hooded quilted jacket known as the anorak, taking down the numbers of locomotives as they passed. As a group we were also dismissed as ‘The Anoraks’. At the time steam traction was steadily giving way to diesel and electric traction and it was the technology that I found interesting.   That is perhaps why I am also directing a major conference that will take place in October entitled Future War, Strategy and Technology under the leadership of General Lord Richards (sponsorship opportunities still available).

 

The conference is supported by NATO and its Chief Scientist, Dr Bryan Wells.  Bryan and his team have just published the excellent NATO Technology Trends 2023-2043 https://www.nato.int/nato_static_fl2014/assets/pdf/2023/3/pdf/stt23-vol1.pdf & https://www.nato.int/nato_static_fl2014/assets/pdf/2023/3/pdf/stt23-vol2.pdf

 

Future proofing NATO

 

The core message of the NATO report is both sobering and encouraging in equal measure.  Between 2023 and 2043 NATO asserts that advanced military technologies will become increasingly intelligent, interconnected, decentralised and digital.  This was also the conclusion of my 2022 Oxford book Future War and the Defence of Europe, co-written by General John R. Allen and Lieutenant-General Ben Hodges. Consequently, military capabilities will become ever more autonomous of human command, networked, multi-domain, and precise, not to mention fast (hyperwar). The technologies that appear in the battlespace will also be increasingly those developed first and foremost by the commercial sector and thus have a raft of dual-use applications.

 

The good news is that such emerging technology-enabled capabilities will greatly increase NATO’s ability to uphold a credible deterrence and defence posture by turbo-charging the Alliance’s operational and organisational effectiveness. The NATO of 2043 will also be a markedly different beast to the NATO of 2023…it will need to be. Critically, so-called emerging and disruptive technologies (EDT) will enable the NATO Warfighting Capstone Concept’s five Warfare Development Imperatives (WDI): Cognitive Superiority; Integrated Multi-Domain Defence; Cross-Domain Command; Layered Resilience; and wide-ranging Influence and Power Projection.

The not-so-good news is that NATO’s adversaries, most notably China are also fully engaged in exploiting these technologies for future war. Moreover, they also present significant challenges to the Alliance across the operational, interoperability, ethical, legal, and moral spectrum.  In the twenty years to 2021, the combined EU countries increased defence expenditure by 20%, the US by 66%, Russia by 292% and China by 592%.  In other words, the Allies need to relearn some of the ‘national endeavour’ lessons of industrial warfare – albeit contextualised for the information age – and provide the investment required to place their defence industries on a war footing.  This needs to drive a closer and more transparent relationship between defence and industry to ensure that their forces can acquire and maintain the right information technology, combat platforms, support systems and munition stockpiles within the right timescale and at the right cost to deter and, if required, defeat future threats.  The nature of 21st century warfighting technology suggests that industry must be an integral part of the through-life team that helps to maintain defence’s combat edge and readiness. 

Interoperability or inoperability?

The key to NATO’s future credibility is the maintenance of military interoperability in extreme high-end warfare. As China moves to exploit such technologies, so is the United States.  Therefore, industrial resilience will be a core plank of national deterrence, and will require a continuous flow of expenditure on defence, albeit on occasions at low rates of production.  Viable industrial independence amongst European nations, albeit interoperable with US capability and industry, will incentivise cross-Alliance burden-sharing with capability programme collaboration between nations as a way to economise on effort.  As a direct consequence of the NATO Technology Trends report NATO and its agencies should undertake an immediate audit of industrial capability and capacity and, thereafter, undertake the role of broker in this field ideally in conjunction with the European Defence Agency.

The specific aim of such a demarche would be to better understand the cradle-to- grave concept, development and acquisition of potentially revolutionary technologies that range across artificial intelligence, quantum computing, machines-learning, big data, Nano-tech, materials, hypersonic and glide missile systems, drone swarming and a host of other technologies and capabilities that begs two very big questions indeed: can the European Allies keep up and if so how?    

First, the Alliance needs to build on the 2019 Military Strategy and the Warfare Development Initiative by developing a force model that can act as systems and platform integrator within Allied forces structures and across the nations. In the TAG Shadow NATO Strategic Concept we called on the NATO Canadian and European Allies to go beyond current planning to preserve all-important military interoperability into the future. Specifically, the creation of a NATO Allied Command Operations Mobile Heavy Force (AMHF) that would consolidate all Allied Rapid Response Forces into a single pool of forces supported by the requisite force, logistical and wider support structures.

 

Second, if speed of relevance is to be maintained the Alliance needs to adopt a concept of agile manufacturing and procurement that will enable the better exploitation of civilian technologies and thus far faster fielding of military capability at the required capacity. ‘Spin-in’ from adjacent (non-defence) sectors and incentives for S&T collaboration expand defence’s ability to innovate.  The pace at which ideas move from laboratory to frontline can be a deterrent in their own right; this relies on investment, focus and exploitation projects. 

 

Third, maintenance of a strong Science & Technology (S&T) base and supporting investment will be essential to sustain a warfighting edge. Investment can be wasted if key R&D activity is not exploited quickly. 

Fourth, defence requirements and procurement practice have yet to embrace fully data and information-centric capability.  This is not to eschew the importance of platforms but they will need to be better configured around the information [on-board or remote] operators need to fulfil their mission, and be able to integrate into a wider force. 

Fifth, given that most equipment in service in 2035 is either in service now or is just coming into service, platform-based capability must accommodate faster refresh rates for information- and other sub-systems.  There are some historical precedents for this and current experimentation in the field. For example, in 1906 HMS Dreadnought was a platform that fielded innovations that had been discretely developed independently for decades prior to being finally brought together in one ship.

Sixth, growing through-life technical complexity can only be delivered and sustained effectively by innovative commercial arrangements with ‘rainbow teams’ of large and small suppliers; these long-term relationships require two-way commitment, transparency and flexibility.

Seventh, higher procurement costs results in fewer platforms being acquired with more integrated capability to compensate. This leads to unbearable affordability and risk management issues, a vicious cycle of cost escalation, delayed delivery and reduced mass leads to indigenous industry abandoning key areas, and leaving fewer off the shelf options.

Eighth, while significant effort is applied to delivering large-scale programmes, operational military capability is most often the result of combining those programme outputs.  However there is much less focus on thematic or cross-cutting multi-platform and/or multi-domain system of systems (e.g. integrated air defence) - which will be the key enabler of future military capability. 

Ninth, although best led by market forces, there is strategic risk in the marked decline in the number of defence industries. Reliance on a few ‘mega-primes’ will create dependencies which may not be able to deliver capability and materiel scale up at times of crisis.  .

Tenth, despite the Alliance having academic, research and commercial industry partners who lead the world in the development and fielding of some of the most exciting, breakthrough technologies for a range of applications, defence innovation too often focuses more on ‘discovering ideas’ than innovation adoption.  Generally high-tech, safety intensive nature will require systems thinking to be applied from the outset allied to the early engagement of regulators. 

Eleventh, fewer forces/less combat mass than in previous eras of confrontation creates an imperative for greater interoperability and multi-domain integration.  Greater rigour in enforcing common standards (STANAGs) and measuring the effectiveness of technical and procedural interoperability will be increasingly important. 

Twelfth, defence and defence industry are too often in competition with other (non-defence) industrial sectors for the skills required to create and sustain defence capability.  An enterprise approach to the development and nurturing of relevant skills between public and private sectors will be required to ensure the right number and balance exists; this will undoubtedly require closer collaboration and some employment innovation. 

Thirteenth, focussing time and resources on totemic platforms, without an equal focus on the ‘dull but essential’ supporting aspects (such as materiel and weapons stockpiles) undermines performance and effect. At the very least, a revalidation of stockpile planning is urgently required in the light of recent experience in Ukraine. 

Fourteenth (and perhaps above all other considerations), the Alliance must not become blinded by emerging and disruptive technologies.  Human enhancement via twenty-first century professional military education and training (PMET) at all levels of mission command will be vital. Cognitive superiority will be as important as technological superiority and most definitely not an afterthought, which it too often is. PMET needs to do far more at all levels of intended effect, not least assisting in conscious work on using technology (simulation et al) to make the operation of platforms and systems easier from both a motor skills and cognitive perspective.

 

S**t happens!

 

S**t happens! All military technology ultimately comes down to policy and planning. In May 1941 a naval battle took place that remains a metaphor for the profound tensions that exist between future war and the defence of Europe.  A severely over-stretched force sent an ageing ship to confront a state of the art enemy because there was little else to send and because repeated opportunities to modernise had been sacrificed over years to satisfy politics at the expense of strategy and defence. Europe today.  

 

On the morning of May 24, 1941 in the Denmark Strait between Iceland and Greenland, a fifteen inch (38cm) armour-piercing naval shell from the German fast battleship KM Bismarck crashed into the starboard side of the British battlecruiser HMS Hood.  The shell penetrated deep into the innards of Hood, pierced the armoured deck and then exploded in one of the shell rooms for the ship’s 4 inch guns which were also close to the shell rooms for two of the Hood’s main 15 inch batteries. As Bismarck’s shell exploded the stored and ‘ready’ British shells joined together in an almighty chorus of cataclysmic death that sent a cathedral spire of flame towering over the doomed ship.

 

The essential problems were hubris, denial and relative under-investment.  At 47,000 tons The Mighty Hood was a symbol of fading British naval might in the interbellum.  By May 1941, she was over twenty-two years old.  Plans had been in place to modernise her in 1937 but the money had been diverted to other projects, including for the completion of the new battleship HMS Prince of Wales that accompanied her into battle.

 

An Allied Mobile Heavy Force would protect against such failure because it would act as an agile and adaptive high-end, first responder and force integrator, an Allied Future Force able to act from seabed to space and across the domains of air, sea, land, cyber, space, information, and knowledge. If sufficiently robust and responsive, and held at a sufficient level of readiness, such a force would be able to meet any and all threats to the territory of the Euro-Atlantic area in the first instance, with sufficient capacity to also support those frontline nations facing transnational threats such as terrorism.

 

Future War, Strategy and Technology

 

War is the consequence of bad policy that fuses strategy and technology. In Future War and the Defence of Europe we write, “…the danger persists that Europeans are moving inexorably towards a lowest common denominator European force, an analogue ‘European army’ in a digital age which simply bolts together a lot of European legacy forces”.  To avoid that is precisely the reason for the Future War, Strategy and Technology Conference.

 

As for my trainspotting there is a gaping hole in my Ian Allen train-spotters book of locomotive numbers: BR Class 9F 2-10-0 92220 Evening Star. Any ideas?

 

I commend NATO Technology Trends 2023-2043 to you.

 

Julian Lindley-French

Britain’s Down-Payment Defence Review

 

“We have, as the House is aware…a very great problem [German and Japanese rearmament]…that will have to be met in the next four to five years and, as we go on to meet those conditions, one of our greatest problems will be to consider whether such measures as we have taken hitherto will be sufficient”.

Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, House of Commons, 24 February 1936

Refresh or re-hash?

March 17^th, 2023. What should the world’s fifth or sixth largest economy spend on defence and what kind of force does it need given its location, the threat array it faces, and the alliances and partnerships Britain needs to leverage?

On launching the Integrated Review Refresh (IR2023) Prime Minister Rishi Sunak described Russia as the greatest regional threat to Britain’s security which was in turn intrinsically-linked to the outcome of the war in Ukraine. He also said that China “poses an epoch-defining challenge”. Given the scale of the challenges implicit in those statements compared with the money London is prepared to further invest in defence the IR2023 is yet another down-payment on defence, a down-payment on future war, a down-payment on future alliances, and a down-payment on the warfighting lessons from Ukraine for which most of the British armed forces lack the critical capability and capacity.  Above all, IR2023 is yet another down-payment on Global Britain which if it is ever to be anything more than empty political rhetoric will require London to invest far more in defence and far more efficiently.  

Given the centrality of China to Britain’s Integrated Review Refresh it is interesting to compare and contrast “IR2023” with President Xi Jinping’s “Great Wall of Steel” speech this week. China’s President was uncompromising: “We must fully promote the modernisation of national defence and the armed forces, and build the peoples’ armed forces into a Great Wall of Steel that effectively safeguards national sovereignty, security and development interests”, during which he announced a further 7.2% increase in the Chinese defence budget to $224 billion (in fact China already spends far more).  This is a year-on-year increase of some $15 billion. Britain, on the other hand, will increase its defence expenditure of $70.2 billion by $6 billion by 2025, with a “somewhere over the rainbow” promise to spend 2.5% of a $3 trillion economy bit only if “fiscal and economic circumstances allow”.  They never do.   

One could argue that given China’s official defence budget is only some 1.5% of Chinese GDP Britain’s hike is reasonable. That is not the case.  First, China’s nominal GDP is $14.14 billion, whilst its “usable” GDP (Power Purchasing Parity) is $27.31 trillion, whereas Britain’s ‘PPP’ is only $3.78 billion.  The map above is interesting in that it shows GDP per capita and confirms the extent to which China is a developing nation and Russia is close to being a failed state.  Economists would suggest that as a consequence neither China nor Russia really poses an existential threat to either Britain or its allies. Unfortunately, economists by and large fail to understand why wars start. Still, China is a large country far away about which we know little so what should it matter.  China is gearing up to confront the United States in the Indo-Pacific. Given the centrality of Washington to London’s security and defence planning assumptions, anything that impacts on the US impacts on Britain and NATO.  China is impacting big time on US defence policy. Just read the new National Defense Strategy 2022.  

Plus ça change?

Lord Richard Dannatt, the former head of the British Army, likened the state of Britain’s armed forces of today to those of the 1930s.  In fact, and as someone who wrote his Oxford thesis on that very subject, the situation could be even worse. On March 23rd 1932, Britain scrapped the so-called Ten Year Rule by which Britain could assume that it would not be involved in a major war for the next decade and reduce defence expenditure accordingly.  In February 1934, Britain began rearming and over the next eight years both modernised the Royal Navy and created the world’s most advanced air defence system which the Luftwaffe discovered to its cost in 1940.

The British Army by and large lost out. There were several reasons for this, perhaps the most telling of which was a political determination in London never to the trenches of World War One in which several of Britain’s leaders had fought between 1914 and 1918.  And, although the British had in 1918 invented ‘Blitzkrieg’, or the ‘All Arms Battle’ as it was known, by 1935 the British Army had resorted to being what it had been since 1815,  an imperial policing force.  Consequently, in May and June 1940 Lord Gort’s British Expeditionary Force (BEF) only represented 10% of the Anglo-Belgian and overwhelmingly French forces defending North-West Europe. When the French fortress of Sedan fell on May 15, 1940 Gort’s force was simply too small and lacked the necessary joint fighting power to act as an independent force and was forced to retreat to Dunkirk where it lost the bulk of its equipment. Whatever the quality of the BEF it was simply too small and too under-equipped to make a qualitative difference on the ground in the face of the Wehrmacht’s onslaught.

Drill down into IR2023 and the facts are revealing. Almost $4 billion of Britain’s $6 billion defence uplift will go towards nuclear defence, particularly support for the clumsily-named SSN-AUKUS (if the French get involved will it become SSN-FAUKUS?) which is planned to replace the current Astute-class from mid-2030s even though these admittedly excellent submarines are still in the process of being delivered.  In other words, Britain will not see the fruits of much of IR2023 until probably the 2040s and that $4 billion is thus a down-payment on a future submarine system with little impact today.

The cost of Ukraine

What is relevant today is the planned £2 billion to be spent on replenishing munition stocks depleted by transfers to Ukraine, thus reinforcing the £560 million announced in 2022. The implication being that IR2023 is also a down-payment on the lessons being learnt from the Russia-Ukraine War.  However, given the extent, scope and cost of those lessons it is not much of a down-payment given the nature of those lessons which explains why Ben Wallace, the Secretary-of State for Defence was seeking a $13.25 billion hike, rather than the $6 billion on offer.

Learning the lessons of the war in Ukraine will cost the British a lot of money if London is to transform the British Army from counterinsurgency policing to full-on warfighting as both IR2023 and Integrated Review 2021 suggest it will. Given the size of Britain’s population any future war will always cast Britain as Sparta to Athens, Ukraine to Russia.  Britain’s defence-industrial capacity is woefully small compared with the 1930s. British forces will also need far more robust logistics far more forward deployed, with enhanced and far more secure military supply chains particularly important.  That is perhaps why there are echoes in IR2023 of the 1936 Shadow Factory Plan which was critical, for example, to Britain out-producing Germany in combat aircraft as early as June 1940.   Britain will now invest in “munitions infrastructure” to accelerate the acquisition of ammunition which has been consumed at a far higher rate in Ukraine than expected. 

British forces will need to make far better use of technology to authorise action at the lowest level possible of mission command.  A flat-line command and control structure will also be needed to reinforce redundancy in command and avoid decapitating strikes against the command structure.  Land warfare is also becoming like submarine warfare with concealment, stealth and sudden strike now at the core of warfighting doctrine with a shift also taking place towards so-called “Über-targeting” with the best-placed unit given command authority to strike at their discretion to ensure a larger enemy is kept permanently off-balance. All of the above will require force transformation and should ideally see such investment beginning now.

Improved force protection will also be vital with a particular need to reduce the digital footprint of force concentrations (‘bright butterflies’).  The vulnerability of armour unsupported by infantry and helicopters in the battlespace is been all-too-apparent and Britain lacks sufficient numbers of all three, especially so given the need to dominate both fires and counter-fires.  The vulnerability of deployed forces to expendable drones, strike drones and loitering systems armed with precision-guided munitions is also abundantly clear. Enhanced land-based, protected battlefield mobility will also be a core British requirement together with increased force command resilience given how often the Ukrainians have been able to detect and ‘kill’ Russian forward (and less forward) deployed headquarters.

Agility or fragility?

Beyond Ukraine? Integrated Review 2021 focussed on future agility at the higher end of the conflict spectrum, primarily to reinforce London’s weight in NATO and Britain’s importance to, and thus influence with, the US.  At the core of the military-strategic thinking behind IR2021 was creation of a fully-interoperable, deep joint, global reach if need be future force able to better share transatlantic security and defence burdens.  AUKUS will be central to such future force.  That was the essential message from this week’s meeting in San Diego, home of the US Pacific Fleet, at which Sunak stood alongside Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and US President Joe Biden. The three leaders announced that Australia will purchase between 3 and 5 US Virginia-class submarines, as will begin work in Australia and Britain on building SSN-AUKUS using US technology.  It was also implied that Britain will increase its future fleet of nuclear-powered attack submarines from the 7 Astute-class boats to 15 SSN-AUKUS.  It is all very impressive on paper but if Britain is to meet the procurement challenge implicit in AUKUS it will need to markedly improve the performance of its Submarine Delivery Agency.  The gap between each of the seven Royal Navy Astute-class boats has been so long that each submarine is literally in a class of its own!

IR2023 and NATO? The New Force Model at the heart of NATO’s Military Strategy calls for the enhanced NATO Response Force of some 40,000 troops to be transformed into a future force of some 300,000 troops maintained at high alert, with 44,000 kept at high readiness. At American behest the new force will be mainly European.  A force of that size and with the necessary level of fighting power would normally mean that with rotation there would always be a force of some 100,000 kept at high readiness, which will be extremely expensive for NATO European allies grappling with high inflation and post-COVID economies. A NATO standard brigade is normally between 3200 and 5500 strong. Given that both air and naval forces will also need to be included, a land force of, say, 200,000 would need at least 50 to 60 European rapid reaction brigades together with all their supporting elements. At best, there are only 20 to 30 today. Britain?

Back to the future?

What must be done? In November 1933 the Defence Requirements Sub-Committee (DRC) was formed to consider the shortfalls and deficiencies in Britain’s then armed forces.  A new version of the DRC needs to be stood up as a matter of urgency.  Britain’s defence procurement is also (eternally) in desperate need of root and branch reform. Last October’s Future War and Deterrence Conference, which I had the honour to direct, was clear: “A new and far more interactive and proactive partnership is needed between government, defence industries and the wider military supply chain.  Such supply chains also need to be made more robust and secure.  The pace and scale of political, economic and military-technical change risks undermining Allied cohesion, force interoperability leading to increasingly unbalanced security and defence planning in democracies. Effective long-term project management is a particular lacuna”.

For both IR2021 and IR2023 to be credible acquisition cycles will need to be markedly accelerated.  There is also profound tension between the acquisition of platforms and systems. For example, the acquisition of new military platforms in Europe is on average 5-7 years whilst technology evolves every 5-7 months. As the war in Ukraine is demonstrating, European states in particular simply lack the defence industrial capacity to ramp up production immediately and rapidly. Only something akin to the British Shadow Factory Plan will do so.  The Plan enabled London to place the British economy on a war footing and rapidly increase war production in September1939. And here is the crunch. IR2023 implies Britain must prepare for war but with a determinedly peacetime mind-set.

Does the UK defence strategy implicit in AUKUS make sense?  IR2021 had much to be commended. Innovative thinking was built into its DNA with digital manoeuvre and space reach considered across the emerging hybrid war – cyber war - hyperwar spectrum, whilst at its core was the vision of a US-interoperable high-end British future force. IR2021 also considered security in the round, i.e. the effects Britain needed to generate from the entirety of its security investment and the role of defence therein.  The key word was ‘integrated’, the use of all national means including defence to secure Britain and its interests. Unfortunately, the ends, ways and means of IR2021 did not add up and nor do they for IR2023.  The major lacuna is the lack of new money for the Royal Navy, the Royal Air Force, and above all the British Army.  Consequently, British will continue to do what it has been doing since the 1998 Strategic Defence Review and the creation of the hideously misnamed ‘Smart Procurement”: the sacrifice of contemporary mass to pay for ill-defined digital manoeuvre, the here, now and tomorrow for some ill-defined future.  In 2010, the British went further and took an axe to Britain’s armed forces even though they were in the midst of a major campaign in Afghanistan.

And yet, Sunak said this week that Britain’s defence policy rests on “the quality of relationships with others”.  However, important the relationship with Australia it is the relationships with Britain’s NATO Allies that must come first. First, because Sunak has placed NATO at the heart of British defence policy. Second, Britain is a European regional-strategic power.  The most striking paradox of IR2024 is that by continuing to sacrifice contemporary mass for future manoeuvre London is effectively binning its commitment to the land component of the NATO Defence Plan and the 2019 NATO Military Strategy.   

Britain’s down-payment defence review

The strength of the Integrated Review process is that it envisions security, intelligence, influence and defence in the round and attempts to understand and respond to the changing character of the new hybrid, intelligence, and cyber ‘permawar’ the Britain is daily fighting, as well as deterring a possible future war. The weakness is a culture of government in London that sees Britain’s public finances as the first line of defence rather than Britain’s armed forces. This basic misconception exaggerates the importance of soft power and underestimates the utility of hard power as the essential commodity in national influence. Consequently, funding for defence is what is left over after other instruments of power – economic, diplomatic and development – are afforded. And, even though defence is the fifth largest expenditure from the public purse it is simply not enough to meet the ambition implicit in IR2023.  This is because Britain and all the developed democracies are engaged in a clash of wills with autocratic powers such as China and Russia.  Russia might be down but it is certainly not out, particularly as a hybrid and cyber warrior. China is not Russia and may be reasoned with but Xi’s Great Wall of Steel speech still reveals a Middle Kingdom only just beginning its Long March to geopolitical power.   

Furthermore, the reasons a country like Britain invests in defence do not simply concern national defence.  A relatively strong British defence effort buys influence inside NATO, with partners, in the UN and G7, and above all in Washington.  In other words, visible defence has a value far beyond steel and must be seen as such. Sadly, the ‘refresh’ still reeks of strategically-illiterate Treasury economists who only ever see defence as a cost that must be limited.  Even 3% of Britain’s GDP spent on defence would be barely enough given the strategic circumstances because of the way Britain spends on defence.  Given events and decisions being made by the likes of China, Russia, Iran, North Korea and others 2.25% GDP on defence, even if it is enough, could only ever be enough if the British spent far, far better.

IR 2023 is thus a down-payment on alleviating the eternal short-term funding crisis from which Britain’s armed forces suffer, and AUKUS is clearly a down-payment towards a new intelligence-led Five Eyes-based alliance fit for the twenty-first century. The problem is that the first is little more than a fix and the second is a structurally strategic shift that will require both investment and delivery, neither of which Britain’s High Establishment is renowned for. Critically, AUKUS will require a sustained and joined-up security, defence and industrial policy. In other words, whilst AUKUS implies a profound change in Britain’s view of its role in the world and the utility of defence as a value rather than a cost, IR2023 seeks to limit the very defence investment central to the AUKUS vision.  The result? Ever more tasks over ever greater distance for Britain’s dangerously hollowed-out and over-stretched armed forces.  . Politics at the expense of strategy.

Too small with too much to do

The hard truth is that in relative terms the British armed forces are too small and too ill-equipped for the missions and tasks the British Government has signed up to in NATO let alone Global Britain.  They have neither the quality nor the quantity.  This is particularly the case for the British Army which has become a leitmotif of the dead-end which for too long British defence policy has been parked in.  It is precisely for that reason the British Army of today faces a very similar challenge to Lord Gort’s force back in 1940. For all its illustrious history the British Army of 2023 is an ‘anything but warfighting force’ compared with the forces that could soon be arrayed against it in the kind of war it might be called on to fight. Much the same can be said for the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force.

Therefore, the essential inefficiency in British defence policy and investment is both caused by, and a consequence of, profound misalignment between the ends, ways and means of Britain’s security and defence.  Such chronic defence-strategic inefficiency is magnified by a High Establishment seemingly incapable of generating the deep synergy across government that would be vital to turning relatively low defence investment into high effect. IR2023 is thus the latest iteration of a process that began back in 1998 which seeks to give the impression of ambition but in fact reveals Britain’s lack of it due to a woefully incoherent between national strategy, defence strategy and public finances. Smart defence it ain’t.

IR2023, like its forebears, is a thus another well-meaning attempt to square the eternal circle of Britain’s security and defence failure in the twenty-first century, but it is no more nor less than that. Rather, it is another one of those increasingly iterative ‘Microsoft’ security patch defence reviews that London routinely likes to download for political effect rather than strategic influence. IR2023 or Muddling Through 2023? As we Yorkshire folk are prone to say, IR2023 is a bit like putting a bay window on a brick s***house!   

Julian Lindley-French

A Comprehensive Strategy for Ukraine's Future

Julian Lindley-French

https://thealphengroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/TAG-Ukraine-Strategy-PUBLIC-LAUNCH-VERSION-220223.pdf 

INTRODUCTION

It is my honour to share with you the TAG’s latest publication “A Comprehensive Strategy to Secure Ukraine’s Future”, The Alphen Group’s latest working project, which I have had the honour to lead.  

The Strategy has been prepared over several months with the support of experts from fifteen democracies, including Australia and Japan.  Signatories, inter alia, include one former NATO Secretary-General, two Deputy Secretaries-General, three former NATO Deputy Supreme Allied Commanders, former ministers, several Chiefs of Defence Staff, and senior diplomats, as well as many subject matter experts all of whom are members of The Alphen Group. Our aim is simple: to secure a legitimate peace for Ukraine as quickly as possible and secure that peace going forward. This blog summarises the main points of the Strategy the TAG believes should be adopted now by the community of democracies (the West for the purposes of the Strategy) that form the coalition supporting Ukraine.

2023 will be the decisive year of the Russian-Ukraine war. The prospect of a total Russian victory that would see the complete dismemberment of an independent Ukrainian state, although by no means impossible, seems remote. However, Ukraine will only prevail with sustained and extensive Western support.  Equally, continued Ukrainian advances and recovery of still-occupied territory cannot be assumed and Russia may have sufficient capability to repel Ukrainian offensives and force a stalemate. Russia enjoys far more strategic depth and industrial capacity than Ukraine which is precisely the reason why Western support remains indispensable. 

As Russia’s war of aggression enters its second year, the Western definition of success must remain the re-establishment of Ukraine as a secure and sovereign European democracy with all the rights and responsibilities that entails.  The critical issue the TAG Ukraine Strategy 2023 (the Strategy) thus addresses is the scope and extent of Western support required to reinforce that goal across the diplomatic, informational, military and economic domains.  For the purpose of the Strategy, “the West” encompasses the Euro-Atlantic Community and those members of the G7 and beyond, such as Australia, Japan and South Korea, the policies of which are largely aligned.

The specific aims of the Strategy are threefold: To bring the war to an end on terms acceptable to Kyiv that deny the Russians the fruits of aggression and ensure that Russia does not invade Ukraine again; to restore Ukraine as an independent state in full control of its internationally-recognized borders, with the capability to deter and defeat any further Russian aggression; and thereby, to demonstrate to any potential aggressors that the democratic nations will defend the rules-based international order.

 THE STRATEGY

The TAG Ukraine Strategy is established on the following principles:  Russian aggression and attempts to change borders by force must not be rewarded or legitimized in any way; Russia must pay reparations for the death and damage it has inflicted on Ukraine; there can be no de facto Russian veto over NATO’s support for Ukraine and no secret deals with Moscow that undercut Ukraine’s position; the lifting of sanctions on Russia will only come as a consequence of Russian action and only over time; the West must be able to determine the European security order on its own terms, including Ukraine’s place in it; and, a NATO-Russia war is avoided.

The Strategy has two phases: the short-term (2023) and the medium-to-longer term (2024 and beyond). Within the Strategy there are four lines of action: diplomatic, informational, military, and economic (DIME) the main elements of which can be thus summarised:  

Diplomatic: issue a new “Declaration for Ukraine” to maximize Western cohesion and further deter Russia; pursue more vigorous diplomatic measures with China to seek their intervention to end the war;  clarify further for Russia the consequences of nuclear use or another massive invasion of western Ukraine; convene a “Conference of Democracies” to begin planning the post war order; maintain diplomatic contact with Moscow to the maximum extent possible;  provide all support necessary to support Ukrainian efforts to hold Russians accountable for war crimes.

Informational: Prepare western publics for the broad consequences of a protracted war; escalate the information campaign in Russia to counter the Kremlin’s narrative; maintain a high level of public support for assistance to Ukraine; and publicly define the meaning of a Ukrainian victory in which the full restoration of Ukraine’s territorial integrity is the goal. 

Military: Streamline decision-making on assistance to Ukraine; increase the pace and volume of weapons transfers to Ukraine designed to allow them to retake occupied territory, while refraining from attacks on Russian territory with western arms; seek to deter and prepare to deal with further Russian escalation should it come; take additional steps to guarantee Ukraine’s long-term security, including security guarantees and eventual NATO membership; and, avoid the temptation to slow efforts to further strengthen the NATO alliance because Russia will rebuild its forces in its long-term struggle with the alliance. 

Economic: Maintain and further strengthen sanctions; there is much more that can be done; continue to provide short-term economic aid and budget support to Ukraine to counter Russia’s effort to undercut Ukraine’s will to fight; pass western legislation as needed to allow sequestered Russian financial reserves to be used for Ukrainian reconstruction; and prepare for a massive Marshall-style plan for Ukraine once the conflict ends.

 LESSONS FROM THE WAR FOR NATO

War is a giant black hole into which people and materiel vanish at an alarming rate far beyond that envisaged by peacetime establishments. Consequently, there are two overarching lessons for the Alliance from the Russian-Ukraine War. First, NATO’s Deterrence and Defence Posture across Central and Eastern Europe must be reinforced to frustrate possible future Russian territorial ambitions. Second, whilst NATO’s missions and tasks were stated clearly in the 2019 Military Strategy, the 2021 NATO Agenda and NATO Strategic Concept 2022 the Alliance must also learn the military-technical lessons already apparent.

The initial military-technical lessons for the Alliance can be thus summarised: the vulnerability of armour unsupported by infantry and helicopters in the battlespace; the vital need to dominate both fires and counter-fires; the vulnerability of deployed ground forces to expendable drones, strike drones and loitering systems allied to precision-guided munitions; the need for more robust logistics forward deployed, with enhanced and far more secure military supply chains; more ready-action materiel, most notably small arms and tube and rocket artillery ammunition; build more and rebuild infrastructure to accelerate military mobility in scale; remove all legal impediments to rapid cross-border movements in a pre-war emergency; and, improve force protection of deployed forces, allied to a particular need to reduce the detectability and thus digital footprint of force concentrations.

THE WAY AHEAD

The core aim of Western strategy must remain, and must continue to remain, the complete and irreversible withdrawal of Russian forces, an end to all shelling and rocket attacks on the Ukrainian people, and the restoration of normal democratic governance across Ukraine’s territory.

However, a wider strategy must also be embraced by the West. Russia is seeking to tear down the rules-based order with the massive use of Russian power and illegitimate coercion using all other possible means. It is precisely such coercion that the West is confronting in Ukraine with Ukrainians and which must be contained and then ended. History suggests that only when Russia has acknowledged the West’s countervailing power will rules and all-important institutionalised structure be re-established.  In Europe, such structure is particularly important.  

Therefore, when negotiations for an enduring and equitable peace agreement do eventually begin there must be no territorial compromise. That said, the West, in consultation with Kyiv, must also consider its minimum conditions for a peace settlement beyond a mere cease-fire precisely so that serious negotiations may begin.

Those conditions might include: Any eventual peace agreement would be linked to Russia's future behaviour, and not just to ending its use of force in Ukraine; effective security guarantees for Ukraine, as part of which the West excludes nothing in advance, including NATO membership, and with no repeat of the failed 1994 Budapest Memorandum; OSCE-guaranteed language and other 'rights' for Russian speakers in Eastern and South-Eastern Ukraine, in tandem with similar guarantees by Russia for ethnic Ukrainians and Crimean Tatars; a lease-back deal for the Black Sea Fleet’s base in Sevastopol could be considered,  coupled with guarantees that Crimea will not be used as a base for aggression against Ukraine as in 2014; reparations by Russia to Ukraine; and, an immediate and expanded Association Agreement with the EU and Ukrainian membership of both the EU and NATO by 2033. 

A much greater Western effort is also needed to convince the likes of China and India to further withhold support from Russia. At this year’s G7 Summit in Hiroshima, Japan, China and India should be invited to join a G7-Plus Contact Group charged with both preventing nuclear escalation and returning the conflict to an institutional framework. A major diplomatic demarche is also needed towards other important democracies, such as Brazil, Indonesia, Nigeria, the Philippines, and South Africa.

Beyond the future of Ukraine, what is also at stake in the war is the West’s capacity to shape its strategic environment and shape the European security order on its own terms in a way that upholds the principles of the rules-based international order established following World War Two. All and any collective action will involve risk. A new European security system will be needed in order to restore respect for the principles of international law that Russia has violated and, over time, to lay the basis for a new relationship with Russia, whatever the outcome of the war. And, in the short term, it will also be indispensable in order to maintain a sufficient level of support from Western public opinion.

The Alphen Group, February 2023

 

Could China Invade Taiwan?

 “I hope I am wrong. My gut tells me we [US] will fight [China] in 2025”. General Mike Minihan, Commander, US Air Mobility Command

HMS Mallard

Lessons from the past

February 1st, 2023.  On September 17^th, 1940 Hitler indefinitely postponed Operation Sealion, the planned invasion of Britain. He had good reason.  None of the basic conditions for a successful invasion had been met. First, on September 15^th the Luftwaffe had received a mauling at the hands of the Royal Air Force which denied any chance the Germans could establish air superiority over the Channel and proposed landing grounds near Hastings. Second, the Kreigsmarine was in no position to escort the Wehrmacht across some 30 miles/40km of open sea under ferocious attack from the Royal Navy, world’s biggest navy at the time. The plan was to land three of the Wehrmacht’s best divisions on the southern English coast supported by paratroopers.  Had they tried it is likely all three divisions would have been destroyed.

Fast forward to 2023.  In late January a memo appeared online from General Mike Minihan warning US forces of a conflict with China as early as 2025, most likely over an invasion of Taiwan.  He warned that the 2024 Taiwanese presidential elections could be a pretext for invasion.  In August 2022, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) carried out a major exercise simulating just such an invasion.  That begs a question: just what would it take for the People’s Republic of China to successfully invade the Republic of China?   

History would suggest that President Xi would need to feel pretty threatened to undertake such a gamble. Any Chinese invasion of Taiwan would be fraught with danger for Chinese forces.  Yes, in some ways such a massive air-maritime-amphibious operation would be different to those of the past.  It would doubtless be preceded by a massive missile barrage, as well as cyber and other information warfare attacks designed to take out critical Taiwanese infrastructures and people. However, it would not be THAT different.  

Plans, planning and experience

Helmuth von Moltke the Elder said that, “No plan of operations extends with any certainty beyond the first contact with the main hostile force”. Take the D-Day maritime amphibious invasion of France in June 1944. Portsmouth to the Normandy beaches is a distance of 180km or 110 miles, whilst the distance between mainland China and Taiwan across the Strait of Taiwan is exactly the same. However, prior to D-Day Anglo-American forces had undertaken five major maritime-amphibious invasions.  Operation Torch in North Africa in November 1942, Operation Husky in Sicily in July 1953, Operation Avalanche at Salerno in October 1943 and Operation Shingle at Anzio in January 1944.

Experience gained is the best proof against such failure. Both Britain and the US were long-experienced blue water naval powers with corps of marines that had pioneered and were pioneering such operations both in the European and Pacific theatres of World War Two.  Even so, D-Day was a gamble, even though Nazi forces were fighting in Russia and the so-called Atlantic Wall spread thinly from Northern Norway to the Spanish border with France. And yet, five American, British and Canadian divisions landed on D-Day.  That D-Day was a success was in no small part because the conditions that were absent for Operation Sealion were in place for Operation Overlord: excellent intelligence, the support of the local population and undisputed Allied control of both air and sea.  The ‘only’ contest Allied forces faced was getting ashore and establishing quickly an unassailable bridgehead.  

No doubt the Chinese have studied the extremely extensive and intensive Chiefs of Staff Supreme Allied Command (COSSAC) plans that led to D-Day in their own planning, which they have clearly now completed.  However, recent exercises testing Chinese Naval Infantry suggest the force is neither big enough nor experienced enough to successfully assault Taiwan without being effectively destroyed in the process.  For all their burgeoning and impressive equipment the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) and its air force simply lack the experience of contested blue water power projection and/or massive joint maritime-amphibious operations. Therefore, at present, Chinese planning suggests more Operation Sealion, i.e. an attempt to force a settlement through the threat of invasion, rather than Operation Overlord, an actual invasion.

The First Battle of the Next War?

Early in 2023 Washington’s Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) released the findings of a series of war games entitled, “The First Battle of the Next War” they had conducted simulating a Chinese invasion of Taiwan in which the US and Japan was engaged. They suggested that under any scenario the People’s Liberation Army and Navy would see at least 10000 troops killed with tens of thousands more taken prisoner. The Chinese would likely lose 138 ships and 155 aircraft.   However, both the US and Japan would also suffer very significant losses, with Taiwan losing its entire navy of destroyers and frigates.

There is an additional factor President Xi would have to take into account - the ferocity of the defence. This would certainly be the case given the past history between the Chinese Communist Party and Chiang Kai-shek’s Chinese Nationalist Party which retreated to then Formosa following the latter’s defeat in 1949. My father once told me a story that had been told to him by my grandfather. In the summer of 1940, at the height of the invasion scare, my grandfather was serving in a Royal Navy destroyer, HMS Mallard, off the south coast of England. He told my father that they were ordered to intercept what appeared to be a commando-style raid by German forces. When they intercepted the German force they discovered they were in wooden boats and were about to take them prisoner when an order came through from the very top of government that there were to be no prisoners.  Rather, they were ordered to ring the German force in fuel oil and set it alight as a message to Hitler about the ferocity with which German forces would be met if they attempted to invade.  

My grandfather was not prone to telling lies, but I have never found any corroborating evidence in support of his story, although there are stories of burnt corpses of German soldiers washing ashore. Sadly, any ‘evidence’ if it exists has now been lost to the world of conspiracy theorists. If it is true, the information would probably be covered by a 100 year release restriction because it would have been a war crime, not dissimilar to the murder of 80 members of the Royal Warwickshire Regiment by the Waffen SS at Wormhoudt in June 1940. However, I do know my grandfather lived with the images of what he says happened for the rest of his life.  Chinese forces could expect a similar reception if they ever attempted to invade Taiwan.

It may be that General Minihan’s leaked memo is simply a general musing to keep his forces focused on their mission.  They do that. Still, the threat of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan is a real one and must not be discounted.   

Julian Lindley-French     

Kontesting Kissinger

 

“For all its propensity to violence, Russia has made decisive contributions to the global equilibrium and to the balance of power for over half a millennium. Its historical role should not be downgraded”.

Henry Kissinger, “How to avoid another world war”

December 28^th. Over the Christmas excess I read and re-read Henry Kissinger’s essay “How to avoid another world war”. His core thesis is that Russia must be maintained for the sake of global equilibrium because there are so many unknown unknowns that will come at us all in the years ahead.  I am in full agreement about the unknown unknowns and I am trying to know some of those unknowns now.  What I do not understand is Kissinger’s implication that we need to maintain THIS radically, revisionist, wrecker-ball Russia because if not the worsening disequilibrium in the international system will only get worse. That begs a question Kissinger fails to answer: how can an over-armed failing state the very ethos of which is the exploitation and undermining of the rules-based system be convinced to become a pillar of said system?

This paradox is apparent in the opening paragraphs of the essay when Kissinger likens today’s situation to that of pre-World War One Europe.  The paradox is that the period pre-1917 was the last time that Russia made any pretence to be a paragon of a rules-based order.  Kissinger’s argument about the causes of World War One also reveal the conceits of an American Realist of his era. Kissinger cites Christopher Clark’s seductive but essentially wrong argument that World War One was caused by all the Great Powers sleepwalking into war. Kissinger describes World War One as “cultural suicide”, but surely its consequences were more strategic and political than cultural.

Kissinger must be aware of Fritz Fischer’s powerful early 1960s book “World Power or Decline”.  Fischer clearly lays the blame for World War One at the feet of the agrarian Prussian Juncker elite in the then eastern Germany and its de facto alliance with an emerging industrialist class in western Germany.  The very creation of the German Empire on January 1, 1871 was the power equivalent of dropping a very large stone in a relatively small pool – it caused waves as the French found to their profound cost during the Franco-Prussian War of the same year. One man who understood this was Otto von Bismarck who skilfully managed Prusso-Germany’s external relations until he was unceremoniously dumped in 1890 by the unstable Kaiser Wilhelm II.

Thereafter, Wilhelmine Germany dragged Europe into war by first militarising itself and then threatening the rest of Europe with hard-boiled nationalism.  In the early 1900s Britain and France were imperfect democracies, but then so was the United States. They did not want or choose war as they both knew the consequences of industrial warfare having studied the American Civil War from 1861-1865. What was France expected to do faced with the 1904 Schlieffen Plan, of which they were aware, and a rapidly expanding Imperial German Army?  What were the British expected to do when the Imperial German Navy began to arm itself with Dreadnoughts and Super-Dreadnoughts all of which had only the range to fight a major naval battle in the North Sea against the Royal Navy.  In 1916 that battle took place and the German High Seas Fleet lost because Britain was prepared.

Consequences

What Kissinger completely misses in his essay is the changing dynamic within Germany that drove the Prussian elite to trigger war. The very power they relied upon for Germany’s external weight threatened the Prusso-German Constitution from within. The growth of industrial Germany also saw the growth of organised labour, and most notably the SPD, which began to challenge the power of the agrarian Juncker aristocracy. World War One was a desperate gambit by the Prussian aristocracy to preserve their domestic power. Nothing more, nothing less. On August 3^rd, 1914 Britain warned Imperial Germany that if it invaded Belgium it would force Britain to respond under the terms of the 1839 Belgian Neutrality Act, a cornerstone of the then European rules-based order.  On August 4^th, Berlin ignored London’s ultimatum and invaded. As for ignorance about the slaughter to come Kissinger is just plain wrong.  During the evening of August 4^th Sir Edward Grey, Britain’s Foreign Secretary, said “the lamps are going out all over Europe, and we shall not see them lit again in our lifetimes’.  One only has to listen to Germanophile Edward Elgar’s sad “I Sospiri” (the sighs) to feel the foreboding.

Kissinger’s other conceit is to imply the US saved Europe from itself.  First, World War One was ‘won’ by French sacrifice, the Royal Navy’s blockade of Germany and the technological and tactical advances of British Imperial Forces on land and in the air.  That is not to downplay the often naïve bravery of the American Doughboys but they were not the decisive factor.  What WAS decisive was the force and wealth the US could add to the Allied side, albeit at an immense strategy price for Britain and France. When America entered the war on April 6th 1917, it was not simply because of Germany’s unrestricted submarine warfare or the discovery by British Naval Intelligence of the so-called Zimmerman Telegram and the farcical plan to get Mexico to declare war on the US.  It was also about hard-headed American power and the rise of the US to global supremacy. 

By 1917, the combatants were exhausted and on the Allied side increasingly dependent on American munitions and money to continue the war.  However, contrary to Kissinger’s assertion neither President Woodrow Wilson nor his aide Colonel Edward House made serious efforts to bring about peace. The US Secretary of State Robert Lansing secretly encouraged the Allies to make peace demands Washington knew Berlin would never accept just at the moment the German military leadership of Hindenburg and Ludendorff had secured victory over Romania.  This ensured any hope that German Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg might have had of purposeful American engagement to end the war was dashed. Consequently, the Germans made proposal that they too knew the Allies would never accept, including the permanent annexation of Belgium and the territories they held in northern France. Why? First, America has never granted Allies money and weapons.  For example, Lend-Lease during World War Two was precisely what its names suggest – loans and leasing.  The last payment made by the UK to finally bring Lend-Lease to a close was in December 2006. Second, Wilson’s December 1916 demand that all parties to the conflict state their war aims prior to any American peace bid was far more to do with American domestic opinion and getting America into the war, not ending it, so that when negotiations did finally begin the Allies would be in a position of overwhelming strength with the Americans primus inter pares.

Putin’s Monday offer this past few days of peace negotiations to find “acceptable solutions” must be seen in a similar light.  Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov confirmed the cynicism of the ploy when he said later that, "Our proposals for the demilitarisation and denazification of the territories controlled by the [Ukrainian] regime, the elimination of threats to Russia's security emanating from there, including our new lands, are well known to the enemy. The point is simple: Fulfil them for your own good. Otherwise, the issue will be decided by the Russian army."

Relevance?

What is the relevance of World War One to today and the Kissinger essay? 

Firstly, because the Kissinger essay reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of the causes of World War One and America’s role in it his subsequent analysis is at times flawed.

Secondly, too many so-called Realists fail to understand the problem of irrationality and personality in international relations, particularly when one man has been at the apex of immense power for too long. Both Putin and China’s Xi Jingping show signs of megalomania and belief in their own propaganda. Beijing has increased its military pressure on Taiwan in recent days. 

Thirdly, when aggressive revisionist powers seek to change the established order through violence there is no alternative for the collective democracies to contain that threat until it dissipates.  

Fourthly, when new technology threatens to tip the balance of power decidedly and rapidly in favour of autocrats, democracies need to act decisively.  That is exactly what the British did in 1906 with the commissioning of HMS Dreadnought and it is exactly what the Alliance and its Partners now need to do to forge a dominant concept for the use in deterrence of Putin and his ilk.

Fifthly, there is little option but to form blocs of some kind or another when the values and interests of the Great Powers become increasingly opposed. That is particularly the case when revisionist Realpolitik powers such as China and Russia seek to tear down a rules-based order.  They must first be confronted with power and only when they have acknowledged that power can the rules and the structure it bequeaths be discussed. Why? It is because such a strategy is the only peaceful way back to equilibrium in the international system. Anything else is appeasement.

Kontesting Kissinger

Kissinger is right.  There will come a time when Russia comes to its senses but that time is not now.  He is also right that no-one should seek the dismemberment of Russia, although Beijing poses a much greater threat to Russia in that regard than any Western power, whatever Putin’s propaganda says.  However, Kissinger is simply wrong to believe that Putin’s Russia or any Russia like it can ever be a partner in preserving global equilibrium when it is so determined to destroy it. It is the only way Putin and his cronies can see a way to preserve their power and wealth having failed to prepare Russian society for the twenty-first century, in much the same way Kaiser Wilhelm and his Juncker aristo-cronies refused to face up to societal change in the twentieth century.

I have long been an admirer of Henry Kissinger the academic, even if I remain less admiring of Henry Kissinger the policy-maker back in the 1970s. Together with Richard Nixon they took valueless interests to an extreme and as such were distinctly un-American.  Kissinger has made profound errors of judgement over the years (as have we all). His call for a protracted stalemate during the 1980-88 Iran‐Iraq War to sustain American influence and his suggestion in 2012 that in “10 years, there will be no more Israel” were just plain wrong. In August of this year he said of the Ukraine War that, “We are at the edge of war with Russia and China on issues which we partly created, without any concept of how this is going to end or what it’s supposed to lead to.” He has also suggested that Ukraine should relinquish its claim to Crimea and grant self-government autonomy to the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics.  This is because he is profoundly concerned about power disequilibrium between China, Russia, and the United States and it is that disequilibrium that could trigger a Third World War. This is the crux of my disagreement with Kissinger.  Russia may have a lot of nuclear weapons but it is a small, poor state in a big large country with an exaggerated sense of its own power and influence. How on earth can a stable ‘equilibrium’ ever be fashioned with such a state?  

In other words, serious negotiations over Ukraine can only begin when Russia acknowledges its errors and its failure and Moscow is convinced of both Western unity and power. Which brings me to perhaps the greatest paradox of the Kissinger essay: the role of the United States.  Kissinger himself might be the master of balance of power geopolitics but he fails to recognise that American Realism has never been for purely Realist.  The use of American power has always had an element of the idealism of the Founding Fathers imbued within it.  It is what I call Liberal Realism – a hard-headed understanding of power and its application in pursuit of a liberal democratic outcome.  The essay effectively invites Americans to abandon that tradition which is precisely what China and Russia would want because it would replace the liberal rules-based order with the bad old-fashioned anarchy of Machtpolitik, the very stuff of autocratic and fascist ‘order’.

As for the disequilibrium of geopolitics it is Moscow that has taken a wrecking ball to global equilibrium and because of that it is Russia, not the West or anybody else, that is downgrading Russia’s historical role.

Julian Lindley-French